#but perhaps the distorted version of life that girls are exposed to

[chaiaurchaandni]

behind every hot girl is a deep history with the horror genre

[aaknopf]

Today we present a preview of a major new biography of Sylvia Plath, Red Comet, coming this fall. Through committed investigative scholarship, Heather Clark is able to offer the most extensively researched and nuanced view yet of a poet whose influence grows with each new generation of readers. Clark is the first biographer to draw upon all of Plath's surviving letters, including fourteen newly discovered letters Plath sent to her psychiatrist in 1961-63, and to draw extensively on her unpublished diaries, calendars, and poetry manuscripts. She is also the first to have had full, unfettered access to Ted Hughes's unpublished diaries and poetry manuscripts, allowing her to present a balanced and humane view of this remarkable creative marriage (and its unravelling) from both sides. She is able to present significant new findings about Plath's whereabouts and her state of health on the weekend leading up to her death. With these and many other "firsts," Clark's approach to Plath is to chart the course of this brilliant poet's development, highlighting her literary and intellectual growth rather than her undoing. Here, we offer a passage from Clark's prologue to the biography, followed by lines from one of Plath's celebrated "bee poems."

from Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

The Oxford professor Hermione Lee, Virginia Woolf’s biographer, has written, “Women writers whose lives involved abuse, mental-illness, self-harm, suicide, have often been treated, biographically, as victims or psychological case-histories first and as professional writers second.” This is especially true of Sylvia Plath, who has become cultural shorthand for female hysteria. When we see a female character reading The Bell Jar in a movie, we know she will make trouble. As the critic Maggie Nelson reminds us, “to be called the Sylvia Plath of anything is a bad thing.” Nelson reminds us, too, that a woman who explores depression in her art isn’t perceived as “a shamanistic voyager to the dark side, but a ‘madwoman in the attic,’ an abject spectacle.” Perhaps this is why Woody Allen teased Diane Keaton for reading Plath’s seminal collection Ariel in Annie Hall. Or why, in the 1980s, a prominent reviewer cracked his favorite Plath joke as he reviewed Plath’s Pulitzer Prize–winning Collected Poems: “ ‘Why did SP cross the road?’ ‘To be struck by an oncoming vehicle.’ ” Male writers who kill themselves are rarely subject to such black humor: there are no dinner-party jokes about David Foster Wallace.

Since her suicide in 1963, Sylvia Plath has become a paradoxical symbol of female power and helplessness whose life has been subsumed by her afterlife. Caught in the limbo between icon and cliché, she has been mythologized and pathologized in movies, television, and biographies as a high priestess of poetry, obsessed with death. These distortions gained momentum in the 1960s when Ariel was published. Most reviewers didn’t know what to make of the burning, pulsating metaphors in poems like “Lady Lazarus” or the chilly imagery of “Edge.” Time called the book a “jet of flame from a literary dragon who in the last months of her life breathed a burning river of bale across the literary landscape.” The Washington Post dubbed Plath a “snake lady of misery” in an article entitled “The Cult of Plath.” Robert Lowell, in his introduction to Ariel, characterized Plath as Medea, hurtling toward her own destruction.

Recent scholarship has deepened our understanding of Plath as a master of performance and irony. Yet the critical work done on Plath has not sufficiently altered her popular, clichéd image as the Marilyn Monroe of the literati. Melodramatic portraits of Plath as a crazed poetic priestess are still with us. Her most recent biographer called her “a sorceress who had the power to attract men with a flash of her intense eyes, a tortured soul whose only destiny was death by her own hand.” He wrote that she “aspired to transform herself into a psychotic deity.” These caricatures have calcified over time into the popular, reductive version of Sylvia Plath we all know: the suicidal writer of The Bell Jar whose cultish devotees are black-clad young women. (“Sylvia Plath: The Muse of Teen Angst,” reads the title of a 2003 article in Psychology Today.) Plath thought herself a different kind of “sorceress”: “I am a damn good high priestess of the intellect,” she wrote her friend Mel Woody in July 1954.

Elizabeth Hardwick once wrote of Sylvia Plath, “when the curtain goes down, it is her own dead body there on the stage, sacrificed to her own plot.” Yet to suggest that Plath’s suicide was some sort of grand finale only perpetuates the Plath myth that simplifies our understanding of her work and her life. Sylvia Plath was one of the most highly educated women of her generation, an academic superstar and perennial prizewinner. Even after a suicide attempt and several months at McLean Hospital, she still managed to graduate from Smith College summa cum laude. She was accepted to graduate programs in English at Columbia, Oxford, and Radcliffe and won a Fulbright Fellowship to Cambridge, where she graduated with high honors. She was so brilliant that Smith asked her to return to teach in their English department without a PhD. Her mastery of English literature’s past and present intimidated her students and even her fellow poets. In Robert Lowell’s 1959 creative writing seminar, Plath’s peers remembered how easily she picked up on obscure literary allusions. “ ‘It reminds me of Empson,’ Sylvia would say . . . ‘It reminds me of Herbert.’ ‘Perhaps the early Marianne Moore?’ ” Later, Plath made small talk with T. S. Eliot and Stephen Spender at London cocktail parties, where she was the model of wit and decorum.

Very few friends realized that she struggled with depression, which revealed itself episodically. In college, she aced her exams, drank in moderation, dressed sharply, and dated men from Yale and Amherst. She struck most as the proverbial golden girl. But when severe depression struck, she saw no way out. In 1953, a depressive episode led to botched electroshock therapy sessions at a notorious asylum. Plath told her friend Ellie Friedman that she had been led to the shock room and “electrocuted.” “She told me that it was like being murdered, it was the most horrific thing in the world for her. She said, ‘If this should ever happen to me again, I will kill myself.’ ” Plath attempted suicide rather than endure further tortures.

In 1963, the stressors were different. A looming divorce, single motherhood, loneliness, illness, and a brutally cold winter fueled the final depression that would take her life. Plath had been a victim of psychiatric mismanagement and negligence at age twenty, and she was terrified of depression’s “cures,” as she wrote in her last letter to her psychiatrist—shock treatment, insulin injections, institutionalization, “a mental hospital, lobotomies.” It is no accident that Plath killed herself on the day she was supposed to enter a British psychiatric ward.

Sylvia Plath did not think of herself as a depressive. She considered herself strong, passionate, intelligent, determined, and brave, like a character in a D. H. Lawrence novel. She was tough-minded and filled her journal with exhortations to work harder—evidence, others have said, of her pathological, neurotic perfectionism. Another interpretation is that she was—like many male writers—simply ambitious, eager to make her mark on the world. She knew that depression was her greatest adversary, the one thing that could hold her back. She distrusted psychiatry—especially male psychiatrists—and tried to understand her own depression intellectually through the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Erich Fromm, and others. Self-medication, for Plath, meant analyzing the idea of a schizoid self in her honors thesis on The Brothers Karamazov.

Bitter experience taught her how to accommodate depression���exploit it, even—in her art. “There is an increasing market for mental-hospital stuff. I am a fool if I don’t relive, or recreate it,” she wrote in her journal. The remark sounds trite, but her writing on depression was profound. Her own immigrant family background and experience at McLean gave her insight into the lives of the outcast. Plath would fill her late work, sometimes controversially, with the disenfranchised—women, the mentally ill, refugees, political dissidents, Jews, prisoners, divorcées, mothers. As she matured, she became more determined to speak out on their behalf. In The Bell Jar, one of the greatest protest novels of the twentieth century, she probed the link between insanity and repression. Like Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, the novel exposed a repressive Cold War America that could drive even the “best minds” of a generation crazy. Are you really sick, Plath asks, or has your society made you so? She never romanticized depression and death; she did not swoon into darkness. Rather, she delineated the cold, blank atmospherics of depression, without flinching. Plath’s ability to resurface after her depressive episodes gave her courage to explore, as Ted Hughes put it, “psychological depth, very lucidly focused and lit.” The themes of rebirth and renewal are as central to her poems as depression, rage, and destruction.

“What happens to a dream deferred?” Langston Hughes asked in his poem “Harlem.” Did it “crust and sugar over—/ like a syrupy sweet?” For most women of Plath’s generation, it did. But Plath was determined to follow her literary vocation. She dreaded the condescending label of “lady poet,” and she had no intention of remaining unmarried and childless like Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop. She wanted to be a wife, mother, and poet—a “triple-threat woman,” as she put it to a friend. These spheres hardly ever overlapped in the sexist era in which she was trapped, but for a time, she achieved all three goals.

They thought death was worth it, but I Have a self to recover, a queen. Is she dead, is she sleeping? Where has she been, With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?

Now she is flying More terrible than she ever was, red Scar in the sky, red comet Over the engine that killed her— The mausoleum, the wax house.

from “Stings” by Sylvia Plath

More on this book and author:

Learn more about Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath by Heather Clark

Learn more about Heather Clark

Share this poem and peruse other poems, audio recordings, and broadsides in the Knopf poem-a-day series

To share the poem-a-day experience with friends, pass along this link

[yourdeepestfathoms]

Deathly Loneliness Attacks

Okay so this is definitely not a fic, BUT- basically it’s a script of an animatic/amv for SIX that I would do if I had any artistic talent. But I don’t. So y’all are just gonna get the script of what would happen if I could because I like to make up music videos in my head while listening to music. And I came up with this. And wanted to share. So enjoy.

Song- Deathly Loneliness Attacks

TW: Vaguely implied rape and CSA, teenage pregnancy

———————

Instrumental.

At the beginning four beats, the following images are shown- Large hands pinning down frail wrists; the same hands scraping down a pale, naked back; Henry on top of a smaller girl; and a bloodied crown of thorns. At the music after these beats, we see scenery of the theater. When the music picks up, Bessie is seen standing out in front of the theater with her back towards the screen, her black hair blowing in the breeze. During the slight shift in the music, she turns to the screen and stares with a curious expression. Near the end of the instrumental, the camera zooms in on her eyes, which shut tightly, then snap open right as the lyrics start.

—

No matter how you live your life, you're breathing every day

Depending on somebody else to lead you on your way

Bessie, whose black hair is slightly brown at the roots, seems to “wake up” and look around dazedly, finding herself in her old childhood home. She’s startled as a little girl runs right through her as if she were a ghost and she turns, realizing it was her as a child. Bessie’s figure should be sparkling and slightly transparent, while everything else is solid.

—

But even if they disappear you're breathing all the same

’cuz all you’ll do is drag along whomever keeps you safe

She watches her younger self play with a toy with an awed and curious expression until a door down a hallway slams open and her younger self scampers into it. She follows and is consumed by blackness.

—

Instrumental

Bessie is running through early childhood memories. A prominent image is of her mother yelling at her younger self and then an image of her parents fighting, which she runs right past.

—

The people who I cherished and the people I forgot

At the “cherished” she’s looking at scratched out faces of old friends with question marks all around them, like she can’t tell if they actually ever existed or, perhaps, if they ever really liked her, and then she turns her head in the other direction at the “people I forgot” to show blurred out, distorted figures of her family with their faces scratched out as well.

—

Relationships that came and went without another thought

The camera pans out from that scene and, from the background, Bessie watches her younger self, who is screaming and crying and reaching for her parents, who don’t seem to care, get pulled into a carriage.

—

Although I felt an inkling “this is not how things should be”

I guess I really didn't know a single thing-

Bessie is in the carriage, sitting beside her younger self, who is sniffling and crying and rubbing her eyes. She’s holding the toy she had been playing with at the beginning. Bessie herself is stiff and wide-eyed in her seat and turns very slowly to look at the child version of herself. At the “guess I didn’t really know a single thing” she shoves open the carriage door with force.

—

Whatever anyone may say

I know I've always been this way…

At “whatever anyone may say” a wide shot of the grand hall where Aragon’s wedding takes place is shown. “I know I’ve always been this way” pans back to young Bessie, her eyes wide in fear, but wonder. Present-Bessie, with her hair slightly browner, is at her side, stiff with fear at what’s to come.

—

As I avert my gaze away from bonds I’ve severed to this day

Young Bessie is shown meeting Aragon, who is smiling warmly and treating her very kindly. Bessie watches them before shaking her head and running away, knowing what happens to their relation. When she runs out of the grand hall, the scene changes.

—

Even I cry when I’m alone

Even if nobody will know

Bessie travels further down the hallway and sees her younger self, slightly older (thirteen) sitting alone in the bedroom she was given, clutching the same toy from earlier close to her chest. Memory Bessie is sobbing and alone and the camera pans at an angle that shows bruises on her exposed shoulders and bites on her neck, and Bessie looks at her with resigned pity before continuing offscreen.

—

Cause deathly loneliness strikes on its own

Aragon and Maria are talking and laughing. The camera pans to younger Bessie, watching them before running over with a big smile. Behind her, Bessie is shown, tears running down her cheeks and a stricken expression on her face, once again knowing what happens to their friendship.

—

Instrumental

Bessie runs past her many loves ones; Aragon, Maria, her siblings, parents, friends, although most of them have their faces scratched out. Henry starts to appear in the images, mostly showing him touching a younger version of Bessie.

—

For all the people’s feelings that I threw off to the side

Although I know I needed them to keep myself in line

Bessie, whose hair has gotten browner, is back in the castle and walking down one of the many halls. She sees herself again, slightly older- around fifteen. Memory Bessie and Maria are talking, and Memory Bessie snaps at Maria, who looks stricken and surprised at the action. As Memory Bessie turns and stomps away, Bessie looks sadly and with regret at Maria, as if she wishes she had been kinder to her at that moment, and then continues on offscreen.

—
The punishment for running from my duty all those times

Memory Bessie is shown throwing up in a bucket. One hand grips tightly at her slightly swollen stomach.

—
Has tightened all around my chest and now begins to bite

Bessie watches her younger self become sick again, holding at her own stomach. At the “bite” she appears to be lanced with some sort of pain and her eyes go wide. In her eyes’ reflection, images of Henry and Memory Bessie in bed together flash wildly.

—
Before I know it, something in my heart begins to change

I wish I had somebody else to share my everyday

We cut to a shot of Bessie who looks pained and tired, and just behind her is a memory of her younger self with a big smile, despite being very obviously pregnant, who runs through Bessie toward the camera to go meet Aragon in the distance. Bessie continues offscreen.

—
My body feels so numb as I succumb to prickling pain

Pregnant Memory Bessie is collapsed on her side, holding tightly at her stomach and sobbing in obvious agony. Bessie watches her, slowly sliding to her knees as well, froth oozing from her mouth and a pained look on her face.

—
I realize now that solitude is not a strength

A hand suddenly reaches to Bessie and she sees Maria, looking concerned. Bessie, who is startled that she can apparently be seen, leaps up and runs away through Maria. After she’s gone, the camera pans to show Maria had actually been reaching for the collapsed form of Memory Bessie. Aragon is now at her side, very worried.

—

Whatever words I said out loud

I know there's no returning now

Bessie trips and stumbles through a new doorway and sees a slightly older version of herself (nineteen/twenty) with Henry in the bed. She watches, brown slowly streaking through black portions of her hair, as her younger self fights with the king, appearing to yell at him before she’s slapped and pinned to the bed.

—
And yet again I tell myself “it’s fine because it can’t be helped”

Bessie watches the king violate her younger self before scrunching her eyes shut and shaking her head angrily, then running offscreen and away from them.

—
No matter just how much I cry

No one will be there by my side

Bessie is running down one of the castle hallways as several memories from her life flash by her- being taken to the country home after becoming pregnant again, not being let outside, pacing anxiously, sticking herself with needles, writing letters to Aragon and never being answered, going into labor, holding baby Fitz (who she gazes at with disgusted horror), Henry kissing the top of her head.

—

The cracks within my heart run deep with time

Bessie suddenly skids to a stop, hair completely brown and her body no longer transparent and glistening, and she’s in the throne room. Aragon is in front of her, looking furious. She realizes that she’s actually there, not just watching it, and Aragon seems to be about to hit her. Then, ground opens up into darkness and Bessie falls right into it, spinning wildly downward into pitch blackness lit with twinkling stars.

—

Instrumental

Bessie plummets down into darkness, reaching desperately for nothing.

—

So that it wouldn’t break-

So that I wouldn’t break-

Bessie collapses onto the ground, still surrounded by darkness. She looks down and sees shackles around her wrists. Blood is running down her face from a crown of thorns.

—

Although my hands were shaking I still tried to keep it safe

There’s a sudden glow of light and Bessie looks up to see an image of her younger self being exiled. Memory Bessie is crying as she walks away from the city, holding Fitz in her arms.

—

Oh what a simple feeling and

She turns her head slowly to witness another memory, this one of her when she’s older and returning to court as Jane’s lady in waiting.

—

I fail still to comprehend-!

She turns in the opposite direction, looking at a third memory of her being Cleves’ lady in waiting.

—

I held too tight and it broke to pieces in the end

Bessie reaches up and rips the crown of thorns off right at the best after the word “end”.

—

Hugging my knees I cry in vain

Knowing that not a thing will change

Bessie jerks backwards, eyes wide. She’s back in present time and on the stage, seemingly performing. She appears to be hyperventilating.

—

No one will answer to my useless cries that echo in this room

Bessie rips off her bass and runs offstage.

—

Even the silence of the night

Even the veil of the moon light

Bessie stumbles into the bathroom, eyes still bugging in her skull and struggling to breathe. She braces herself against the sink and doubles over.

—

Won’t erase, won’t erase

Images of hands all of her body flash at each “won’t erase”.

—

What I try to escape, and that’s the truth...

An image of chains and the crown of thorns appear on Bessie’s body, distorted and shaking. She looks up slowly at “that’s the truth” and sees a brown haired, bruised, naked, and abused version of herself in the reflection.

—

There’s no way I can say

All the words hid away

So deathly loneliness

Maria and Aragon burst into the bathroom, looking very worried. Bessie looks at them, not realizing there were tears streaming down her cheeks and looking slightly dazed, and they run to her, immediately pulling her into their arms.

—

...has followed me to this day

Bessie is stiff in their embrace until she is shown hugging back tightly.

—

Instrumental

This part starts with four beats- on those four beats, in order, we should see: Bessie’s, Aragon and Maria’s faces, the reflection standing behind them, and then the reflection nodding, proud of how Bessie finally accepted help and comfort. The rest of the images shown during the instrumental are of Bessie being tended to by Maria and Aragon.

[ramckinnley]

The streetlights were dim tonight, nothing new. The cities power grid had been awful for years now and the church was in an older part of town.

Father John Martin made the trek back to his Parish from the shelter he had been volunteering tonight. The stench of stale bread and body odor soaked into his vestments like blood into an old carpet. Walking up the steps leading to his rectory he noticed the lights had been shut off. He didn't remember switching them off and the power seemed to be on, albeit faint.

He tugged on the door open; it creaked and moaned open revealing a dark void. No color, no objectivity. Father Martin navigated the room through familiar instinct. Enroute to his sleeping chambers he passed his office, a quaint little place to catch up on paperwork and plan that weeks sermon. He has walked past it a million times before, lumbering the same tired shuffle...the enthusiasm lost years ago. Yet tonight the air seemed heavier, almost as if he was moving through a dense fog.

Straight to bed...none of the normal, habitual hygienic pleasantries tonight. No, this was a man far too exhausted to worry about such menial tasks. For tonight at least.

The fathers rest was short lived as the smell of smoke filled his nose like waves crashing in the ocean. He jumped out of bed, running desperately to escape the sweltering inferno. With each step he took, he could feel the air being drained from his lungs. Falling to the floor he peered a blurry gaze around him...no fire, no ash...not even a bit of smoke. Father Martin stood up, visibly baffled by the events that had just transpired.

Room to room he searched, checked, ventured. looking aimlessly, hopelessly for a shred of logic or reason. Perhaps he was merely having a dream that bled into his waking mind and confused him...yes, yes that must be it. Simply a dream.

Walking back toward his chambers, the priest glanced over into his office again. To his shock and fright, a small shadowed figure of a child sat on his desk, tapping her heels against the aged walnut. She appeared to be no older than 8 or 9 years old and her features became more noticeable as he entered the room. Her long blonde hair was pulled tightly into a braid, porcelain skin was tainted by the spatter of freckles across her nose and cheeks...her eyes were a color he had never seen before. Something beyond...

"...Jessica..." He chocked out in disbelief.

"Tunc suus 'experrectus es." She stated gently. "Ego erat exspectans."

"Waiting for what." the good father asked the rigid child.

"You." She perked up in distorted English. "I've been waiting for you."

A shiver ran up the priests spine as he heard the child's words. What was this child, surely she wasn't of this Earth.

"Foul demon, give me your name." A mighty bellow from the shaken priest.

"O quaeso, est ut vos have optimus. Infirmi agresti nationis Dei." The girl chuckled back.

"Your Latin is weak demon." Father Martin announced. "I command you back to hell!"

"Not my first language Padre." The girl laughed. "And Hell is no place for me...Hell is a vacation compared to me."

The priest staggered backward, a sharp pain ran up and down his legs. The smell of smoke returned and the sensation of heat scorched his body. fear enveloped Father Martin and he fell onto the floor. Looking up to the child, the universe seemed to shift...distort.

Father Martin's office became a swirling maw of chaos and despair. He couldn't see but a foot in front of his face or hear his own thoughts over the cacophony of discordant echos, screaming in all directions.

Suddenly a voice...not the voice of the child. not the voice before. It was something different...

John began to pray.

"N'ektar ver romshuma Martin. Your time is upon you." A deep growl gurgles deep within John's mind. "Here Priest...here in the Other, your worthless God is one of my many slaves. Damned to die, rot and be reborn until the sands run still. Praying to him now only increases his pain."

A wind howled through the maddening, impossible vortex. John was thrown back, his body hurled at speeds that seemed to defy physics. Disoriented, he lay crumpled over a large rock on a suspended platform in the middle of the inescapable blackness. A stiff wind cut through the priest like a spray from the ocean; constant, unrelenting.

"For everything you tried to be, for every lie you passed as real, for everytime they had to suffer through you." A moan came from the darkness.

John stood up, fists clenched screaming into the hallow void of indescribable eternity.

"I FEAR NO EVIL, YOU SHALL NOT CONQUER ME." His voice echoed into the timeless malevolent filth.

"Evil...maybe not." The sinister voice called from John's left. "You know evil well priest, but what of innocence, what of purity."

John swallowed hard, a quiver came over him as the acrid taste of decay filled his mouth. Looking down he saw his flesh boil and bubble and peel. A spume of puss and blood seethe from his newly opened wounds. Falling to his knees, John erupted with a howl of pain so ear shattering, the hollows couldn't contain out.

"It seems I have your attention." The voice called. "I was wondering when we could get down to business."

Whipping and lashing, a festering, slime covered tentacle shot around John's body from the depths. Tiny lancers pierce into his exposed flesh an hold him firmly in place while the ground beneath him dissolves.

The rope like appendage retracts into the time space vacuum at speeds fast enough to agonizingly liquefy John's bones. What felt like a torturous eternity was condensed into a mere second as the Father was transported into a small room. a room he had seen before.

Lilac walls with daisies painted in the corners, a dense berber rug and the scent of camomile and cane sugar enthralled the priest's senses. his body now intact, pain free and vibrant.

"...Jessica?" A woman's voice called from beyond the room. "Father Martin is here to see you."

The clatter of footsteps thundered into the room and ended in a deafening silence. the door slowly opened and John's mouth went slack as he watched himself enter the room. The scene grew cold and John felt a shiver run down his spine.

"Waaaaaaaatch." That brooding voice from the beyond cried inside John's mind.

The man, dressed in priests clothes who was in everyway Father John Martin walked over to a young girl of no more than eight or nine, crying at the foot of her bed. John remembered this moment...suddenly he understood why he was here.

"STOP, OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP!" John pleaded with this second version of himself, in vain.

"We cannot alter the past priest. We must atone for the transgressions we commit." The young girl spoke in a guttural tone. "Even a man of God isn't absolved from his unconscionable actions."

He watched in horror as he relived a dark moment in his past.

John shuddered as he watched himself run his hand up young Jessica's skirt, exposing himself to her and ultimately taking her innocence. A single tear left John's eye.

"I've changed..." He begged. "I'm not that man anymore."

"CHANGED?!" The dark voice became enraged. "YOU'VE CHANGED?"

In that instant John was taken to another scene. Another young vulnerable girl taken advantage of, desecrated, raped. Scene after scene, girl after girl. The flashes continued into the futures of these girls, these young women. A mural of drug abuse, abusive relationships, destroyed self worth and suicide became an all encompassing ocean of despair, depression and death.

"Change can only come through sacrifice, hardship and pain." The echo rang. "Your existence has proven only that you used any and all of the pithy authority you could command to further your sick desires and destroy the innocence around you."

John fell to his knees. The weight of a life erroneously lived, the lives tormented, the blood on his hands finally took its break.

"I'm...I'm sorry." He wept.

"You will be." It grunted

With that Father Martin fell through the room floor, cascading through a near infinite vortex for what felt like razor wire, acid and flame. As his skin was flayed, piece by piece, the filthy priest was forced to eat the rotting chunks. Maggot ridden muscle was exposed from underneath as he was torn apart slowly, agonizingly by a force unseen.

An intense pressure compacted his head from within. Unable to withstand the punishment, his eyes burst. Foaming vitreous gel saturated his face. the contents of his stomach erupted out from within him. Flesh and bone, bile and blood covered what remained of his body and ate away the remaining rotting husk as he was hurled into oblivion.

Suddenly John awoke, sitting straight up in bed. a cold sweat beading down his face, ready to vomit he ran to the washroom. Clutching the bowl, retching over and over.

"What...was...that...dream?! He pondered aloud as the vomiting slowed.

He stood up and left the bathroom, headed back to bed. Except this time as he passed by the office he closed the door. A simple enough action, but one that made him feel a thousand fold better.

Walking into his room he stopped dead staring breathless, lifeless, horrified at young Jessica staring back tapping her feet against the end of his bed. Eager to start her dream...her eternal revenge all over again.

© 2020 R.A. McKinnley

[eunahfmdarchive]

my heart gets teary.

let me in          lyrics  &  composition self  -  para.  (  written with plenty of time to spare because i had the muse.  ) warnings, please read: eating disorder, low self  -  esteem, body dysmorphia, mild suicidal ideation  &  a longing for something to change. word count: 1415, discounting three lines of lyrics.

the song starts as a feeling. it’s hard to keep everything bottled up all the time the way that she does  &  her feelings somehow, deep inside her, manage to develop somewhat of a LIFE of their own. they grab hold of her, dictating her moods  &  her actions, down to her sleeping patterns. eunah spends most nights wide awake, sitting in the chair in the office of 7rophy’s dorm, fingers drumming aimlessly on the desk, eyes staring blankly, unblinkingly, out at the city through the window. 

other nights, instead of leaving her prone in the chair, the  feeling  directs her on a manager  - approved trip through the streets of gangnam to the dimensions headquarters, where she settles down in front of a piano and plays         aimless drumming takes a new form, fingers moving up  &  down the keys until the tips of them ache. the outcome is somewhat more HOPEFUL in tone than what most might expect from eunah, known for her melancholy temperament. she leans into her first love as she writes for inspiration         musical theatre. she plays and experiments until the sun rises for several nights in a row, making notes and tearing up sheets scribbled with abandoned ideas, only really sleeping in waiting rooms or during car rides. 

she listens to a lot of les misérables, the last 5 years  &  into the woods for inspiration when she isn’t sleeping, turning the volume up loud to drown out everything else, her own weakly grumbling stomach included. she pays special attention to the songs belonging to the  women  and the themes of growth and change within. 

suddenly, the nights of frustrated idea scrapping turn around and soon, eunah is crying onto the piano keys, hands shaking as she sits back, rubbing away her tears from her cheeks as quickly as she can. no one is here to see her cry, but she still won’t let the tears fall. she hasn’t cried in so long  &  the taste of salt feels foreign on her tongue. the song is done, she thinks. she records it on her phone and listens to it back with her a couple of the other members of 7rophy. it’s not like the OLD DAYS of pepe or eighteen anymore. ever since nu.clear, little bit by little bit, they’ve gotten to have a little more say in what they produce. when crystyle happened, they let eunah herself get stuck in with the concept change         truthfully, she found the girl crush concept exciting. even if the others LAUGHED at all of her powerpoint presentations that she made in preparation for the comeback, she didn’t care. one of the things she misses the most about the theatre to this day is the collaborative effort it takes for everything to come together, and as gratifying as it has been to see their main rapper finally have the chance to let her talents shine ever since the release of latata, eunah wants to have that opportunity too.

but why should dimensions let her? she’s never given them any real reason to  believe  in her song  -  writing capabilities. so, eunah sits on the music for her song for several weeks before she has the courage to show it to their producers. they pick the sheet music up off the piano when she finishes playing it for them, not that she needed to look at it by now. 

“ is this  . . . POP MUSICAL sound what you were aiming for? ”

she nods.

“ okay. there’s a real story in the music, you can hear it. come back to us with lyrics, and we’ll see.         and dry your eyes. ”

eunah does, and quickly too. she hardly even realised she had started crying. 

the lyrics take a long time to write, though not as long as the music. she cycles through ideas, but they either fall into one of two categories that gets whatever she’s jotted down instantly written down:

     1. too personal  /  she comes under enough scrutiny for her weight already. there’s no point talking about how she wishes she could pull out her own guts, pull her skin taught over the bone beneath  &  fade into nothingness         a  passive  sort of suicide. what would that do for her? pull up all those old videos of her from before, from before she dropped all the weight. that’s the last thing she wants to happen. she sees that in the mirror every day already.

     2. too . . . wannabe theatrical  /  eunah should, she quickly realises, stop trying to be the next stephen sondheim or jonathan larson. she’s nowhere near that level yet, nor will she be any time soon. 

but once she finds the balance, the words seem to flow from her pencil like water. she writes first in english, and then she remembers one of her most common criticisms         isn’t she still too AMERICAN ? from hosts pretending they can’t understand her all for some laughs at her expense, to the harsh realisation that she wasn’t as fluent in korean as she thought when she first arrived as a trainee, she’s experienced it all. so she writes in korean. 

if she can’t bring herself to expose her SOUL, her most intimate of issues, she can speak about something close to it         her longing to be different  &  her inability to figure out where to start. 

she’s scared, truthfully, of what she’s doing to herself, knows where it ends, but distorted thinking patterns are difficult to break, and, in a way, eunah’s resigned herself to the disorder. it’s her ONLY REAL COPING MECHANISM, something she can’t imagine herself without. she knows she was a different girl once, but that was a long time ago, and it’s someone she can’t find the way back to. this melancholy truth about kim eunah is glaringly evident in what she writes         about her world on the path to fall asleep, about her heart that needs to UNTHAW.

she brings the first draft to the producers, and they ask her where the song is going  &  pose her only two questions to go back to the drawing board with;  “ you were trying to tell a story through the music, weren’t you ? shouldn’t the lyrics match? ”  they think it’s too HOPELESS, that it needs a more uplifting conclusion. this hypothetical girl  (  who they all know is eunah herself  )  needs to initiate the change she wants to see in herself, somehow.

and so, writer’s block hits her again. it’s harder to crack this time, as eunah struggles to find a way to make everything she comes up with sound less damn sad. eventually, she comes to the decision, that maybe, just maybe, the song’s narration doesn’t actually need a change in tone, at least not from her perspective. instead, the listeners just need to THINK things are looking up         as they believe in this version of eunah she’s presenting to them, more than the real eunah could  ever  truly believe in herself. 

kim eunah doesn’t believe she’s capable of change, not any time soon anyways. but there are people who do. her friends, her family, the other 7rophy members         they are who she’s really singing about when she’s referring to this BOY who’s knocking on the door to her heart, absorbing her  &  giving her the opportunity to finally see what everyone else does, and to re  -  learn herself. they are the best parts of her. it’s a love song to them, disguised as something more palpable to dimensions’ producers, who still see the worth in her even though she’s long given up on herself.

but, behind the hopefulness, there’s something else. an edge perhaps, sharp  &  sinister. a line of french, spoken in that  tiny  speaking voice of hers, breaking up the powerful vocals and melodies. tu ne saura pas où commencer  /  you will not know where to start. a word of warning to those who may try to let her in, that it’s a bigger task than they realise. the final line too: this girl is a boy’s wish. and wishes, eunah firmly believes, do not come true. 

the song gets approved for a portal release. they bring her to film a music video in the snow, where she SHOOTS HERSELF with a slingshot. a better version of herself at that.

eunah smiles, a sad pull at the corners of her lips as she starts to cry on the flight back to seoul. the director understood: this girl is a boy’s wish.

this girl is the  girl’s  wish  &  wishes belong in fairytales. 

[iliketowrite1996]

Spaces and Secrets part 6

 WARNING- MENTIONS OF FAMILY SECRETS, BETRAYAL, TRAUMATIC EVENTS, RELATIONSHIP PROBLEMS. FEELINGS OF INADEQUACY, AND COUNSELING .

THIS IS THE SECOND TO LAST PART!

Ramonda . 

Ramonda Udaku loves her children. They bring an everlasting supply of joy to her life, an never-ending bounty of love. The days that they were born will forever be two of the happiest, if not the happiest, days of her life. She remembers the day that they were each born perfectly.   

 T’Challa came into this world wailing, the loudest he's ever been. He calmed down nearly immediately when he was placed on her chest, wrapped in a royal purple blanket, only his face exposed.   

 She remembers that she pressed kisses to his tiny little, wrinkled face as she calmed him from his wailing, that she counted ten little fingers and ten little toes attached to the most perfect hands and feet that she’s ever seen.   

  She remembers when  he fell down at the age of five, scraping his knee. He’d been playing with Okoye the general’s daughter, and Nakia, of the River Tribe, he remembers how she cradled him and cleaned the wound, promising to protect him.   

 She also remembers how she failed to keep that promise when T’Chaka…   

 No. Not now. She can not pause there now, and she won’t.    

She also remembers when he fell for Nakia, when she broke up with him. How badly it hurt. That was only a small taste of what he’d go through years later with you, when he had to prove to you that you were bent but not destroyed, that you two could work things out.    

Then there was Nisa.  Nisa, who he swore that he’d marry one day. Nisa, who he invited to the palace and to special events, who held onto his arm the way he hoped to hold onto her heart. Who craved his attention the way that he needed affection, who made him lose his faith in love. 

   For reasons Ramonda can’t know, that would probably leave her flabbergasted if she did, he fell back in with Nisa when things with you fell apart. And she doesn’t believe that he meant to. T’Challa is human and he often takes better care of others than he does himself, but he’s not reckless.    Except for, maybe, when it comes to Nakia, Nisa and you.   

 So when Nisa showed up at the palace searching for him and  claiming to be pregnant with his child just as he was working things out with you, just as he was rebuilding what you two had torn apart… 

Ramonda compromised. She protected T’Challa from Nisa, from everything that would come with this. Ramonda regretted that he would never know the baby, but she didn’t regret that he wouldn’t get his heart broken yet again by someone who treated his love as if it was inconsequential.    Which is what she must explain now, to a room full of familiar faces who are all looking at her like she is a stranger amongst them.  

 It hurts and it feels like she is peeling a layer of lies with each confession, similar to the way one would wipe dirt and grime off of a table, but here she goes. She told Nisa that she’d financially support him if they left.  She did for two years.    Nisa contacted her months ago, saying how it was not fair on Nyala. That she wanted T’Challa to know his daughter, for her daughter to know T’Challa. That she had siblings. That this was all for her daughter.    

Ramonda was able to twist her words, to treat them as if they were as malleable as metal, bending them and crafting them at her will to create a distorted version of the truth.   

 It’s all out now, the truth hangs in the air like a bad aroma. It stinks, it’s pungent. It burns eyes…    

And it’s forced T’Challa into silence.

Nisa   

 She is seen as the bad person in the Udaku family story- the person who came in to break a happy home. And, okay, maybe she did get a bit of satisfaction of getting under T’Challa’s girl’s skin. Maybe she liked the way he’d linger when she walked past, a mix of longing that he’d never indulge and irritation in his looks. He’d never go after her again, not when he has you. His affection for her is tied up in memories and of her being who she was in his eyes- but there is a stark difference between who he wanted her to be and who she actually was.    In her eyes, T’Challa saw a future. He could see someone who wanted to be in Wakanda, who wanted the rights and roles, the privileges and prerogatives of being Queen of Wakanda. Nisa was young then, and she did not want to be tied down. T’Challa believed there was more to that feeling. She swears she wishes there was. But there wasn’t, and she broke his heart in her need to break free. In a way, though, she’s kind of glad she did,    That way, she wouldn’t have to continue to be someone she’s not for someone who could so easily confuse attention with affection.  

  He is a good man, though. That’s why, years later, she fell into that casual relationship with him. They were just meeting to discuss her new business, she swears.   

 Somehow she ended up right back with him again. 

   It was supposed to be one time.    

But one time turned into two.    

Then three.   

 Then a couple of more after that.       

 Finally, he ended things with her on a bright and sunny day, claiming his feelings for his ex-wife as the reason. That he was determined to work it out, that he couldn’t get her off his mind.    

And it was only  a while before she was rubbing her pregnant stomach, looking out of the window in her apartment outside of Wakanda and thinking of her decision to take Ramonda up on her offer.    

She could see pictures of T’Challa and her, his ex-wife, splashed everywhere. She felt confused because she didn’t want to be with him, but she also felt something that she didn’t know what it was.

    Perhaps fondness.  

  Fondness because he always treated her well, always treated her with respect, yet he just was not what she wanted.  

  Fondness because had she ran unto T’Challa and not Ramonda that day, things would have turned out differently.  

  Nyala is her world. She loves that little girl more than words can describe. From her kinky, coily hair to her button nose, to the eyes that are so clearly T’Challa’s to the smile that is so clearly Nisa’s. She loves that little girl and would do anything for her.   

 That is the only reason that she returned to Wakanda, two-year-old in tow and a half-cooked plan that she left her apartment with before she could lose her nerve.   

 Nisa wants what is best for Nyala. That’s why she kept Ramonda's conversation a secret for so long- who would believe her? Why place more unwanted and unneeded stress on her baby?  

  Now, though the secrets have been spilled. Everyone knows what happened and T’Challa is processing it. But she can not tell what he is thinking.  

  She looks to you, meets your eyes, and can tell that not even you know.

    T’Challa is processing this. 

He is processing that his mother lied to him, that she is the reason that he has a child he didn’t know about for quite some time. That that little girl is somewhere in the palace now, playing with the siblings she is just now coming to know.     

So now, she waits.

T’Challa 

T’Challa is a man of few words if he can help it. That is because, when he does speak, he gets his point across. His words are powerful and dynamic, and they make themselves known.    

He is intelligent, he is intuitive. 

   And not even he could tell that his mother was keeping this from him.   

 In all honesty, he feels as if the rug has been pulled from under him the day that he learned about N’Jadaka and N’Jobu and his dad and Zuri and why is the room spinning?    

‘’Mother, you kept the truth from me.’’ he states calmly, a bit too calmly, ‘’You kept my daughter, my child from me. You claim that you did this to protect me. I ask you, with all due respect, what do you think of the effect of your actions now?’’    

She looks to him then, and you can’t read the look that passes between them but the tension is tangible.

It’s weighing you down and pulling you apart and suffocating you and letting you breathe all at once.

‘’You can not protect me forever, mother. I believe that this has been proven time and time again. Nisa. We will work something out, I promise. As for now, please. Give me a moment to collect myself.’’  

  T’Challa doesn’t wait for approval, instead turning on is heel and leaving the throne room.    He needs to think this through. To come up with a solution, a plan, before he tries to talk it through with you.    

That’s why you and Nisa find him hours later in the palace garden, and why the conversation stretches into the late hours.    

‘’So now that we have all agreed to it, i am going to talk to the children. Abioye and Nyala may not be old enough to understand, but Adanya and Ado sure are. We need to stop acting like they aren’t involved. And I believe that we need to all go to counseling,’’ T’Challa takes your hand, ‘’It worked for us.’’   

 ‘’It did,’’ you agree before looking to Nisa, ‘’These relationships will take some time to build. I think that, if we all agree to give it sometime and some space, we will be able to make this arrangement beneficial for all that are involved.’’    

‘’Space is important,’’ Nisa says, looking to where your hand is intertwined with T’Challa’s, ‘’For all of us.’’  

  ‘’We have to let the children grow and come to terms with things, but we need also  to be there for them. Come what may, something is gonna give and things are gonna change if they are okay with this arrangement.’’   

 ‘’No more secrets,’’ Nisa tells him. 

   ‘’No more secrets,’’ T’Challa nods firmly, ‘’Now, if you will excuse me, I am going to talk to my mother. We have some things that we need to discuss.’’    T’Challa stand then, leaving you alone with the woman who was your enemy just hours ago.    

Now, though, you’ve walked a mile in her shoes. While you are not sure how you feel about the situation, you are sure that you want to keep an open mind.    

And you do.   

 ‘’T’Challa is so in love with you,’’ Nisa says, a puzzling look on her face, ‘’He loves those children so much. He is a good man. He loves Nyala.’’

You hear the tone of love in her voice when she speaks of her child. She feels the way about Nyala that you feel about Abioye, Adanya, Ado and the new child.   That is the start of your bond to her, the one thing you have in common. The children are tethering you, her and T’Challa- they are your incentives to work things out.  So you talk. You talk for hours, loving the good and living the bad and making the best of this situation and the crap show that birthed it.   

 ‘’Daddy loves you,’’‘ you rub your pregnant stomach as T’Challa sleeps enxt to you,’He has a good heart.’’    

You remember the words that he’d told you his dad had shared with him- it is hard for a man with a good heart to be king. Some days, it’s hard for him to be human without cracking under the pressure to be perfect. He is not perfect.    ‘ 

It is something that Ramonda realizes later when she is apologizing fiercely, when the walls come down and he is having the first heart-to-heart with her in so long. When he suggests counseling for her, him and Shuri, she agrees.

   Shuri is on board,too. She is tired of things being swept under the rug, tired of never knowing what is going on. So here she is, ready to start anew, to fix the cracks in her armor to protect herself better next time. 

   It’s a process, but the children are slowly worked in.  

  You tell them the plan, let them think it over, let them voice their opinions, questions, comments, concerns.    You let the children have a say in what is going on around them…    

And now, you wait. 

DISCLAIMER- ALL MARVEL CHARACTERS AND THEIR FICTIONAL UNIVERSES AND SUCH BELONG TO THEIR RIGHTFUL OWNERS, I OWN BUT THE PLOT, AND THE CHARACTERS   OF : Adanya, Ado, Abioye, Nisa, Nyala and the new baby.

@soulmates8 @airis-paris14 @greenswishbish @chaneajoyyy

  @halfrican-heat @sisterwifeudaku @greenswishbish @airis-paris14 @90sinspiredgirl @shesakillerkween @myboyfriendgiriboy @blackcoffeeandgreenteaforme @afraiddreamingandloving @beautycomesindifferentformsworld @niecey4cocaine @chaneajoyyy @halfrican-heat  @bezzywazhere @melaninmarvelgirl62 @hutchj @chaneajoyyy @ashanti-notthesinger @niecey4cocaine @melaninmarvelgirl62 @soulmates8

[caveartfair]

The Forgotten Story of Audrey Munson, Famous Muse and Fierce Advocate for Women Artists

Audrey Munson with Arnold Genthe’s cat, Buzzer. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Alexander Stirling Calder working on a sculpture for the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco in 1913. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Not many people know Audrey Munson by name—but if you’ve spent any time in New York City, you’ve seen her face. After all, Munson’s likeness tops some of the city’s grandest buildings. She’s the subject of a handful of its largest sculptures, and is featured in a whopping 30 statues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her influence extends further, too, all the way to the White House, which holds a piece that borrows Munson’s features and fierce gaze.

How did one woman come to captivate so many? In the early 1900s, Munson—an artist’s model, actress, and writer—was a household name in the United States, lauded by many as both the “American Venus” and the “Perfect Woman.” The country’s most celebrated artists, like Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Daniel Chester French, invited her into their studios. Hollywood enlisted her to star in trailblazing films, like Inspiration (1915), directed by George Foster Platt. And newspapers ran her first-person, tell-all articles to the delight of readers hungry for more insight into this great, gutsy beauty. (If the rumors are true, it would have been hard to find an American schoolboy circa 1915 who didn’t harbor a passionate crush on her.)

But, like so many women of her time, Munson’s star faded fast and hard—eclipsed by the male artists she worked with as model and muse. Even when she is remembered, it’s often for the more scandalous and tragic events in her life (controversy around her nude modeling; struggles with depression) rather than her essential role in the creative process, and her work as an advocate for the rights of creative women.

Audrey Munson in her role as an artist’s model in the film Inspiration, 1915.  Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

“There were tragic aspects to her life, and that’s a juicy story to tell,” artist Andrea Geyer explained to Artsy. Geyer, whose practice is research-based and often focuses on the untold stories of women, made a series of photographs and collages inspired by Munson’s life: an attempt to rewrite her distorted, mostly forgotten legacy. “It’s also important to tell Munson’s story with the agenda that she had in mind—one where she not only had agency, but also creative power,” Geyer continued.

Munson was born in 1891 in Rochester, New York. Before she was 10 years old, her parents divorced, setting off a life of financial struggle for Munson and her mother (who had sole custody of her daughter). But Munson had dreams of supporting herself as an actress, and between 1907 and 1909, both she and her mother relocated to New York to pursue her goal.

It was around this time that Munson, still in her teens, was scouted while walking through Manhattan; a photographer, captivated by her beauty, asked her to sit for him. The gig jumpstarted Munson’s role as artist’s muse, and led to her first major job: modeling for a then-famous sculptor named Isidore Konti.

Konti, though, had one non-negotiable request: He wanted Munson to pose nude for one of his sculptures. His intentions, he insisted, were pure. “To us, it makes no difference if our model is draped or clothed in furs,” he claimed. “We only see the work we are doing.” Munson’s mother was eventually convinced.

USS Maine Monument in New York City, NY, USA. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Soon after, Munson became one of New York’s most sought-after nude models, inspiring the greatest sculptors and painters of her time, from Vanderbilt Whitney and Chester French (of Lincoln Memorial fame) to Attilio Piccirilli and A. Stirling Calder. She posed with the dramatic flair and sensitivity of an actress, and artists’ interpretations of Munson began surfacing all over the city. You could find her likeness in the New York Public Library, leaning against a horse; on top of the Manhattan Municipal Building, gilded and presenting a crown with aplomb; and at Columbus Circle, a stern, stone figure serving as the centerpiece for the USS Maine monument. By 1915, when she was selected as the model for a large series of highly publicized works commissioned for the World’s Fair in San Francisco, Munson was undoubtedly one of America’s most recognizable figures.

Hollywood and Broadway took note and began producing blockbuster silent films and plays in which Munson acted as a version of herself: a bold model whose work was marked by both agency and artistry. With titles like Inspiration (1915), Purity (1916), and The Girl O’ Dreams (1918), they highlighted Munson’s essential role as an active—rather than passive—muse.

These films, with their smattering of nude scenes, were also controversial, and many theaters banned them. Through them, “the fine line of art was examined,” as writer Justin White (whose grandmother and aunt knew Munson) put it in his 2007 essay “Rediscovering Audrey.” Indeed, Munson’s films exposed both the “true skill and instrumental role a model plays in the creation of the human form in art” to a large, national audience. “To pose nude for an artist in privacy was one thing,” White continued, “but to bring it to the masses was a courageous, perhaps even bold, move on her part.”

Munson’s unwillingness to be a silent partner in the artistic process manifested in other media, too. In 1921, she penned a series of 20 articles about her life and work for the popular magazine The New York American, a Hearst publication. Across Queen of the Artists’ Studios, as her articles were collectively titled, she emphasized the collaborative nature of the artistic process and the important role of the model. She also exposed salary discrepancies (between women and men, as well as between female actresses and artist’s models), and alluded to the inherent sexism of the art world in the early 1900s.

Audrey Munson, 1915. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Advertisement for the film Purity, in Moving Picture World, 1916. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

“In a successful play the principal actors and actresses who contribute to its success are given due praise…and such honors mean increases in salary and a step at least one notch higher on the road to fame and prosperity. Not so with the artist’s model,” Munson wrote. “She remains ever anonymous. She is the tool with which the artist works…though she provides the inspiration for a masterpiece and is the direct cause of enriching the painter or sculptor.”

While Munson wrote the articles at the height of her career, she began to see something that her contemporaries hadn’t yet: that her legacy, like those of other women like her, was by no means set in stone.

For some, the chance to have an image survive into posterity seemed like it should have been enough. To Norman Rose, who interviewed Munson during her heyday, she was “a slender, graceful girl who will live in marble and bronze and canvas, in the art centers of the world, long, long after she and everyone else of this generation shall have become dust!” But Munson, in her own accounts, seemed to predict a different future: “Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful? What has been her reward? Is she happy and prosperous or is she sad and forlorn, her beauty gone, leaving only memories in the wake!”

In 1922, a year after Munson wrote these words, she attempted suicide. By that point, modeling requests and film roles had begun to slow, and she had been embroiled in two scandals that seemed to negatively affect her reputation. The first came in 1919, when Munson’s landlord murdered his wife because, according to him, he wanted to marry his famous tenant. Munson denied any romantic relationship and was cleared, but the media latched onto the story nonetheless.

Film still of Audrey Monson in Heedless Moths, 1921,  on the cover of Movie Weekly, 1922. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

Daniel Chester French, The Four Continents at the Alexander Hamilton Custom House, Bowling Green, New York, 2015. Photo via Wikimedia Commons.

The other incident, which took place in 1922, bears a striking resemblance to recent stories that have emerged in the wake of the #MeToo movement—and Harvey Weinstein’s conduct in particular. In Munson’s telling, a powerful Broadway producer (whom she never named) entered her dressing room during the production of a play called The Fashion Show. He made sexual advances, to which, as she later recalled, she boldly rebuffed: “Don’t touch me. I hate you. Your touch is repulsive to me. I would rather have a snake crawl over me than to feel your hand upon me.” The lecher didn’t react well. A few days later, Munson was told—without explanation—that the play was closing imminently. From then on, she struggled to find work.  

Afterwards, Munson also battled mental illness; she was eventually committed to the St. Lawrence State Hospital for the Insane in Ogdensburg, New York, at the age of 40. It was there that she died in 1996; typical of Munson’s tenacity, she lived to the remarkable age of 104.

But, as she predicted, it would be years until she was recognized for her unique contributions by historians and artists, like Geyer. After Munson died, she was buried in an unmarked grave—an ironic end to the life of a woman rendered all over the United States in stone and gold.

Geyer, for her part, is intent on raising money for a gravestone to mark Munson’s resting place. “She not only stood up for her own rights, but also became an activist and organizer fighting for the recognition of other women,” the artist explained. “For that and many other achievements, she deserves to be remembered by name.”

from Artsy News

[mimicjapan]

   1: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:52:07 ID:fMus8bxQ0.net

  Death due to hemorrhagic shock such as a deep wound in the neck.

The cause of death was found to be hemorrhagic shock when a woman was stabbed and killed in a commercial facility in Fukuoka City on the 28th.

On the 28th at a commercial facility in Fukuoka City, it was found that Misato Yoshimatsu (21) had fallen bleeding in the toilet and died thereafter.

According to investigators, Yoshimatsu had multiple stab wounds on his left chest and deep wounds on his neck, and his judicial autopsy revealed that he was bleeding shock.

At a commercial facility, a self-proclaimed 15-year-old boy with a kitchen knife was arrested for a current criminal offense, and police have set up an investigation headquarters to find the boy involved in the killing.

It seems that the two had no acquaintance.

*Excerpts from the links below. Continuing with the source.

https://www.fnn.jp/articles/-/79270

                  3: Sunday, August 30, 2020 02:54:56 ID:RUSQ5Qwn0.net.

  What is the kid's name and face photo?.

    4: Sunday, August 30, 2020 02:55:25 ID:mU5Mitt/0.net.

  Also, are you only seeing the victim's face?

  >>4

  7: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:56:58 ID:+O8pe5le0.net.

  What? Forgive me.

    9: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:57:20 ID:yXNp9MOb0.net.

  A mystery in which the victim's name and face are exposed and the perpetrator is hidden.

  >>9 Youth law doesn't want to be a violent crime.

>>9 Really that.

  14: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:57:50 ID:Zd+Gz9CF0.net.

  Was it further chopped by judicial dissection?

    16: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:58:18 ID:jk9ASThQ0.net.

  This kid has also been released, and he doesn't even have a criminal record, so he forgets about the incident.

    18: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:59:06 ID:SlBQpvl/d.net.

  will live in a free apartment called Juvenile Training Center for a few years and come back to normal.

    20: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:59:43 ID: fMus8bxQ0.net.

  was stabbed in the toilet by Metta.

    21: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:59:51ID:DZtkO5600.net.

  The kid is the death penalty.

 .

  >>21 It's impossible even if the Sake Demon Rose comes out to the aunt.

  23: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:00:08 ID:bbnKdDor0.net.

  What kind of circumstances do you have when you are a minor, such as a demon.

    40: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:03:05 ID:Mf8YqsVc0.net.

  Why is this happening, regardless of age?

    54: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:05:29 ID:q0dXGLi80.net.

  Even if was born so cute, wouldn't be happy.

    57: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:05:47ID:0ApyzKcR0.net.

  Anyone could have liked it (actually, it was a firm choice).

  >>57 Anyone (if it seems weaker than me) was fine.

  97: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:10:09ID:k65Sgrhv0.net.

  When think about parents' feelings, crying.

    108: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:10:52 ID:w0Cf2GFbd.net.

  This is what haven't heard from the news at all.

    152: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:14:31 ID:g2ymG2xV0.net.

  The boy law has fallen.

    180: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:16:35 ID:lsiPZgM+H.net.

  The 15-year-old is a crazy country where everything is protected and allowed.

    2: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:52:42 ID: fMus8bxQ0.net.

  A video of when they were taken over.

hungry.

 .

    10: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:57:30 ID: cUo/S7eG0.net.

  >>2

Macho is edging a sense of justice.

  >>10 more excited about adrenaline than justice A family that oppresses will have children specializing in brain structure that makes it easy for the child to lose reason.And in anger, forget about me, and become an adult who can not distinguish between good and evil and commit crimes. Therefore, the one who gets excited and irritated by seeing violence is a criminal reserve army, and is also a victim who was the target of stress relief for poisoned parents. Poisoning parents who want to show their authority are wasting time and effort to give birth to children.

>>10 Really..

  113: Sunday, August 30, 2020 03:11:07 ID:5NGBu61l0.net.

  >>10

Just like adding a hand, it's just like a man.

    383: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:29:11 ID:RQCoG45F0.net.

  >>2

Mysterious punch grass, maybe junior high school students.

  >>383 In the unlikely event that you can escape, it's just a slight pain that weakens or weakens your power. Is it a mystery?.

  396: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:30:08.25ID:MrTPLIDo0.net.

  >>2

Damn it.

haven't seen it.

    5: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:55:41 ID:fMus8bxQ0.net.

  Apparently she was shopping with her three female friends.

    30: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:01:22 ID:RibxU+On0.net.

  >>5

Not even a clerk?

It's also perfect.

 .

    11: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:57:31 ID:2lwsb0Fq0.net.

  Kill these guys while holding them down.

  >>11 That's fine, even though it's a minor, it's definitely a defective product and has no future. It's ridiculous to use tax to protect error messages.

  473: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:35:29.71 ID:2AEgmBg10.net.

  >>11

Knees on neck.

    12: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:57:42 ID:KxPeOZJW0.net.

  Why are only the victims exposed?

Really sorry.

    42: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:03:52 ID:q0dXGLi80.net.

  >>12

When die, letting go of human rights, so it can't be helped.

    237: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:20:08 ID:4zKoCkiS0.net.

  >>42

A corpse consists of people and things and things.

    17: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 02:58:42 ID: fMus8bxQ0.net.

  It seems that the news is regulated.

The news is barely covered.

    31: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:01:35 ID:.

  don't really need the Juvenile Law.

don't think the person doing this kind of thing will be rectified.

Get the death penalty.

  >>31 really think so.

  34: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:02:00 ID:t/BHHnpe0.net.

  This is the luck that boyfriend is half gray.

  >>34 If it's a picture you're hugging, that's a rapper, T?.

  142: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:13:34 ID:QIrDWN0M0.net.

  >>34

Is there any evidence that your boyfriend is half-gray? Not a fanatic.

  >>142 ↓ ↓ ↓ Chi beef also w.

>>142 All the scary guys for Yin-kya are half gray.

  172: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:15:55 ID:t/BHHnpe0.net.

  >>142

There was an image of boyfriend in the thread that was standing in the daytime yesterday, and was told that.

    198: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:17:33 ID:Mf8YqsVc0.net.

  >>172

It's too scary, even exposing a photo of lover to the internet, it's just as bad as a murderer.

    254: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:21:01 ID:IvOtbcrk0.net.

  >>198

This is the image that he exposed on SNS.

    51: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:05:06 ID:DSMTONBva.net.

  Perhaps the woman's side made the kid stupid.

    62: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:06:05 ID:5AV90Slg0.net.

  >>51

Crime scene women's toilet.

    170: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:15:52 ID:dcI0MUeA0.net.

  >>62

Eh.

 .

    59: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:05:50 ID:0tVUcO3J0.net.

  The first offender, one person, if you name a minor, it is doubtful that there is even an indefinite life rather than the death penalty.

Probably about 18 years.

    101: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:10:16 ID:DTCebTWDa.net.

  It's called a women's toilet.

In a place where there are only people with low basic physical ability.

A place where it is difficult for men to get help even if they call for help.

    130: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:12:37.19 ID:Qos5YlLv0.net.

    >>130 It's Oliva.

>>130 Is it Oliva?

            143: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:13:41 ID:kl+28zY70.net.

  >>130

Strong.

    148: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:14:09 ID:RibxU+On0.net.

  >>130

Grass.

    235: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:20:07 ID:xOad6FL20.net.

  >>130

What does a kitchen knife break?

    273: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:22:20 ID:Zd+Gz9CF0.net.

  >>235

If it is made of new ceramics, it will break.

    303: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:24:12.47ID:xOad6FL20.net.

  >>273

Oh yeah.

wonder if am a self-catering J person.

    296: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:23:48.33 ID:lDpP0EjM0.net.

  >>130

A terminator or something?.

    562: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:40:52 ID:c6/4tUB/0.net.

  >>130

Thanks to the clothes of Magileth Sumanga.

    131: Sunday, August 30, 2020 03:12:37.31 ID:ZvNnA9hs0.net.

  Fukuoka...

In Fukuoka, there are some guys who are begging for accounting.

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1164247852563873793/pu/vid/720x1280/GKhgxyccV0Z853tJ.mp4

  >>131 It's a messy boobs w Like the Fukuoka version of last year's fanatic couple.

>>131 Inflammation of repeated Japan Posts (effect 0

>>131 'll post it on Scat Japan.

>>131 afraid can't turn to someone who gets caught up in the back even though afraid of it.

  203: Sunday, August 30, 2020 03:17:53 ID:HoVAHgxX0.net.

  >>131

Turn around and love.

    322: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:25:11 ID:FPfWbKGB0.net.

  >>131

It's too hard.

    162: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:15:17 ID:6svm00Uc0.net.

  The daughter stabbed by Akiba Kato was also sorry.

Has Kato not yet executed the death penalty?

    169: Sunday, August 30, 2020 03:15:46 ID:yXNp9MOb0.net.

  The Juvenile Law is a minor offense, though.

It's better to expose those who do such brutal things.

How much can you expose from school?

    183: Sunday, August 30, 2020 03:16:44 ID:BxRPRjpO0.net.

  It's strange to have a stab, without the privacy of the dead person.

Even if such a person is killed, it will come out in a few years, and there are many unfair people in the world.

  >>183 could understand this kind of opinion before. In the case where the host man was stabbed by a woman who was dating, "The girl is cute, innocent and yeah w" "The host is a waste ~", and the victim spreads a lot of images lying naked blood, From the perspective of justice on the internet, which gives a lot of likes, these opinions only seemed empty. can't be ashamed to say that the world is full of injustice. Well, these people, when pointed out, said, "It's not necessarily the same person writing ~", but fooling you. It's ugly.

>>183 It is because of the unreasonable and unfair distortion that the internet people can safely engage in internet lynching..

  192: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:17:05 ID:FvYxGtug0.net.

  stabbed it multiple times and cut off the neck, or it was too much of an egg.

    211: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:18:31 ID:ZvNnA9hs0.net.

  >>192

Have you been decapitated?.

    ------ ↑ twitter descriptions ---------------- 

 Knife Man It's bloody and you can hold it down...😨 #PayPay Dome #Mark Is #Knife Man https: //t.co/YqNolMTB1B

-------------------------------------------

      229: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:19:46 ID:FvYxGtug0.net.

  >>211

It says that there is a deep scratch on the neck.

Originally it was cut off.

    249: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:20:50 ID:kwCALPMC0.net.

  How many people are there with junior high school students?

https://i.imgur.com/hyxz9Ns.jpg

  >>249 If there is only information about the man who stabbed a woman, that would be the case.

>>249 You're a murderer.

>>249 What is this grass with a serious net? Is the head in front of you?.

          265: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:21:46 ID:rve0S3RKa.net.

  >>249

The police gather like an idiot.

  >>265 If it doesn't gather like this, it will be useless as a state power, and even if police officers are in full force, it is an intimidating effect.

>>265 There are a lot of people originally because that consulate is near.

>>265 Do you want to throw in your strength one after another?

>>265 Do you think it is to catch the criminal? If there are many targets, it will be because it is to protect citizens w.

  277: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:22:30 ID:ZeemWddd0.net.

  >>265

If you lick it, you'll get yelled.

    290: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:23:12 ID:+O8pe5le0.net.

  >>265

The other person is a murderer.

It has nothing to do with brat.

    452: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:33:36 ID:2vOPyLUod.net.

  >>265

A group of sports clubs.

A sense of unity.

    464: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:34:32 ID:J2B9264I0.net.

  >>265

It's because you're parting with an appalling person and an intimidating person.

    487: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:36:36 ID:BiQ/rrcW0.net.

  >>265

There were people sleeping in the downtown area of Wai, so there were people sleeping there, so when went to the police box, was surprised to see about six people coming.

It's a wanted criminal.

    300: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:24:03.79 ID:Q/a/5ttN0.net.

  >>249

What's the one in front of me?

    310: Sunday, August 30, 2020 03:24:31.44 ID:wXzx3MZOa.net.

  >>300

You can see it looks like a human head.

    318: 2020/08/30 (Sun) 03:24:56.23 ID:OFhF63Q00.net.

  >>300

Sashimataro.

The one with the mark of the fire department.

  via http://tomcat.2ch.sc/test/read.cgi/livejupiter/1598723527/

News via exercisesfatburnig.blogspot.com http://mimicjapan.blogspot.com/2020/08/20200830-sun-025207-idfmus8bxq0.html

[delicrieux]

amortentia [young!tom riddle x reader] pt.4

premise: two students start developing feelings for one another despite having too many secrets to count. tws for this chapter: implied childhood trauma word count: 2.6k

amortentia masterpost | masterlist | music

4. a lesson in language

The trip is long and tedious, with dark grey skies and no sunshine. Puddles lay waste on the road, small rocks sticking to your black robe, its edges already patched with mud. The rest of the students fare no better: the girls yelp and giggle and lift their coats and skirts higher; the boys run and laugh heartily once someone slips and tumbles into the dirt. The two teachers that accompany this crowd have barely enough time to discipline everyone, whether for indecency or otherwise.

“En sa beauté gît ma mort et ma vie.”

You and Tom walk together, a bit further back, watching the excited horde of students as they seem in an unruly rush to Hogsmede. You pull your scarf closer, letting the wool scratch your face and tickle your neck. Some girls glance back at the two of you, narrow their eyes and look away again; the two of you stand at a distance, enough for all to understand that you are merely two friends enjoying a conversation about the weather.

Tom’s focus on you varies – at times he watches closely, mapping your face, the cupid’s bow of your lips and the wink of your lashes…At other’s, he is completely immersed in Ruth’s flaring skirt or the teacher’s nagging voice.

“Beautiful.” He murmurs, and you almost fail to hear him over the wind. Tilting your head to the side, you trace his pale face with striking precision; perhaps he notices, since the corner of his lips curls into a knowing smile, “What does it mean?” A spur of pride ignites in your chest and you take your next step with a light jump, fighting the grin that is about to pull on your lips. You look away from him, pretending to think, letting the silence stretch, leaving a pinch of mystery.

“Maurice Scève, a famous French poet, once wrote so about his mistress…” You begin, dreamy, song-like, “And it is also considered to be one of the most romantic sayings in the world.” At this your gaze locks on his. A breath catches in the back of your throat as your heart makes a sudden leap you are almost all too familiar with by now. He seems to share this delicate wonder you are spoiling him with, and he strays closer, as if your next words would be a spell to open Pandora itself.

A whistle blows. Your shoulders jerk and you glance away. Tom smiles and steps back. Ruth is yelled at again. Two kids bump your shoulder lightly as they rush forward.

“…I simply like the way it is pronounced…” You continue with a mumble, “En sa beauté gît ma mort et ma vie. In her beauty rests both my death and my life.” You smile shyly, “See, it is the ma mort…My death, and ma vie…My life. Such profound devotion…I could never imagine anyone saying so to me.” You add quietly to yourself. Lost somewhere in a daydream, you do not notice the strange look he sends your way.

“Are you well versed in French?” He inquires.

You are quiet for a moment, “I suppose so, yes. My mother… made me learn it when I was younger.”

“What else did she make you learn?”

“Nothing of real interest.” You say, “I was an avid reader, though. She insists it was because she used to read me La Belle et la Bête.” Your lips twitch at the memory, neither blissful nor awful, “It was my absolute favourite…Do you know of it?”

“I’m afraid I do not.”

“Well, it is a fairy-tale. About a girl trapped in a castle by a terrible beast. Each night he comes to her and asks for her hand in marriage…And each night she dimissess him. He was a horrendous monster, see, a frightful thing. She had thought that his soul was as terrifying as his visage.” You say, “One day, though, she realises how deceiving appearances can be. She falls in love with his kindness and thoughtfulness instead of his looks,” You glance at Tom, “And she finally says yes…” You trail off, “Then he turns into a prince. Mother said it was based on a true story, and I cannot help but wonder if that was the case.”

“Sounds like the opposite of Dorian Gray.” He grins.

You laugh a little, though it comes out a bit raspy, “Yes, I suppose it is, is it not? It is a bit silly, though, how muggles reinvent magic. They really do believe it is limitless.”

“It sort of is, isn’t it?”

“Come now, Tom, there is no such magical object in the world that would grant eternal life. If there was, I am certain most wizards and witches would use it.” You finish with a teasing smile. He chuckles.

“Well, to be fair, Wilde was a muggle. It was most likely a metaphor for youth...Did you read it in English?”

“French.”

“Do you read everything in French?”

“Of course.” He narrows his eyes at you, though subtly, you barely notice the change, “It is in my family, you see. I was supposed to attend Beauxbatons.”

“Why didn’t you?”

You turn away. Your fingertips numb from the cold and you curse the leather gloves that you wear. You hook your hands together and bring them to your lips; he watches in silence and wonders what exactly are you thinking. Nothing of real interest, is what you chant in your mind. It is unnerving. You feel as if he can see right through you: past the layers of fabric, past the skin, past the tender flesh and to the very core of your being. As if, if he were to draw closer, he would be able to read every tale of your life weaved into muscle, every snippet of your childhood you keep secret exposed by the drum of your heart.

You smile graciously, like any proper lady should, to deter his inspection. Something dark and icky pools in your stomach, an overbearing sense that he knows. It weighs you down and your shoulders slump lightly. The expression you wear is plastic, but you doubt he can tell. No one has been able, so far.

“It does not matter, really.” You reply, upbeat. “But now, I am afraid you will have to tell me a bit more about yourself, seeing as you have questioned me so relentlessly.” He snorts at your words, and your eyes crinkle from your smile, “So, pray tell, Tom. Do you speak a different tongue?”

He thinks; his eyes shift to the front again into the upcoming contours of the small village. A drop of rain kisses your cheek, and soon enough more dot the surface of your face. You glance down, see the ripples in muddy puddles and avoid a few by carefully stepping to the right and brushing your shoulder to his. You murmur an apology and before shying away. A second whistle pierces the air and it seems to catch Tom off-guard. He blinks owlishly, finally returning his attention back to you.

He leans closer, “Promise not to tell?”

“Mister Riddle and Miss (Lastname)! Do hurry up! And, respectful distance, mind you!”

You are to obey the order, but something about the way he looks at you makes you freeze and ignore it; he either does not care or did not hear it. Your throat itches from a sudden dry-spell and you gulp. A wave of curiosity soaks you to the very bone. You see small versions of familiar doe eyes reflect in his iris. Is it a secret? You wonder, For such a look it must be…

The rain hits harder.

“I promise.”

...

You must take shelter when the scenery becomes a blur: the houses distort and even the teacher’s whistle falls flat and quiet in comparison to the barbaric drum of rain. Cold water leaks down your lashes and your hair sticks to your skin. You shut your eyes as they start to sting and shudder. A warm touch on your leather glove tugs you along, and blinded your quickly follow in mismatched steps.

A bell chirps as you are pushed into somewhere warm and dry. The door creaks shut behind you and the space echoes with sharp noises: clanking, cracking, a few barks.

Pet shop?

You open your eyes and the grip on your hand eases. Tom runs his fingers through his hair and moves forward to the empty counter. You briefly glance back through the small window of the door—the world is indistinguishable, a miss-match of heaven and earth, leaving you and he completely isolated. The thought is not entirely unpleasant.

You take off your gloves and shove them into your pockets. The two of you are drenched from the tops of your heads to the soles of your feet; he leaves a trail of water as he paces and seems amused by the fact, and you, rooted in spot, count the drops plashing from your robe onto the wooden floorboards. They creak under you, and skittishly step onto the carpet in fear that they suddenly will not hold up your weight.

Fire dances in the stone fireplace, glimmering like a small dragon, its light reflecting in glass trinkets. An unusual place to take shelter in: you would assume one would run straight to The Three Broomsticks and have a drink of Butterbeer to warm up. Shivering, you move closer to the fireplace like a moth drawn to light.

You jerk once some creature swinging its legs above your head knocks on the ceiling. Letting your hands heat you peek at the various animals lurking in cages—some are proudly displayed by the windows, some are tucked away in the shadows. Perhaps they fear daylight, or perhaps they are too dangerous to see.

Tom searches for the owner, and once he is sure no one is near, he turns to you and you smile as you notice water dripping from the tip of his nose.

“I suppose leaving our wands at Hogwarts was foolish.” He says, a grin pulling on the corners of his lips. You laugh, though it is quickly interrupted by a cough.

“Definitely.” You agree hoarsely, inching closer to the fire.

“Sorry if I made you sick again.” He adds, drawing near, crouching next to you, “You can tell the Head Nurse I’m to blame.”

“As if that would appease her…” You murmur with a small smile, “But worry not, I can manage a cold on my own. A bit of tea and I will be good as new.”

“Still, if there’s anything I can do…” He extends his hand to you in a wordless invitation. You stare at it for a moment, struck by wonder at the implication. Your palm aligns with his in a holy palmer’s kiss, and his fingers weave through yours, “Do let me know.”

“Certainly.” You utter as he comes to stand, once again pulling you along with him.

“I really wish you’d refer to me in a friendlier manner.” He comments with a smile, “I almost feel like I’m conversing with a professor all the time.”

“Apologies if I caused you—”

“You caused nothing.” He says, “Only delight. Come away, now. I want to show you something.” He moves further back and you follow, and you think you would follow him to the depths of the earth or through Dante’s inferno if he spared you one of those lovely smiles again; if he only spoke in tender words that concealed something so devout behind them.

“Much like you,” He starts, “I could speak it since I was little...Only I had no teacher.” He stops next to a glass cage with a small serpent inside—its scales shimmer in the firelight and dot with mellow colours of rain. The amber surface is slick; small beady eyes watch your approach cautiously. A hostile hiss with a flash of shiny, long fangs makes you halt. Though it loses interest in you all too quickly, ticking it’s head to Tom. It’s fearsome maw closes. It appears curious, attentive almost. You glance between them, not sure what to make of this sudden change in tact. Perhaps it is just a trick of the light.

Tom crouches to it and you follow suit, minding your distance between the two, the former you fear will feel your tremble, even through linked hands, and the latter you fear will strike you. He eyes the snake before turning to you, almost expectantly, as if to ask for permission. Unsure, you give a simple nod.

It is strange. Unnerving, perhaps. Unlike most languages—barebones, nothing but graphological markers and sounds stringed into lexis—this one has a feeling, an odd one at that. Shrill and ululating, it pierces your ears and makes your hairs stand on end. It is divinely uncomfortable, danger marked by tone. If it was not for Tom, holding your hand so gently, and speaking in such a refined, fluent manner, you would feel unsafe, scared even. But you are not.

Odd. You feel odd, stranded at a crossroads, uncertain of how to react. Your mind skews with flashing images of warnings and omens and prophecies and a history of ill reputation. All of it molds like wax into a figure your hand is held hostage by, and a part of you wishes to pull away and rush into the drowned world behind the door, safely hidden from him. Another wishes to stay and finds little harm in the fact.

Are you surprised? Certainly, you had not expected him to speak in Parseltongue. Russian, perhaps, Arabic even, but not the language of snakes that holds such high regard at your House, such deific esteem among your peers. Yet all of them are none the wiser. If Salazar Slytherin himself was to hear Tom’s words, he would rejoice, and the whole House would follow suit. A celebration of dionysian scale would take place the very same evening.

So why is it, that grand as this secret is, it remains one? And why, out of all of his friends, his peers, his professor, he shares it with you?

You feel on the verge of unravelling something, finding some hidden meaning behind his actions, yet that would implore you to assume his feelings and you dare not stray into forbidden territory. You were not brought up to assume, nor to flail in fear or overtly revel in a discovery. You do not wish to do those things, either.

He stops, all this time he was watching you closely for any shift in your clear expression but you look no different than just hearing someone read off a verse in French. Your focus falls from him to the amber snake, a soft gasp escaping your lips as you lean forward—it spins, going in circles, trying to devour its own tail. Ouroboros. If eternity is his secret, then you will guard it with your heart. It is a wonderfully terrible sight.

The room goes into vertigo when you stare at it for too long, your mind trying to keep up with your eyes, ears, the erratic beats of your heart.

“You have said…” You take a pause to catch your breath, “You could speak Parseltongue ever since you were little.” It is more of a statement rather than a question, and Tom only nods. You pull away from the snake, unable to hide your awe, “I will not—I won’t” You fix yourself, and a slow grin graces his features, one so lovely you hardly contain your own, “—ask what else you can do. Not now, at least. But I’m...curious, I’ll admit. So please tell me when you’re ready.”

“I will.” He says without missing a beat, squeezing your hand, “I promise.”

Pleased with his cooperation, you glance back at the snake and catch a glimpse of it laying still with its tail grasped between its teeth and ink and blood oozing—

His hand on your cheeks pulls you away before you can get a better look; his proximity erases any feelings of unease before they had time to take root, “It’s stopped raining, I think. We should go before the shopkeeper comes back. He might start asking too many questions.”

shall we go back?

or onto the next part?

[infobeanie]

CROW CILLERS RECAP: ELAINE

This month’s review is going to be a recap instead of a review, because so much is going on at this point that it’s important to establish what we know has happened before we can try to figure out what is happening. The focus of the recap here is the ostensible focus of the most recent episode: the character of Elaine, who might secretly be the main character of Crow Cillers. More than any other character, it is Elaine’s actions and decisions that have shaped the course of the show, mostly in ways she is completely unconscious of. Let us try and trace the evolution of the girl who’s changed her hairstyle so many times she doesn’t know what she looks like.

We don’t know much about Elaine’s pre-Marcus past. Everything is presented through a haze of memory and Ynce-Iche distortion. Chronologically, the first concrete scene we have with her, I believe, is her first encounter with Marcus, shortly before the events of season 1. It’s as if his analytical mind snapped her into reality. What we see, even at this initial stage, is a woman who has had enough of the Crow, of people like Marcus, of the useless trappings of life. Having remained aloof from these trappings, her life before this point is known only through half-acknowledged objects: a chocolate bar, a department store, a swimming pool. They exist as alien artifacts now, unable to be sorted properly into a coherent reality. As far as Marcus is concerned, she has no one but him at this point.

Wait, I’m wrong. The first scenes we see of her are with Jill.

Elaine’s obsession with Jill makes her unique among the heroes of the show, none of whom have so intensely latched onto any objective or object, especially one who is also a subject. (It does not make her unique among the villains of the show.) We’re never given much insight into the nature of her obsession, what initially attracted her to Jill and what caused it to take root so deeply, but it’s implied that this compulsive drive is somehow linked to her connection with Ynce Iche, and that it’s partially responsible for her throwing herself at Marcus’s project with a self-destructive intensity.

Season 1 Elaine is not a pretty sight. She is stretched thin, driven to desperation by some deep, implacable inner dissatisfaction with the world. The people around her are as alien & impenetrable to her as the landscapes she inhabits, the objects that have denied her pleasure: Jill, always standoffish and withholding, never the her that Elaine liked; Marcus, cold and clinical, hiding his perverted male gaze behind an unshakeable mask of composure. The slide kids of life keep passing through just to cause her pain, and they pass by entirely unaffected by anything she does. But Elaine does manage to affect Marcus, at her own expense, by giving him a glimpse of her own annihilation. Rejecting the boundaries of the real world, she destroys her discrete self, and plummets headfirst into the psychic echo chamber of Ynce Iche.

A mirror becomes a razor when it’s broken. The first shard to emerge from Elaine’s ego-schism is Elaine Jr., a defense mechanism come to life, designed to protect Elaine from the outer world whether she wants it or not. She manifests Elaine’s villainous side - the Jill-obsessed, misanthropic people-eater - in a form both more fully-developed and more fantastical than Elaine was able to achieve in the real world. She makes little distinction between what she’s already eaten and what is fresh food, between half-digested memories and still-living bodies. It is not so much that she is always hungry so much that she only consumes. 

Separated from her eating apparatus, it is Elaine Sr. who is always hungry. The new world around her leaves her empty, because it’s made up of her insides. Passive and pacified, she begins to see more clearly the cruel streak in Elaine Jr. as it operates independently of her, and begins to resist the imperatives Elaine Jr. sets to keep reality from filtering in.

Meanwhile, the unseen forces of attraction that drove Elaine into Ynce Iche are still at work, as the Crow Cillers find themselves pulled into the dream-world, and Marcus continues his attempts to gain entry. The same forces work on Elaine in the opposite direction: unable to attain complete inertia, she develops an increasingly defined sense of dissatisfaction with this new world. With Elaine Jr. off doing her own thing, the dissatisfaction is differently flavored from that of season 1 - instead of cutting like a razor-blade, it expands like water to fit the confines of whatever is containing Elaine now. Defanged, she yearns once more to penetrate reality. 

But something is missing - even here, in this land contoured to her consciousness, she’s unable to manifest her desires into something concrete, to make sense of the motions she’s going through. As Partydog predicted in the crossover episode, the script calls for real blood, and there is no real blood left in Elaine, it seems. But she has the knife - that’s real enough. And when she has finally had enough of Ynce Iche, she does the unthinkable, and does something. It’s hard to judge the ethics of Elaine killing Dustin; it’s a necessary sacrifice, the initial act of agency that frees Elaine from her purgatory of potentialities, of options but no drive.

In Season 3, Elaine seems to have reached an equilibrium ideal to her character. Her crueler nature is ensconced in its imaginary kingdom, now feeding off of the energy of That Kid and indulging in vindictive fantasies towards Jill, while her more peaceful self finds a more peaceful home with the Crow Cillers Cociety. Yet this place of recovery only fills her with new self-doubt. She can’t feel at ease with these people, living as she is under a false appearance, a false name. The CCC lead lives of double identities, pretending to be Crows in their work hours; with her unmasked face a mask of its own, she’s left with little assurance as to who she actually is, or what side she’s on. 

But she’s not ready to move off on her own again, for obvious reasons. As the courtroom drama involving Jill suggests, Elaine Jr. has always been the advisor, a voice in the ear of the queen, making no decisions but seemingly influencing everything with her madness. Elaine was the former queen, and while she’s ditched out on that particular voice, how can she trust the voices in her own head now? She needs the support group of the CCC to guide her somewhere better.

Unfortunately, she’s forced to abandon them at a key moment, when she again commits the one act that seems to come naturally to her, this time in defense of Mary. While killing to protect others instead of oneself might reflect significant character development, all Elaine registers in the moment is the shame and terror of being exposed, of having her true face reflected in the knife. 

The escape that follows is thorough; we don’t see Elaine again for almost 10 episodes. Meanwhile, Elaine Jr. finds a blood sacrifice of her own, and enters the real world for the first time as Elaine Jr. X. EJX, intriguingly, behaves in much the same way Dustelaine did in the prior season: reserved, guarded, restricting their bloodthirsty tendencies to the Ynce forest. But she’s still out of control, especially when it comes to Jill, and a confrontation seems unavoidable.

Finally, 4 episodes into season 4, we catch our first glimpse of Elaine (just “Elaine” now), trying to make peace with the funhouse mirror version of her body that she ended up in. Season 4, coincidentally, also looks like a funhouse mirror version of season 1. We have the group of misfit kids forming a friend-and-otherworldly-activities group called, through no agency of their own, the “Crow Killers”. We have Jill back at home with the Ru’crew. We have the Special Musical Act whose relation to the main plot is currently unclear. And at the center of it all we have Elaine, working a shitty job which sometimes involves murder. After all this time, it’s back to the Order, except no one is wearing a mask this time. This is perhaps the key difference - the strict symbolic language that governed and restricted the show in its early episodes, the literal order of the Crow, has finally broken down, and everything is up for grabs. A new symbolic language has to be formed from the images that were always there; the difficulty lies in translating it.

This shift exposes the sea change the series has undergone, which seems obvious when we walk through it like this. One of the basic goals of Crow Cillers has always been to penetrate the impermeable barrier of objects, to show the true context of an empty room. Now the lifeless objects that were given character space in the opening credits of season 1 really have come to life, and that’s its own kind of horror. The rooms of season 4 have broken through the false layer of objectivity and become one with the ideas they contain. This abundance of life is wonderful and threatening. It must be contained, countered, without being destroyed; it must be conveyed properly. It is no wonder that Beloved’s most evil trait thus far is not her schemes or her motives, which are still completely opaque, but her bad writing. (And appropriate she should find a foil in Emma, whose creative drive is at an ebb this season.)

I’ve gotten off-topic, and the topic is Elaine. Fresh Fries, the first magical manifestation Elaine has encountered that exists outside of her own fractured identity, serves as the latest catalyst to action for our girl. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her first non-murderous altruistic act is not only glossed over by omission, but murky in intent. Why did she take the horse home? To rescue it, or to own it? She’s terrified when she discovers its sentience; would she have saved it if she had known it was a subject and not an object? It’s easy to forget she’s wearing the body of the last guy who walked into her home uninvited. Like so much with Elaine, elision colors her actions with ambiguity. After three and a half seasons, do we know who she is?

No, we don’t, and that might be her saving grace. If she can keep something as good as a friendship with Brecken a secret, then it stands to reason that what continues to lurk unseen inside her might be more benevolent than anyone had suspected, least of all herself. Her reaching out to him at the end of the episode suggests that it’s this uncharted territory within herself she’s starting to explore now: the land of human connections, of shared meals, of recontextualizing those dreamscapes of capitalist debris into something slightly less intimidating. The blade she’s been holding onto since season 2, perhaps longer, has been sheathed. You can go anywhere from true neutral.

[kvnzzart]

Quotes and thoughts from The Descent of man by Grayson Perry

‘The higher the power the duller the suit’

‘Men are the rational ones and women are somehow victims of their own emotions’

‘The default men had this unique ability to somehow look round the side of the most interior lens, the lens that is always distorted by our feelings.’

‘Masculinity is at odds with modernism’

‘Old fashioned’

‘the industrial revolution cemented masculine dominance’

‘Public realm being more associated with men and masculinity’

‘Masculinity is woven into the very fabric of society.’

‘The process of blending masculine ideology with the notion of common sense in peoples minds so that it becomes invisible is called ‘exnomination’ by Roland barthes’

‘Men live in a mans world’

Men like to be in control

‘(Men) they feel feminism is an attack on their core identity rather than a call for equality.’

‘Gender, sexual politics, prevention of sexual assault and relationships are female topics’

‘(Men) they are probably unaware of feelings resulting from the constrictions of the male role... they may suppress them.’

A penis ‘ can be like having an illusory  prize dangled in front of you.’

‘Men denied the promised reward for masculinity, and who feel powerless, can coerce respect from those they see as lower down the pecking order.’

‘How successful or rich are you? How serious are you? How fit are you?’

‘Men will only come on board when they feel there is something to gain from change.’

‘A central concern for a man is that he looks and acts the part.’

Can gender be learnt?

‘Men who really want to camouflage themselves when getting up to nefarious activities wear a grey business suit.’

‘Many office workers loathe dress-down fridays because they can no longer hide anonymously behind their suits. They might have to expose something of their messy selves through their ‘causal’ clothes.’

‘Mens clothes are entirely necessary for function and little more.’

‘Though men might plead that their muscles,big cars and sharp suits are for attracting women, really they are for impressing male rivals.’

‘Perhaps I sensed one of the attractive qualities of uniforms- that they imply a public role rather than an individual private identity’ links together youth culture and masculinity

Leather jackets a pinnacle of a man

Blue jeans are a sign of ‘working-man symbolism’

‘Nearly every masculine garment is coded to associate the wearer with dramatic versions of their gender role.’

Are we all acting up to our genders?

‘The muscular male body is becoming ornamental.’

‘One reaction to the redundancy of the traditional male role has been the rise of a kind of cosmetic hyper masculinity. I see it as an overtly performed version of working-class manhood.The shiny muscles, tattoos, loud music on loud cars will hope to pump up the message but he still a real man despite the collapse of heavy industry and a clearly defined status... Please performers pay great attention to detail: hair and beards are groomed in precision lines; torsos are waxed to resemble figures from computer games.

More pressures for boys and their bodies as ‘ today’s ideal mail body used to be seen only on bodybuilders and professional athletes.’

‘ Sixth formers at Posh schools diet to look moodily thin. Big muscles aren’t classy.’

‘Digital natives and millennials seem more at ease with gender fluidity.’

‘Our clothes are in part a visual vocabulary that communicates how we wish to be treated, we invest in looks that facilitate the styles of relationships we desire.’

‘If you wish to be seen as a powerful man you dress the part and, hey presto, people unconsciously or otherwise start to treat you as one.’

‘Masculinity seems to be a need for dominance, and the oldest way of asserting it is by force.’

‘Anger is a response to a feeling of powerlessness.’

Does age allow for vulnerability? ‘ though at the age of fifty-six, I feel more at rest, more willing to admit vulnerability.’

‘Tim Robertson... says that the arts help the men dismantle the stereotypes and assumptions around masculinity.’

‘Little boys learn that violence is a way of solving problems.’

‘The idea of masculinity can hinder personal development and growth, leading to negative outcomes.’

‘Masculinity is to chase things and fight things and to fuck.’

‘Shame and humiliation are big issues for ‘traditional’ men.’

‘To be a man was to be prepared for violence.’

‘As I pointed out earlier, Old school masculinity is increasingly sold to the modern man has a hairy chested leisure pursuit that can you put on like a crash helmet or a wet suit at the weekend, something he can harmlessly Slough off and leave in the cupboard under the stairs while he carries on normal life as a well-behaved earner/father/lover.’

’The men feel that the thing feminism is attacking -the sexiest patriarchy- is the same as their core masculine identity.’

‘Men need to equip themselves for peace.’

‘Boys grow up steeped in a culture that says that their feelings are somehow different from girls. Boys have fewer feelings and there is a simpler than girls; boys are more robust, they don’t care about things so much. But this downplaying of the emotional complexity is, I think, the aspect of masculinity that we most urgently need to change.

‘Emotional illiteracy it’s difficult for boys to deal with, yet they are brought up to accept this as readily as their beards growing and voices breaking.

‘Numbing does not mean we stop having the feelings, it stops us from being aware that we are having them.’

‘Boys are taught to be brave put in a quite specific way, mainly when facing physical danger on the sports field or the playground. But what about emotional danger?’

‘Boys are not brought up to be sensitive to their own feelings, so how are they meant to voice them in a disagreement or declaration of affection?’

‘It is ok to be wrong, to fail, to be rejected, to show weakness.’

‘Hegemonic masculinity, the archetypal bully all men carry around in their heads, tutting, sighing and sniping’

‘The single biggest cause of death for men under the age of forty-five in the UK is suicide.’

‘Vulnerability is central to men’s future happiness.’

‘A vulnerable man is not some weird anomaly.’

‘vulnerability you can seem such a terrible option that suicide is preferable.’

‘To be unaware or unwilling to examine feelings means that those feelings have free reign to influence behaviour unconsciously.’

‘Emotion is a physical thing.’

‘A strong component of masculinity is nostalgia.’

Masculinity will not change unless the economic, cultural and social conditions welcome that change.’

‘Men can learn... to realise that no one dies of embarrassment.’

‘We need to stop dismissing men as cardboard, brittle, inflexible, unable to change.’

‘Men need to stop giving other men, and themselves, a hard time for not attaining the standards of masculinity.’

‘A gentle man is a powerful person who has the strength to crush something, physically or emotionally, yet chooses not to, chooses love and tenderness.’

‘Masculinity is mainly a construct of conditioned feelings around people with penises.’

‘men’s rights: the right to be vulnerable, the right to be weak, the right to be wrong, the right to be intuitive, the right not to know, the right to be on certain, the right to be flexible, the right not to be ashamed of any of these.

 Certain quotes were more relevant to me as I was reading his book.

[gatewayunlimited]

Jehovah Is Not to Blame

“As a father shows mercy to his sons, Jehovah has shown mercy to those fearing him. For he himself well knows the formation of us, remembering that we are dust.”—PSALM 103:13, 14.

JEHOVAH is not responsible for hardships we may experience because of our mistakes. In this regard consider what happened some 3,900 years ago. God’s friend Abraham (Abram) and his nephew Lot had become very prosperous. (James 2:23) In fact, their possessions and livestock were so plentiful that ‘the land did not allow them to dwell together.’ Moreover, a quarrel arose between the herders of the two men. (Genesis 13:5-7) What could be done about this?

2 To end the quarreling, Abraham suggested that a separation take place, and he let Lot have the first choice. Though Abraham was the older man and it would have been appropriate for his nephew to let him take the best area, Lot selected the choicest region—the whole well-watered district of the Lower Jordan. Outward appearances were deceptive, for nearby were the morally decadent cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot and his family eventually moved into Sodom, and this put them in spiritual peril. Furthermore, they were taken captive when King Chedorlaomer and his allies defeated the ruler of Sodom. Abraham and his men rescued them, but Lot and his family returned to Sodom.—Genesis 13:8-13; 14:4-16.

3 Because of the sexual perversion and moral degradation of Sodom and Gomorrah, Jehovah decided to destroy those cities. He mercifully sent two angels who led Lot, his wife, and their two daughters out of Sodom. They were not to look back, but Lot’s wife did so, perhaps longing for the material things left behind. At that, she became a pillar of salt.—Genesis 19:1-26.

4 What losses Lot and his daughters sustained! The girls had to leave behind men they were going to marry. Lot was now without his wife and his material wealth. In fact, he was eventually reduced to living in a cave with his daughters. (Genesis 19:30-38) What had looked so good to him had turned out to be just the opposite. Even though he had obviously made some serious mistakes, he was later called “righteous Lot.” (2 Peter 2:7, 8) And surely Jehovah God was not to blame for Lot’s mistakes.

“Mistakes—Who Can Discern?”

5 Being imperfect and sinful, all of us make mistakes. (Romans 5:12; James 3:2) Like Lot, we may be deceived by outward appearances and may err in judgment. Thus, the psalmist David pleaded: “Mistakes—who can discern? From concealed sins pronounce me innocent. Also from presumptuous acts hold your servant back; do not let them dominate me. In that case I shall be complete, and I shall have remained innocent from much transgression.” (Psalm 19:12, 13) David knew that he might commit sins of which he was not even aware. Hence, he asked to be forgiven the transgressions that might have been hidden even from him. When he made a serious mistake because his imperfect flesh prodded him to take a wrong course, he greatly desired Jehovah’s help. He wanted God to restrain him from presumptuous deeds. David did not want presumptuousness to become his dominant attitude. Rather, he desired to be complete in his devotion to Jehovah God.

6 As Jehovah’s present-day dedicated servants, we also are imperfect and therefore make mistakes. Like Lot, for instance, we may make a bad choice as to our place of residence. Perhaps we pass up an opportunity to expand our sacred service to God. Though Jehovah sees such mistakes, he knows those who have a heart inclined toward righteousness. Even if we sin seriously but are repentant, Jehovah provides forgiveness and help and continues to view us as godly individuals. “He has not done to us even according to our sins; nor according to our errors has he brought upon us what we deserve,” declared David. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, his loving-kindness is superior toward those fearing him. As far off as the sunrise is from the sunset, so far off from us he has put our transgressions. As a father shows mercy to his sons, Jehovah has shown mercy to those fearing him. For he himself well knows the formation of us, remembering that we are dust.” (Psalm 103:10-14) Our merciful heavenly Father may also enable us to make amends for our error or may grant us another opportunity to expand our sacred service, to his praise.

The Error of Blaming God

7 When things go wrong, it is a human tendency to blame someone or something for what has happened. Some even blame God. But Jehovah does not bring such hardships on people. He does good, not harmful things. Why, “he makes his sun rise upon wicked people and good and makes it rain upon righteous people and unrighteous”! (Matthew 5:45) A foremost reason why we suffer adversities is that we live in a world that functions on selfish principles and that rests in the power of Satan the Devil.—1 John 5:19.

8 Blaming Jehovah God for the hardships that our mistakes bring upon us is unwise and dangerous. Doing so can even cost us our very life. The first man, Adam, should have given God credit for all the good things he received. Yes, Adam should have been deeply grateful to Jehovah for life itself and for the blessings he enjoyed in a parklike home, the garden of Eden. (Genesis 2:7-9) What did Adam do when things did not go right because he disobeyed Jehovah and ate the forbidden fruit? Adam complained to God: “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree and so I ate.” (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-12) Surely, we should not blame Jehovah, as Adam did.

9 If we encounter hardships because our actions are unwise, we can draw comfort from the knowledge that Jehovah understands our weaknesses better than we do and will deliver us from our plight if we give him exclusive devotion. We should appreciate the divine help we receive, never blaming God for the predicaments and difficulties we bring upon ourselves. In this regard a wise proverb states: “It is the foolishness of an earthling man that distorts his way, and so his heart becomes enraged against Jehovah himself.” (Proverbs 19:3) Another rendering says: “Some people ruin themselves by their own stupid actions and then blame the LORD.” (Today’s English Version) Still another translation states: “A man’s ignorance muddles his affairs and he flies out against Jehovah.”—Byington.

10 In keeping with the principle of this proverb, Adam acted selfishly and his foolish thinking ‘distorted his way.’ His heart turned from Jehovah God, and he set out on his own selfish, independent course. Why, Adam became such an ingrate that he blamed his Creator and thus made himself an enemy of the Most High! Adam’s sin brought his own way and that of his family to ruin. What a warning there is in this! Those inclined to blame Jehovah for undesirable conditions might well ask themselves: Do I give God credit for the good things I enjoy? Am I thankful that I have life as one of his creations? Could it be that my own errors have brought hardship upon me? Do I merit Jehovah’s favor or help because of following his guidance, as set forth in his inspired Word, the Bible?

A Danger Even for God’s Servants

11 The Jewish religious leaders of the first century C.E. claimed to serve God but neglected his word of truth and leaned on their own understanding. (Matthew 15:8, 9) Because Jesus Christ exposed their wrong thinking, they put him to death. Later, they displayed great rage against his disciples. (Acts 7:54-60) So distorted was the way of those men that they actually became enraged against Jehovah himself.—Compare Acts 5:34, 38, 39.

12 Even some individuals in the Christian congregation have developed dangerous thinking, trying to hold God responsible for the difficulties they have encountered. For example, appointed elders in a certain congregation found it necessary to give one young married woman kind but firm Scriptural counsel against associating with a worldly man. During one discussion, she blamed God for not helping her to withstand the temptation that her continued association with the man brought upon her. She actually said that she was mad at God! Scriptural reasoning and repeated efforts to help her were of no avail, and an immoral course later led to her expulsion from the Christian congregation.

13 A complaining spirit can lead a person to blame Jehovah. “Ungodly men” who slipped into the first-century congregation had a bad spirit of that kind, and it was accompanied by other types of spiritually corrupt thinking. As the disciple Jude said, these men were “turning the undeserved kindness of our God into an excuse for loose conduct and proving false to our only Owner and Lord, Jesus Christ.” Jude also stated: “These men are murmurers, complainers about their lot in life.” (Jude 3, 4, 16) Loyal servants of Jehovah will wisely pray that they have an appreciative spirit, not a complaining attitude that might eventually embitter them to the point that they lose faith in God and jeopardize their relationship with him.

14 You may feel that this would not happen to you. Yet, things that go wrong because of our mistakes or those of others might ultimately cause us to blame God. For instance, a person may be offended by what a fellow believer says or does. The offended individual—perhaps one who has served Jehovah loyally for many years—may then say: ‘If that person is in the congregation, I will not attend meetings.’ An individual might become so upset that he says in his heart: ‘If things like this go on, I do not want to be part of the congregation.’ But should a Christian have that attitude? If offended by another imperfect human, why take it out on an entire congregation of people acceptable to God and serving him loyally? Why should anyone who has made a dedication to Jehovah stop doing the divine will and thus take it out on God? How wise is it to let an individual or a set of circumstances destroy one’s good relationship with Jehovah? Surely, it would be foolish and sinful to stop worshiping Jehovah God for any reason.—James 4:17.

15 Imagine that you were in the same congregation as the loving Christian Gaius. He was “doing a faithful work” in extending hospitality to visiting fellow worshipers—and strangers at that! But evidently in the same congregation, there was the proud man Diotrephes. He would accept nothing with respect from John, one of Jesus Christ’s apostles. In fact, Diotrephes even chattered about John with wicked words. The apostle said: “Not being content with these things, neither does [Diotrephes] himself receive the brothers with respect, and those who are wanting to receive them he tries to hinder and to throw out of the congregation.”—3 John 1, 5-10.

16 If John came to the congregation, he intended to call to remembrance what Diotrephes was doing. Meanwhile, how did Gaius and other hospitable Christians in that congregation react? There is no Scriptural indication that any of them said: ‘As long as Diotrephes is in the congregation, I do not want to be a part of it. You will not see me at the meetings.’ Doubtless Gaius and others like him stood firm. They let nothing cause them to stop doing the divine will, and they certainly did not become enraged against Jehovah. No, indeed, and they did not succumb to the crafty devices of Satan the Devil, who would have rejoiced if they had become unfaithful to Jehovah and had blamed God.—Ephesians 6:10-18.

Never Become Enraged Against Jehovah!

17 Even if some individual or situation in a congregation displeased or offended a servant of God, the one taking offense would really be distorting his own way if he stopped associating with Jehovah’s people. Such a person would not be putting his perceptive powers to proper use. (Hebrews 5:14) So be determined to face all adversities as an integrity keeper. Maintain loyalty to Jehovah God, Jesus Christ, and the Christian congregation. (Hebrews 10:24, 25) The truth that leads to eternal life can be found nowhere else.

18 Remember, too, that Jehovah never tries anyone with evil things. (James 1:13) God, who is the very epitome of love, does good, especially for those loving him. (1 John 4:8) Though we do not always understand divine dealings, we can be confident that Jehovah God will never fail to do what is best for his servants. As Peter said: “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time; while you throw all your anxiety upon him, because he cares for you.” (1 Peter 5:6, 7) Yes, Jehovah really cares for his people.—Psalm 94:14.

19 Therefore, do not let anything or anybody stumble you. As the psalmist so well said, “abundant peace belongs to those loving [Jehovah God’s] law, and for them there is no stumbling block.” (Psalm 119:165) All of us experience trials, and these may cause us to become somewhat depressed and disheartened at times. But never let bitterness develop in your heart, especially against Jehovah. (Proverbs 4:23) With his help and on a Scriptural basis, handle the problems you can solve and endure those that persist.—Matthew 18:15-17; Ephesians 4:26, 27.

20 Never let your emotions cause you to react foolishly and thus distort your way. Speak and act in a manner that will make God’s heart rejoice. (Proverbs 27:11) Call upon Jehovah in fervent prayer, knowing that he really cares for you as one of his servants and will give you the understanding needed to remain on the path of life with his people. (Proverbs 3:5, 6) Above all, do not become enraged against God. When things go wrong, always remember that Jehovah is not to blame.

How Would You Answer? □ What mistake did Lot make, but how did God view him? □ How did David feel about mistakes and presumptuousness? □ When things go wrong, why should we not blame God? □ What will help us to avoid becoming enraged against Jehovah?

[themindfulword]

THE ART OF MAKING MEMORIES: What would happen if we switched memories with others?

If you could copy and paste someone else's memories into your mind, which ones would you pick? Happy memories? Sad memories? Memories that would imbue you with new and exciting skills? Each would have its benefits, yet each would also have its drawbacks. Could acquiring new memories change your personality, change the world or even expose your own dark secrets? Let's find out as we ask ourselves what would happen if we were to download the memories of others into our own brains.

Changing your personality

One thing this could do is change your personality. The way you act is governed by both the chemicals in your brain and the events you've experienced in life. We know that we can influence the former by messing with our grey matter’s chemical makeup, but could adding new memories to your brain fundamentally change who you are as a person? If it could, the way to do this would be to edit our explicit memory, which is a form of long-term memory, not an archive of a person's dirtiest-ever fantasies. Explicit memory requires conscious thought, so if you needed to recall who's coming to dinner on a particular night, what they're all allergic to and who's likely to say something racist, you'd use a part of your explicit memory (called episodic memory). A large part of your everyday behaviour is governed by the way you remember things happening in the past, so if you were to absorb the memories of someone else today, this might change how you act tomorrow. If you wanted to make another person more confident, you could do this by adding memories of someone else overcoming adversity to their brain. However, this could take a dark turn, since by giving a person negative memories, you could create a new fear in them. Once a person is scared, they're yours to control.

Editing your view of the past

You could also edit your view of the past by changing your memories. If you've had a terrible life full of woe and failure, you could replace your memories with better ones from someone else’s life. What would happen to those memories once they were implanted in your mind, though? Would they stay forever pristine and perfect or would the failure so intrinsic to your life degrade them gradually over time? Though it may seem unlikely, the answer is the latter. Each time you remember something, your brain alters the memory ever so slightly. It's not like a movie being played back—actually, your memories are more like a lifelong game of Chinese Whispers. Imagine 10 versions of you, with each one taken from a different year, over the past decade.

Improving yourself

The opposite of explicit memory is implicit memory and this type controls your subconscious movements, including everything from walking to speaking to driving. Each of these actions is governed by the memories you gained while learning to perform them. If you could download those memories from others, the scope for self-improvement would be endless. However, if you’re thinking you could just download martial arts lessons from a black belt master and become a ninja, you're wrong. The key to learning is repetition, so to take on someone else's abilities, you'd need to take on every memory of every lesson they've ever had. It reportedly takes 10,000 hours to master something, so this is the volume of implicit memories you'd need to acquire just to become good at a single task. In spite of the sheer quantity of memories required, this raises the possibility of a future in which skill sets are bought and sold, with things like Spanish horticulture and erotic breakdancing becoming skills that are able to be learned in an afternoon. Could the brain cope with this many memories flooding in at once?

Overload!

How far could you push the brain before overloading and confusing the fragile human mind? If your memories were to become confused and the mind were to become oversaturated, you could start weaving baskets while trying to make love, and if someone asked you to speak French, the folk music lessons you downloaded on the same day might make you start playing the air ukulele like a madman. Additionally, it's important to understand that many skills require a base level of ability. You couldn't just seamlessly transfer your memories to someone, allowing them to develop the same capability as you, without them having the same physical aptitude. For example, I could give anyone the memories of how I've trained my luxurious sensual voice, but without my unique vocal cords, you might end up sounding like an epileptic hyena. The fact is, we still don't understand the precise manner in which much of our memory works. With the technological advances required before we get there, there's hope that this may change by the time we develop a memory transplant machine, but even then, there could be gaps in our knowledge. How could we solve that problem?

The advantages of semantic memory

There's another type of conscious explicit memory that helps you retain facts and information, with these memories being consciously activated whenever you need to know something. Ever woken up next to a cute stranger and forgotten their name? That’s a result of your semantic memory failing you. Semantic memory enables you to remember that the capital of Germany is Berlin, that milk comes from udders and that brown things often taste delicious, but that's not all. Semantic memory also helps you retain complex knowledge learned through education. If we could transfer this, the sharing of factual knowledge directly from person to person could revolutionize humanity's progress. Complex subjects could be learned at the touch of a button, no knowledge would ever die just because someone's physical form did, and the world's greatest minds could continue the work of their predecessors as if they'd never died, at least in regard to knowledge. As with skills, however, many activities require a base level of talent to make the knowledge worthwhile. This would apply to semantic memories, too. It's no good knowing how to perform heart surgery if your brain isn't capable of staying focused enough to correctly perform the surgery. Remember, also, that the utopian idea of sharing knowledge directly between generations ignores one crucial fact about memory: it edits itself. This could have some peculiar ramifications, indeed.

The mind distorts things

For the purpose of explaining how your mind distorts things, let's say that in 2007, you embarrassed yourself at a party by calling your best friend "Daddy." A year later, in 2008, you'd remember this incident differently. Perhaps you'd add a little patch of urine to the equation. The following year, you might continue with the urine memory, but then forget that some girl you liked rolled her eyes at you. This would continue over the years, and in 2017, you'd remember how you called your best friend "Daddykins" and how everyone found it funny when you wet your pants and an octopus shook your hand. Every time you remember, you add a detail that wasn't there before and you lose a little detail, too. After enough time has passed, your memories become significantly distorted. The same thing would likely happen to implanted ones, and eventually, they'd become so different that they'd bear little resemblance to the originals. You might be able to alleviate this with boosts of fresh, piping-hot memories delivered to your brain once a month, but since this technology isn't even available yet, we can only speculate as to whether this would have the desired effect or not. The memories you hold—or those you believe you've had—may very well be altered in some way. This, unfortunately, permits you to assemble an incident in which you were the victim when you weren't, replay a scene so many times that you no longer recall what really occurred or mix a circumstance with something else that followed earlier. Memories are the most cherished of items, but also the most brittle and the most misleading. And when the trigger dies, they're forever expended. «RELATED READ» YOUR FEELINGS, MY BRAIN: They’re more connected than many of us would think» image via 1. Pixabay 2. Pixabay Click to Post