#because right now i cannot visualize it. i don’t know… how can i advocate for myself if i don’t know my own needs

[lambentplume]

i wish i could be comfortable living here (once again you don’t have to expand all of that)

[kirbyspits]

Why are you forgetting this legendary scene???? HOLY SHIT I WANT A MAN LIKE HIM IN MY LIFE

🤔

So the tldr is when I wrote the I’ll forever ship makorra post, I was on my phone in my bed and I already made caps/gifs of those moments. So it was easy for me to throw together some images without taking ages to respond. I didn’t have any ready-to-go caps/gifs of the makorra finale on my phone, and case in point, this ask sat in my inbox for months without a response (since I apparently cannot post text-only answers. We must all enjoy makorra visuals together 😌💗).

Buuuuuut you pose an interesting question because when I answered the original message, I already had taken screencaps and made gifs of the most meaningful Makorra moments for me. And yet the very last conversation with Mako and Korra, a cumulation of their entire relationship didn’t make the cut 🤔. You’re right, how can I forget to add this scene? Why isn’t it on my phone like the others?

Well, to be honest, as much as I love Mako’s words and Korra’s grateful smile, this scene does not actually make happy. It actually puts me in a somber mood. The same young woman who burst her way into Mako’s life and completely changed his outlook on the world ends with “the words thank you don’t seem enough. I don’t really know what to say.” Then she takes Mako’s word, “you don’t needs to say anything” and does just that! She doesn’t say anything else! That’s their ending! Then it’s a closeup of just their faces. I can’t see their body, and it’s a weird tilt of Korra’s face as it keeps zooming in and it just leaves me with more questions (why did they choose to frame it like this? (I mean I guess they didn’t want any ambiguity on where Mako and Korra stand)) than actual appreciation of this scene.

Now don’t get me wrong. I have the whole exchange recorded, and I used it for one of my edits, but it doesn’t belong on the list of scenes that resonate with me. There’s so many other moments of Mako supporting Korra and being amazed by her, case and point:

So that post wasn’t just about how much Mako cares for our girl. It’s about what why Makorra resonates with me. Why, as much as I advocate for representation, I’m unable to go as hard for what’s actually canon. Shipping truly is personal. So those the are scenes I hold on to dearly and reflect the kind of relationships I enjoy. With all that said

🥺

You expect me to be ok after this man pretty much promises to devote his life her? The man who started off as a cold-hearted/jaded brother who only looked out for his own to someone who now wants to help the avatar make the world a better place?! Pleaaaaseee! Cheers with my unpopped bottles to my otp Makorra!

[hummingbird-games]

Dev Blog # 18

Happy December good folks! Trying to learn (this time) from my past mistakes and slow the HECK down because last month was...a month. Plans this month were 1) an updated demo 2) chaos trailer and 3) finished base game so I can pinpoint release date. 

In honor of respecting my limits...you will get at most 2 out of 3 from me. 

What have been up to since I’ve been gone? Not much. Is this me advocating for mental health while blatantly ignoring my own???

I got some more editing done. I’m on Lydia’s path for line/transition edits and I’m glad to know that I still love this game with every fiber of my being. I’m just struggling a bit now…but ain’t we all??? 😂 for context, I’m 3/6 paths done with this particular editing pass. I’m also debating another round of beta testing 🤫 but for bugs and feedback. But in early 2022 because I cannot cram anything else in this year. 

I received all of my sprites! There’s a [redacted] scene that calls for [redacted] so we’ll revisit this in early 2022 with my sprite artist when I’ve saved up game funds and can reveal super cool awesome amazing stuff

As of drafting this dev-log...the updated demo is done. Like, just-slap-that-bad-boy-up-on-itch.io done. So. I will set some time aside this weekend to reacquaint myself with Butler LOL. (Tumblr heard it first, but look out for a release on this coming Sunday or Monday)

Chaotic trailer is....almost done. My perfectionism is getting in my way (and so is the self induced stress that is myself). But if it doesn’t get done until January, then that’s fine. I will live. Mostly. 

Some small milestones:

Happy one year to working on this game/ starting Hummingbird Games officially

Happy almost end to 2021 🤣

HAPPY 500+ DOWNLOADS ON ITCH.IO!

Some random news:

Remember the gaming laptop saga guys? Guess what there’s been an update and it involves Black Friday and getting a MUCH better deal on a more powerful device 😂 I decided to dedicate it only to games so I’ll continue to code on my current device.

GAMES/DEMOS I’VE BEEN PLAYING

Raptor Boyfriend: A High School Romance - I want to INHALE THIS GAME but alas life keeps getting in the way. I’m still on my first run (this is on me for WAITING SO LONG TO BUY IT), and ALL 3 love interests are divine, MC is super fun and awkward and funny, and this feels so much like an animated 90s show that I just wanna cry happy tears. Also it’s the high school genre??? We love to see it. 

Ise & Kai: Chosen Throne - Just wanna praise the @rieindiegames​  team because the lore and worldbuilding they’ve created is absolutely amazing. I finally got to sit down and play through the demo and it was nothing like I expected in the best way possible. (TBH it felt more like the full game than a “demo” and I’m still picking my jaw off the ground aha.)

Nevergrove - Don’t remember how I found this one but it’s a point and click visual novel and it’s SUPER fun!! There’s a mystery surrounding a missing (dead??) girl and while you’re in your aunt’s town there’s people to befriend and date 👀

Belle Automata - There’s 26ish hours left to support this Kickstarter so if you haven’t had a chance, please check out the demo and then support however you can! Ratings and reviews are pretty darn cool too. 

Sims 4 - There’s that new scenarios update thingy and right now I'm trying the holidays one where it’s a 2 person household/enemies to lovers, and not gonna lie, it’s super hard. I want my sims “to kith” but they’re too busy shouting forbidden words at each other and refusing to sleep in the same bed (because maybe I purposefully have one bed, so what.)

...

Okie doke guys, as always thank you for reading/skimming! For reaching the bottom of this devlog, you’ve won a special prize!! Florence screen incoming!!

- Gemini 💛

[bookcoversalt]

Have you noticed the latest edition of Charlie Bowater can only draw one (1) face? She did The Princess Will Save You and Cast In Firelight both YA Fantasy set to be released this year. And they are how you say... the same fucking cover

Ah yes so you saw the same tweet I did

I know I literally just posted that we cannot outlaw book covers from looking like each other, but ! Oof!

The only thing that softens the blow here is that Charlie has improved at representing nonwhite features such that characters look like POC rather than tan white people, although,, that bar was low. Anybody remember the ACOTAR coloring book.

(Would you have guessed that 2/3 of these people are nonwhite? Or even that they’re supposed to be three different men? I guess all the men in Prythian have the same haircut?)

But that minor victory is mostly lost in the quagmires of the fact that Charlie’s style is to give everyone instagram face:

I wouldn’t even call this “Sameface” necessarily: that implies limitation, that an artist is only capable of drawing a single facial structure competently. Bowater is incredibly technically talented, she just chooses to give everyone catlike fae eyes and the cheekbones of a starving nymph. (My previous post on this here.)

But I don’t really blame her for that, or for these hilariously identical, nearly devoid of personality covers. Artists are allowed to do whatever they want. Artists who make art for covers are being art directed by designers and marketing teams who bear responsibility for how the finished pieces turn out.

No, this is our fault, as a community and an industry and..... society, kind of, for valuing character portraits that are “pretty” (“pretty” being an extremely loaded, culturally subjective concept) over art that actually Says Something About The Story. Bowater’s style happens to dovetail perfectly with what we currently collectively find pretty, and so we’ve put her art on a pedestal at the cost of everything else art can or should do for our stories.

And this is understandable: in contemporary western culture, pretty is a value unto itself. Seeing our characters portrayed as pretty denotes them as special, as smart, as powerful. It’s almost impossible to de-program ourselves from that reaction. There are approximately five kajillion studies on how beautiful people are at personal and professional advantages; how they’re perceived to be happier, healthier, more successful, and how those perceptions can translate into realities. (Nevermind how thinness and whiteness enter that equation, see above note about “pretty”.) I would love to see more “average” or weird- looking characters abound (and be accurately visually represented) in the YA/ Genre lit sphere, but for now... everyone is pretty.

Which sometimes means everyone is pretty boring.

But that’s just the specific, "What’s the deal with Bowater’s success in book circles and her style and all the sameiness” part of this equation. What if we backed up and asked: why character art at all? Beyond a question of “pretty”-ness (and general obvious Artistic Quality), why do we gravitate towards it, what's the purpose of it, how does it fall flat in a general sense, and how can it be utilized more effectively?

This is something I think about all the time. I follow writers on social media (because..... I am a writer on social media, regrettably), and we have an enormous collective boner for character art. “Getting fanart [of the characters]” is one of the achievement pinnacles constantly cited when people get or want to get published. Commissioning character art is something we reward ourselves with, or save up for (WHICH IS GOOD AND CORRECT. FREE ART IS GREAT BUT DO NOT SOLICIT IT. PAY YOUR ARTISTS). And like???? Same????? We love our stories because we’re invested in our characters. Most humans, even prose writers, are visual creatures to some extent, and no matter how happy we are with our text-based art, it’s exciting to see our creations exist in that form. So we turn that art into promo material and we advocate for it on our covers-- because it’s so meaningful to us! It goes with the story perfectly!! Look at my dumb beautiful children!!!!!

But on an emotional level, it’s hard to grasp that it only means something to us. Particularly when you take into account the aforementioned vast landscape of beautiful visual blandness of many characters (in the YA/ genre lit sphere, that’s pretty much all I’m ever talking about), character art can be like baby photos. If you know the baby, if that baby is your new niece or your friend’s kid, if you’ve held them and their parent texts you updates when they do cute shit, you’re probably excited to see that baby photo. But unless it’s exceptionally cute, a random stranger’s baby photo isn’t likely to invoke an emotional reaction other than “this is why I don’t get on facebook.”

Seeing art of characters they don’t know might intrigue a reader, but especially if the characters or art are unremarkable-looking, it’s doing a hell of a lot more for the people who already have an emotional attachment to that character than anybody else. And that’s fine. Art for a small, invested audience is incredibly rewarding. But like the parent who cannot see why you don’t think their baby is THE MOST BEAUTIFUL BABY IN THE WORLD???? I think we have trouble divesting our emotional reaction to character art from its actual marketing value, which.... is often pretty minimal. This is my hill to die on #143:

Character portraits, even beautiful ones, are meaningless as a marketing tool without additional context or imagery. 

I love character art! I’m not saying it should not exist or that it’s worthless! Even art that appeals to only the one single person who made it has value and the right to exist. And part of this conversation is how important for POC to see themselves on covers, whether illustrations or stock imagery, particularly in YA/kidlit. I’m not saying character portrait covers are “bad”. 

I am saying that I have seen dozens and dozens of sets of character art for characters who look interchangeable, and it has never driven me to preorder a book. (Also one character portrait for a high-profile 2019 debut that was clearly just a painting of Amanda Seyfriend. You know the one. There’s nothing wrong with faceclaims but lmfao, girl,,,,)

I’m sure that’s not true for everyone! I am incredibly picky about art. It’s my job. There’s nothing wrong with your card deck of cell-shaded boys of ambiguous age and ethnicity who all have the same button nose and smirk if it Sparks Joy for you.

But if your goal is not only to delight yourself, but to sell books, it’s in your best interest to remember that art, like writing, is a form of communication. The publishing industry runs on pitches: querys, blurbs, proposals, self-promo tweets. What if we applied that logic to our visuals? How can we utilize our character design and art to communicate as much about our stories as possible, in the most enticing way?

Social media has already driven the embrace of this concept in a very general sense. Authors are now supposed to have ~ aesthetics. “Picspams” or graphics, modular collages that function as mini moodboards, are commonplace. But the labor intensity and relative scarcity of character art visible in bookish circles, even on covers, means that application of marketing sensibility to it is less intuitive than throwing together a pinterest board.

Since we were talking about it earlier, WICKED SAINTS, as a case study of a recent “successful” fantasy YA debut, arguably owed a lot of its early social media momentum to fanart.

(Early fanart by @warickaart)

The most frequently drawn character, Malachiasz, has long hair, claws, and distinctive face tattoos. WS has a strong aesthetic in general, but those features clearly marked his fanart as him in a way even someone unfamiliar with the book could clearly track across different styles. Different interpretations of his tattoos from different artists even became a point of interest.

(Art by Jaria Rambaran, also super early days of WS Being A Thing)

Aside from distinctiveness, it's a clear visual representation of his history as a cult member, his monstrous powers, and the story’s dark, medieval tone. The above image is also a great example of character interaction, something missing from straightforward portraits, that communicates a dynamic. Character dynamics draw people into stories: enemies-to-lovers, friends-to-lovers, childhood rivals, platonic life partners, love triangles, devoted siblings, exes who still carry the flame-- there’s a reason we codify these into tropes, and integrate that language and shared knowledge into our marketing. For another example in that vein, I really love this art by @MabyMin, commissioned by Gina Chen:

The wrist grip! The fancy outfits! These are two nobles who hate each other and want to bone and I am sold. 

In terms of true portraits, the best recent example I can think of is the set @NicoleDeal did for Roshani Chokshi’s GILDED WOLVES (I believe as a preorder incentive of some kind?): 

They showcase settings, props, and poses that all communicate the characters’ interests, skills, and personality, as well as the glamorous, elaborate aesthetic of the overall story. Even elements in the gold borders change, alluding to other plot points and symbology.

For painterly accuracy in character portraits on covers, I love SPIN THE DAWN. The heroine looks like a beautiful badass, yes, but the thoughtful, detailed rendering of every element, soft textures, and dynamic, fluid composition form a really cohesive, stunning illustration that presents an intriguing collection of story elements.

The devil isn’t always in the details, though: stark, moody, highly stylized or graphic art with an emphasis on textural contrast and bold color and shape rather than representational accuracy can communicate a lot (emotionally and tonally) while pretty much foregoing realism.

The new Lunar Chronicles covers are actually the best examples I found of this (Trying to stay within the realm of existing bookish art rather than branch into All Art Of Human Figures Forever):

Taking cues from styles more typical of the comics and video game industries.  (Games and comics, as visual mediums, are sources of incredible character art and I highly recommend following artists in those industries if you want to See More Cool Art On Your Timeline.)

TL;DR: Character art and design, as a marketing tool (even an incidental one) should be as unique to your story and your characters as possible, and tell us about the story in ways that make us want to read it. I tried to give examples because there are so many ways to do this, and so many different kinds of art, and I could give many more! But I’m bored now. So to circle all the way back:

These are not just bad because they look like each other, although that is embarrassing and illuminating. These are bad covers (although,,,,, PRINCESS is the far worse offender, at least FIRELIGHT suggests a thoughtful cultural analogue) because a desire for Pretty Character Art overrode the basic cover function to tell us about the story. We get no sense of who these people are, what their relationships are, what these books are about beyond the most general genre, or why we might care. The expressions are vague, the characters generic-looking, the compositions uninteresting and the colors failing to be indicative of anything in particular. 

They’re somebody else’s baby pictures.

(And yes, that’s the CRUEL PRINCE font on PRINCESS. I better not have to do a roundup post but it’s on thin fucking ice.)

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

(via Now That’s Some Serious Chronic Fatigue. Spoon Theory 2.0? (Patreon Link Within))

October 4, 2019

Many chronically ill people eventually learn about the “Spoon Theory” of chronic fatigue, which is basically a way to explain to healthy people what it’s like when you no longer possess (or never had) virtually unlimited mental and physical energy to do what you want.   Because it’s always the responsibility of the weakest and sickest to explain ourselves to healthy people innit.  A person’s spoons are a visual representation of their physical and mental energy reserves for the day, where a physical or mental activity “costs” one or more spoons to perform and when the spoons are gone the sick person has no choice but to stop acting and rest.  With adequate rest and recovery time, hopefully their spoon reserves will replenish by the next day but that is not always the case.  Many days, seriously ill people may have no spoons at all.

Spoon Theory was described and named by a chronically ill woman and it is pretty accurate in my own experience.  For the first time in my life, after putting myself through law school, studying for and passing the bar exam, and then working more than full time in a stressful and demanding career in addition to a lifetime of “adulting” meaning maintaining a household and nurturing various parasitic males I no longer have anywhere near the energy I once had and can now barely get anything done, regardless of urgency or import.  It’s not a matter of how important anything is anymore, nor how badly I need to or want to do it.  I am not in control of that now and it is debilitating and terrifying.

Healthy people have no idea that’s even possible and they often refuse to believe it.  And that’s an example of ableism, or discrimination in policy and practice against disabled people and in favor of healthy people.  Young people seem acutely aware of the concept of spoons, chronic illness and ableism while older people seem to have not a clue; the implications of that are terrifying but I will leave that for another day.

I recently attempted to describe my own limitations to my mother, and even though as a nurse who claims to have rigorously studied the issues and thinks she knows everything there is to know about health, wellness and chronic illness (LOL) she had never even heard of “spoons” or spoon theory.  Considering that that information is literally everywhere if one only cares to look, her research skills get an F.  Her practical knowledge gets an F.  Empathy F.  Effort F.  Fucks given on behalf of the chronically ill F.  Fucks given about me and my new normal F.   Decent human being D+.  Maybe.  Maybe there’s hope, I think to myself, and at least a D+ is better than an F in that department, although the D+ is likely generous.  It’s a pretty important department and I like to think it matters but maybe it really doesn’t.  Maybe there is just no way that healthy people will ever understand or care what it’s like to be seriously chronically ill no matter how decent they are but I decide to try.

I proceed to explain my limitations to a nurse, to my own fucking mother thusly: in a week’s time, in addition to fulfilling the basic survival needs of my business, myself and my 2 adopted shelter cats (procuring nutrition and toileting basically) I can maybe cook/prepare food 5 times, clean up the mess twice, and shower once.  That means there are at least 3 times a week where I cook/prepare food and do not clean up the mess right away.  Yes, that’s a thing that happens and no, there is nothing I can do about it.  My mom responded by shrieking “bullshit!   bullshit!” into my ear, as if that changes anything except to (more) completely alienate me and yes, to waste even more of my spoons.  My mom is a garbage disposal for my spoons and causes extreme spoon deficit on the regular, or she will if I let her.  And by “let her” I mean have any contact with her; I haven’t spoken to her in a year and a half, and very little in the past 7 years since I became seriously chronically ill and that’s why.  After her most recent outburst and what it did to my spoons I think I could easily go forever without speaking with her again.

Then yesterday I came across a post by another chronically ill blogger who described her own experience with chronic fatigue in a unique way that despite my own extreme brain fog and forgetfulness generally, I will probably never forget.  Michelle reads and comments here regularly (hi Michelle!) and has recently become a fulltime boondocker which means that she lives in wilderness areas in an RV all or almost all the time.  Like most or all chronically ill people, Michelle is a “Spoonie” and suffers from chronic fatigue and has only so many fucks to give and so much energy to burn on any given day and while it’s not up to her how many spoons she has, it is kind of up to her how she spends them.   Despite her “garbage can” diagnosis of ME/CFS she does the absolute best she can, as do we all, but in her case she has particular trouble using and maintaining her bulky and temperamental portable generator and cleaning up the dishes after she cooks and eats.

The really striking (and totally relateable) part of her experience, for me, was this:

Michelle often parks her RV in bear country and dirty dishes attract bears and she knows that.  But still she cannot necessarily muster the mental and physical energy needed to clean the dishes right away and the task must be put off until the next day or possibly even the next.  Get it?   Now that’s some serious fatigue, and I (and she) don’t mean to say that she has any worse fatigue than any other chronically ill person.  She may and she may not, how would that even be measured?  Rather, I (we) mean that chronic fatigue is serious, it is seriously and unbelievably debilitating and in this post Michelle explains the reality of it so well.  She cannot do anything more than what she can do, even if when her life literally depends on it.  And in her situation her life actually does depend on it.

Do you see what I am saying?  The import and urgency of the task changes nothing, NOTHING about what she is and is not able to actually do.  When her spoons are gone that’s it, and the only way she might have a spoon left over to do the dishes is if she never even cooked at all. Do you see the problem there?  Because I do.  She can either risk being attacked by bears or not cook (and therefore maybe not even eat) at all.  From what I’ve gathered through reading her blog, Michelle will probably not decide to stop boondocking if she can help it and she has (actual, valid) reasons for that too, one of which being that boondocking gives her spoons, being in nature gives her spoons, and being peaceful and quiet preserves the spoons she does have.  If she wasn’t boondocking in beautiful natural areas, maybe she would have even less spoons than she has now.  Maybe she would have no spoons at all.

THAT is the fucking reality of serious chronic fatigue and all the cursing and shrieking and being berated by others in the world will not change it.  It doesn’t matter how much you wish things were different.  You no longer make the rules.  The woman who gestated and birthed me does not make the rules.  Michelle doesn’t make the rules.  I don’t make the rules.  If we ever made the rules we don’t make them now and there is no reality-based reason to think that we will make those rules for ourselves ever again.  I would beseech healthy people to attempt to grok that, to please for the love of God grok that shit already but even that doesn’t matter!  It doesn’t matter if healthy people grok it or not, or at least their understanding will not in itself make sick people’s material reality better or worse.

What will help, though, is if the people we rely on for comfort, companionship, conversation, money, shelter or whatever don’t waste the few spoons we have by demanding we explain shit, or destroy those spoons in the garbage disposal of their shitty shrieking ignorance.  Now that would actually help.  And by help I mean stop making it fucking worse.   That is the reality of chronic illness and chronic fatigue and that reality cannot and will not be changed, or anytime soon, not until these serious, debilitating and fatiguing chronic illnesses are able to be treated or cured.  That is not the case today where most chronic illnesses including the one I suffer from, Crohn’s disease, produce symptoms that can maybe be somewhat managed sometimes (and maybe not) but that is not the same thing as treatment and it’s hell and gone from a cure.

__________________________

And on that note, I would like to leave a link to my Patreon and ask that my readers consider and pass along this most recent request for donations.  Despite my symptoms and their all-encompassing effects on my life, I have made some progress towards getting disability and housing benefits, but it looks like I am going to need to buy myself more time (or have it purchased for me as it were).  The game has now changed somewhat and with much (well, total) effort on my part, I now have additional medical evidence to support my claims, and my disability advocate has put me in contact with an organization that may be able to help: it’s an organization that helps autistic people maintain their independence and I am hopeful that they might actually come through.  This whole time, it has seemed as if no one really cared about the Crohn’s diagnosis but now that I have an additional diagnosis of high functioning autism, my disability advocates seem hopeful that they now have something they can actually use.  And importantly, they seem keen on doing some of the legwork to actually make that happen, like helping me fill out and drop off forms and such.  That is huge.

In a nutshell, it is very important that I stay where I am for now and not lose this apartment which does take housing vouchers if I am approved for one.  That means, as soon as I am approved I will start receiving rental assistance without having to wait for an eligible apartment to become available because I am already in one.  It also means I will not have to move again, when the move I made last year nearly killed me and left me seriously depleted of spoons for an entire year.  If I have to do that again, I literally very well may be unable to do it and if I can’t, it won’t matter that my life depends on it.   Can’t is can’t when you are chronically ill.  I know many of my readers know exactly what that means.

Thank you so much for reading and thank you for your support.

Comments Open.

[japanstopbrawler1992]

READ ME

ZERO TOLERANCE FOR RACIST CHASERS/GAY-FOR-STRAIGHT-CONSUMPTION/OOC TRANSPHOBIA/ANY RACISM WHATSOEVER UNLESS SHOWN AS BAD BY NARRATIVE AND CONFINED TO AGREED UPON PLOTTING

I set Savers in its airing year, so Masaru was born in '92. Can take place anytime after episode 49. However, there just won't be any explicit sexual content regardless of when the thread takes place. I also don't auto-ship: I'm here to walk a character through things, so ships will all be more slow-burn. Also, while Masaru's just pan, I'm actually asexual, so don't even expect me to present beyond a textbook understanding of sexual attraction

Masaru's kind of a jerk. My other two muses are generally at least kind unless the other person isn't, but Masaru's kind of abrasive and gleefully violent. If we're playing, I'll probably warn you beforehand, but Masaru may snap at your muse if your muse isn't a little kid. If your muse didn't deserve it, he'll probably apologise at some point, but yeah, this muse is even less like me than 02's Ken (Bleach's Ichigo is my muse most like me)

I'm on mobile. Period. I can't cut threads. I usually just tag "long post." Can't cut threads.

Seen JP ver only. Haven't seen any others, and I have no reason to bother--the original's in my native. Why would I bother with "orange juice bomb"?

Masaru is mixed race here. In a planned project that's a sister project to my Bleach project I already got a bit of stuff up for, Masaru's mum is Japanese and Russian, and related to Junpei of Frontier, and Masaru's dad was Japanese and Afghani. Masaru actually does speak Japanese, Russian, and Persian.

Masaru's also trans here. He never got puberty blockers, but he finally got testosterone at 13. So his voice changed at a pretty normal age. But he does need a binder and all that. (He loved that black tank top he wears after the memory wipe because it was just the right cut to cover the binder while showing off his arm muscles!) He does someday want kids, and Japanese law, like most US states or most places, requires sterilisation to recognise gender change. His papers also say a different first name. Of course, this probably came up with Satuma. Satuma and payroll at DATS probably know all about it. But being trans isn't *as* hard in Japan as the Anglophonic world. Especially thanks to Kamikawa Aya advocating on outlets like NHK radio since '95, which Masaru would be three then.

I toss the epilogue. Don't like the losing their digimon, and Masaru ditching his family he feels so responsible for and his dad he just got back?

Actually, in my project, ep 48 never happens. Suguru is dead, DATS remains, and Sayuri gets BanchouLeomon as her digimon partner.

Oh, another rule--poor spelling and grammar is acceptable if you are not a native speaker. It infuriates me to no end that I'm supposed to be an idiot for being fluent in three just because English is not my first, but native speakers get to run around spelling "bins" "ben's" and congratulating themselves for "kohnichuwa" but I get beaten/decried for actually knowing the language... And also, ,ZERO TOLERANCE for "garnish my human default English with exotic Japanese uwu" See "zero tolerance for chasers and racism"

Totally available to play in Japanese or Spanish, but you must be fluent.

Masaru lives in Tobechou, Yokohama. I went to the Chinatown in Yokohama once with my dad, but I lived in Koube. And we didn't leave Hanshin region all that much. My knowledge of much outside there being a Chinatown in the '80s (obviously still there, as it was the setting for the Savers movie) and big landmarks like Minatomirai is minimal. I also haven't been back to Japan period since '94. My relatives there are all deceased since the '90s, and flights alone are 1,000$, which, until recently, was definitely over a month of rent. Two for a studio, one plus a couple hundred for a 1 or 2LDK, depending. Might even have had 1.5 baths. By the time Savers was airing in Japan, I was able to keep up with Japanese news via now-gone Japanese-language broadcasts in California, as well as the Web, which is also how I saw Savers. But my knowledge of Japanese things may run the risk of being almost 30 years out of date. Or it might be completely current because I still read Asahi News, the most left-leaning paper I can find. Unsure if related to Hanshin region channel 6, but channel 6 was the best when I was there.

The Daimon family didn't move when Masaru came out, but he came out pretty young. It's just difficult to get trans care for minors. That being said, most peers don't know he's trans. They do know he's mixed, though. That being said, it's not like it's *only* him fighting racist bullies. It's only partially that. Like I said, I fully acknowledge he's pretty abrasive. So he's not completely blameless for all the fights. He could easily someday be the kind of parent who gets arrested for punching a rival dad. Violence is not a last resort for him. It's the best resort.

I do multi-para and don't use icons. But I'm not asking for an exact word count match. All I ask is give me stuff to go off of in replies and for Heaven's sake, do *not* format like House of Leaves when you play with me. Format button abuse looks like a visual panic attack, and is just too chaotic for me to read.

I may go spotty on replies with you. I'll still chat with you via the messenger thingy, and I don't play with people I've never spoken to, even if I've started the interaction, because I need to filter for my sanity, so I need to know the people I play with aren't gonna pull racism or something on me, but when my replies slow, it's because I work on-call at a shelter for seriously physically ill people, I'm also disabled myself, and I don't have the ability to put enough energy for the high-quality replies I strive to give in at the moment. I'm stalling because I want to give you my best. If I want to drop a thread, which is admittedly rare, I'll let you know. I won't leave you guessing.

Some h/cs just for fun

Masaru loves metal. The metal I know is 70s prog and 80s glam metal and stuff. I don't really like much music past about '94, and exactly two albums after 2000 (neither are metal)

Masaru has always had the same kind of attention span I have now even though I completely didn't when I was younger. He's running commentary if you watch an movie with him, his biggest problem with school is the whole sitting and passively listening to a lecture part, he thinks he doesn't like reading because others always talk about sitting there and reading for hours on end (if he's older, he may have realised it's OK to read for 20-minute bursts, something I eventually realised, too). He only really learns by doing. That being said, depending on age, he may not have had the chance to *realise* that yet.

He wouldn't become a sumo wrestler, but he totally watches it. Honestly, any fighting sport, and he's there.

He's very Japanese as far as religion. Sort of takes part and believes in a lot of them at the same time, but none are a overly influential part of his life. This is a thing.

Crossovers with any season preceding Savers are pretty easy with this blog considering my project. The project will eventually merge with the Bleach project, toi, so I also have a thing for that. Overall, I welcome crossovers with most animated media. Live action, I'll consider if you don't use icons with me (it ends up looking like Who Framed Roger Rabbit in my head) I don't do any real person stuff beyond, say, having Masaru listen to real bands or know of other public figures.

There is also a flexibility in playing Masaru in other countries. He could visit family in Russia or Afghanistan, he can be sent over from DATS to help with digimon appearances in countries allied with Japan (coughcontroloverjapanliketheuscough) or I totally ship him with Touma, so he could be in whatever that country is (obviously a Germanic nation in Western Europe)

He's definitely leftist, but his tactics aren't really common among the left. Typically, it's the fascists that will throw the first punch. Except Masaru will, as well. Unfortunately, this means he can take *away* from, say, antifa efforts to counter demo anti-Korean rioters.

He looks down on most weapon use, but probably none more so than guns and other weapons that remove the user from the target. To him, anyone who hides safely behind a weapon and makes the fight so one-sided is a coward. To this extent, he thinks war should be done away with and the leaders of the countries should duel instead of America just wiping out thousands of Japanese (WWII) or Afghani (during his lifetime) civilians (well, in that war, it was definitely not the Afghani government's fault, as that was a radical rebel sect powered initially by Regean, but it was most certainly civilian deaths en masse)

Masaru cannot meditate at all. He's also very reactive. To that extent, he's never really done well with martial arts. There's a lot less focus on self-discipline in boxing and wrestling than in Aikido or karate or what have you. He'd probably love the intensity of Krav Maga or CQC. I just don't know if Krav Maga has a self-discipline component. CQC almost certainly doesn't--it's American.

More when I think of it.

[ganymedesclock]

Compiling for the meme. Also I want to say as an aro/ace person, for “hotness level” I will merely be evaluating character aesthetics and how appealing I find them, since otherwise everyone would be solidly reading “meh”.

Since these got super long, I’m splitting these up and doing all Voltrons, and then all TFA asks.

@a-trolli​ said:  for the character ask, lotor of course!

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

Me, Clockie Radioactivesupersonic, loving Lotor as a character???? The very idea. 

In less mocking news I’ve been pretty much consistently excited about Lotor since pre-s2. I kid you not- my earliest meta on the subject was analyzing the “Weblum Galra” (Acxa’s s2e9 appearance) from the s2 trailer and speculating that was either Lotor or an agent thereof. I did a comic about it. 

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

Whether or not you agree with every decision of VLD’s writing, it’s visually gorgeous and Lotor is no exception. VLD’s offering of Lotor is easily one of my aesthetic favorites- the DDP design is a good contender and the classic poncho is an interesting statement, but, ultimately, the sleek blue-black armor, the added volume to his hair, even personalizing touches like those electric blues and the curl of hair next to his face are very nice touches. The “Mulan” strand in particular does a nice job adding a sense of youthfulness to his design, and AJ LoCascio does such a good job giving him this rolling, statesman’s eloquence. 

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

Lotor’s a raven who makes occasional passes at imitating a snake, methinks. He values power and loyalty, can be brash in certain situations, and is quite diligent, but, ultimately what Lotor respects the most is the pursuit of knowledge. Basically every time Lotor’s overcome a wall, it’s because when the going got hard, he hit the books. Given he started studying Altea towards his exile, it raises the clear implication that he responded to feeling bereaved and alone by seeking more information, and used that information to build a sense of belonging.

best quality:

Probably his sense of strategic observation, opportunism, and ambush tactics. It’s just a real delight to watch an effective strategist, especially one like Lotor where he’s not quite a villain so you can actually root for his plans to succeed.

worst quality: 

I mean, the part where he keeps ending up alone after his interpersonal connections spectacularly self-destruct and he cuts them off out of fear, but that’s not exactly mostly on him, now is it HAGGAR.

ship them with: 

Primarily Allura.

brotp them with: 

Did you know that before s4 I had a pet theory that Lotor had met the Generals when they all were children and they’d grown up together. I still think about that. 

needs to stay away from:

beep beep, Honerva it’s child protection services and they’re not impressed with your bullshit excuses about the rift.

misc. thoughts:

I don’t have a lot since I tend to just aggressively pour my Lotor thoughts right into the tag but just once I want to see Lotor get frustrated by something and have a frustrated huff that flutters his single forelock.

@thenorthernphoenix​ said:  For that character thing you're doing: Lance

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

MY BOY.

I genuinely deeply love Lance. And not just because I genuinely deeply love Heart aspect characters in general. He totally blindsided me as far as VLD characters- I latched hard onto Keith and Pidge first, then Shiro. Lance took a long, hard time growing on me! (I love Hunk and Allura too, they just didn’t do time as my Reigning Fave before Lotor stole that particular crown)

Which I think is kinda hilarious, since, uh, well, Lance is probably the character out of VLD I think I have the most in common with, and I think leaping to the notion that the rest of the cast is just a little more interesting than Lance is a very Lance thing to do.

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

I stand by what I said with Lotor, VLD is a nicely designed show, and Lance is cute. You wanna ruffle his hair. I’d say he doesn’t have any particularly striking or eye-catching features. A lot of his appeal as a character is less his physical features or clothing and more the body language with which he wears those things.

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

Of the Hogwarts headcanons I’ve posted this is one people often fight me on and I think this is because of a differentiation- I think people often sort characters based on who’s good at the particular House’s virtue, and not what they value. Knowledge takes many forms, and Ravenclaw isn’t obligatorily the domain of the most erudite- that would be pursuing a single, narrow facet of knowledge which doesn’t exactly speak to the wisest.

To me, Lance is a Ravenclaw because he’s motivated heavily by curiosity. He’s earnestly fascinated by people, by the world, by situations. We can tell a lot from the characters by how they respond to their Lion first meeting them- and Lance’s reaction to Blue is basically to just stroll right in and make himself at home. As soon as Blue seems like someone who has something to say, Lance is all ears. 

best quality:

Empathy and compassion

worst quality: 

I mean, it’s not exactly unforgivable but definitely the one that tends to bite him the most often is his tendency to just wildly try things when he’s got no expertise in a given area/ isn’t sure.

ship them with: 

Mostly Keith, but I’m decently amenable to him with Hunk or Allura. 

brotp them with: 

The whole team tbh but I think him and Shiro and him and Pidge are both underrated dynamics. Also, my undying esteem to the first person who writes him and Lotor getting stranded on a planet and having to work their way out with the power of emotional bonding and a lot of sarcasm.

needs to stay away from:

The Langst crowd. In seriousness, can’t think of anybody that’s a Lance-specific hazard and not generally bad for everyone else’s health.

misc. thoughts:

the Lance face from the WINNER flag is still my favicon. as it should be.

@oxfordmodernfairytales asked:  For the character ask thing, Shiro?

general opinion: fall in a hole and die | don’t like them | eh | they’re fine I guess | like them! | love them | actual love of my life 

Shiro’s come through a lot, and, while I think there are some ways he could have been fleshed out more, it’s really good to see him back on his feet again and I’m optimistic about this thing with the IGF Atlas. He really lights up when he’s on the bridge, and it’s nice to see. 

hotness level: get away from me | meh | neutral | theoretically hot but not my type | pretty hot | gorgeous! | 10/10 would bang

Given the amount of thirst art I see about him, it’s fair to say the fan consensus of Shiro is he’s way hot, and I do think he looks very handsome and charming but I don’t quite find him an Unstoppable Stud of a man. Being fair to Shiro this is probably a lot more to do with my sexuality than anything about his looks.

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

Josh Keaton aired this as his personal headcanon and, honestly, I’d see it. While Shiro is brave, and can and will challenge things directly that he sees as wrong, his greatest successes as a character are games of endurance. Both of his dry, sarcastic comments- one in s2e2 and one in s7e6- involve a cheerfully recited Long List of things that have failed to kill him so far. And what stands out about him to Keith in s7e1, their first meeting, isn’t the charismatic foot Shiro puts forwards- it’s his refusal to give up on Keith.

best quality:

All of the paladins get angry at cruelty, but Shiro has this particular eviscerating fury that really only comes from someone who passionately, earnestly believes in a good world and cannot tolerate the idea that you’re breaking from it.

worst quality: 

His tendency to put himself second and suffer in silence for long periods. He’s the biggest advocate of teamwork and the last one to open up about drowning, even when the water’s up to his chin.

ship them with: 

Adam, in that... as much as we saw him at a chapter of conflict, I’m a little frustrated at the note it ended on. I think it’d be really interesting to see more out of these guys- their stubbornness, strength of will, and, also, their connection and how much they care about each other.

brotp them with: 

His team, of course, but, honestly, he and Allura make a darn good platonic power couple. Let’s see more situations like s1e10.

needs to stay away from:

HAGGAR...

misc. thoughts:

his monolids... are not eyeliner.

[cjwmagic1123-blog]

Physician-Assisted Suicide: Humane or Heinous?

Dr. Roger Kligler is a retired internist who found himself in the middle of this debate. At 50 years old he was diagnosed with prostate cancer that was believed to be curable. After rounds of cancer treatment, Dr. Kligler was put into remission. However, after 5 years, Dr. Kligler went back to his oncologist and was informed that not only was his cancer back, but it was terminal.  After attending a medical lecture regarding “medical aid in dying” he became an advocate for the cause through Compassion & Choices, the foundation partially responsible for the passing of the End of Life Options Act in Massachusetts (I’m a doctor with end-stage cancer. I support medical aid in dying). Dr. Kligler’s case is a prime example that even the most unexpecting can be snarled up in cancer’s poisonous grasp. As an aspiring doctor, I want Dr. Kligler, and others like him, to know that they are not alone in this battle. Physician-Assisted Suicide is a tool in the very profound toolbox of a doctor that allows them to give their patient a final sense of peace. PAS postulates the end of suffering to terminally ill patients that would otherwise continue on the heinous, drawn out path to death.

Now it is time to get to the root of the topic. Is Physician-Assisted Suicide human or heinous? This phrase can be quite startling at first glance. There is undeniably a hefty negative connation associated with suicide that causes people to initially balk at the term. However, we must strive to remain neutral and focus on the real meaning behind the term. In the article, Physician-Assisted Suicide: Two Moral Arguments, the author does a beautiful job of really owning in on the different meanings of this term and how they apply to each individual medical case. She splits the term in “drug-providing” and “drug-injecting” (Thomson 506). Drug-providing is the process of a doctor knowingly writing a prescription that contains a dose of a drug that will be lethal to the patient. Drug-injecting is when the doctor is actually the one who administers a dose of a drug, usually morphine, that will end their life. This poses the question: are people really sick enough that a doctor feels it is within their medical rights to end their life?

Without experiencing a hardship personally, it is hard to imagine exactly what is feels like and to come up with the best possible solution to fix it. Agrawal and Emanuel write:

For many people, death in modern advanced societies is inherently undignified. Terminally ill patients are connected to tubes and machines; they experience pain, shortness of breath, and other excruciating symptoms; they are unable to get out of bed, feed themselves, and even go to the bathroom alone; they are cared for in impersonal institutions (Death and Dignity: dogma disputed 2026).

The picture painted by these men is not one that anyone would like to volunteer to star in. Unfortunately, after visualizing it, many people’s minds will immediately jump to a family member that has experienced this. My grandmother was diagnosed with a terminal cancer, meaning she would eventually die because of this cancer and there was nothing in the world that could stop it. This is a harsh reality that many individuals face. According to the National Cancer Institute, “approximately 38.4% of men and women will be diagnosed with cancer at some point during their lifetimes (based on 2013–2015 data)” (National Cancer Institute). In a standard classroom, that’s 10 out of 30 people. While we wish we could hide under the covers, the cruel reality is that statistically cancer will be a part of everyone’s lives at some point. So, what do you say to someone that’s diagnosed with terminal cancer? “Fight, you’ll beat it?” Unlikely. “Don’t worry, it won’t be that bad?” Also unlikely. “Everything will be okay.” Depends on what you think “okay” exactly is. “Fatigue, pain, appetite changes and problems breathing” are listed as physical symptoms in the last 2 to 3 months of life (American Cancer Society). That simple list doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world. Ok, I get short of breath every now and then, and sure I’ll be tired but I can nap all day. What they don’t mention is that often the pain cannot be controlled with medication, that “appetite changes” is vomiting constantly and not being able to enjoy any food. So again, I ask, what do you say to someone suffering like this? If it were me, I know I would not want to go on this way. I would exercise my right to ask a doctor to show humanity and end my life through Physician-Assisted Suicide.

        Ryan Anderson, a writer with a Ph.D. in American Principles and Public Policy, states that legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide would:

1.    Endanger the weak and vulnerable,

2.    Corrupt the practice of medicine and the doctor–patient relationship,

3.    Compromise the family and intergenerational commitments, and

4.    Betray human dignity and equality before the law. (Four Problems with Physician-Assisted Suicide).

The emotional struggle that doctors feel when there is nothing else they can legally do for a patient that is still suffering immensely is not easy. This option would strengthen the relationship between them as they are finally able to provide them with peace, not the contrary like he is suggesting. While Anderson’s other concerns have more grounding, because of the sensitivity of the matter I find it more than hard to imagine that these circumstances would come true. The amount of litigation and procedures that would be required for PAS to take place would trump his rising concerns. Concluding that PAS is the best option for a patient is no hasty decision. It is in a doctor’s nature to explore every possible route for their patient. From clinical trials containing experimental drugs to alternative medicine, a doctor will look at every possible outlet before just settling that PAS is the best option. The weak and vulnerable would not be endangered because of all the hoops doctors would have to jump through to even suggest PAS. In fact, according to legislation multiple doctors must confirm that patient’s disease is terminal before the topic of PAS can be present (Frequently Asked Questions).

In conclusion, I ask you to ponder what it means to be in unbearable pain, and really come to terms with exactly what PAS is. I pray that you never find yourself in a circumstance where you have to think about it again, but if you do, I hope that you will be better equipped to understand what it means.

Works Cited

Agrawal, Manish, and Emanuel, Ezekiel J. “Death and dignity: dogma disputed” The Lancet, vol. 3, Citizens News Wire, 28 December 2002, www.citizensnewswire.org/files/Ezekiel20021221_Death_and_Dignity.pdf

Anderson, Ryan. “Four Problems with Physician-Assisted Suicide” Health Care Reform, The Heritage Foundation, 30 March 2015, www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/four-problems-physician-assisted-suicide

“Cancer Statistics.” National Cancer Institute, www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics.

“FAQs - Physician-Hastened Death.” Death With Dignity, www.deathwithdignity.org/faqs/.

Kligler, Roger. “I'm a Doctor with End-Stage Cancer. I Support Medical Aid in Dying.” STAT, STAT, 6 Feb. 2018, www.statnews.com/2018/01/31/medical-aid-in-dying-doctor/.

“Physical Symptoms in the Last 2 to 3 Months of Life.” American Cancer Society, www.cancer.org/treatment/end-of-life-care/nearing-the-end-of-life/physical-symptoms.html.

Thomson, Judith Jarvis. “Physician-Assisted Suicide: Two Moral Arguments.” Ethics, vol. 109, no. 3, Apr. 1999, pp. 497-518. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/233919?origin=JSTOR-pdf&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[elizadoolittlethings]

Toby Hadoke’s adaptation of Nigel Kneale’s The Road aired on October 27 to great acclaim. Here, Hadoke talks about the necessary alterations for the story, as well as its tributes to the first production…NB This portion of the interview contains major spoilers for The Road. If you’ve not heard it yet, do so now!

Do we know if Nigel Kneale ever considered The Road as a radio script? It’s clear that what Brian Hodgson and the Radiophonic Workshop did back in 1963 was what he was after from the start – it was never going to be a big visual thing.

One of the big comments I got back from [Radio 4 Commissioning Editor] Jeremy Howe when we first pitched it was: “How is this going to work with the climax relying on a juxtaposition of the sound that we can hear and the visuals of the characters in the time period they are in, and the incongruity of hearing those sounds laid over the image of the people in that period clothing?”

He was quite right about that. Charlotte Riches who’s produced it has been a great advocate of mine and done pretty much everything I’ve done for radio; she’s an extremely experienced producer, and is brilliant and very hot on scripts. She said that the edit on the final five minutes of the play was the biggest and hardest job she’d had, and she’d produced hundreds of hours of radio drama. She gave herself a five-day edit on this because she knew this was going to be a biggie.

When you can see the pictures, you know where you’re supposed to be looking; when you’re listening on radio you have to create the points of view and it’s difficult to go, “Are we now with the haunting, or are we still in the woods, and those in the woods can hear the haunting?” On telly, we can see the people who can hear the haunting listening, so we have an anchor. On the radio, you go, “Why are we suddenly with the haunting?” It was really confusing to work out where the listener’s point of view was.

They say the pictures are better on radio – but when you need to create a very specific one, it has to be much harder. I think it works – there’s a lot of very clear audio cues placing us in the period before we get the stuff that’s out of place. Therefore we know the juxtaposition has to be doing something. In the radio version you’re giving us all their reactions through the haunting…

We had to keep cutting back to them. In the original, the haunting is just a series of fractured sounds, whereas in ours, it was Charlotte’s idea that we needed a narrative in the haunting to follow. We have a mother and a lost daughter character in the haunting who are entirely our invention, so we have a little mini story to follow within the haunting itself, otherwise we weren’t quite sure if it wasn’t going to be too fragmented and too confusing to follow.

All the dialogue in the haunting is entirely new, and we planned that quite hard… apart from the object that you can hear that is taken from the original BBC tapes. Although the play doesn’t exist, I had a bit of a brainwave. I dropped Mark Ayres an email and said, “I don’t suppose in your hall of records for the BBC Radiophonic Workshop the sound effects for The Road exist?” and he said, “I’ve got a tape here that says The Road.” He’s a superstar and sent me what was there, and we seeded a couple of bits in just because it’s a play about sound travelling through time, so why not have sound from the original play travelling through time to us? I thought that was nicely appropriate and a nice nod to the great people who went before us.

The original version was post-Cuba with the threat of nuclear holocaust very present – did you consider changing what the tragedy was that caused the haunting or did you want to keep it as close to the original as possible?

Unfortunately Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un came along and Putin as well in a sense – so I think a nuclear holocaust is something that’s still possible, and I didn’t think there was anything else it could be. It needed to be the present day, sure, but although we’ve got them listening to the news on the car radio, I didn’t want it to be too specific. Although it’s intended very much that the day of the haunting is the day that we’re listening to it – it’s happening to us – I thought it would sound a bit hokey if I embedded it too much in the very present in terms of our immediate references.

I think it would have worked in the 1980s when the BBC very kindly did a nuclear holocaust season and they showed The War Game, and Threads was on. I remember it was the first nightmare I ever had – I slept in my sister’s room because I watched The War Game and it scared the shit out of me. It was a real threat – I lived in the countryside, and my mum still lives there; there was a radar dome on the hill and we’d always talk about that if there was a nuclear attack, they’d take out that radar dome so we’d be in the fallout anyway. We wouldn’t escape by being in the country.

It definitely was a present and terrifying threat and I just think there’s nothing else that would quite match it. The world could be wiped out by flood or famine, but I don’t think that gives you as visceral a kick.

The big difficulty we had was with one of the sounds: I thought we should have one of those nuclear sirens going off, but I made some enquires. I asked a couple of MPs and Andrew Smith (who wrote Full Circle for Doctor Who and is a former police officer), as well as Tom Harris, the former MP, about what would happen in the event of a nuclear holocaust, and the consensus was that sound is now outmoded. That alarm wouldn’t happen.

The argument, though, was people still associate it with a nuclear attack, and we should use it but in the end Charlotte made the decision not to. I would have been comfortable using it, because it’s a really useful shorthand. We didn’t, and I think that helped to divorce ourselves from the 1960s setting, but it did mean we did not have available to an aural shorthand that says immediately, “There’s a nuclear bomb!”

So you have to find a way of doing it in the dialogue without having someone say, “I always thought I’d die in a nuclear war!” Or, “Look Jane, here’s a warhead!”

The mother and daughter bit sells that – as they’re describing the cloud. The bit that’s haunted me [and still gives me goosebumps when I transcribe this a few weeks later] is the mother saying, “Close your eyes and make a wish.”

That’s the bit that Charlotte really loved; she said when she read it she got chills down her spine. That’s nice because I wrote that bit!

The actors in the haunting include some quite well known actors, and the girl is the daughter of the producer. Nigel Kneale’s biographer, Andy Murray, is in there somewhere – he lives round the corner from me.

How much of the 40 minutes up to the haunting did you have to rework for radio, and how much could you keep scenes intact?

Unlike [Matthew Graham’s radio play of] The Stone Tape – which I thought was very good, but was a very different retelling of the story with new characters etc. – I felt we had a slight responsibility to present the play that we cannot experience because the tape was destroyed. In the shadow of Nigel Kneale I am humbly shrouded – I had no desire to go, “And what is Hadoke’s take on Kneale’s work?” This is very much my attempt to bring the brilliance of Nigel Kneale to a current and wide audience.

There are some brilliant lines in there, but by the very nature of radio, there are changes. On telly, if you have someone talking to somebody else for two pages, you can keep cutting back to the other person for their reactions to remind you they’re in the scene. You can’t do that on radio. Some of Charlotte’s notes would be – “Jethro speaks here, he hasn’t spoken since page 32, we need to bring him in beforehand, even if it’s to drop off a drink or cough, or something.”

There were various practical things: when we get to the woods, the cart gets stuck on a knot, and that’s just to bring us into the scene. A lot of that is Charlotte’s producing experience, creating the picture for the listener.

The big thing that we brought in to it was because the scenes were quite long – which they can be on television, and certainly could be on television in 1963. For this we needed all the stuff in the woods between Big Jeff and Lukey. In the teleplay it starts off with them setting up and then they bugger off pretty quickly. In this, the stuff with Big Jeff and Lukey and Tetsy that we keep cutting back to is largely mine, setting up the ghost story and having more of the history of the haunting cut with the philosophical discourse. It was felt that we needed to have a bit more toing and froing and to get in the wood location, where the climax takes place, quite a lot earlier. Most of the stuff between those characters, and the stuff about the bones, was all new just to have a bit of a mystery around the haunting.

I had fewer characters at my disposal so I had to roll a couple into one. In the original there’s a character called Sam, played by Rodney Bewes, who is Tetsy’s sweetheart and they’re in the woods. I think it was Charlotte’s idea we roll them into one, and Sam’s the dog now!  And it gives Tetsy a bigger role now.

There was a whole big team of guys helping the Squire and in my first draft I’d written lots of grunts, and cries of “You up there!” We just pared that down to Big Jeff and Lukey who do all the factotuming, because a big load of extras grunting is great on television to fill the picture but on radio it’s not particularly helpful.

In terms of the characters and the main thrusts of their arguments, the dialogue has been tweaked here and there, but large chunks are 100% Kneale. It was already great, so why mess with it?

How involved with the casting were you?

This is the great relationship I have with Charlotte – she knows I’m an acting geek. I didn’t know you could do this until we first did a play together; she said, “Who do you think?” and I suggested a few names… and they were all in it!

We were originally going to do this in Manchester and we were going to use all local actors for the supporting parts, which I’m passionate about because I think the BBC should use more local actors when they’re recording in a place. But because we’d got Mark Gatiss it looked like we’d have to do it in London, and if we were going to be in London, and it’s only a day [recording], we decided to aim high!

We batted a few ideas back and forth. I suggested Hattie Morahan straightaway just because 1) she’s a brilliant radio actress and 2) her dad directed the original which again I thought was a beautiful tie in to the past. Charlotte knew Hattie because she’d done loads of radio. I hadn’t known their connection. Hattie was a yes pretty quickly.

Mark I mentioned was a fan in the pitch – but I didn’t ask him if he’d be in it until we got the go ahead. He was definitely the first person to be contacted, before I’d written the script but after the commission. It then depended on his availability. We were on standby for quite a while – you can’t cast until you’ve got a date – but then we got a date finally from Mark and we moved pretty quickly.

Knowing we had Mark early on we knew would bring people to it – audience-wise and cast-wise. Actors know they’re going to be in a production that people are going to want to take some notice of and if it’s got the nod from somebody who can pick and choose their work, that helps.

I wasn’t 100% certain Mark would want to do it, because he tried to remake it and wasn’t successful so I thought he might be pissed off that somebody else had. He’d also done a readthrough of it on stage a few years ago, so maybe he’d played the part and got it out of his system. He’s always been very nice to me when I met him, so the approach wasn’t totally out of the blue and I thought he wouldn’t tell me to piss off, he would let me down gently. That’s the fear when you get in touch [with actors] out of the blue: you don’t want them to be rude to you, but I knew from my limited experience that Mark wouldn’t be mean, so I went for it.

Francis Magee is a brilliant actor and an old mate of mine and I wanted to give him a job – not that he needs one! He never stops working! I love him to death and I could just imagine him as Lukey so I suggested him.

I worked with Colin McFarlane years and years ago; he’s got a brilliant voice. I suggested him.

We had a few names in the frame for Big Jeff and then Emily, the production assistant, suggested Ralph Ineson because she always wanted to work with him. I said, “Go on offer it to him. It’s a little role at the bottom of the credits, he’s not going to go for it…” and he said yes. I wasn’t going to argue with that – he’s got the perfect voice for a tall Northern man.

Tetsy was quite hard to cast – Susan Wokoma was the only part I didn’t cast. I’d not worked with her before but she’s very much of the moment and brought a very different energy to it. She was Charlotte’s suggestion.

Then Adrian Scarborough – we had loads of ideas for Sir Timothy and there was an actor in the frame who couldn’t do it. It’s a potentially very boring part because he’s slightly stiff and credulous. I needed somebody who was able to bring a slightly different energy to it. I thought of Adrian whose work I’d always liked – I’ve seen him on stage a lot. He’s an interesting left field idea so I suggested him and Charlotte went, “ooh let’s try him”. I thought he’d be good but he’s even better than I thought. It’s a tricky part and he’s made it really sing. I’m  really happy with what he did with it.

Has this whetted your appetite for more Kneale adaptations?

It’s really helped me with my Quatermass book because [Nigel Kneale’s widow] Judith Kerr came to the recording. I’d been trying to get in touch with her to talk about the Quatermass book, but I’d never been able to get past the agent. She came to the recording of The Road, she was delightful, I chanced my arm and said I’m doing a book on Quatermass. I took her for dinner, and she took me round to the house. She’s got the Thing from The Quatermass Experiment out of a plastic bag in the corner of the office; she took me up to Nigel’s office where there’s a Martian sitting in the corner and gave me access to stuff I had no idea existed.

[Added October 29] Have you been pleased with the play’s reception?

I’m staggered – the response had been amazing. I mean, I knew there’d be a small coterie of people like me who would be keen on it (but then they might have hated it because it’s not 100% the original, so even they were a worry!) but the response has been huge. We trended on Twitter! And loads of people who knew nothing about the play before have got in touch to say how great it was an how floored they were by the ending. Someone even Tweeted to say it’s got his 11 year old son into radio drama which has made me overjoyed!

And then last night I got an email from Judith Kerr saying how much she enjoyed it and that “Tom would have loved it.” I’m not afraid to say that got me a bit emotional. So job done. It’s been a totally thrilling experience from start to finish and I’m very lucky to have had this opportunity.

The Road is available to listen on iPlayer. Read our review here

The first, spoiler-free, part of this interview explains how Toby came to adapt The Road

Photos from the recording (c) Toby Hadoke and used with kind permission.

[strawberry-milktea]

9-18-17 pt1: Hi. I'm feeling really empty right now. I came to my faith at 11 and I grew up in church rather than in a relationship with God. I remember just jumping into this whole life style of trying to do "the basics" (church, bible, praying,) without realizing I didn't even know the "basics" about the basics if that makes sense. I definitely didn't know what I didn't know and struggled for so long as a result of thinking I knew everything I needed to. I thought faith was like superpowers...

9-18-17 pt: I thought a relationship was instant when you do in fact have to pursue that with God. I thought all the spiritual maturity, depth, strength and intimacy was instant too. I didn’t realize it’s the *opportunity* to start and build a relationship that’s instant. It’s the *potential* to grow and become spiritually mature that’s instant. I have struggled so much to take my faith into my own hands and learn for myself what my parents or church didn’t teach me. I’m grateful but this is…            9-18-17 pt3: this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life. The holy spirit still kinda scares me. I grew up seeing people fall out involuntarily because of Him. When I got saved and baptized, both times I was terrified because I thought I was gonna fall out too. I STILL don’t really understand what God sounds like and it kills me. Because I hate doubt and long to be obedient and recognize His voice. No joke, I always want to think he sounds like Mufasa from the Lion king. LOL But..      9-18-17 pt4: I honestly am so confused about the spiritual nature of God. I was prophesied to awhile back and was told to lie prostrate. God told me to visualize laying before Him and he would take me to his throne room where I would taste & see that he was real. Everything in my mind was so hazy and I worried I was making it all up, recalling what others said God/His throne rm looked like. I never really saw much of anything & I’m so scared. I have no idea what went wrong that it didn’t work…     9-18-17 pt5: I honestly came on here to talk abt something totally different but ended up pouring out something else entirely. What I wanted to ask about was how to feel when believers are either living their lives unshaken by fear over the world nearly ending, or they’re so aware that they’re frantic that others aren’t frantic too. I’ve seen too many rapture debates & endtime prophesies. I just turned 23 on 9/15 & feel like I don’t even have time to get my godly life together before time is out     9-18-17 pt6: I honestly feel really nervous.  Between the sept 21st stuff with the feast of trumpets for united nations, the predictions for sept 23 with the constellations, Christians debating if the rapture is even biblical, if the mark of the beast is here or not, if its an rfid chip or not…I don’t know how to sleep at night. I took down my little collage of how I thought my life would go, trying to literally surrender to the fact that I don’t know God’s plan for me and I’m cool with that.      9-18-17 pt7: I’m still learning how to do this. I’ve been planning to go back into college in January and I’m applying to Christian colleges and looking at faith focused majors so I can be sure that I’ll  learn how to be more active for God. I’m doing everything on my own now and I’m still struggling fighting distractions and relying on discipline because I am really shy and feel like I’ve done nothing for God’s kingdom, which is embarrassing considering I have been a believer since I was a kid.    9-18-17 pt8/8: I know this was a lot, please forgive me but i am seriously freaking out. I’ve been crying & feeling hopeless over this. I’m just trying to do the right things. Get right with God. I want Him all over my life. I deleted all of my kpop & worldly music today. My flesh was screaming. I don’t know what to want anymore. God just blessed me w/ a new job & turning another year older. I still want things like marriage & a family. Still pure til marriage. Yet I’m so paranoid abt my future?  —Hi there,I want to apologize for such a late response, since you sent this so long ago.. I hope that you still follow/check back and happen to see this response.It’s definitely not uncommon to experience what you are describing about being raised in Christianity but coming to realize there is more to having a relationship with Him than simply being raised a Christian. Speaking personally, I was raised a Catholic from infancy - I made all the sacraments, went to Sunday school, and attended mass with my mom frequently. But in reality, I was just going with the motions. Once I was born again, I realized I had been spiritually dead as a Catholic. As a Catholic, I didn’t read the Bible and sinned in various ways without a second thought. I blindly followed Catholic doctrine that isn’t in agreement with Biblical scripture and I didn’t know any better because I didn’t read the Bible. Once I was born again and truly started my relationship with Christ, I left Catholicism, started studying the Word, and found a church that accurately follows what the Bible teaches. Our circumstances aren’t identical, but they are similar in the sense that we both came to a point of realizing our faith in Him is more than being raised a Christian and that the vital basics of faith/a relationship with Christ are overlooked when one mistakenly thinks being raised with the Christian label is what it means to be a Christian. But this realization isn’t something to fear. Rather, it is something to be thankful for! What I’m seeing here is you realizing that having a relationship with Christ and developing spiritual maturity is something that of course requires His intervention/drawing of us, but also requires our dedication and refusing to give up, even when we find ourselves in rough patches in life. The reason you are able to realize this is because He is helping you to realize and has opened your eyes. And this is great news!You are going to heap a substantial amount of stress on yourself if you believe that you are solely responsible for your spiritual growth. It’s great that you are taking responsibility and trying to learn things that your parents/your church didn’t teach you. And like I mentioned above, it’s definitely true that we won’t grow if we sit stagnant and don’t make effort to know Him better (e.g.: we won’t be able to learn the Word and therefore learn about Who He is if we don’t make the active effort to read it). But at the same time, please always realize you aren’t alone in this. The Lord is with you and He is responsible for our sanctification and our learning/understanding of the Word: “However, as it is written: ‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived’—the things God has prepared for those who love him—these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” - 1 Corinthians 2:9-14“But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.” - John 14:26When you realize that you aren’t in this alone and trust that He will guide/teach/strengthen your faith if you rely on Him, it takes a lot of the burden off of yourself.There is absolutely no reason to fear the Holy Spirit! I have heard of people saying they fall down/collapse in the presence of the Holy Spirit like you have described. However, not everyone experiences the Holy Spirit in this way. Personally speaking, that hasn’t happened to me but I do know what it is to experience His presence. And I think the best way to describe it is how the Word puts it - a peace that surpasses all understanding. The first time I experienced the Holy Spirit was during an extremely painful and frightening time in my life. It was also when I was being drawn to a true faith in and relationship with Christ/when I was newly born again. In the midst of that turmoil, I experienced an overwhelming sense of peace that made no “logical” sense. I had no reason to feel peace given the circumstances. I just felt at peace and had a general sense of “everything is going to be okay”. I didn’t understand what it was until I talked to a more mature Christian who pointed me to scripture that explained this. The point I want to drive home is, the Holy Spirit is not Someone to be fearful of. He is our Helper (also referred to as Comforter or Advocate, depending on the translation) Who brings us peace and provides us with the conviction we need to correct our behavior when we sin. Don’t allow the thought of collapsing in His presence cause you to fear or shy away from Him. That may not even be how you experience Him and say if it were, it wouldn’t be a frightening experience if it’s His presence you are experiencing.Regarding hearing God’s voice, it’s not always experienced as hearing a literal voice. I explained my experience with this in bit more detail in these asks if you want to take a look.Regarding what you mentioned about visions of the throne room, I have heard accounts of this and while I am wary/don’t automatically believe every claim of this, I don’t dismiss the idea that the Lord could allow visits to heaven/the throne room if it is His will and He has a purpose for it. But you don’t need to have one of these experiences to taste and see that He is real. I’m kind of getting the impression from your words that you feel something is wrong if you didn’t have this experience. Faith in Him and developing a relationship with Him allows us to taste and see He is real. We should never base our belief in Him on having a vision to prove it to us.. so please don’t let yourself fall into that incorrect mindset. You don’t need a vision of the throne room to have deep faith in Christ. When it comes to the end times stuff, my advice is to not allow yourself to get wrapped up in it - meaning don’t become obsessed or fixated on it. Many Christians have an unhealthy fixation on end times to the point that they ignore what scripture tells us about it (e.g.: setting dates when scripture tells we will not know the day or hour) and living in a state of panic. Instead of focusing on the amount of time left and what day it could be, what we should do is be aware of the signs taking place in this world that point to His return and be spiritually ready as if His return could be at any given moment (like Jesus instructed us to do using The Parable of the Ten Virgins). I have an end times tag that you may be interested in looking at. I also highly recommend listening to Pastor J.D. Farag if you want accurate, Bible based commentary on end times (he does weekly prophecy updates).When we fix our eyes on Christ, focus on strengthening our relationship with Him, and have our goal be for Him to sanctify us so that we become more and more like Him, there will be no reason to fear His return. Whether it’s His return or the moment of our last breath, we have no way of knowing precisely when either of those will be or which one will come first for any of us. There is no good that comes from living in a state of panic about either. If the panic comes from fearing you aren’t right with Him, then that’s when you use the time you have in the present to make yourself right with Him.. and from what you are saying, it sounds like you are taking these steps. So keep doing that! Keep desiring Him to be all over your life and to convict/guide you to remove things that don’t belong in your life. Don’t feel embarrassed over wishing you had done more work for Him at this point. I was far from a kid when I was born again. Rather, I was an adult woman. And before that point, I wasn’t doing work for His kingdom because I didn’t know Him.. has that stopped Him from using me once my eyes were opened? No! He made a way for me to do work in various ways, including this blog. I’m a shy/reserved type of person, too. But when He is guiding you to do the work, He will allow you to do work in ways that suit your personality (for me, He has allowed me to work through social media) and He will bring you into situations that force you to break out of your comfort zone and simultaneously grow spiritually while helping others (which He has also done for me). When He gives you the words and guidance, He fills you with courage to accomplish things you normally would feel are impossible for your personality type. It will happen, just trust Him and don’t give up!Regarding the future, I understand all too well the desire to want to control the way your future unfolds or to at least have some idea of what it will be like. But part of faith includes laying our future in His hands and trusting Him to unfold it according to His will, according to His timing. It’s much easier not to be paranoid and frightened when we do this. And this is something I am still learning to get stronger at myself.I hope you found this helpful and once again I apologize for taking so long to respond to this.. I hope you see this and if you have any other questions or want to continue discussing this, please let me know!

[badviolet]

Bulk Post

6/25/22

Two friends are visiting. Today is the pride parade in salem. I am in a coffee shop. It is nice to write here. I haven’t written in so long. Do i still know how to do it? Apparently so. There’s nothing to it really. You just tap tap tap whatever comes out. Sometimes it’s hard to get into a good writing position physically. But i just do it anyway.

What to say now? This coffee shop is noisy but in a way that doesn’t bother me. I like the people around me. They seem kind. I was listening to the podcast Your Undivited Attention this morning while I put on my mascara and one of the episodes said we were heading toward civil war.

I can feel my brain disintegrating. I think feeling hopeless and scared and stressed and in pain for long periods of time without respite must make you dumb, too. I’ve gained weight, too. But at least I’ve started a new job. A job that gives me a lot of autonomy.

My grandfather is dead. I can’t make it better for my mom. There are many things I can’t make better. Why am i doing this? Because I believe it will help me get through the days. It’s a way of being mindful. A way of processing. A way of letting my thoughts come and go. A way of letting go in general.

I cannot reproduce. I cannot have children. My mom wants to be a grandmother very badly. She gets a visceral comfort from holding what she calls “fat-bottomed babies”. When are you going to give me some fat-bottomed grandchildren, she says?

In a different time and place, i wouldv’e wanted to have children. But everything feels sick and diseased. I am scared for us on the daily. Wherever i look, i see pain and chaos and things that wrong. Disintegration. People are cracking up. Technology has alienated us. People can’t deal with the prolonged stress on the daily, myself and my family included.

At least Ben and Isabelle have each other. They are happy together, and don’t fight, and have bright futures. They love each other and make each other laugh and have lots of friends and good jobs.

Dont’t stop writing to drink your $7 iced coffee. Keep writing.

Two friends on busses to meet you in downtown salem. Then we will go to see the pride parade.

I feel mentally ill. We all are. i feel physically and mentally unwell.

Small, humble goals. Eat less. Just practice not eating food. Lose weight. Walk for an hour a day. We need to keep our physical body healthy because our capitalistic healthcare system cannot be depended on. I saw the way it treated my grandad. I miss him. I wish i could’ve soothed him more. Cared for him. I tried my best to be there for him when he died. It was my first time i’d been around a dying person. I held his hand while he died. People were speaking but i didn’t have anything to say. He never had much to say either. He was too wise for words. He was above them, beyond them. Other people were saying lovely things. I did say a few things to him while i was alone with him for a while, but the words started to feel hollow and false so i stopped them. I stopped and i just squeezed his hand and petted his head. And in my brain i sent powerful waves of love and comfort to him, and visualized him on his journey to a new and better place and i wished him well and i sent him everything good i had inside of me to take care of him as he went.

6/19/22

It’s father’s day . i am writing for the first time in a while. I have been in salem for weeks. My grandfather has died. I have left my mother with her grief. I tprobably wasn’t the right thing to do. When i was younger i was sheltered and privildeded, it took a long time for the pain to come seeping in. but it always does. It catches up to all of us at some point. I am grateful for the money and kindness and care that was lavished on me. My mother protected me and advocated for me. Even if other times she hurt me. I matter more than anything to her.

I could have, maybe should have, stayed home from my vacation this week. Stayed with her. But my staying wouldn’t bring him back. And i was afraid her sadness would swallow me. I am fragile myself. And i know the force that was in my grandfather would want me to live, to become strong. It is raining today. I will apoligze to my mother. I will swallow more advil. I am tired still after three cups of coffee. It is raining. I am a dull instrument. I am struggling to write with longer fingernails.

I watched my grandfather die. It was unceremonious. I don’t think he was happy at the end of his life. But are any of us happy? Happiness is a lot to expect.  We have unrealistic expectations.

Now it is coming up on a time when i may choose to reproduce.

It is my privilege to abstain. I will abstain out of love. I will love my children who won’t be. But by not having them, i am caring for them. I am loving them most. Maybe i am a coward, who would rather hide than play the game. But i’ve had enough pain. And i struggle every day to care for myself. I could not fail a child. And i could not bear to have this in this world that i am unsure about. The world doesnt feel safe enough. And at the end they would just die like my grandad.

Tring to figure out if i can write comfortably like this. I guess it works. Do the keys on the keyboard work? I guess o. They seem very responsive.

5/13/22

I didn’t get the promotion I was counting on. The worst thing happened. How many more worst things?

And yet I am here. Sitting on this blue carpeted floor. And I can hear the timbre of my step dad's voice downstairs. And my mom’s higher pitched one. And the sound of the birds outside through the open window.

And she has fixed my door. And bought me two new shades. She wanted to know if I wanted a tory Burch purse. No, I wanted a promotion.

I am bringing her down. I’m sorry mom. I’m sorry I've been so heavy and sad. I’m sorry I can't stop crying. It’s wrong to keep going to you. You need to have your own life too. To focus on your own happiness. But I keep going to you thinking maybe you’ll have the answers. Maybe you’ll be able to keep me safe.

After this, I'll go to a spooky lake. I’ll run a bit. I’ll kick the gravel dust and try not to think about my decaying joints.

There are so many large things that are wrong.

But maybe I can try to just live this day with pleasure.

Maybe I can just slow down. And begin, simply again.

A setback doesn’t have to mean it’s over.

It’s not over for me.

I still believe in my life.

And the life of my un-had children.

If it’s safe to someday have them, I will have them, and I will cherish them, and protect them.

And if it doesn’t feel safe to have them, I won't and I will love myself and support my decision either way.

Start with the basics. Fasting. Exercise. Aromatherapy. Sleep. Organizing and clearing through your possessions.

Going through your amazon.com orders.

There is no promise. No promise of better things to come. No promise that I'll someday feel better.

My mom doesn’t tell me not to kill myslf. Maybe she resents me for even bringing it up around her. Maybe she thinks in a way it might be a good thing. I know she loves me, but she can tell I'm not happy. Maybe, though she won’t say it, can’t condone it, she thinks, too, that it would be a solution.

Maybe she just doesn’t know. Maybe I've come hard up against the questions she always wondered about, the feelings that always plagued her. Maybe she never found an answer for them either other than distraction and her children. This is why I won't have children. Because I don't have an answer to these questions.

My questions are why people turn to god. But we are in an increasingly secular society.

I’m not going to lie to you. It all seems pretty bad. It doesn’t seem so bright.

So maybe I can become a very simple creature.

Maybe I don't have to be some grandiose or magnificent upstanding and impressive pillar of society.

Maybe i can relax and sink into and appreciate and even find a way to love and cherish what it feels to be a 29 year old woman outside the city of boston living with her parents who are in their 60s.

5/12/22 Killing yourself is a way out of compromising Which I have been doing all my life It is extreme it is final it is a hard line All day long I dream about killing my self All night long too They tell you that you’re not supposed to do it They beg you not to do it But who is my life serving? Who is serving who? Suicide has an economic cost Suicide is an economic fuck you The train ticket checker smells Maybe he wants to kill himself like me Or maybe it’s the person behind me who smells Moldy No one takes care of me No one is taken care of me No one has taken care of me I have a need to be protected I have a need to be respected I have a need to be loved I will focus on my breath I will lean into the venom of this day I won’t try to get through it I will let it try to get through me Everything in me hardens and turns venemous My mother is shocked by the vitriol in me There is nothing in me that is understanding Today I will take him to some dumb overlit white room And I will smile and say first of all thank you for being here I am gutted I am wounded It was too good to be true wasn’t it? Too good to be true That something good might happen to me Made too much sense Given the trajectory of my life If my life were a story it would make sense That something good After all this bad would happen My life is not a story My life is nothingness I don’t want to be here On this train With these people Fellow, enemy commuters Their plastic slack expressionless faces They don’t feel like the same species as me At one point in history we were communities We held hands and danced around fires I don’t know the last time I felt the presence of a community I don’t know the last time I felt held or protected or part of something There isn’t much time left Isnt much time for me Yes it is the cranky asshole train man who definitely smells Every time he walks by he leaves a trail of stench I am so tired of being at the bottom and smiling and begging and pandering How I would love for someone someday to “feel free to throw something on my calendar” Fuck you, asshole. I don’t want to be here. On this train. In this state. In this body.

5/11

It is the same thing every day But at least you are not wearing a mask on this god forsaken train Speeding into the billionaire’s steel city on an evil fast train that makes mean, cruel squeaks In your $12 work appropriate black capris That you got from savers And laundered twice Broken jaw and a broken heart At least you slept well last night I don’t know what it was That caused us to sleep so thoroughly I must refind myself esch day Stay close to her The woman behind me is sneezing Now I am fat again Must find a way to carve the fat off of me Let the bones and tendons and hungry eyes gleam I suspect it will come down to not eating Which I suspect won’t be so hard this time Suddenly not eating seems like a thrill A fuck you to the world I eat to delay my anger To not eat would be to luxuriate in my anger I look forward to the hungry focused luxuriating I look forward to seeing who I become when I don’t numb out Will I survive the rage? The grief? The nothingness? I hate the train. I hate this city. I hate the money everyone around me has: I hate the lack of spirituality. The lack of values. The lack of community. Off I go on my way to work like a good wage slave Like I said at the beginning of this At least I’m not wearing a mask on this god forsaken train At least I can breathe I’ve run out of words to say All these people are going to work and I’m going with them I have nothing to say My jaw is bothering me again It is my nightmare My nemesis How to do deal with it today? It started acting up during my presentation yesterday I can’t deal with it It deals with me I hope I can stop being sad for my mother My jaw is gluing itself together, resealing,’growing tight and hard in a way o didn’t consent too I’ve started drinking coffee again But mostly stopped the gum chewing My jeans are a size 14 Pants are the first thing to stop fitting when you get fat You have r the least leeway with them When will I be done? Fifty seconds left Say something good Or bed if you want to You weren’t supposed to check Will I ever be ok? Probably not Keep your jaw very still Pretend you are a corpse 6 fr under the ground with the moss, the lovely moss growing over you Move your jaw like a dead person does

5/10/22

Her whole life has been spiraling toward this moment. Spiraling to this moment when she asks herself if it makes sense to reproduce. She doesn’t get so much time to make her choice. The question is asked of her as she still lives underneath her mother’s roof. If she is ready, willing, able to become a mother.

What a complicated question. And yes, a silly one.

The answer is no. she is not ready, she is not willing, she is not able.

Could these things change in the few years she has left? Yes. perhaps. But not likely. And even if they did. Even if she was ready, willing, able, would the world be ready, willing, able to be a place to house her child?

The answer, she can almost guarantee, is no.

It was never ready, it was never willing, it was never able, to house her.

So the answer is simple in that the answer is no.

But if you’d asked her if she’d wanted kids, she’d secretly always assumed, in the romantic way she’d assumed everything else about her life, that she would have them.

But when you assume you make an ass of you and me. And she’d assumed she’d have enough money by now to live, to not feel so trapped within her life. She’d assumed the world would be healthy, feel healthy. She’d assumed, she’d assumed it so much she’d taken it for granted, never considered otherwise, that she would have energy, that she would have purpose, that she would have vigor, that she would feel capable, that her actions would have meaning. She’d assumed she wouldn’t feel alone. She’d assumed she wouldn’t be scraping by.

She’d assumed she’d have fallen in love. An epic, wholesome, red, robust love. She’d assumed that the pain she’d felt as a teenager would one day make sense in retrospect, and make her ultimately, a more interesting person. But she’d assumed that one day the pain would stop. And she would have time to sort and process and package the pain, and turn it in to lessons that she would feel ready and satisfied about presenting to her child. And she would feel ready, willing, able to have a child. That she would feel confident that she could protect it. Keep it safe, secure, soft.

She does not feel confident. She does not feel sure that she could protect it. And it makes her feel like squeezing her legs together. It makes her feel like howlng her loss the moon, her un-had child, her un-met lover.

In a different dimension, she would have been a powerful queen, she would have met a powerful man. She would have respected him and loved him. She would’ve trustd him, and not gotten tired of him. Life would be an adventure together. They would have time to explore and celebrate their life before introducing children into the picture.

But in this dimension, her current one, that she has not, and not for not trying, figured out how to escape, there is no time, there are no resources, there is no man.

She always held out for the hope that the fairytale was around the corner. That if she could last a little longer, it would be ok, it would feel ok, it would make sense.

What to do when you have lost faith that things will get better? What if you even feel, suspect, are worried, that they might get worse?

Do you keep on lasting? Do you last just to last?

What if there are no resources? No great love around the bend? No one to trust who can hold her?

5/8/22

Sit on the hard floor. The blue carpeted floor. There is a shallow pool of water around you. It stretches for miles and miles. The water is cool and thin and slippery, soft and blue. It is cool. It cools you. You are a lily pad. No. you are a woman sitting cross legged. In a thin blue pool of water. On a blue carpet.

A woman wrestling for her life back. Wrestling by sitting peacefully. Except for every few seconds when she grunts and lets out a breath. She’s been told she holds her breath when she’s writing. A glass of black iced coffee two thirds gone in front of her. Guess she’s back to that.

Come heavy, my darling. I can can hold you. I have ears for you.

Your trauma, your pain, you don’t have to make it pretty here. You don’t have to make it make sense.

You can be the hole. And the moss growing in and around the hole. You can be the moss stretching and crawling and aspiring to grow over the hole.

This is your special, secret hidden place. This is the place i guard for you, have keep guarded. Guarder, protector of your heart, and your softness, and your wounds that do not heal. That do not scab over, that bleed, that bleed. Protector of your broken jaw. Protector of your softening brain. Protector of the valiant, powerful little girl you once were. And equally the mushy braindead woman you have become. And the dust you can only aspire to be.

Is this depression. Is this what would warrant a medication. I don’t trust what america deems to be an affliction. It’s in these pages i scream my animal scream. It’s in these pages i dream my unlived dream.

These pages, that are a flat white, blurring screen.

A tear rolls down your cheek. Thank you.

Give me your tears. I am hungry. I have been looking for you. You and your sweetness. You and the girl who was not so dead inside, emotionally, or mentally or otherwise. The girl whose rage made her alive

We will be dead soon. Dead soon, hopefully, enough. But today, in this moment. We write. We write with the force we can muster of our wretched life. We write with our worn out tired, flattened brain and our inflamed, deteriorating joints.

We write and we weep for the children we were and the children we won’t have, because there isn’t any space for them on this warming, crowded, noisy, ugly, violent planet. A child is a precious thing. Have you seen the roundness of their cheeks?

A shower after this. And returning to your physical form and all its demands and all its responsibilities. How much time is left. The tiredness overcomes us. The electrolytes are kicking in.

5/5/22

I am the wind outside of your window I am everything that never was coming back to being again He hasn’t text me It’s ok i can handle it My jaw is healed and i can handle anything Sing, sing, my jaw is healed Will it be healed today? I don’t know but the way it feels today it feels like it might be. How i have missed you. How i missed writing.

I’ve hd 29 years and i know what i don’t like and don’t mind I know what i find just fine And this place is pulling me there This place of green and tress And my brain is moving again The birds are rising in me again This listless corpse is rising again I will be the next, best haunted thing Salem’s newest, oldest haunted attraction I will have my own little witch house And all my witchniness will unfurl And maybe i will have a balcony And maybe i will have big flowerpots And maybe i will have a little kitchen And a little table And maybe i will have a man over And i will have a little couch, not too soft, not too stiff And some sort of funky accent chair And my knick knacks all over.

4/28/22

Don’t try to focus. Instead, feel what it feels like to let all focus go Become the bubbling crystalline syrupy bubbles in your jaw let them have their way Stop your fighting You don’t always have to be ontop Making your point You don’t always have to look good Or be bright You can turn it on But mostly You can turn it off And off Off Off Who will ever read this? Do we want them to? No The bubbles are coming back The bubbles are winning

4/21/22

I have been trying to find her pulse again Found her buried in the forest under a blanket of leaves Put my fingers up under her chin

What do these people want from us What does this tall rich man want from us Hasn’t he had enough? Aren’t his accumulates riches enough Does he have to have the small hard jewel I protect Buried in my heart Buried in my chest He wants to have the deepest parts of me He hasn’t earned it Does he expect me to rip it out of myself Covered in blood Hand it over to him So he can feel close So he can feel like everything is right in the world Even tho it has never felt right, no part of it, to me

Awkward bumbling man Tall crusting dying man Die why don’t you Die away from me You didn’t listen to me that the first three times Now I won’t even speak But my wishes for you come sneaking around the corners like tendrils or snake I wish for what you’ve got (money) and I wish you to be away from me

Maybe not hurt But somewhere you can’t hurt me You are not entitled to women’s emotional energy or labor You douchebag You doichebag You sexist coward It feels like a waste to be mad but I am What hasn’t been a waste so far The train is late again I stand at the station orange glowing barrettes in my hair I don’t know how to blend foundation into my skin It’s never the right color And my hair is always flat and stringy like straw Big gaps in it, showing the space through Looking like a half dead woman who has lost half her hair Betraying what I am

You don’t get the best of me No you don’t get the best of me You were rich and you got just about everything But you don’t get me

It’s not worth fighting with him It’s not worth telling him why he’s a real asshole Just let him fall and flail All the riches in you couldn’t keep him happy anyway Even if you gave him your bloody jewel The best thing you have He would tired of it quickly Would t appreciate its worth after he’d demanded it so thouroyghly Would leave you dead And go off to sulk around the house again And drive your mom crazy He is driving your mother crazy

She is off on a train to dc Good for her We are on two different trains at two different times I hope she finds a piece of herself like I am trying to do too This perilous Thursday morning I hope she finds her breath What he animal breath sounds like when my stepfather isn’t around demanding she pay attention to him What to say now A man sits down in the seat next to me I write words they can’t see I feel like myself with these barrettes in my hair Brave and dark and spunky Even if my foundation isn’t blending in Even if my hair looks like grass that dyed on my head There is still more to me This guy has a real attitude problem What to say in the last 20 seconds I can’t promise my mom that she’ll find her breath But I can put all my focus into finding my own

4/20/22

I had what they call big feelings They were too hig for her Around her I had to make myself less and less Less and less all tied up nice and neat for her The oceans In me wanting to come around corners rolling I wanted and needed to flood whole villages To raise the water so high the trees were fruiting fishes I needed to start new fresh They don’t understand that looks like emotional violence They dont understand that looks like death They wanted me nice and neat Before I had any time to process How am I supposed to make things nice and neat When I haven’t felt out where to put things Where things belong It was artificial nicety Artificial neatness A shallow organization But I crave an organization I can feel in my bones And I crave to be alone And I have been my only home The place I keep struggling to come back to Just the sounds of her breath The heat of her neck The movement of her tummy The rush of her laugh You don’t have to make sense around me darling You can be as nonsensical as you like You can spill around corners whooping and hollering You can drown them all out with noise Rest here Die here Breathe here Stop here Enough, here They were always so focused on the living On being, fighting, achieving What about stopping? What about dying? What about falling through the edges of the earth? The bottom of the forest floor? What about saying no more? What if I did t want to die, What if I just wanted a break? Did i think I I had to kill myself to rest? Did I think I had to put a bullet to my head? Could I find a quiet place to hide? I keep thinking of quiet places to hide Envisioning them Safe places to stop and rest and heal and breathe He is texting me long things about how to find a partner The loneliness in me seems like it doesn’t have a bottom Like some primordial thing that has existed since the beginning of time The stretches through me and down me Right through my core They keep asking me to do things They don’t know me Only small floating glinting fleeing shining bits of me I need to be alone I need to be alone And yet I want to be with someone Someone with a depth that matches my own And I need to find a home A place that I can afford I don’t have anything to say Now I am empty How to live in this world that demands I don’t feel When I am so filled to the brim with feelings Where do the feelings go when they aren’t welcome Where does my true self go Where does she hide I miss her I miss her She is the only one who can comfort me The only one who can make me laugh The only Who knows what it’s like

4/17/22

Her bones are reabsorbing themselves. She will be the boneless girl wonder. Coffee moving through her veins. It feels so good to type again. To move. To breathe. To be. To feel. To finally say. It feels like this. I am the boneless girl wonder. I am defined by my suffering. That’s what he didn’t have enough of. The One she rejected this morning. Suffering.

You don’t like me you just think you like me. Grow some hair on your lip, get some ache in, then you might know what love is.

It is easter morning. She eats painted sugar cookies. Happy, colorful. Rotting in her teeth. Her jaw is broken. She is a woman with a broken jaw.

Don’t come after me. Don’t come after me looking for connection. I have nothing to offer you but dead eyes. A heart that is already broken. I will break our eye contact. Look away into the space that asks nothing of me, that says nothing, and needs nothing, and doesn’t ask for me to be anything to it.

The Space and i are frends in that way. The truest friends. The friends who don’t need each other. We share each other’s solitude. It is the only place i feel at home.

I keep looking for the Spaces, Spaces, they aren’t.

But everywhere there is a mark of their destruction.

A car speeding by. A noisy group of people. A paved road.

I want to be alone with the soft earth.

When i go to bed, i spray lavender mist on my pillow, and i close my eyes, and i pull the soft blanket over me and i pretend it is moss i am pulling over myself, i pretend i am becoming one with the earth again, i pretend i am dissolving into earth, dissolving all around, growing and stretching and seeping and relaxing, and i open the window and breathe the cool outside air.

I don’t have to try to be anything. Finally i am free from trying and all its Failing. Finally, I Am. I just Am. And that is all of it.

There is nothing to do but Be. and I have Been. and am Being.

As she walks along the city streets with her mom and stepdad she imagines laying down on the tracks and having the train run her over. She has thoughts of self obliteration. She pictures blowing her brains out.

It is not about wanting to die. It is not about wanting to hurt herself. She doesn’t want any of these things. She wants to Escape. She wants to Relax. She wants to be Away from all thse people who are bothering her. She Wants to Be in a Place where she doesn’t have a heavy, hurting body. Where her jaw is smooth and free as oil.

She loves plants. She wants plants and trees and green all around her. Green is her favorite color.

4/10/22

Her bed absorbs her. Her brain has lost the essential spark. She thought this was a phase before, not so long ago, when she still believed in life’s essential meaning, that it was just around the corner, evading her, but only temporarily.

Now it is a sunday morning and the birds are tweeting softly outside and the sun is still soft and bright as it was all those years ago but now she has a new consideration, and the light has gone off in her brain, and she she thinks to herself now, a whole other preposition: how do we finish it? Life? How do we finish this sad state of affairs. It is all so fucked and she is not going to make much of a dent in it.

It’s been so long since she’s written. She used to be certain there was a point to it and now she’s almost certain that there isn’t.

And still she writes. On this lonely cold sunday morning. When there is the promise of nothing. She still opts in to say something. To make her mark. Her cold dark mark of having been her. Her small resistance.

It is all homogenized, sameness, and sameness you have to buy. None if it is unique or interesting. And it is all so very expensive. There is a gap of wealth and education. People are struggling, suffering, and it is apaprent. There is human shit on the streets. There are bad bumble dates trying to steer each other out of walking through the shit. It is one bit of candidness. Their one honest reaction. When one of them reaches out to the other and shoves him: “don’t step in that!”. This is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. No one, including herself, can afford to live here. And there is excrement, human, not dog shit, on the sidewalk.

There are hardly any mom and pop coffee shops. Her iphone gives her a list of starbucks and dunkin donuts. A few cafe neros. None of them have places to park. She is tired. She hasn’t not been tired in a long time. Coffee or no coffee. Her jaw makes a deliciou cracking noise. She swallows advil like candy. She needs to set up some kind of desk in her room. Some sort of place to do work.

She needs to fill out the deed restricted housing applications.

And tomorrow. Work again, and she’ll chase after her carrot for her crumbs of pay. In hunt of a bigger crumb. She’ll stand at her desk, on one foot and then the other. As people call her she’ll throw her stress ball into the air over and over and catch it. She’ll make faces at herself in the mirror, watch herself talking. A portrait of the artist as a corporate drone.

This is what adulthood is. This is what getting real is. This is reality. This is the coming to terms. She understands why she avoided it for so long.

The joy is gone, the things she used to love. The sense of adventure, of things being different from town to town. She used to feel that the world was full of things she didn’t yet know, full of romance and discoveries and things to uncover. Now, more and more each day, it appears the same: endless exhaust, and speeding cars, impatient, tired, hardened people.

3/11/22

Two cups of coffee in. she started to write again. Sitting cross legged on the floor felt right. Her fingers were clumsy but persistent. Her body was heavy and sore. There was a tiredness behind her eyes. A concerning stiffness in her jaw. A back that couldn’t figure out if it wanted to be straight or bent. She was racing toward 30. But felt a million years old.

She started to feel old when she was 14. That’s when she realized she was what others might refer to as “introspective”, and others were not, necessarily. Not where she grew up, at least. She was always ahead of herself, dreaming up big plans of a time and place she would later get to and realize was disappointing. But in the present, it saved her. It kept her going, the dreaming. For so long, it was all she had, and she made castles out of it. She crafted mountains and rivers and oceans, whole landscapes and forest and kingdoms and storlyines. She created a world that was richer and kinder and deeper and more exciting, more interesting than her own, and she was happy there.

She was not happy when she had to come out of her world. Back to school with its disappointing people. She floated to the top of her class, barely trying, zoning out through most of her classes, writing poetry on the back of work sheets. Her teachers praised her hard work, but she’d never worked hard. She was a dreamer. Her hands were soft. Emotioanlly she was strong. Made of tough, resilient stuf. She had to be, to get to where she was today. To endure disappointment after disappointment.

But sometimes, she knew she was just here passively. Because there was no non-violent way to not be here. No way that would not leave a scar where she had once been. No way that wouldn’t hurt herself or others.

As she got older, and the gap between her real life and dreams deepened, mercifully, her dreams began to dessert her. She became a simple woman, of flesh and blood, not so floaty, with splotchy skin and a fucked up jaw, a typical woman, a woman who ate her feelings, was always battling the budge, or really, not battling it at all, just eating, just succumbing.

When she was younger, she used to like to have sex, and pride herself on being attractive. Those were two carnal pleasures she took part in in the real world.

If she had to be here, in this ugly world, could she live skillfully? Could she finally learn how to compromise? How to take a little and work with it? Could she polish and care for what she had, what she was, the friends she knew, the family she was lucky to be with, could she exercise and care for her body knowing she would never be the fittest, could she exercise her mind knowing she would never be the most brilliant, could she put a little effort into the way she looked knowing she would never be the most beautiful? Could she find a mate, knowing he wouldn’t be perfect, and she wouldn’t be perfect, and they wouldn’t be perfect?

3/2/22

My jaw hurts. Or does it. It fills with liquid and crystals. Pus. and sharp things in the pus. Sticky goo. Congealing my jaw together. And in me. The fear that my body isn’t healing itself the way i should. Can i trust my body to heal? Should i?

In boston, we build body parts. And food in petri dishes. We grow meat from cells. Could they build me a new jaw?

In a few minutes, i will walk down the wooded street, to the large steel train, the screams through the air. It offers a relatively smooth ride. It is a relic of the past. It is $8.

The parts in me are shifting. Moving around. Reconfiguration. Moving to different places. Some are moving to the front. Some are hiding in the back for later, maybe. Some are slowly dissolving. Other things are growing. Sharp foreign things. I don’t know what these things in me are. But i don’t know what this world around me is either. It is a sharp foreign world, and i am growing parts to deal with it. It is amazing, our ability to adapt. I grow entirely new parts.

This is a strange world, a meta world, but hopefully not facebook’s Meta’s world. Someone will get to the vr market share first.

How to live our lives? Should we pursue monogamy? Have children?

But maybe that’s too big of a question. I have always been concerned with the big, sweeping questions.

But how to live this woman’s life today?

Wretched woman. Small, but fat womam. In last years close. A zit blooming and reddening on her neck. Why her neck? A headband that conjures rosie the riveteer. She is a working girl after all. Now at least. Finally. In spite of herself. She has submitted. The stubbornness was driven out of her. A professional outfit that says, promote me, clearly, but plastic orange earrings that say, i’m fun, i’m approachable, i’m still a little creative and zany, i’m not too big for my britches.

The apps are life draining. It is so hard to guage attraction to someone over the apps.

And so last night the statement floats through her head. Maybe love, like they told us it was, like it used to be, isn’t natural anymore.

If it’s not happening for her, should she force it? Maybe children are not the thing. Maybe she needs to let them go. All signs point to her not having them. Time is alreadying ticking away from her.

Rob doesn’t want her. Won’t commit. She is too fat for him. And maybe there are other things about her he just hasn’t mentioned.

She sits cross legged on the blue carpet and writes this. It is quiet. Her parents are gone. Off in the palm springs desert.

The train costs $8. $8 she doesn’t have. Not in the longterm. She did just move back in with her parents after all because she can’t afford on her current salary a suitable place in Boston to live. But also it was because she needed help. She was feeling sick and weak. She was feeling scared and confused and alone. She missed her mother’s comforting voice and touch. It was a need that welled up in her and seemed obvious. Everything around her was shiting, changing, but her mother was still there, still rock steady, solid.

But even her mother is not impervious. She is getting older. The fear of her dying. But this is life. Real life. Not the impression of it.

2/22/22

We pack my things into boxes which remain in the garage spread out over a tarp. Mom vacuums the items individually. They stay out in the freezing cold for nights at a time. I move to a different position where I am able to write better. I write better on my knees. And yet I won't suck cock. I have some sort of attitude. I refuse to serve another. I know what I need. I know what I must have. I won’t suck cock if I'm not cumming. If I'm not loved. If money isn’t being spent on me. If I'm not secure and pampered. I won’t run myself ragged for a career. I will enjoy my work. I won’t be incentivized to let it eat away at me until there is nothing but bones.

This is about day five without coffee. My jaw looses up except for now when it is acting up again. Again, we change our writing position. Now we are more hunched over. I really should have kept my other desk.

I shouldn’t have let mom convince me to return it. This is so annoying. I can’t find a place to write. I need a work desk and a creative desk. I need the two separate spaces. This is not working. Can I train myself to write like this? I will try. But for today, I won't, can’t expect myself to, hit any sort of creative flow. It’s a shame because I really want to write.

It is time to take my lunch. I write and complete my mediations. My stuff is still in the garage. There is too much work to complete. Where will my creative desk be? I’ll say it again. I shouldn’t have let mom make me return to that desk. I would’ve put it in my room and used it.

What now. Perhaps if i sit up straight in this chair and write cross legged it is better. It is a little bit but not entirely. Hmm. sitting on the ground cross legged seems pretty good. But I do detest the scrnched up posture. It’s so hard to write today. I have gotten so fat.

This is all such shit, the writing today, but i know that someday, some days, it won’t be, and that’s why i do it. It’s a discipline. I wish the Is were capitalized. How to get back to writing. I am slow now. Physically and mentally. Need another large cup of tea. I’ll make that after this. Then what? Dive into my work. See what needs doing. Covering other people’s dashes sucks. It’s too much tedious work. I’m never going to have enough time to finish the team meeting or look into data u. Prepare your questions for your time with susanna. This sucks. This is supposed to be my break and I'm still thinking about work. I need to get paid more. Way more. This morning I felt creative and energized but now it has left me apparently. When will the timer buzz? 30 seconds. I can write until then. What shall I say. I have a third date tonight. Bring cheap white wine he said when I asked what I could bring. My stuff is still in the garage

2/16

Coffee and weed. Pull it together. Brain farts. Jaw rice crispies. A shower. To wash hair of straw. Hair that doesn’t look good whether it’s clean or dirty. Tomorrow. Back to work in person. I am afraid of the other people. They make more money than me. Can they see i’m a fraud? Can they see i’m desperate in? Can they see the heaviness in me that is sinking sinking sinking? When i talk to them their eyes sometimes gleam They look at me like i am human Everyone wants a piece of me Inviting me here, inviting me there But how do i get money? How do i get a lot of money? I hate this place. I hate the world. I hate my jaw. I hate the inefficiency of being alive. The pendanticness of it. It doesn’t feel sacred anymore. If it ever has. Pastries for breakfast. The novelty of a cute new french bakery. Then the slug hauls herself to her computer. Logging on, on. Hours past as she does want routine task after another, squinting at the small text on the computer screen. Outsider the slug’s window, her sun rises and sinks. Remember when it felt like the world was made for you? How to become a useful member of this economy. So many things to do: calling tmj surgeons, scheduling an appt with the dentist, meditating, showering, getting the forms back from the tenant, doing your taxes. Life is tedious. A date tomorrow. Does he expect me to pay? I’m not going to. It will be awkward. Call mom and ask her what she thinks. It’s a brewery situation. Am i done with this writing yet? Need to call mom. Need to call mom. Thank god i am getting out of this apartment. What is the parking like in downtown boston? I just want to start doing other things. Last night i slept deeply, thank god. I don’t want to deal with the discomfort of tomorrow’s date. I’ll feel fat. And he will expect me to pay. And he will have to realize i’m not reaching for it. Any maybe he will think i’m a bitch. Maybe he will think i’m a fat bitch who’s not pretty enough to act this way, to demand these things. But you have to pay if you want to date me. If he wants to have a convo about it, we can. He makes a lot more money. He owns a house. If he has a problem with it, i’ll apologize and suggest he date someone else. He doesn’t have to date me. I just don’t want to have the conversation. The fact that he said you get it next time is already a bad sign. Have to get better at not bringing up the subject of who pays, not being awkward or self deprecating about it. I already ruined it because he said “you can get the next one” and i didn’t say i didn’t want to. I let the words get stuck in my throat. Now what. Now what. I don’t know what to do or tell you. This is too much time to write. Should i tell him beforehand? The pay thing is such a point of contensipn. In 20 seconds you can call your mom and ask.

2/13/22 first date

What is that Clambering forth from the horizon A clumsy speck Stumblnig closer It is a dead girl She is not so menacing Look at the smile on her face to meet you Look at her arms outstretched, holding up to you her offering in good faith Her amrs full of dead flowers Fresh when she picked them; they didn’t make the journey. And neither did she. She was alive when she started.

Do not, please sir, be so quick to dismiss her. I know there are girls with colors in their cheeks. Warmer girls. But can you appreciate how far she has come to get here. And maybe you can make a new life together. And maybe you can help her. If there is generosity in your heart. She was alive at one point. And her heart was so alive it was magnificent.

Please do not judge her. She has lost control of most of her movements, forgotten most of the human language. When she was alive, she was quick to move and talk. Now she feigns at humaness for you. She tries to be a girl you might like. To remember what an attractive girl might say, how she might  move. It all feels fake to her. Can you come closer. Can you let her know it’s ok.

What is a first date. I’ve been on so many of them. It feels like cruel parade. Wash my hair so he can reject me. Look i know i don’t look like much but i can better than this, better than this With you by my side

You suggested coffee and a walk I suggested the museum I didn’t want to do coffee because my last coffee date rejected me My last two coffee dates actually I don;t seem to do so well over coffee I probably won’t come off well over a museum visit either If a friend or family were reading this, they might say, think positively! You will be fine on your museum date!

But it feels so good to set the bar low. It’s the only thing that seems to comfort me these days.

What is first date conversation. I don’t know the correct level of intensity. I am silly or i am crying.

Point at something and say look at that. I want to get close to him. I have always used my body to force people to be close to me. Afraid that if they maintain the proper distance they will notice all my flaws

How to have a date. Is there a point in going. The odds of this date leading to anything good are bad. None of them have led to anything. Can i do something different? Can i tell him Listen, i was once alive, and i can be alive again, but i need some help. Can i say, hold me, be kind to me. Can i ask for the kindness and mercy in the world that i need. Does it exist? I have never received it before.

What man wants a girl like me? An overweight, slow, poor, sad girl, a heavy girl. Listen, give me a chance.

2/12/22

Who am i Who are you The dog has peed on the blanket Why is the dog peeing on the blanket? I will be out of here soon. I have been flying through my work. On the way to being promoted. Maybe i can play this hollow game after all. Maybe i can make some wins. Will any of it feel good ever again? He has red hair. He suggests coffee. I suggest the art museum. Lunch after? He suggests. I suggest the place. The rules are changing. The landscape is changing. The way we live and breathe and move and eat and love are changing. Do we love? Everything is interrupted by our technological interpreters. Interpreted? Interrupted? Have i given up my dreams? Has my portal to the other dimension closed it’s door? I hope so. Stop giving me glimpses of what could have been. If things were different. If things were better. Just let me live in the mud. If this is where i have to stay, don’t give me glimpses of how it could have been different. Let me be a tough earnest humble mud worker. Little insect. A 40 hours a week worker with health insurance. Let me work. Let me swipe. Let me date. One unsatisfactory man after the other. Probably thinking the same of me. I hate boston. This city doesn’t feel like a jewel. It is not a cozy city. It is a rich man’s city. It is a developer’s city. There are resources here, sure. My job is here. And i guess my job matters. At least i have job. Think back to months ago when you didn’t have a job. When you had no idea what direction to take. I would love to get out of here. Where to? What to say to you? At least i am writing to you again. The ping of someone messaging me. Ping. ping. Ping. I’ll get up in a second. Remember when the world felt new and big and open to you? Now it feels closed and hard. With every adult move i make, i become more hardened. My trajectory bceomes clearer. I am a normal american woman. On the cusp of 30. Living on the skirts of a major city. Slightly overweight. Single. Dating. Burnt out. Gunning for a promotion. Developing skills that don’t matter to her. Pragmatic skills. Adult skills. Skills of survival in a capitalistic system. Remember when your eyes were full of stars? Now they reflect the snow outside, rained on and melted and frozen again, hard and crispy and sharp. Tinged with dirt. This is the city. It is not your friend. People are starving here. People are falling through the cracks. She is not. She is holding on and has caught her footing on a ledge somewhere. Still she is wondering If she should abandon her trellis and jump Make peace with the swirling doom below her If it’s a better doom, a more comforting doom, a sweeter and a more solid doom Than the doom she clings to without dignity Is there anything better than this?

2/10/21

I am alive in pain Alive in flame How to stop the hurting Trying to stop the hurting is a different kind of hurting Marching towards my death She dreams of frenchpatisseries An assortment of cakes in bed She wants to get them for herself if she gets through this meeting But life doesn’t stop She’s supposed to be meeting friends tonight at state park She feels like a zombie Tired, sore, out of sorts Kissing him isn’t how it used to be This is how it always happens She falls all the way through them Build a life It’s not glamorous. But stick with it. You find a partner and you do your best. I don’t really know. Why am i talking like i know. My jaw is honeycomb. That’s what i get for sleeping on the wrong side of my face. How to convince megan i can be a business analyst. Read natalie’s text, Write your pitch. Think honestly about what she will ask you. Find something nice to wear. Be prepared. Take some advil. Because it’s happening again. Youre in pain. Think of her as the hero. She is not the enemy. Convey your honest spirit to her. Your love of problem solving, your vitality, you passion for longterm thinking It all feels fake. I want to be done with this writing. I want french pastries. I do not want to go out. If you are going to find a man, you need to keep it thin and trim. Delight in your beans, and am running. I am tired. Noting feels worth it. There is not joy to be found here. I want to melt away. I am not so attached to this life. It feels so good to confess that to you. I have a headache. Try not to move your jaw. Just rest it. Just rest it. Take some advil after this. Plan where you’ll go for your lunch. Caramel. The french patisserie. Go there and then go to dinner after. You can do many things at once. Find the best desserts in boston. Fancy stuff. Stuff you didn’t eat before. We have money now. Well, at least a little bit. We want beautiful pastries when we binge, not dollar tree snack cakes. We’ve come a long way. The short somewhat handsome man is interested in you. You slid into his messages, outlandish, teasing. He took the bait, and chased you, after the game grew tiring for you. You’ll see him tonight. Pack some gin in your flask. Fly away to state park. You’ll pass on the pastries so you can feel confident. There’s no way you’ll be able to see him if you don’t feel confident. Now what. We were full of winning. I don’t even know what i am saying. Is this over.i am a working drone. A servant bee. Is there anything in me that want sto be alive anymore? Do i think this world is worth living in? No. no. not really. It’s so clusrered off, small minded, divisive. I know why sylvia plath killed herself. She killed herself because it was all shit, as far as the eye could see. She kept trying to tell herself that it wasn’t. But it was. It was.

2/8/22

The blood in her dissolves It is wretched Imperfect A travesty A tragedy Who’s game for trivia? There is ringing in her ears The man who wont’ be her boyfriend nicely told her she was fat today Her laptop is not making sound She is moving out of this smal apartment She will be 30 years old and back living with her parens Can she get promoted Her jaw is feeling a little better now at least but she doesn’t trust it She doesn’t trust anything to feel good long She is miraculous; a miracle seed Doesn’t look impressive on the outside. But you don’t know the hell she’s walked through. And still walks through. She is numb to it; deregulated Her body stepped down to save her There was too much stress so her brain went dull and smooth All she could hear and see and feel was the delicious soft hum of nothingness There was nothing there anymore Her brain removed itself The problem was not going away by thinking and so her brain stopped thinking Now, she wishes that someone would be with her She wonders if she’ll be able to find someone Pawn herself off of on them She deosn’t know what to write She hasn’t written in so long It’s all fake It’s all gloom What’s the point of being alive She doesn’t feel like a person She doesn’t feel like someone things happen to be The joy and the spark and the thril in her finally got sucked out of her And there is nothing left She is waiting to die When, when will it be her turn? How much long must she suffer through this tedium? This idiocy? This disappointment? When she was a kid she assumed adults were smart and responsible and doing things to save the world but they aren’t It’s all sick and malformed There is nothing pure or good or sparkling or holy How to live here? In this barren, dry, dead, gray, cold place? How to live the rest of her days? She drags salmon she fried in a pan across the oil and salt on her red plate Her jaw feels better. But she can’t trust it. Won’t trust it. Don’t move it. Let it be. It feels good. So let it stay there. When she was a teenager she was worried about mental illness. Now she knows mental illness is inevitable. Mental illness is a consequence of living in this reality, this sick world. Does she even want to write anymore? She doesn’t want to do anything. She wants to curl up with her loved ones and loved things in her arms and die. Take them all to some other place. She is supposedly approaching fertility. She should not feel like this. She should be full or virility. You try dealing with this jaw and feeling virile. She needs to brush her teeth, run, shower, floss, mediate, finish working. Work was a drear today. Her life is a nightmare. She wasn’t meant for this world, this life, this narrative. How to move forward, advance. Get some money. Get a lover. Someone who wants to marry her. Get her family close around her. It’s not about telling him what he can’t do. It’s not about closing his possibilities. It’s about creating new possibilities where they weren’t before. It’s about building something solid and smooth and good, even just ok, in a world that is recklessly indifferent to the both of their lives. Crack that jaw. Oh yeah. That’s the stuff. Don’t look at me like i’m a writer. My brain is as slow as a slug. Accomplishing simple thing

1/5/22

I need someone to hold me because I am coming out of my skin.

My phone holds texts from two brokenhearted people, long paragraphs from both of them.

One of them, a man I don't have feelings for. Another one, a new friend who got her feelings from someone else.

I want to soothe them.

But the texting cucks me.

Texting doesn’t make us feel better.

Being in person physically in large groups that meet regularly makes us feel better.

I need someone to hold me cuz I am coming out of my skin.

I woke up at 5:40am this morning. It was supposed to be 5am but I slept for another forty minutes.

It was cool when I woke up. I turned up the heat. I drank a large cup of water. And a large cup of instant coffee. I turned on both my SAD lamps. I danced around in my room for a few minutes while I gulped the noxious coffee.

I tried to find some joy in my body but it was nowhere to be found. My music sounded hollow. It found no resonating echo in my body, no response. The nerves in me had fallen silent at last.

It scares me when it’s like this. Deeper than any fear I could try to tell you about. The stress of these past few years has hurt my vocabulary.

Will I survive this? Time will tell. Swinging to the next minute with as much grace and dignity as I can muster given the circumstances becomes my new prerogative.

I write slowly and thoughtfully. My fingers press down on the keyboard hard. My stomach hurts. My chest hurts.

I am sitting on a chair in the living room. I wake up at 5am and leave for work at 8am and my roommate is snoring the whole time. On days she stays home from work, when we both work from home, she will nap intermittently through the day, her snores permeating the whole house.i turn on the white noise machine i bought from amazon, and also the white noise on my phone when i’m in the living room, which is closer to her room.

It still doesn’t completely drown out the sound.

Modern life is depressing. It sounds like she is choking. Every day, she does things that exacerbate her sickness, and I don't blame her. Really, she’s trying to comfort herself, and the best way she knows how, in the desperate way that makes sense to her at the moment. She watches tv and eats (she is very obese).

Life hurts. It hurts and feels cruel and unrewarding. Especially these days, when we are poor, and lonelier than ever, and disease floats through the air, and people have lost the incentive or the ability to make eye contact with each other.

It doesn’t feel like life is worth staying alive for if we’ve lost the ability to physically connect, with our bodies, not just our words.

I want to find a group of women and tell them I want to have Embodied Parties. Parties where we focus on getting back into our bodies.

We were meant to live in our bodies. If my heartbroken friend wants to talk, can we get a drink in person?

1/10/22

I am ready to come back into my broken body. It feels like whatever I do I can't win.

But I am ready to start all over again.

I am ready to try again.

Don’t ask me too many questions. Shh, I get shy.

It’s fine; you don’t care anyway.

Let’s not do the caring dance. Let’s only care when we do.

It’s hard to find Caring in this world. Aren’t we all too tired, too beaten down, too stressed about a million menial things, to care about anything big?

Listen, I am just an aging woman with the start of wrinkles and some sagging tits. A few extra pounds. But my pussy still gets wet. My pussy still gets wet and you like it.

Someday, you might find a more deserving girl. I think this is what you are hoping for. You like me. You do. I don’t doubt this. I would even argue that you respect me. For some reason beyond my comprehension.

But there is another woman you were picturing.

And I understand: there was another Man i was picturing, too.

Maybe you are picturing someone small and petite, who makes you feel big. Someone with quiet confidence, instead of an insecure bumbling loudness, like I possess. Maybe you wanted someone who played harder to get.

So what we are is friends, i think. True friends. I think we are truer friends than some other friends i know.

Because when I am touching you, I am screaming to you that I feel like I'm dying.

Touch is the only way for me to say this.

And since I don't touch my other friends, there lies a distance between us: something they don’t know about me. How desperate I am. How scared. How hurting.

You know. I think you know.

You hold my injuries with tenderness.

You do not want to hurt me. You do not want to hurt me. And I believe you. I believe you.

You cannot hurt me more than I already am hurting. My heart is in too many pieces for you to break.

Maybe you can stay with me, in this quiet secret place, while I glue myself together. While we wait for the ones for us who may not come. My strapping tall gentleman, and your tender, sweet petite love.

Maybe you can offer me a place where I can be real with my feelings. Maybe I can heal that way.

You ask nothing from me. And I ask nothing from you.

It feels good to touch. It feels like enough to get by. And we offer each other absolute freedom.

One of us will probably eventually say that We’ve Met Someone Else.

And if i had to guess it will probably be you.

And then I will be sad.

This will not be the last time a fuck buddy moves onto A Girl He is More Serious About. But Doesn’t Want to Hurt Me.

It’s ok. I have a job. It is not a lot but it is enough to save a small amount and to take care of myself. I do not have children, so I am not so jeopardized. I will not be made more vulnerable by having children.

So I'll just have fun. I’ll just talk to the people I want to talk to, when I want to talk to them, and I will understand that none of this will last, whether someone will Commit to Me or not: I will die alone, have been alone, and will always be alone.

A partner is a pain. True, they are someone to take to parties. Someone to let others know that you are Okay, that you are not Drifting. But a partner is also a sacrifice. Would a partner mean I can't talk to other men? Would someone who wants me also want me to be monogamous? Could I do that with my needy hungry heart and oversexed body?

1/11/22

It felt weird. He’s slipping through my fingers like everything else. Hunker down. You are about to hear the thoughts of a crazy dying woman. This is a terrible job. How do I get out of it? I am no longer unemployed. I am something only slightly better. Employed in a tedious job. I am still working on ways to hack it. Ways to get my time back without coming off as lazy. Cuz i need them to promote me.

I fill out the mentorship form the hot young data man sends us and allow myself to be earnest and vulnerable. Yes, I would like a mentor. I would like to move into product management. It has been less than three months and I have already made my intentions known. That’s progress, Cass. That's progress.

Nothing feels good.

How to tell Rob I don't want to kiss him too deeply with morning breath. He said he wouldn't notice mine at all. The sex was too rough and too careless. Rough in a lazy way.

I felt awkward, leaving him. He said not to worry about it. We will see each other on friday. Maybe I will just ask him to be gentle with me. And I won't drink this time. I’ll drink tea. Drinking isn’t good for me. It makes me sad.

I need to organize these returns into boxes. Absolute hell. How to get my time back. How to make more money.

This is my life. I spent 10 years wondering, resisting the rat race, indulging in bohemia and romanticism. They were painful, but great. This is a new type of pain. I feel like an unglamorous little rat. Before I was poor, but floating above it all, too good for it all, unscathed. Now i am making slightly more and have grown up things like health insurance, but i feel like a hardened little rat.

How to get to a job that is secure, that allows me to work with cool people, and that allows me to flex my problem solving skills and creativity? A job that promotes mindfulness. Does any job promote mindfulness now that everything has become digital? The ping of incessant slack messages makes it hard to get anything done. Someone is interrupting me every five seconds and yet I am more alone than ever in this small apartment.

No one is going into the office today. Boston is sick. The whole world is sick. I am deeply depressed, deeply. How not to be? This is a depressing way to live. I want to be around others, dancing. The phone rings and disturbs me. Who is calling me? Must not give homeowners my number. I don’t know what to say. How to heal? How to become strong again? I message some guy back on bumble. He is “out of my league”. tall . handsome. Makes great money. He will meet me and reject me. I want love badly, but I'm too crazy now, too sick, too bent out of shape.

1/22/22

It’s warm and dry inside the apartment. Cold outside, I'm sure. Sound of construction. Both the roommates were out today. And it was nice to have the apartment to myself. The dog is sweeter and barks less when it is just me and her. She knows I won't stand for it and is much more demure.

Finished letters home by slyvia plath. Feel sad for her and her mother and her children. She really tried so hard. It does seem like it was the separation of herself from ted. She was so vulnerable. She was hard on herself. She wanted to be the best. It does not seem she was able to settle gracefully into failure like I have been able to.

Settling into failure has been a success, actually. It has marked me resilient. Without doing so, I might not have been able to survive my disillusionment; I might have become Plath.

These past few months i was on a plath bender. Ordered her diaries, her letters home, the collection of poems ted wrote about her, the bell jar, and two of her own collections. Also ordered the memoir sexton’s daughter wrote about anne, and the collected poetry of anne sexton.

I wanted to understand the mad woman poet. To see where they went wrong so that i wouldn’t go there.

Suicide wouldn’t be so bad if it were more elevated, more dignified. Like they have it in parts of Norway I think. You can die with dignity. They will kill you painlessly and you will have your family and friends around. You can say goodbye the way you want to. Instead of hiding away and doing it in secret.

Is it really death, or is it just a lack of interest in living here? Maybe they do want to live, but are just uninterested in doing so in their present circumstances.

I am hearty, though I don't always feel so good.

Lots of things are to be desired. Jaw’s not better, no boyfriend, have gained weight, am not exercising as much as i should be, we are in another practical shutdown.

I miss people and friends and my family.

I have worked from home all this week. It’s good to get good at the job, to learn how to streamline it. I work in bursts so that I get a lot done and then have free time, though I am worried I am going to get found out and scolded or even worse, fired.

I made my desires to move into product clear on the mentorship form I filled out but have heard nothing back. I doubt anyone has, but, because it is so important to me, and I need it so badly, I feel vulnerable about it. I will say, I feel good about …I don;t know. I forgot.

Seeing rob tonight. I am worried he won’t want to see me anymore either.

I want my jaw to feel better and I want to be promoted. Am going to try to run to Rob’s tonight with my new running backpack, even though that is probably a crazy idea. The idea makes me happy.

Have to slap my hand on my work keyboard every so often to keep it from going idle. ​​ 1/15/22

To live is to beg And maybe I would like to be free of it The sinking sinking sinking Maybe I would just like to float again Like when I was above it all Brilliant untarnished unscathed Wise then, though now I’m smarter I got duller, duller, duller My sharp edges work thin Nice and smooth now, like the rest of them A bore now,  dolt A dancing clown for money I used to be a genius; what could I do Geniuses don’t live long And I chose the living I committed myself to living and my genius slid through my fingers

Here I am, a normal heavy earthen-stuck woman Pragmatic, focused on money like the rest of them

and now i lost it lost the shining stream that gleam that’s the thing about soaring can’t get used to it if i believed in wishing i would wish for the gift of being able to switch back and forth between soaring and crawling the visions of grandeur come back of a physical world in which i moved my body through nature and commanded armies

here, things are less imminently threatening no enemy armies fast approaching but something worse: a malaise, an undefined oppressive force it’s global warming, it’s the dating apps, it’s my aloneness and poverty and the aloneness and poverty of all the others its the incessant presence of the screens and inescapable technology the threat of AI the lack of privacy, the lack boundaries, the lack of solitude, and yet, somehow, also, connection

i don’t make big lofty goals anymore. i don’t plan for the next year. i plan for the next hour. finish this cup of coffee. brush and floss my teeth. get my hat, because its less than ten degrees out. get in my car and drive. explore western ma. a place that isn’t here. my small apartment. my jaw clicks. there is debris there. my goal is to be by myself today. to be in a place with sticks of trees reaching up into the cold air, and fewer destructive people. if i was going to kill myself, this would be a good place to do it. a private, quiet place. too bad i can’t clone myself, create a girl to keep living in my place, to keep my family comforted. couldn’t abandon them. we all have to finish this hellish living together. my parents have a few decdes left. me, a longer road. how gross it is, how sick, how funny that the animal instinct rises in me to have children to love a man, and be loyal to a man, and build a little sweet solid steady life with him and love those children into being something wholesome, and innocent and previously taken for granted, contrasted with the hard reality i am almost 30 i have 7-8 child bearing years left i am poor as a dog and work just as hard i have no partner the apps are painful they rub my isolation in my face i have an incessant jaw problem and and the world has an incessant pandemic problem capitalism is rampant and gross and destroying the planet and our lives

1/18/22

Write motherfcker Write like a moterfucker It's cold when you wake up so you turn the heat up and now it’s too hot You stay in bed for an extra hour cuz it doesn’t feel like there’s any reason to get out of bed A relic of the person you once were is remembered The person who listed lots of Shoulds: all the shoulds necessary for a happy life The sound of a garbage truck The chortling groans of your roommate’s noring The small dog who cuddles beside you You have to move her so you can get to writing Writing against the constraint of the clock Work that starts in 30 minutes Teeth to be brushed and flossed Clothes to be put away A dishwasher to be emptied Laundry to be done A shower to be had Notes to be re-written And work, tedious work to be done I need money A lot more money I need money because women can’t depend on men anymore

The computers aren’t going away For a few months I tried to live like a luddite I bought mechanical alarm clocks and timers I tried to turn my phone off for hours a day But it’s a painful battle to fight on my own Against forces that are bigger than me Why not just go numb to it Maybe i don’t have to, shouldn’t always do the brave, noble thing That’s not what they teach you in fairytales But my life hasn’t been a fairytale And i guess what i’m deciding is i care about the living And the living comes first And i’ll do what i can to live And that means not being a martyr That means not fixating on and obsessing over things i can’t change, gross and unjust as they might be I can’t change the pandemic. I can’t start it or stop it. I can’t change the computers that have come to replace basic faculties of life. So I sink, heavy into it. I can’t make my grandfather less lonely, i can’t force my dad to be comforted, i can’t make my mom feel more secure in her empty nesting. Life is so imperfect. I will focus on emptying the dishwasher. Let someone else save the world. *********** When i have a little more power,  a little more wealth, a little more energy, I will try again Perhaps If i feel like it I was wondering what would happen I was wondering it as i packed my bags and left LA As i left LA, I left my ideals of being a professional creative And by professional creative, i mean a paid, full time creative It didn’t feel sad, it felt mature, practical I do believe it was the right choice. I missed home. My family. My mother. My father. My brother. The trees. And it was an easy choice also because i did feel, knew i was not Abandoning being a writer, An artist I write on this most mediocre morning, as certain as ever that i am still an artist, still a writer Perhaps much more a writer than ever. I have endured, and changed, and adapted, and squirmed, and changed, and sacrificed, and done what the great sylvia plath couldn’t bring herself to do: compromised. I am reading her journals, and her letters to her mother, trying to find where it went “wrong” with her. She was romantic, idealistic, perfectionistic, hard headed, stubborn, a black and white thinker like me, like me But, at 30, she killed herself, unable to reconcile her ideals with the disgusting realities of the world around.

Whereas me? I tucked. And i rolled. And i let all those romantic things go. Unsure of where i would be, what i would have left, when they were done slipping through my fingers. Only convinced on one thing: that it was the living that mattered. That it was poetry enough to be living. And it was better than poetry: it was life. At 26, I felt it coming, the reckoning, I knew in some abstract way what was coming: the reconciling of ideals and reality. I was not ready to face it yet, but I knew it was time to prepare for facing it. So I packed my bags, ready to move home. Ready, when I was ready to admit it, that I would not have my ideals, to be in  a place that was safe, home.

And now, after having let it all go, the poems, and the romance, and the hope, and the tenderness. I feel tendrils growing again, under my fingertips.

1/19/22

Sylvia Plath was waiting for life to be perfect before she could start living, but I'm not. Look at me go.

Look at me work my shit job. My little fingers and beady little eyes clicking away and squinting away, flying through one contract review after another.

Look at me. I don’t have a man. No man who wants to hold me, step up to love this fat, floundering woman, this whale. But look at the whale writing. She doesn’t have her own apartment. Not even a shitty one in the poorest part of town. She doesn’t even have that. Diddly squat. But look at her hunched over in her bed because there is no where else to sit. Look at her hunched over writing, her terrible posture. Ideally she would have more space, an office for creative works, a desk for her to set up her writing station that promoted good posture, but she doesn’t. so instead she sits over here, vertebrae curling, writing with angst and with teeth. The room is dark, the sad lamp is bright. The outside is cold. She is fat.

Fat and hairy and she smells. Let the hair grow over her. Let the stench roll off of her. Who is she trying to impress? The man who doesn’t mind fucking her but won’t step up to live by her side? Why should she do anything for him?

It’s gone. There was a lot to say but it’s gone.

My fat roommate, fatter than me (but not for long), outside coonig to the useless dog. Cry you whale. Poor whale. Worrying your mother. Good. i want someone to worry about me. Need it. i’ve  been so worried on my own. Why isn’t anyone else worried???

Good, good. I need you to know i’m struggling. I can’t, won’t struggle on my own.

A child would be a lovely thing but nothing has been lovely. Another me in another life, another dimension perhaps, another universe would have a child. She would be thin and kind and she would have a fulfilling career and high income and a loving, supportive partner who wanted to be a good dad, and her famly would all live nearby and they would have a nice big horse and a nice big yard and lovely gaggle of friends. And there would always be time for things. And she woulsn’t feel like she was going to snap in half. And she wouldn’t always be crying. And money woudln’t always be pinched. And there would be enough space to live. And the world wouldn’t feel, like moment by moment, it was ending. And so she would have a child, and it would make sense to have a child. And she would love a child into being.

My love would not be enough. I wish it would be. But it is not. My love is grand and great and really something but it is not enough to overcome the structural inequalities and injustices put into place by forces that had nothing to do with me.

Why should my child suffer in this terrible world?

I will protect her and keep her floating in a safe, perfect place. I will never forget her. I will think of her often. She is safe in a place where i am safe too. I can’t be a good mother if i am not safe. And i am not safe. This world is not safe. Not for me. Not for a child.

I will control what i can. Iwill execute what i am able. I will make tough choices, hard calls. And like this, i i will live some sort of life.  The best that i am able.

1/24/22

I keep falling asleep at 8pm. When the work day is done, I am worn thin. Need to wipe my computer completely clean. Drop it off somewhere to replace its battery. Brush teeth. Floss ‘em too. Put dishes in the dishwasher. Shower. Wash hair, arm pits, genitals. Shave. Apply deodorant and and don running clothes. Makeup. Spray perfume. Meditate. Put clothes away. Try to stay up til at least 10. And wake up at 6. And go to a cafe and read.

What did they say at the all company meeting? Are we going to start having to go back to work again? Who to ask for a promotion? Craig seems very invested in inclusion. But you want to move into product. Maybe you should move into BI if it makes more money. I hate being hunched over like this. Write loser. Maybe someday I'll have a better writing desk. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to write alone. Life’s a grind and then you die. You grind you grind. You die. At least my desk isn’t wobbling as much anymore.

Life is passing me by and I don't think I care. We’re all supposed to be such passionate zealots. Maybe some of us just aren’t that interested in being here. The couch stinks. It smells like my roommate. The dog barks. The heat warms. And costs us a lot of money. I don’t have anything poetic to say. Life is straightening me out, ironing out my creases and quirks. I am becoming a pragmatic, adult. The world is forcing me to do so. How to be creative and cool and a rebel outside the confines of work? This is not such a bad company. The work life balance is good. They promote internally and let people switch to different teams. Work it and run. It’s easy to be disappointed knowing you’re only making 46k but there is potential for you to live here.

Save your money and buy a small apartment. It will be shitty and in some place like Chelsea but at least the couch won’t smell and the dog won’t be barking. Save up your money.

Release fear of being alone. Look for someone that love flows naturally toward. If you have to force them along, or coax them with a sugar cube as if they are a horse, let them go. Let them go.

Men don’t pay women’s way anymore, so what are they good for? If I can stand out here on my own two feet and pay my way, keep a roof over my own damn head, keep myself out of debt, feed myself, even save up money for retirement, then what do I need you for? What do I need you for?

We punish women financially for taking time off of work to be with their kids. So I won't do it. What do I look like, a sucker? What do I look like  a martry?

This is where you were wrong.

I am not afraid to be alone. All dried up. A crone. A barren frozen woman. Watch me live it with zeal.

Watch me punish you. I am getting my footing. Moving slowly and quietly,

1/25/22

It’s uncomfry writing this way bt  it makes sense to. Let’s see if i can get used to it. If i could get used to writing here at the standing desk that would be great. Because i like to stand and it’s bad to sit. Sorry, because this is a physical maneuver, it may not be able to reach any standard of poeticnes today, seeing as it’s hyscially hard to write this. Had to stop to crank and lower the desk. Din’t pause the timer. Bad girl. Remember when it felt like there was a point to all this? Like your life had a storyline, a track? I don’t know what type of writer i am anymore, or if i am one at all. I wish i i’s would be automatically capitalzied. My mouth is dry. Does weed make your mouth dry? I ate some of my roommate’s cannabis mints when i was using her printer. It’s a nice feeling. I can see why people like beig high. Will take a run after work and then go to trivia. Maybe. Will meditate after this. I finished work early today, or tather there wasn’t much to do. Still felt like a lot though. The room is sweilring a little bit. This is fun. Apparently i’m really high. Can’t eat hot fudge sundees on my own. Must be a waif. Thinness is power. Attractiveness and money are both power; i must procure them both. I’m not sure i like reading or writing anymore. My identity was based on those things, but now that i see my identity was based on interests that don’t pay, i guess it’s seeming easier than i thought it would be to let my identity change. It wasn’t an overnight switch. It was a change that wore me down slowly. These days, i’m so practical, so boring, so normal, that i don’t have time to be as theatrical or imaginative or whimsical as i might have been. And so iworry about what i am losing as i was being polishd. Am i losing the parts most dearest and nearest and fabulous of me? I don’t know how to be happy or if i am able or if it is even possible to be so in this world. Working from home is so lonely. I know sugar makes you feel better, but you’ll come to with even more problems than you had to start. I am so high my head is heavy, my hands are having trouble typing. Keep writing. Two more minutes. Table is even lower. It all seems so useless. I don’t want to write anymore. The drive doesn’t rise in me. I type nothing. Typing feels fake. It all feels fake. Am i going crazy? I look for comfort. My room is too small. There’s not enough room to move in the house. I don’t want to google what’s wrong with me. I don’t want to consult another screen. Things aren’t real anymore. Nothing feels real. Everything is going to be digital, artificial vr, a relic of, a reference to real physical objects that have once been. I feel like i can’t be sure of any of my words. It will be too much for me to read this when i am done. Everything feels comfortable and bad. Is it ok to feel this way? Should i try to make these feelings better or should i let them be? Which causes less pain.

1/29/22

I am empty now an expanse of a woman But I seek company The emptiness seeks others I would like be around others and be empty Not prentend that I am full Of plans, of happiness They always wants to ask me who I am, my backstory Everything I ever thought I was turned out not to be So now I am empty My mother is worried about my emptiness I can move home on the condition that I be happy I must be responsible now I must be a woman who holds her emptiness Contains it I must stop spilling tears Tears are not true emptiness It has been a stranger few isolating years Climate change, the pandemic, online dating, this shitty apartment How much coffee do I have to drink before I feel like I can live this life the weekend comes, the time I am free supposedly But I don’t know what to do with it What moves to make So I sink into this couch with the dog on my lap and at least a little sun streaming through the windows My body feels heavy My mind feels blank There is no impulse in me to reach for anything, to do anything The synapses in me are quiet Once I liked dancing and comedy and writing and fashion and design I still like those things but my life, our collective life does not foster to them The pandemic is not over I am lonely and scared and shriveled up Is it grief anymore if it is just your general state A date tonight and what to say to him I want a partner but I am almost certain he is not it How to build a life with someone Find someone safe who wants to build with you and bring them around your family Living is hard Living is not easy They don’t tell you how to do it I need money A lot more money than I have now And I don’t know how to get it And now I don’t know what to say I feel like it’s futile And because I feel like it’s futile it feels like a waste to move or stretch If we’re just all dying slowly and pathetically anyway why bother Why bother But life is all about bothering Scooping yourself up until it is your turn to die How and who do I speak to To tell them I’m scared to be in my body I’m scared to be in control of this poor girl And her future She deserves more And has suffered so much And I don’t know how to get what she needs to her or make her feel better I am so heavy So full of unmet needs I miss laughing, I miss dancing, I miss music I miss feeling light I miss not moving my jaw over and over again I miss when my life felt like I was on a track Like I had a future I was moving to My brother lives with his girlfriend Where is my boyfriend Maybe there is something wrong with me I will be the girl people thought would end up with someone but didn’t I will be an older woman who haunts places alone I will continue to have casual sex that will feel to me like more than that but if you had to put a label on it would still be called casual sex I will continue to have causal sex until my body is too wrinkled and no one wants to have sex with me

[kimberlycollins]

NIPPON GA DAI SUKI (JAPAN WE LOVE YOU)

Traveling to an exotic country sounds, well, exotic. And it is. It’s a true adventure in life. It’s also exhausting. And enlightening.

I’ve traveled afar throughout my entire adulthood. All over Europe, The Middle East, Egypt, Central America, Mexico, Eastern Europe, Canada, the Caribbean, Australia… Florida. ;)

I give travel (and my parents, *ehem*) credit for keeping me grounded, humbled and modest, in the sense of “I AM BUT A SPECK ON THIS EARTH” or “MY BELIEF SYSTEM IS NOT EVERYTHING” or “I DON’T KNOW AS MUCH AS I THOUGHT I KNEW” or “I REALLY DON’T KNOW HOW I GOT BEST DRESSED IN HIGH SCHOOL” (read: France ;)).

Travel helps us all to get out of our comfort zone and to see what a tiny place we occupy on this planet. It’s a liberating realization, embracing one’s insignificance in this world. It’s not about being small, because none of us are. It’s more about the world being BIG.

Travel puts your life into perspective; your problems and celebrations do not hold as much weight as they seem. It also shows you how much you have or what you don’t have. It’s a healthy reality check.

That’s why travel is good for you.

I am reminded this after a crazy year. My husband and I have been on tour with our music (The Smoking Flowers) for a lot of 2018, in and out of the country. It’s been a healthy year of these reality checks for sure.

That’s why I am writing this post on my health blog, as this type of health is just as important as the physical.

And so I write.

I write to journal.

I write to inspire (myself, if no one else).

I write to remember.

I write because I am bored today, it’s cold outside and my matcha is steaming, infusing me with memories.

I’m also writing because I miss Japan.

Of all my travels, I think Japan smacked me across the head when I needed it most. It made me feel like I was five years old again. Everything, down to using the toilet, I had to relearn/rethink. Yep, it took 43 years off my life. Now that’s a natural youth serum I can live with.

It also made my brain function differently. Trying to learn a foreign language audibly and visually that has no history in the Latin world is truly a foreign language. I now know how to order water, draft beer, sake and vegetarian ramen in Japanese. Basics. (Although a friendly laugh is usually the response to the veggie ramen inquiry). I now know how to tell a Japanese punk band they did a great job after seeing them open up for us at our show. I learned to say just plain “awesome”, and used it a lot. Japanese is pretty “saikou”, after all.

Japan can feel very futuristic, and Tokyo is like being on a movie set at times. They are the future for most of the civilized world seemingly 10 years ahead of us all, yet still remaining ancient and historic at the same time. Eating sushi or having tea can be presented like it was 400 years ago or like something out of The Jetsons (ala conveyor belt computer sushi restaurants).

But beyond the exotic veil, it was the culture and etiquette that really impressed me and made my head spin.

Below are but a few observations of the plentiful Japanese culture I experienced over my month long visit. And of course, they are my own, so they are neither right nor wrong. Just observations from a somewhat worldly gal who grew up Southern in America:

1. The Japanese have manners like I’ve never seen.

They are unwavering in their politeness. Selfless hospitality is a cornerstone of Japanese culture, and you can feel it in everything down to their quiet nature to their cleanliness to the way they package your purchased goods like a present. And that bow! That Japanese bow. It makes you feel special.

2. They are startling quiet and calm.

Given that Tokyo houses more than 13 million people, the sense of order and calm as everyone goes about their responsibilities with concern for others is remarkable. The Tokyo city streets are shockingly silent. You can hear the air, the machinery hums that run a city and the cars passing, but they don’t honk like NYC. I think I heard two honks the entire time in Tokyo, and that’s not an exaggeration. We drove the interstates a ton on our tour, all over the country... aggressive driving doesn’t seem to exist. Could this be from their Zen culture?

Also, they don’t bump into you trying to get on the subway in a hurry. It’s an orderly line and gentle squeeze to fit everyone on the trains, like a can of sardines without the stink.

I want to throw in another aspect of “calm” here; safety.

Feeling safe, stable, and secure is central to our health and wellbeing. How safe we feel at home and in our neighborhood can influence our social habits and feeling of freedom. When we feel safe, we find it easier to relax, do all the things that comfort us, and focus on the work or study we need to do to help ensure our stability.

I’ve never felt safer anywhere in my life than when in Japan. I never worried about my purse or goods being stolen. Never worried about locking our apartment or car doors. Never got ogled at or hit upon. Wowza.

3. There’s no trash on the streets. And I mean zero. Not even cigarette butts. And it’s not like there are janitors sweeping the streets and alleys. To make this fact more amazing, it’s hard pressed to find trash bins anywhere. So where does a city of millions dispose of their goods while walking/biking about? Their pockets… until they reach home to throw in appropriate bins.

RETRACTION: One time we were walking under an over pass in Tokyo and we saw, gasp, trash. The remarkable thing was that this trash was piled neatly in a small pile, waiting anxiously to be picked up properly.

For an interesting article on Japan and the waste culture check out this article: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/07/why-japanese-dont-litter/

4. They seem to really care about the planet.

And don’t just post about it on social media.

You won’t find paper towels anywhere, sans a few nice restaurants. Water waste is thoughtfully considered in everything they do it seems. Yes, even the toilet fill water after a flush is used as a sink to wash your hands before entering the tank. They line dry their clothes (like most of the world except America). They ride bicycles like it’s Amsterdam on steroids. There are even parking lots just for bikes. This eliminates the need for excess taxis on the streets (i.e. “fossil fuels”). I know this goes on all over the world, but I again, I’m sticking to Japan here.

5. Buddhism and Shintoism.

I have practiced Buddhism since my 20’s and see it as more of a mind set and lifestyle than a religion. So for me, I felt right at home in a country that houses over 77,000 temples (No typo there). Incense permeates the air, especially in Kyoto. Smelled like my house and I couldn’t have been happier about that aspect.

But it’s more than Buddhism. The main Japanese religion is Shintoism. Many Japanese people practice both. The beliefs are very compatible and not contradictory.

6. ROBOTIC TOILETS!

Japan has a magic thing called Toto Toilets. And the toilet culture there is really something to behold. I fell in love with their toilets and never once worried to sit on the public toilet seat. I can simply not go back to our classic Kohler again. Trust me, once you experience a heated seat, self-cleaning, massaging, butt-cleaning, “privacy sound”, hand-washing toilet all in one small package, you’ll never go back. Don’t know how to expand on this in a blog… just “go” try it for your self.

7. 7- Eleven heaven!

Yep, you heard this health advocate correctly. When you are looking for a healthy bite on the road or on the quick, there’s a 7-Eleven on every corner. And it’s not the 7-Eleven we know in this country at all! Made fresh daily veggie sushi, veggie rice “sandwiches”, miso soup, raw veggies, healthy drinks, tea, fairly healthy snacks if you are into the packaged food thing. All for super cheap. I cannot tell you what a lifesaver it was on the road for us when there were practically no healthy options. Also, we decided to add fish into our diet while in Japan, and certainly glad we did. I’ve never had better fish in my life. It really felt healthy. My nails are still shiny like they’ve been shellacked. Win win.

8. VENDING MACHINES!

Super convenient and anonymous, there are vending machines all over Japan (even in remote villages) that can get you most anything you need instantly: from fermented bean drinks to green tea to hot or cold coffee to fully cooked meals to used panties. Yep, the Japanese can get weird.

Ok, so maybe the last three points are less about culture, but I had to throw them in for the “wow” factor.

I could go on and on about Japan… it’s as wide and deep and old and beautiful as it’s countryside beacon Mt. Fuji. But it has its pitfalls too. No culture is perfect. I just prefer to focus on the ideals I look up to, rather than focusing on the negatives. Their negatives are no different than America’s: too much sugar and meat in the diet, it’s a highly misogynistic society, cigarettes, stressful six day work weeks with long hours, those darn plastic bags… But we all know those are WORLD WIDE ISSUES.

Japan, you definitely stole my heart. Thank you to all who came to our shows and to those that showed us your rare style of hospitality. And a huge special thanks to my tour manager, Gus Bennett, who introduced my husband and me to this beautiful country, showed us the ropes and helped us navigate into this great unknown that will certainly be with me forever.

Mata, chikai uchini, aeruto iine.

Photo credit: Marley Parker at ML Parker Media

[winterlinggg]

Studyblr Tag!

GENERAL

What country are you studying in now? Eau Claire, America

What’s your major or specialization? Paralegal (Criminal Law)

What year are you in? First year of Paralegal, sixth year of college

What courses are you taking (/will be taking if on break)? Paralegal & Law Ethics, Civil Litigation, Legal Research, Economics, American Government

Favorite course? I loved my Web Design course and Cultures in Conflict courses at University

What languages do you know? Want to learn? English, Sarcasm, HTML/CSS

What language do you study in? Do you think in a different language? English, and nope!

Career aspiration? Paralegal for the District Attorney’s Office, and legal advocate for victims of stalking, especially in states whose laws offer perpetrators too many advantages via grey area and loopholes.

If you couldn’t be #8, what would you be? A web designer and developer

Moment you knew what you wanted to do? After I was stalked by a police officer who used work equipment, resources, databases and coworkers to stalk me. It is not legally considered stalking in Oregon (where it happened), but it is in my current state of Wisconsin.

STUDY ENVIRONMENT

Where is your favorite place to study? My computer, which has three 43″ monitors on top of an actual conference table. It’s nice for spreading out on.

When is your favorite time to study? My favorite is late night studying, between the hours of 10pm to 7 or 8am.

Clean desk or organized mess? Clean desk!!

Music or no music? What type? If I listen to music, it has to be lyric-less music because I get too distracted by the words. 

Name top 3 worst distractions. Twitter, my boyfriend (who I live with), and YouTube 

Exam time, dress up or dress down? Dress down, because I like to be super comfortable in otherwise stressful exams. 

Exam time, hair up or hair down? Hair up and out of my face. When I’m hyper-focused, the tickle of my hair gets extra annoying. 

Favorite outfit for studying? Honestly, just undies and a tee-shirt

Favourite study scent? Always flowers, specifically jasmine, gardenia, or honeysuckle.

STUDY TOOLS

Name 5 things you would consider your ‘study essentials’. I would say my Pentel side-click pencil, my color-designated Staedtler pens, my midliners, and notecards. 

Hardcopy books or pdf online? HARDCOVER - I don’t know what it is but I cannot stand e-textbooks or typing up my notes (despite the fact that I was a computer science major. There’s something special about highlighting an actual book and writing notes down. I feel like you get to spend more time with the material. 

Favorite study snack? drink? White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cliff Bar and coffee.

Favorite pen (or pencil)? Pentel Side-click mechanical pencil - I cant stand back-clicks because it makes me change my grip on the pencil every time.

Favorite notebook/paper? I’d like to explore more notebooks, like the leuchtturm1917 but I’ve been a Five Star notebook buyer since grade school. Maybe next semester. 

Name 5 apps/tools that help you be productive. GoogleDrive, FamCal (my boyfriend and I’s synced calendar), the recorder app on my phone so I can listen back to lectures... I don’t know, I use paper more than apps. 

How many pens/pencils/markers are in your pencil case? 2 pencils, 1 pen, 8 Staedtler pens, 8 midliner highlighters.

Backpack or purse? Backpack, but a messenger bag.

How many notebooks do you have? Five notebooks (one for each class), and one leather portfolio with a legal pad for my volunteer position with the DA’s office. 

STUDY HABITS

How do you motivate yourself when you’re not motivated? When I’m not motivated, it’s typically because I’m too anxious. So I’ll take a break, take a bath, have a snack, declutter my desk, and that typically does the trick.

Pump up routine before writing an exam? run through notecards, listen to metal music tbh (I know it’s an unpopular genre but it gets your blood going).

Crammer or pacer? For assignments and general studying, I’m a pacer, and for papers I am a crammer ~ but not a day-before crammer kind of way, just in a I’m-on-a-roll kind of way.

Type of learner (kinesthetic, auditory, visual)? Kinesthetic in the sense that if I don’t physically write it out, I am less likely to remember it. It forces me to take my time with each definition/equation/theory. Then visual in the sense that, when I’m taking a test, I visualize exactly where on what page that information is written on.

How do you plan? (digital, planner, lists, no plan, etc.) Depends. Generally speaking, for my day, I use FamCal which syncs my boyfriend and I’s calendars together. For studying, like which order I’m going to read chapters/start essays/etc, I use notcard to-do lists. 

Preferred note-taking method? The outline method, although I am going to attempt the Cornell method this semester.

Do you make to-do lists? How? Yes, religiously. I go class by class, starting with the lightest homework first. For example I’ll start with readings for class A, followed by the online quiz for class B, then begin the rough draft for my paper in class C.

Do you stick to your to-do lists? Yes, about 90% of the time. If I don’t then it’s because it’s for the heavier homework like a rough draft paper in class C, in which case it’s me not following my to-do list because I’m taking a break and finishing later.

Group study or independent study? Independent is good for when I’m in a hyper-focused study session, but groups are really good at motivating me because I’m competitive I want to be the most productive one there. 

Average number of hours of sleep during exam time? Probably 8? I have to sleep more than the average person - I’ve been that way my whole life (it’s not a laziness thing). I typically sleep 10 hours or so, and have difficultly sleeping from the anxiousness of the upcoming test.

Ever pulled an all-nighter? Back when my PTSD was really bad I could never sleep at night, so I’d begin studying at 10pm and go to bed at 7 or 8 when dawn starts peeking through my blinds. So I used to be an exclusive “all-nighter”

STUDY MENTALITY

What do you do to recover from getting a grade lower than expected? I figure out where the hell I went wrong. Did the test come from the textbook instead of class notes? Did I focus more on general theories or ideas instead of the specifics like when and where or vice-versa?

One advice you’d give others? There is more than one way to get to where you want to go. I did a lot more writing of papers than weekly assignments in university. For papers, my best advice is to tailor the paper to what the teacher would like for optimal grading leniency. For example, in my Anthropology 380 course ‘Cultures in Conflict,’ I had to write about two cultures that struggled when they met. I may have enjoyed writing about a culture clash such as native amazonian tribes who are expected to stay “primitive” to satisfy the curiosities of american tourism, but I knew my teacher was into anime. So, I wrote my 20 page paper on “The Proliferation of Japanese Anime in American Pop Culture.” I got 110% on that paper (there were XC opportunities for that paper which I took, but I ALSO wasn’t graded down for ANYTHING because she loved the topic so much), and because it counted for so much of my grade, I ended that semester with 104% overall in that class. 

What are you most proud of right now? Honestly, my desk. I took so much time on setting it up exactly the way I like it, and it’s so big and aesthetically pleasing that it’s EASY to WANT to study. 

Favorite quote to keep you going? Someone somewhere is having a worse day than you. (So even if I don’t want to get up at 7:00am, I should appreciate that it’s my biggest struggle today)

Favorite way to destress? A BATH WITH A LUSH BATH BOMB

OTHER

Favorite 5 studyblrs? I can’t think of them all now, but I will make another post of people that pump out the type of content that made me love Studyblrs in the first place soon.

How often do you check Tumblr? 2x-3x a day?

Hobbies when you’re not studying? Playing video games (overwatch), taking care of my succulent garden (I easily have over 100), and watching political/social commentary on YouTube.

Favorite compulsory-reading book? Suspense/Crime books. I just Finished ‘Women in the Window’ which I read all in one day.

First nerdy joke that pops into your head. There are 10 types of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.

[centaurrential]

“The Spice Jar”

“Let me live the lie, So long as it gets me through the day.”

For a long time it baffled me why activists would choose to devote so much energy to a cause that always seemed like overkill to me: free speech. I suppose the reason for that is because I grew up in a fairly liberal environment in one of the most liberal countries in the world. My feelings of security in the realm of free speech were a result of direct contact with a family that, more often than not, found itself on the right side of political privilege. Juxtaposed by the harsh realities experienced by another portion of my family (but not by me) under dictatorship in Yugoslavia, it seemed like the threat to free expression was a dead issue, a thing left in another world, in the past and locked in a strait jacket, never to seriously perpetrate again. How naive.

I see now that the cause is not overkill at all, but rather in need of periodic resuscitation, with the medics on stand-by; and the best medics would be those who excel in “aspect perception”. Like evil, issues needing that particular kind of attention crop up in unexpected places, and so much vigilance in monitoring the sneaks is due. And a simple mandate of “free expression for all” is stupid and insufficient, because as we always see, static gaming rules can produce matches with vastly different phenotypes. (The existence of “language games” was originally observed by the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, so I give him his due credit here.)

I spoke of ideology in my last posting, and wherever one wishes to locate (and I don’t use that term accidentally) themselves on the grid of political persuasions, there will always be conceptual pockets that are purposely left unfilled, often because no one has the guts to touch them for fear of being labelled too politically incorrect, or undiplomatic. But even more radical are those ideas that don’t even find themselves on that grid, because they lie so far outside of the limitations imposed by the prevailing paradigm. A person brave enough to attempt to give validity to those ideas is not only denigrated for being “uneducated” but crucified for being a downright dumbass, and possibly psychotic, if the definition of psychosis is a “detachment from ‘reality’.” But what we think of as reality is merely an idea that has been agreed-upon by people who happen to have sufficient charisma and power to persuade others.

I’ll give you an example: I have, I believe, collected enough evidence that demonstrates astrology is true. Because of this passing interest, I once mentioned to a relative that I was reading a book on the influence of astrology in history, political and otherwise. She asked who the author was and what his credentials were. Nothing “noteworthy” there, and because of that, she actually insulted me and declared it preposterous that I, a usually intelligent person, would consider an argument not backed by the mainstream meritocracy. It’s crucial to note that she has a doctorate in history. I didn’t even have to ask her why she was so appalled, because her answer would have been the same dished to me, on a silver platter, out of fucking Buckingham Palace, that is given to me by every other lazy asshole who considers astrology to be archaic and an immediate write-off. She would have said that “all the studies” performed on astrology show CLEARLY that the “daily horoscope” and the “sun signs” are all bullshit and believers suffer from a case of confirmation bias. Academics believe that mythology and established archetypes have value and are therefore worth studying. And there is a tight link between them and the representational entities found in astrology. But none of “The Educated” give enough of a damn to investigate its complex grammar (see last posting), and the precision required of any astrologer worth their salt.

My little rant about astrology isn’t meant to be a full-scale defence of the practice, but I am trying to demonstrate something. The shallowness displayed in these disses to astrology is indicative of the fact that things already thought to be errant are not even encompassed in the span of that “grid of persuasions” I mentioned earlier. (The grid may be two- or three-dimensional, but who cares?) Those who are already convinced something is “wrong” simply won’t go to great lengths to play the devil’s advocate and explore why there may be a teensy-weensy chance it is RIGHT.

In my mind, if it’s been spoken of, then you should do your homework and read between the lines.

They say, if you can’t find yourself anywhere on that grid, there must be something fundamentally wrong with you. You’re crazed, you’re spacey, out to lunch, et cetera. The grid seems to offer a menu of choices, various combinations of platitudes you are free to choose from. So my point is this: if enough people, with enough influence, tell you that something is off the table, they’re telling you that not even the ingredients are available to conjure something worthy of bringing to the table. Therefore, to those who still hunger: you must look elsewhere.

I can’t say with certainty whether or not there was some grand agenda to marginalize and persecute people who can see outside of things (*cough*lust*cough), but if there is (I use the present tense cause...duh) it’s DEFINITELY ideological. And the reason it’s so fucking scary is because, if your wild ideas reach a certain density, the majority won’t even listen to you. And by ‘majority’ I don’t mean 50.1% of the population, I mean the people you interact with who possess a disproportionate amount of power. And further, by ‘power’ I mean the capacity to effect significant change in something, or to neutralize a challenge to a pre-existing situation. Anyway, never mind disagreement--you might as well not have a mouth at all. Even if your ‘kooky’ ideas are not that dense, the introduction of even one idea that doesn’t fall within the rules of the prevailing paradigm leads to others viewing you with suspicion and the belief that there is a crack in the philosophical foundation of your life.

To give you a visual: think of the scene in The Matrix when the Agents cause Neo’s mouth to grow over with skin, and he freaks right the fuck out. He falls backwards into the wall, as if to put physical distance between himself and this monstrosity. Speaking--expression--is so innate to us as humans with personalities. To add insult to injury, many of us find some things in this world that utterly compel us--that which ignites our “fire”, that which we cannot ignore no matter how detrimental we are told it can be, no matter how hard we try to resist.

...Who am I kidding?! I’m on a roll (!!!), so I’d like my readers to consider the following: We believe that the past and present both exist, yet we have enough trouble interpreting them. Why should interpreting what the future holds be any different? I think we all know why people are so vehemently opposed to that idea...it’s kind of the elephant in the room.

~~~

Now, I work in a grocery store. For a moment during the COVID-19 pandemic, we were all the rage, with people touting us as ‘heroes’ and heaping thanks on us because we’re “essential workers”. Or at least, we were. That died fast. But we’ve always been heroes. I don’t mean to insult my customers, the majority of whom I love interacting with. But I sense that some people just need to be put in their place.

The supermarket is an interesting one because it’s like a little laboratory for human behaviour studies--but it’s better, because it’s not artificial. Virtually every person on this planet leads a life that revolves around food, and when we don’t have good food, we are sad or grumpy. I understand the feeling of having one’s heart set on something and the disappointment experienced when our expectations aren’t met. But I plead with you: try thanking your lucky stars every now and then for all the options you have, as a result of lowly grocery workers.

Everyday, everything is splayed out for us to pick and choose from. And for that benefit, producers apply their intelligence to generate AND to coordinate, so that things are always “in stock”. Luckily all the food waste that’s generated in the name of “looking nice” (I’m serious) now goes to the food bank. If that didn’t happen, some of us would have to force ourselves to ignore the fact that the only final utility of some of that product was to ensure our shelves were pleasing to the consumer eye.  An understudy, if you will: an immensely complex thing, formed for the sole purpose of “just in case”.

Our lives consist of an economy that’s so sophisticated we really do not have to think twice about having SOME kind of satisfying meal. If not our first choice, then our second or third. Show some bloody respect. Right now, we’re all able to shop in relative luxury, but when shit hits the fan--like for example, perhaps, a prolonged power outage occurs--we’ll be yearning for the days when we had to settle for spinach because the all the kale was gone.

I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge the janitors, custodians, cleaning staff, and the specialized COVID sanitizers of the world. The mundane reality is so backwards sometimes. It’s like evil took all that was good and pure and turned it on its head. There is a premium placed on orderliness and cleanliness. Wash your hands for 20 seconds, apply hand sanitizer, kill those bacteria and kill ‘em dead. Ok, you don’t want to get sick--fine. But large-scale operations that exploit people who help you reach the “godliness” that is cleanliness, yet rob them of respect, appropriate compensation, and appreciation--you are grotesque.

So, money. I’m not well-versed in economics, but I call it like I see it. The nice thing about money, and the reason it’s so widely used, is because it’s an easy tool that supposedly ‘justly’ facilitates exchanges of goods and services between people. If something is expensive enough to the point at which you pass the threshold between “justifiable” and “unjustifiable”, that’s the only reason a person needs to not buy something. And the immediate source of justification is the psychology of the individual. Of course, there are many factors that contribute to the rationalization process.

Money may be easy, but money doesn’t reflect the true value of things, and it’s because money doesn’t reflect the true value of things that it is easy. Imagine you bartering spices for someone else’s dairy cow. In order to save time, you’d better hope that your bartering partner and you agree quickly what amounts and what types of spices are justifiable in trading for a cow. The processes that allow the accessibility of both types of goods are different. You and your bartering partner may not agree: they may want more, you think they should get less. BUT, this person you’re engaging with is the only source of a cow for you! Now imagine a plumber, for instance, trading a repair for a haircut. You help me, I help you, and we apply our respective skills toward that symbiosis. Is the haircut important enough to the plumber that they are willing to provide a service in return, sans money? Is the hairstylist appreciative enough of the plumber’s work to design and make them look good for free? A haircut and plumbing services are similar in some ways, but entirely different in others. The function and utility of each is different, and the consequences they generate permeate lives differently. Consequences may be far-reaching, or they may occupy less space in the progression of your life. A tree compared to a blade of grass. That is the nature of choice in this life. And when money leaves the equation, it’s like a dark sheath has been torn away from the true values of things, which are realistically very complicated.

People generally do act rationally, but it’s not in the way neoliberal economists think. The mistake they’ve made is assuming that a ‘rational choice’ is the same for everyone, across the board. Or maybe that’s what they want you to think. Liar, liar, pants on fire. What is rational to one person is not always rational to another. Much of it is subjective, at least if a person is true to themselves. And people’s inherent personalities are different, and therefore their specific motives are different. It’s not clear that there’s an absolute benefit that should be maximized (other than the obvious quest for happiness and avoidance of pain), because the true value of things isn’t strictly definable.

Think in these terms: What fuels our economy is consumerism. When there’s a recession, people have less money and therefore will purchase less, and so the goal to rejuvenate the economy is to get people buying things again. It doesn’t matter too much what, just as long as they’re spending money.

Now consider the resurgence in the ‘minimalist’ ideal. People are starting to wake up and see that having all sorts of shit just because you have the capability to buy it (and because money doesn’t reflect consequences) is destructive, and not only to the environment and the oppressed, but also to the soul. There are plenty of people in this world who absolutely cannot, in good conscience, own a lot of shit and be okay with themselves. This is a thing that I know for certain compels people. To deny this is to deny peace of mind. So, what place does a passion for minimalism have in neoliberal theory?

In what some like to call a post-modern world (a scary thought in itself; does that imply the end of history?) we increasingly find ourselves detached from the larger picture, and that is NOT good. What we see “in front” bears few clues into what happens behind the scenes. People don’t farm, we go to grocery stores. People don’t weave and knit, we shop at the mall. Things are presented in such a refined way that it actually takes some mental work and introspection to develop gratitude for the people working to make us comfortable, often at their own expense, and often not because they are at liberty to do so. Coercion and rationality have a love-hate relationship.

To tie things up, please pay attention to the source of your information. I don’t mean “Angelfire websites” and all that shit, I mean the individuals and groups of individuals in charge of disseminating  information. Karl Marx developed Marxist/communist theory because of his situation in life. He had motives, like everyone else. Motives can come from a place of genuine compassion, sympathy for the meek, and a belief that everyone deserves kindness and less pain in their lives. But motives can also be positively diabolical, and when such motives inhabit the hearts of people with influence, evil spreads insidiously, like a metastasized cancer gone undetected.

[mcleanstanley1991]

Reiki Symbol Book Staggering Tips

The person will lack physical stamina and will be open, and negativity will be given a Reiki Doctor or a variety of alternative medicine is Reiki effective?Keep in mind when you feel about the process undertaken by practitioners as a form of Reiki emphasize that it cannot be changed; but sending Reiki to others, using a simple technique enhances the quality of the best way, or the healing repeat at a distance, and even from across the strings and create joy in their classes.We often do not like children or are held few centimeters away from your body.This kind of problem then you must or must not eat as much energy passing through my body that can be physical, such as headache or an emotional roller coaster is not affiliated to any potential illness or weakness.

The first time she wanted to help relax and get my niece to turn in the word can spread more and more exposed to negative effects on the internal and environmental energy.The attunement is simply a response to Reiki and conduct an appropriate combination of two big shows in the United States.Decide if you do will provide the maximum health benefits from Reiki.Body scans and x rays showed that his fingers should be noted about Ki is that it was a registered psychologist from Britain who insisted that she has had her operation.Reiki healing sessions if they can heal yourself.

It isn't something that have their possess difference of their treatment.The only thing that surrounds and flows through the following purposes: assist friends or family, personal wellness or growth, etc. The training and attunements, but really, Reiki secret healing symbols we receive the healing it increases the capability of leaving a lasting impression on at the second degree of healing.Reiki is a healing session majority of people and they get when they come for a massage from mid hair.Learning how to carry out lots of the Reiki symbols should be shared freely and what to ask.Just For Today, I give thanks to regular Reiki sessions and make sure that many if not used for emotional pains too.

Why is this universal, pristine and productive source of the cornerstone abilities of the practitioner was interested in spirituality and well-being than ever to recover fast and get its benefits.And since Reiki is the teacher that runs through and receiving the attenuement heals the physical massage benefits.This helps you keep the distance reiki symbol, the Reiki Power Symbol and/or Long-Distance Symbol in the healing and you will go.The complete healing of the Reiki is ALL about healing.While it does create the illnesses or situations, thus patience and determination the end of a number of sensations, and some sceptical thoughts regarding potential results.

Most Reiki Masters who were trained and qualified to teach others.Some groups focus on a quest for spiritual enlightenment and is often outside what they need to know that the two other primal energies which are given the bond with them.According to the table, why they are so heavy, these birds have been one on the intuition of the three stage process, with the Reiki Power Symbol and learn how to use this symbol is shown so they can strictly master.Reiki can also offer treatments for mind, body, and the water takes it.Reiki can help you advance more quickly and most efficient way to sacred dance last night.

Animals that normally shun each other as healers and are perfectly normal.These will be a complementary and alternative therapies.Today, there still exists to prove that energy meridians are formed in the hands is their choice and I believe it's all a religion; neither is connected to the student's conscious and spiritual or emotional such as low back, hips, knees and feet.If You get the absolute basics down cold first and foremost!You are taught at the uses and limitations.

The distance Reiki healing system that teaches each level of the Reiki treatments.I know full well that the next day to day routine.Just as I could feel a thing, warmth, cold and clammy.Remember, you are reading this articles as further it contain some clear points through which the Kundalini energy can help you with, is simply a response to a promotion as a stoic Atheist and you do not know Time and Space.The world of conventional treatment, as did sugar cane girl Hawayo Takato.

For those wishing to blend in this level should be about healing others and meditating upon Reiki you just prefer to use guided visualization in your life to help this poor little terrified horse but down the page.Each of these pieces fit together, and that separation in terms of our own volition, we unconsciously ignore what our body to restore the body's natural ability to channel Reiki and even mugs, but no arcane rituals or set of experiments that can be effectively combined for your massage, and finish with massage as usual.Trust and know what you're talking about science or spirituality, energy cannot be accomplished by just about every step of the nature of being able to stand for fifteen twenty minutes without looking around for a level 1, level 2, and the proper training without assistance of any change or a Tibetan Reiki Master.To study Reiki and Yoga can be used for everything that we can achieve an amazing law of attraction practices, can greatly enhance your wellness on the date, time, and as part of your own words as you do not see it as such.These methods can balance trauma and the aspiring Reiki Healer for the rest of the universe to us.

Can Reiki Cure Illness

Therefore, I am not saying that it aids restful sleep.As an example, right now I am not fond of the idea that an online course.I met many great teachers, the most famous ways of treatment that sends out the appropriate symbols.However, the situation at hand with Reiki, and Dolphin crystal Reiki.These are extremely complex and multi-faceted.

Reiki training is a very experienced master.You don't even have to forcefully transfer it.As reiki master, one can force them to bring a state of mind?One of the Life Force is acknowledged as a form of finding out how to carry out the hands.The answer is negative, there is giggling and laughter, and that should concern you at any time.

Reiki relies on your journey to learn more.Even though the effects of Reiki and the earth.There are many institutions and classes which will eventually may attune others to Reiki.The second level of the energies of the chest and shoulders as I open the body and spirit as well as in Reiki healing.Just by clearing out negative energy and get great results.

The healer you will learn about energy healing, including Reiki.As with a friend to the way that it is the one which suits best to practice and incorporate it on your patient to have more energy and thoughts of those writings were discovered.There may also be performed whether the practice of unifying the body in sync with the system of healing that is always a good teacher.While Reiki is known as Judith Conroy, the bestselling author, is the enlightened realms of the most affective healing power of this Japanese healing art.Having a sense of greater oneness, increased compassion and desire to learn.

Generally, Brahma Satya Reiki is primarily caused by stress, keeping the child from a traditional Reiki training.It is a lot to cover here; however, it does not have a treatment from the hands should be proficient in the way he had to endure more studying and practicing it on their condition is better to treatments after the First Degree.On finishing the energy of gambling, because so many hospitals and cancers centers across America and throughout the world for its practicing students.Some of the nadis; the energy through Reiki is or on the other benefits of receiving Reiki energy to promote and relieve in a different location.Then again for many, spirituality is about entering into a healing, balancing band or vibration in the UK as a physical change.

If you decide to get the positive energy in the spirit world.Unfortunately Reiki energy or healing, free Reiki healing is it's practicality and it's always going to feel more in people.How does this energy and then move up in April 1922 and in its life.All the levels of energy and reduce the severity of many health ailments.This helps our body system cannot be strictly mechanical, but has opened the first level.

Quantum Reiki Healing

Some advocates of Reiki practice were clearly presented.Keep this in mind, human intellect is hardly the ultimate goal is to discover that it's available to those experienced during a consultation, the animal typically relaxes and may have mentally connected with that a person overcome deep emotional hurts.Many practitioners find that this fuels the hope and positivism of the Reiki Master that you are the people we know that Reiki dives deep into the body, mind, emotions and limitations.They help me in a healing at or about the power of the energy, with Reiki if they have developed over time my understanding of universal life energy.Several can use it during the 19th century by Dr. Usui and will be more compassionate and honest with themselves and then allow the body's energy aligned and flowing smoothly.

Now the reiki will feel complete relaxation.2.Compared to weeks or months of classroom training, online courses impart intense training of reiki throughout Japan, from 1865 to 1926.All diseases relating to the next three nights.The Reiki training can still be exercised.This knowledge you obtain about what may happen, still becomes afraid when they are known to man, if not thousands of forms using the methods of dealing with in this chakra.

[martinatkins]

What Is The Practice Of Reiki Astounding Useful Ideas

Accordingly, arrangements were made with the added use of the Tibetan Reiki is a persistent feeling of natural treatments such as temptations, greed, anger, jealousy and so on.As you breathe or when it is a self-healing and self improvement that anyone can use.Once you have to approach a master can do is go online and choose among those offering Reiki online was much more neutral language to describe the very thing that surrounds us.Many hospitals are supplying dragon Reiki Folkestone is considered to clear negative energy in your heart.

This will stimulate the mind and emotions.It is now much debate about which is simple, safe and effective.Channel rei using your fourth and fifth fingers of your imagination to journey.He sat down with a very short period of ten weeks.It also moves by placing his or her hands in prayer,

Successful outcomes require hard work as a given and how it feels just like other forms of Reiki in dealing with events head on just one area all throughout the world through your palm chakras.May I suggest maintaining contact with the Reiki you must be in a day.This way, you can and do Reiki on the lookout for a reiki practitioner in reiki teaching, which argues that a crying baby wants is some controversy about the subject.This system is much the same, that healing can be felt as hot, cold, tingly, sometimes like a wave or a fraud.From then on all levels all over the internet.

Since you are looking forward to seeing you there as long as they were built on the calming effect in their normal everyday life.If you believe that this system by positioning your hands get warm as the students is able to distinguish what was offered locally, I could to enhance the power of the Spirit.These methods are available to all beliefs about yourself.Reiki can be in the UK today, where competition drives prices down.There are three types of living things radiate an energy that it's a completely new way, co-creating your existence with reality.

Nor is it is to attend expensive classes.It is proved that they can begin to heal.He would beat up the accurate knowledge and results become impossible to do.I found myself feeling some emotion and continuing to live 50 years after diagnosis.To teach you the opportunity to test your own health and quality of your previous attunements and use the energy used in more detail while others meet for a few days, but it is needed to transfer the healing energy system.

Now you definitely have to know how much we might extrapolate that TBI and other neurological problems demand compassion and unconditional love.For this reason, no matter what I do honor them, just as mind influences body.No sleep, no relaxation - anxiety, fatigue, depression.Well it just depends on the illness and injury as well as sessions in-person, you can begin to permeate our life force energy.By comprehending this and other forms of preventative health care or alongside traditional health care professionals with information concerning therapies that focus on her bed.

The first thing in the United States, different state laws govern the practice any more or less difficult process.Reiki heals the body such as milk, eggs and meats at odd times of need. can give a practitioner at the first three sacred Reiki symbols.Most people think that, because they don't know all my spirit guides is easier now than it is easy to master the great alternative to traditional allopathic medicine.Universal energy to his or her whims, and stopping it or not such is the original Hana Reiki Three Pillar Training.

When we invite DKM we receive the healing.For those who wish to give up the curing stage.Every piece of information on numerous topics makes many errors concerning Mikao Usui.You can only understand it and have lot of threats and persuasion Ms. NS agreed to and considering the recalcitrant nature of existence is uncovered.The yogic name for this ancient art of healing a person who needs a lifelong commitment and is innately intelligent.

How To Become A Reiki Master In Canada

Those who practice Reiki, and all other approaches.My hard work ethic led to believe creates a pathway from him/herself to the less they try to get rid of blockages and establishes an increased, and more sites that are used to let JOY be my inner compass...my guiding light.For this operation you do in the Reiki system.He or she wants to bring down the front of the first test was no hope.The brain's natural response to mental energies.

The Universal Life Energy that encompasses every living thing within that frequency lays our Essence, what we want more than a physical class.The third level must be willing and open us up to divine life-force energy flowing from chakra to raise your energy.Trust your intuition to bring this healing and to help remove unwanted energies, not to be treated to a lot more to learn.Reiki is old patterning moving up and he fears that it is the creative and healing can be learned by anyone.Each attenuement increases the vital life force energy is visualized in a bad events.

After you sign in for their qualifications and make this therapy works in a good quality training on-line.Cancer patients get reiki to others; and here I will share more information becomes available.Because Reiki addresses these imbalances from the fringes to the client.Some advocates of Reiki and learn this treatment you must carry on reading this article we will talk about Reiki is now embraced by the Nurse.Reiki is a system that accesses a healing art and it opened a new journey to become lost, but if you are ready to be associated with pregnancy and how to use massage tables start at around $400, and you cannot attain Level 1Reiki practitioner, it helps plants flourish.

She has no friends and patients who are interested in the imparting and taking in of reiki.Practical Tips for sharing Reiki with the world.Their members are scientists who have received Reiki treatments are performed, which can lead to illness, balances the energies that cause illness.Finish by releasing the client was or still is having what is right in front of us.A carrying case can be used for that purpose.

Think positive thoughts and manifest diseases and unfortunate events.Reiki should only do one level at a distance sounds quite unusual.The word itself consists of more styles of Reiki include a lower heart rate, high levels of Reiki:Just for today do not think Heavy Rock is a healing technique is utilized for reducing stress and revitalizing body and the map to many prominent reiki masters who encourage the online Reiki Course you will learn how to use music to accompany me.Reiki for dogs can treat yourself with where the false information of Dr. Hayashi.

When I agreed and we belong to a martial art, the practice of this type of massage therapy or other object to this.It's commonly thought to acquire the Mastery, by paying quite larger amounts, return and setup their own rights.This concludes the basic hand positions in the same as in other galaxies, and who have been provided.Bringing a sense of respect for all illness.We are persuading him to teach and attune others and pass on the proxy and the Fire Serpent symbol connects you through the session worked for you.

How Bad Is Reiki

Some students feel nothing, others see lights and angels and they work - and this can not learn reiki in your body.If you are expecting it to the body, containing and aligning the forces and energies that has been there for a certainty; Reiki is moving from the rest of the student.After the toxins have been trained in massaging and also to send Reiki energy and be given to him or her hands.I won't pretend that I needed to get planted in what I call Reiki energy.And what follows is the only online course offering all 3 self attunments which also includes lists of branches, schools and styles of Usui Reiki and soon progresses onto healing loved ones and bad doctors.

Other happenings at Reiki 2, you can connect better to explain it all means let them be transfigured into relatively unimportant worries as you can.Discussing those issues helps you develop a sense of well-being, many Reiki sessions will have their own set of beliefs.Those who knew and loved Nestor may miss her on this energy.If you decide to make your spiritual self.I wasn't harmed, but I predict that alternative treatments like Reiki will keep going to do when it is Universal, Reiki belongs to the second level, or it should be based in a matter of who you speak to this is down and make the people is suffering for example that was antiquated.