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chaos-the-stinky · 6 months ago

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Waiting to get a copy of tbob. Uhh The Great Gatsby

Chapter 1

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.

"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."

He didn't say any more but we've always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence I'm inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon—for the intimate revelations of young men or at least the terms in which they express them are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes but after a certain point I don't care what it's founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impressionability which is dignified under the name of the "creative temperament"—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this middle-western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan and we have a tradition that we're descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather's brother who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle but I'm supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in Father's office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world the middle-west now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go east and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep-school for me and finally said, "Why—ye-es" with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year and after various delays I came east, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city but it was a warm season and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weather beaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog, at least I had him for a few days until he ran away, and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

"How do you get to West Egg village?" he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees—just as things grow in fast movies—I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read for one thing and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Maecenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the "Yale News"—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the "well-rounded man." This isn't just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming pool and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby's mansion. Or rather, as I didn't know Mr. Gatsby it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eye-sore, but it was a small eye-sore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor's lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed and I'd known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

Her husband, among various physical accomplishments, had been one of the most powerful ends that ever played football at New Haven—a national figure in a way, one of those men who reach such an acute limited excellence at twenty-one that everything afterward savors of anti-climax. His family were enormously wealthy—even in college his freedom with money was a matter for reproach—but now he'd left Chicago and come east in a fashion that rather took your breath away: for instance he'd brought down a string of polo ponies from Lake Forest. It was hard to realize that a man in my own generation was wealthy enough to do that.

Why they came east I don't know. They had spent a year in France, for no particular reason, and then drifted here and there unrestfully wherever people played polo and were rich together. This was a permanent move, said Daisy over the telephone, but I didn't believe it—I had no sight into Daisy's heart but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking a little wistfully for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game.

And so it happened that on a warm windy evening I drove over to East Egg to see two old friends whom I scarcely knew at all. Their house was even more elaborate than I expected, a cheerful red and white Georgian Colonial mansion overlooking the bay. The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun-dials and brick walks and burning gardens—finally when it reached the house drifting up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run. The front was broken by a line of French windows, glowing now with reflected gold, and wide open to the warm windy afternoon, and Tom Buchanan in riding clothes was standing with his legs apart on the front porch.

He had changed since his New Haven years. Now he was a sturdy, straw haired man of thirty with a rather hard mouth and a supercilious manner. Two shining, arrogant eyes had established dominance over his face and gave him the appearance of always leaning aggressively forward. Not even the effeminate swank of his riding clothes could hide the enormous power of that body—he seemed to fill those glistening boots until he strained the top lacing and you could see a great pack of muscle shifting when his shoulder moved under his thin coat. It was a body capable of enormous leverage—a cruel body.

His speaking voice, a gruff husky tenor, added to the impression of fractiousness he conveyed. There was a touch of paternal contempt in it, even toward people he liked—and there were men at New Haven who had hated his guts.

"Now, don't think my opinion on these matters is final," he seemed to say, "just because I'm stronger and more of a man than you are." We were in the same Senior Society, and while we were never intimate I always had the impression that he approved of me and wanted me to like him with some harsh, defiant wistfulness of his own.

We talked for a few minutes on the sunny porch.

"I've got a nice place here," he said, his eyes flashing about restlessly.

Turning me around by one arm he moved a broad flat hand along the front vista, including in its sweep a sunken Italian garden, a half acre of deep pungent roses and a snub-nosed motor boat that bumped the tide off shore.

"It belonged to Demaine the oil man." He turned me around again, politely and abruptly. "We'll go inside."

We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding cake of the ceiling—and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless and with her chin raised a little as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it—indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.

The other girl, Daisy, made an attempt to rise—she leaned slightly forward with a conscientious expression—then she laughed, an absurd, charming little laugh, and I laughed too and came forward into the room.

"I'm p-paralyzed with happiness."

She laughed again, as if she said something very witty, and held my hand for a moment, looking up into my face, promising that there was no one in the world she so much wanted to see. That was a way she had. She hinted in a murmur that the surname of the balancing girl was Baker. (I've heard it said that Daisy's murmur was only to make people lean toward her; an irrelevant criticism that made it no less charming.)

At any rate Miss Baker's lips fluttered, she nodded at me almost imperceptibly and then quickly tipped her head back again—the object she was balancing had obviously tottered a little and given her something of a fright. Again a sort of apology arose to my lips. Almost any exhibition of complete self sufficiency draws a stunned tribute from me.

I looked back at my cousin who began to ask me questions in her low, thrilling voice. It was the kind of voice that the ear follows up and down as if each speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again. Her face was sad and lovely with bright things in it, bright eyes and a bright passionate mouth—but there was an excitement in her voice that men who had cared for her found difficult to forget: a singing compulsion, a whispered "Listen," a promise that she had done gay, exciting things just a while since and that there were gay, exciting things hovering in the next hour.

I told her how I had stopped off in Chicago for a day on my way east and how a dozen people had sent their love through me.

"Do they miss me?" she cried ecstatically.

"The whole town is desolate. All the cars have the left rear wheel painted black as a mourning wreath and there's a persistent wail all night along the North Shore."

"How gorgeous! Let's go back, Tom. Tomorrow!" Then she added irrelevantly, "You ought to see the baby."

"I'd like to."

"She's asleep. She's two years old. Haven't you ever seen her?"

"Never."

"Well, you ought to see her. She's—"

Tom Buchanan who had been hovering restlessly about the room stopped and rested his hand on my shoulder.

"What you doing, Nick?"

"I'm a bond man."

"Who with?"

I told him.

"Never heard of them," he remarked decisively.

This annoyed me.

"You will," I answered shortly. "You will if you stay in the East."

"Oh, I'll stay in the East, don't you worry," he said, glancing at Daisy and then back at me, as if he were alert for something more. "I'd be a God Damned fool to live anywhere else."

At this point Miss Baker said "Absolutely!" with such suddenness that I started—it was the first word she uttered since I came into the room. Evidently it surprised her as much as it did me, for she yawned and with a series of rapid, deft movements stood up into the room.

"I'm stiff," she complained, "I've been lying on that sofa for as long as I can remember."

"Don't look at me," Daisy retorted. "I've been trying to get you to New York all afternoon."

"No, thanks," said Miss Baker to the four cocktails just in from the pantry, "I'm absolutely in training."

Her host looked at her incredulously.

"You are!" He took down his drink as if it were a drop in the bottom of a glass. "How you ever get anything done is beyond me."

I looked at Miss Baker wondering what it was she "got done." I enjoyed looking at her. She was a slender, small-breasted girl, with an erect carriage which she accentuated by throwing her body backward at the shoulders like a young cadet. Her grey sun-strained eyes looked back at me with polite reciprocal curiosity out of a wan, charming discontented face. It occurred to me now that I had seen her, or a picture of her, somewhere before.

"You live in West Egg," she remarked contemptuously. "I know somebody there."

"I don't know a single—"

"You must know Gatsby."

"Gatsby?" demanded Daisy. "What Gatsby?"

Before I could reply that he was my neighbor dinner was announced; wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine Tom Buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square.

Slenderly, languidly, their hands set lightly on their hips the two young women preceded us out onto a rosy-colored porch open toward the sunset where four candles flickered on the table in the diminished wind.

"Why candles?" objected Daisy, frowning. She snapped them out with her fingers. "In two weeks it'll be the longest day in the year." She looked at us all radiantly. "Do you always watch for the longest day of the year and then miss it? I always watch for the longest day in the year and then miss it."

"We ought to plan something," yawned Miss Baker, sitting down at the table as if she were getting into bed.

"All right," said Daisy. "What'll we plan?" She turned to me helplessly. "What do people plan?"

Before I could answer her eyes fastened with an awed expression on her little finger.

"Look!" she complained. "I hurt it."

We all looked—the knuckle was black and blue.

"You did it, Tom," she said accusingly. "I know you didn't mean to but you did do it. That's what I get for marrying a brute of a man, a great big hulking physical specimen of a—"

"I hate that word hulking," objected Tom crossly, "even in kidding."

"Hulking," insisted Daisy.

Sometimes she and Miss Baker talked at once, unobtrusively and with a bantering inconsequence that was never quite chatter, that was as cool as their white dresses and their impersonal eyes in the absence of all desire. They were here—and they accepted Tom and me, making only a polite pleasant effort to entertain or to be entertained. They knew that presently dinner would be over and a little later the evening too would be over and casually put away. It was sharply different from the West where an evening was hurried from phase to phase toward its close in a continually disappointed anticipation or else in sheer nervous dread of the moment itself.

"You make me feel uncivilized, Daisy," I confessed on my second glass of corky but rather impressive claret. "Can't you talk about crops or something?"

I meant nothing in particular by this remark but it was taken up in an unexpected way.

"Civilization's going to pieces," broke out Tom violently. "I've gotten to be a terrible pessimist about things. Have you read 'The Rise of the Coloured Empires' by this man Goddard?"

"Why, no," I answered, rather surprised by his tone.

"Well, it's a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if we don't look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It's all scientific stuff; it's been proved."

"Tom's getting very profound," said Daisy with an expression of unthoughtful sadness. "He reads deep books with long words in them. What was that word we—"

"Well, these books are all scientific," insisted Tom, glancing at her impatiently. "This fellow has worked out the whole thing. It's up to us who are the dominant race to watch out or these other races will have control of things."

"We've got to beat them down," whispered Daisy, winking ferociously toward the fervent sun.

"You ought to live in California—" began Miss Baker but Tom interrupted her by shifting heavily in his chair.

"This idea is that we're Nordics. I am, and you are and you are and—" After an infinitesimal hesitation he included Daisy with a slight nod and she winked at me again. "—and we've produced all the things that go to make civilization—oh, science and art and all that. Do you see?"

There was something pathetic in his concentration as if his complacency, more acute than of old, was not enough to him any more. When, almost immediately, the telephone rang inside and the butler left the porch Daisy seized upon the momentary interruption and leaned toward me.

"I'll tell you a family secret," she whispered enthusiastically. "It's about the butler's nose. Do you want to hear about the butler's nose?"

"That's why I came over tonight."

"Well, he wasn't always a butler; he used to be the silver polisher for some people in New York that had a silver service for two hundred people. He had to polish it from morning till night until finally it began to affect his nose—"

"Things went from bad to worse," suggested Miss Baker.

"Yes. Things went from bad to worse until finally he had to give up his position."

For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened—then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.

The butler came back and murmured something close to Tom's ear whereupon Tom frowned, pushed back his chair and without a word went inside. As if his absence quickened something within her Daisy leaned forward again, her voice glowing and singing.

"I love to see you at my table, Nick. You remind me of a—of a rose, an absolute rose. Doesn't he?" She turned to Miss Baker for confirmation. "An absolute rose?"

This was untrue. I am not even faintly like a rose. She was only extemporizing but a stirring warmth flowed from her as if her heart was trying to come out to you concealed in one of those breathless, thrilling words. Then suddenly she threw her napkin on the table and excused herself and went into the house.

Miss Baker and I exchanged a short glance consciously devoid of meaning. I was about to speak when she sat up alertly and said "Sh!" in a warning voice. A subdued impassioned murmur was audible in the room beyond and Miss Baker leaned forward, unashamed, trying to hear. The murmur trembled on the verge of coherence, sank down, mounted excitedly, and then ceased altogether.

"This Mr. Gatsby you spoke of is my neighbor—" I said.

"Don't talk. I want to hear what happens."

"Is something happening?" I inquired innocently.

"You mean to say you don't know?" said Miss Baker, honestly surprised. "I thought everybody knew."

"I don't."

"Why—" she said hesitantly, "Tom's got some woman in New York."

"Got some woman?" I repeated blankly.

Miss Baker nodded.

"She might have the decency not to telephone him at dinner-time. Don't you think?"

Almost before I had grasped her meaning there was the flutter of a dress and the crunch of leather boots and Tom and Daisy were back at the table.

"It couldn't be helped!" cried Daisy with tense gayety.

She sat down, glanced searchingly at Miss Baker and then at me and continued: "I looked outdoors for a minute and it's very romantic outdoors. There's a bird on the lawn that I think must be a nightingale come over on the Cunard or White Star Line. He's singing away—" her voice sang "—It's romantic, isn't it, Tom?"

"Very romantic," he said, and then miserably to me: "If it's light enough after dinner I want to take you down to the stables."

The telephone rang inside, startlingly, and as Daisy shook her head decisively at Tom the subject of the stables, in fact all subjects, vanished into air. Among the broken fragments of the last five minutes at table I remember the candles being lit again, pointlessly, and I was conscious of wanting to look squarely at every one and yet to avoid all eyes. I couldn't guess what Daisy and Tom were thinking but I doubt if even Miss Baker who seemed to have mastered a certain hardy skepticism was able utterly to put this fifth guest's shrill metallic urgency out of mind. To a certain temperament the situation might have seemed intriguing—my own instinct was to telephone immediately for the police.

The horses, needless to say, were not mentioned again. Tom and Miss Baker, with several feet of twilight between them strolled back into the library, as if to a vigil beside a perfectly tangible body, while trying to look pleasantly interested and a little deaf I followed Daisy around a chain of connecting verandas to the porch in front. In its deep gloom we sat down side by side on a wicker settee.

Daisy took her face in her hands, as if feeling its lovely shape, and her eyes moved gradually out into the velvet dusk. I saw that turbulent emotions possessed her, so I asked what I thought would be some sedative questions about her little girl.

"We don't know each other very well, Nick," she said suddenly. "Even if we are cousins. You didn't come to my wedding."

"I wasn't back from the war."

"That's true." She hesitated. "Well, I've had a very bad time, Nick, and I'm pretty cynical about everything."

Evidently she had reason to be. I waited but she didn't say any more, and after a moment I returned rather feebly to the subject of her daughter.

"I suppose she talks, and—eats, and everything."

"Oh, yes." She looked at me absently. "Listen, Nick; let me tell you what I said when she was born. Would you like to hear?"

"Very much."

"It'll show you how I've gotten to feel about—things. Well, she was less than an hour old and Tom was God knows where. I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. 'All right,' I said, 'I'm glad it's a girl. And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."

"You see I think everything's terrible anyhow," she went on in a convinced way. "Everybody thinks so—the most advanced people. And I know. I've been everywhere and seen everything and done everything." Her eyes flashed around her in a defiant way, rather like Tom's, and she laughed with thrilling scorn. "Sophisticated—God, I'm sophisticated!"

The instant her voice broke off, ceasing to compel my attention, my belief, I felt the basic insincerity of what she had said. It made me uneasy, as though the whole evening had been a trick of some sort to exact a contributory emotion from me. I waited, and sure enough, in a moment she looked at me with an absolute smirk on her lovely face as if she had asserted her membership in a rather distinguished secret society to which she and Tom belonged.

Inside, the crimson room bloomed with light. Tom and Miss Baker sat at either end of the long couch and she read aloud to him from the "Saturday Evening Post"—the words, murmurous and uninflected, running together in a soothing tune. The lamp-light, bright on his boots and dull on the autumn-leaf yellow of her hair, glinted along the paper as she turned a page with a flutter of slender muscles in her arms.

When we came in she held us silent for a moment with a lifted hand.

"To be continued," she said, tossing the magazine on the table, "in our very next issue."

Her body asserted itself with a restless movement of her knee, and she stood up.

"Ten o'clock," she remarked, apparently finding the time on the ceiling. "Time for this good girl to go to bed."

"Jordan's going to play in the tournament tomorrow," explained Daisy, "over at Westchester."

"Oh,—you're Jordan Baker."

I knew now why her face was familiar—its pleasing contemptuous expression had looked out at me from many rotogravure pictures of the sporting life at Asheville and Hot Springs and Palm Beach. I had heard some story of her too, a critical, unpleasant story, but what it was I had forgotten long ago.

"Good night," she said softly. "Wake me at eight, won't you."

"If you'll get up."

"I will. Good night, Mr. Carraway. See you anon."

"Of course you will," confirmed Daisy. "In fact I think I'll arrange a marriage. Come over often, Nick, and I'll sort of—oh—fling you together. You know—lock you up accidentally in linen closets and push you out to sea in a boat, and all that sort of thing—"

"Good night," called Miss Baker from the stairs. "I haven't heard a word."

"She's a nice girl," said Tom after a moment. "They oughtn't to let her run around the country this way."

"Who oughtn't to?" inquired Daisy coldly.

"Her family."

"Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. Besides, Nick's going to look after her, aren't you, Nick? She's going to spend lots of week-ends out here this summer. I think the home influence will be very good for her."

Daisy and Tom looked at each other for a moment in silence.

"Is she from New York?" I asked quickly.

"From Louisville. Our white girlhood was passed together there. Our beautiful white—"

"Did you give Nick a little heart to heart talk on the veranda?" demanded Tom suddenly.

"Did I?" She looked at me. "I can't seem to remember, but I think we talked about the Nordic race. Yes, I'm sure we did. It sort of crept up on us and first thing you know—"

"Don't believe everything you hear, Nick," he advised me.

I said lightly that I had heard nothing at all, and a few minutes later I got up to go home. They came to the door with me and stood side by side in a cheerful square of light. As I started my motor Daisy peremptorily called "Wait!

"I forgot to ask you something, and it's important. We heard you were engaged to a girl out West."

"That's right," corroborated Tom kindly. "We heard that you were engaged."

"It's libel. I'm too poor."

"But we heard it," insisted Daisy, surprising me by opening up again in a flower-like way. "We heard it from three people so it must be true."

Of course I knew what they were referring to, but I wasn't even vaguely engaged. The fact that gossip had published the banns was one of the reasons I had come east. You can't stop going with an old friend on account of rumors and on the other hand I had no intention of being rumored into marriage.

Their interest rather touched me and made them less remotely rich—nevertheless, I was confused and a little disgusted as I drove away. It seemed to me that the thing for Daisy to do was to rush out of the house, child in arms—but apparently there were no such intentions in her head. As for Tom, the fact that he "had some woman in New York" was really less surprising than that he had been depressed by a book. Something was making him nibble at the edge of stale ideas as if his sturdy physical egotism no longer nourished his peremptory heart.

Already it was deep summer on roadhouse roofs and in front of wayside garages, where new red gas-pumps sat out in pools of light, and when I reached my estate at West Egg I ran the car under its shed and sat for a while on an abandoned grass roller in the yard. The wind had blown off, leaving a loud bright night with wings beating in the trees and a persistent organ sound as the full bellows of the earth blew the frogs full of life. The silhouette of a moving cat wavered across the moonlight and turning my head to watch it I saw that I was not alone—fifty feet away a figure had emerged from the shadow of my neighbor's mansion and was standing with his hands in his pockets regarding the silver pepper of the stars. Something in his leisurely movements and the secure position of his feet upon the lawn suggested that it was Mr. Gatsby himself, come out to determine what share was his of our local heavens.

I decided to call to him. Miss Baker had mentioned him at dinner, and that would do for an introduction. But I didn't call to him for he gave a sudden intimation that he was content to be alone—he stretched out his arms toward the dark water in a curious way, and far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling. Involuntarily I glanced seaward—and distinguished nothing except a single green light, minute and far away, that might have been the end of a dock. When I looked once more for Gatsby he had vanished, and I was alone again in the unquiet darkness.

Chapter 2

About half way between West Egg and New York the motor-road hastily joins the railroad and runs beside it for a quarter of a mile, so as to shrink away from a certain desolate area of land. This is a valley of ashes—a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of grey cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-grey men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud which screens their obscure operations from your sight.

But above the grey land and the spasms of bleak dust which drift endlessly over it, you perceive, after a moment, the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg. The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their retinas are one yard high. They look out of no face but, instead, from a pair of enormous yellow spectacles which pass over a nonexistent nose. Evidently some wild wag of an oculist set them there to fatten his practice in the borough of Queens, and then sank down himself into eternal blindness or forgot them and moved away. But his eyes, dimmed a little by many paintless days under sun and rain, brood on over the solemn dumping ground.

The valley of ashes is bounded on one side by a small foul river, and when the drawbridge is up to let barges through, the passengers on waiting trains can stare at the dismal scene for as long as half an hour. There is always a halt there of at least a minute and it was because of this that I first met Tom Buchanan's mistress.

The fact that he had one was insisted upon wherever he was known. His acquaintances resented the fact that he turned up in popular restaurants with her and, leaving her at a table, sauntered about, chatting with whomsoever he knew. Though I was curious to see her I had no desire to meet her—but I did. I went up to New York with Tom on the train one afternoon and when we stopped by the ashheaps he jumped to his feet and taking hold of my elbow literally forced me from the car.

"We're getting off!" he insisted. "I want you to meet my girl."

I think he'd tanked up a good deal at luncheon and his determination to have my company bordered on violence. The supercilious assumption was that on Sunday afternoon I had nothing better to do.

I followed him over a low white-washed railroad fence and we walked back a hundred yards along the road under Doctor Eckleburg's persistent stare. The only building in sight was a small block of yellow brick sitting on the edge of the waste land, a sort of compact Main Street ministering to it and contiguous to absolutely nothing. One of the three shops it contained was for rent and another was an all-night restaurant approached by a trail of ashes; the third was a garage—Repairs. GEORGE B. WILSON. Cars Bought and Sold—and I followed Tom inside.

The interior was unprosperous and bare; the only car visible was the dust-covered wreck of a Ford which crouched in a dim corner. It had occurred to me that this shadow of a garage must be a blind and that sumptuous and romantic apartments were concealed overhead when the proprietor himself appeared in the door of an office, wiping his hands on a piece of waste. He was a blonde, spiritless man, anaemic, and faintly handsome. When he saw us a damp gleam of hope sprang into his light blue eyes.

"Hello, Wilson, old man," said Tom, slapping him jovially on the shoulder. "How's business?"

"I can't complain," answered Wilson unconvincingly. "When are you going to sell me that car?"

"Next week; I've got my man working on it now."

"Works pretty slow, don't he?"

"No, he doesn't," said Tom coldly. "And if you feel that way about it, maybe I'd better sell it somewhere else after all."

"I don't mean that," explained Wilson quickly. "I just meant—"

His voice faded off and Tom glanced impatiently around the garage. Then I heard footsteps on a stairs and in a moment the thickish figure of a woman blocked out the light from the office door. She was in the middle thirties, and faintly stout, but she carried her surplus flesh sensuously as some women can. Her face, above a spotted dress of dark blue crepe-de-chine, contained no facet or gleam of beauty but there was an immediately perceptible vitality about her as if the nerves of her body were continually smouldering. She smiled slowly and walking through her husband as if he were a ghost shook hands with Tom, looking him flush in the eye. Then she wet her lips and without turning around spoke to her husband in a soft, coarse voice:

"Get some chairs, why don't you, so somebody can sit down."

"Oh, sure," agreed Wilson hurriedly and went toward the little office, mingling immediately with the cement color of the walls. A white ashen dust veiled his dark suit and his pale hair as it veiled everything in the vicinity—except his wife, who moved close to Tom.

"I want to see you," said Tom intently. "Get on the next train."

"All right."

"I'll meet you by the news-stand on the lower level."

She nodded and moved away from him just as George Wilson emerged with two chairs from his office door.

We waited for her down the road and out of sight. It was a few days before the Fourth of July, and a grey, scrawny Italian child was setting torpedoes in a row along the railroad track.

"Terrible place, isn't it," said Tom, exchanging a frown with Doctor Eckleburg.

"Awful."

"It does her good to get away."

"Doesn't her husband object?"

"Wilson? He thinks she goes to see her sister in New York. He's so dumb he doesn't know he's alive."

So Tom Buchanan and his girl and I went up together to New York—or not quite together, for Mrs. Wilson sat discreetly in another car. Tom deferred that much to the sensibilities of those East Eggers who might be on the train.

She had changed her dress to a brown figured muslin which stretched tight over her rather wide hips as Tom helped her to the platform in New York. At the news-stand she bought a copy of "Town Tattle" and a moving-picture magazine and, in the station drug store, some cold cream and a small flask of perfume. Upstairs, in the solemn echoing drive she let four taxi cabs drive away before she selected a new one, lavender-colored with grey upholstery, and in this we slid out from the mass of the station into the glowing sunshine. But immediately she turned sharply from the window and leaning forward tapped on the front glass.

"I want to get one of those dogs," she said earnestly. "I want to get one for the apartment. They're nice to have—a dog."

We backed up to a grey old man who bore an absurd resemblance to John D. Rockefeller. In a basket, swung from his neck, cowered a dozen very recent puppies of an indeterminate breed.

"What kind are they?" asked Mrs. Wilson eagerly as he came to the taxi-window.

"All kinds. What kind do you want, lady?"

"I'd like to get one of those police dogs; I don't suppose you got that kind?"

The man peered doubtfully into the basket, plunged in his hand and drew one up, wriggling, by the back of the neck.

"That's no police dog," said Tom.

"No, it's not exactly a police dog," said the man with disappointment in his voice. "It's more of an airedale." He passed his hand over the brown wash-rag of a back. "Look at that coat. Some coat. That's a dog that'll never bother you with catching cold."

"I think it's cute," said Mrs. Wilson enthusiastically. "How much is it?"

"That dog?" He looked at it admiringly. "That dog will cost you ten dollars."

The airedale—undoubtedly there was an airedale concerned in it somewhere though its feet were startlingly white—changed hands and settled down into Mrs. Wilson's lap, where she fondled the weather-proof coat with rapture.

"Is it a boy or a girl?" she asked delicately.

"That dog? That dog's a boy."

"It's a bitch," said Tom decisively. "Here's your money. Go and buy ten more dogs with it."

We drove over to Fifth Avenue, so warm and soft, almost pastoral, on the summer Sunday afternoon that I wouldn't have been surprised to see a great flock of white sheep turn the corner.

"Hold on," I said, "I have to leave you here."

"No, you don't," interposed Tom quickly. "Myrtle'll be hurt if you don't come up to the apartment. Won't you, Myrtle?"

"Come on," she urged. "I'll telephone my sister Catherine. She's said to be very beautiful by people who ought to know."

"Well, I'd like to, but—"

We went on, cutting back again over the Park toward the West Hundreds. At 158th Street the cab stopped at one slice in a long white cake of apartment houses. Throwing a regal homecoming glance around the neighborhood, Mrs. Wilson gathered up her dog and her other purchases and went haughtily in.

"I'm going to have the McKees come up," she announced as we rose in the elevator. "And of course I got to call up my sister, too."

The apartment was on the top floor—a small living room, a small dining room, a small bedroom and a bath. The living room was crowded to the doors with a set of tapestried furniture entirely too large for it so that to move about was to stumble continually over scenes of ladies swinging in the gardens of Versailles. The only picture was an over-enlarged photograph, apparently a hen sitting on a blurred rock. Looked at from a distance however the hen resolved itself into a bonnet and the countenance of a stout old lady beamed down into the room. Several old copies of "Town Tattle" lay on the table together with a copy of "Simon Called Peter" and some of the small scandal magazines of Broadway. Mrs. Wilson was first concerned with the dog. A reluctant elevator boy went for a box full of straw and some milk to which he added on his own initiative a tin of large hard dog biscuits—one of which decomposed apathetically in the saucer of milk all afternoon. Meanwhile Tom brought out a bottle of whiskey from a locked bureau door.

I have been drunk just twice in my life and the second time was that afternoon so everything that happened has a dim hazy cast over it although until after eight o'clock the apartment was full of cheerful sun. Sitting on Tom's lap Mrs. Wilson called up several people on the telephone; then there were no cigarettes and I went out to buy some at the drug store on the corner. When I came back they had disappeared so I sat down discreetly in the living room and read a chapter of "Simon Called Peter"—either it was terrible stuff or the whiskey distorted things because it didn't make any sense to me.

Just as Tom and Myrtle—after the first drink Mrs. Wilson and I called each other by our first names—reappeared, company commenced to arrive at the apartment door.

The sister, Catherine, was a slender, worldly girl of about thirty with a solid sticky bob of red hair and a complexion powdered milky white. Her eyebrows had been plucked and then drawn on again at a more rakish angle but the efforts of nature toward the restoration of the old alignment gave a blurred air to her face. When she moved about there was an incessant clicking as innumerable pottery bracelets jingled up and down upon her arms. She came in with such a proprietary haste and looked around so possessively at the furniture that I wondered if she lived here. But when I asked her she laughed immoderately, repeated my question aloud and told me she lived with a girl friend at a hotel.

Mr. McKee was a pale feminine man from the flat below. He had just shaved for there was a white spot of lather on his cheekbone and he was most respectful in his greeting to everyone in the room. He informed me that he was in the "artistic game" and I gathered later that he was a photographer and had made the dim enlargement of Mrs. Wilson's mother which hovered like an ectoplasm on the wall. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. She told me with pride that her husband had photographed her a hundred and twenty-seven times since they had been married.

Mrs. Wilson had changed her costume some time before and was now attired in an elaborate afternoon dress of cream colored chiffon, which gave out a continual rustle as she swept about the room. With the influence of the dress her personality had also undergone a change. The intense vitality that had been so remarkable in the garage was converted into impressive hauteur. Her laughter, her gestures, her assertions became more violently affected moment by moment and as she expanded the room grew smaller around her until she seemed to be revolving on a noisy, creaking pivot through the smoky air.

"My dear," she told her sister in a high mincing shout, "most of these fellas will cheat you every time. All they think of is money. I had a woman up here last week to look at my feet and when she gave me the bill you'd of thought she had my appendicitus out."

"What was the name of the woman?" asked Mrs. McKee.

"Mrs. Eberhardt. She goes around looking at people's feet in their own homes."

"I like your dress," remarked Mrs. McKee, "I think it's adorable."

Mrs. Wilson rejected the compliment by raising her eyebrow in disdain.

"It's just a crazy old thing," she said. "I just slip it on sometimes when I don't care what I look like."

"But it looks wonderful on you, if you know what I mean," pursued Mrs. McKee. "If Chester could only get you in that pose I think he could make something of it."

We all looked in silence at Mrs. Wilson who removed a strand of hair from over her eyes and looked back at us with a brilliant smile. Mr. McKee regarded her intently with his head on one side and then moved his hand back and forth slowly in front of his face.

"I should change the light," he said after a moment. "I'd like to bring out the modelling of the features. And I'd try to get hold of all the back hair."

"I wouldn't think of changing the light," cried Mrs. McKee. "I think it's—"

Her husband said "Sh! " and we all looked at the subject again whereupon Tom Buchanan yawned audibly and got to his feet.

"You McKees have something to drink," he said. "Get some more ice and mineral water, Myrtle, before everybody goes to sleep."

"I told that boy about the ice." Myrtle raised her eyebrows in despair at the shiftlessness of the lower orders. "These people! You have to keep after them all the time."

She looked at me and laughed pointlessly. Then she flounced over to the dog, kissed it with ecstasy and swept into the kitchen, implying that a dozen chefs awaited her orders there.

"I've done some nice things out on Long Island," asserted Mr. McKee.

Tom looked at him blankly.

"Two of them we have framed downstairs."

"Two what? demanded Tom.

"Two studies. One of them I call 'Montauk Point—the Gulls,' and the other I call 'Montauk Point—the Sea.' "

The sister Catherine sat down beside me on the couch.

"Do you live down on Long Island, too?" she inquired.

"I live at West Egg."

"Really? I was down there at a party about a month ago. At a man named Gatsby's. Do you know him?"

"I live next door to him."

"Well, they say he's a nephew or a cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm's. That's where all his money comes from."

"Really?"

She nodded.

"I'm scared of him. I'd hate to have him get anything on me."

This absorbing information about my neighbor was interrupted by Mrs. McKee's pointing suddenly at Catherine:

"Chester, I think you could do something with her," she broke out, but Mr. McKee only nodded in a bored way and turned his attention to Tom.

"I'd like to do more work on Long Island if I could get the entry. All I ask is that they should give me a start."

"Ask Myrtle," said Tom, breaking into a short shout of laughter as Mrs. Wilson entered with a tray. "She'll give you a letter of introduction, won't you, Myrtle?"

"Do what?" she asked, startled.

"You'll give McKee a letter of introduction to your husband, so he can do some studies of him." His lips moved silently for a moment as he invented. " 'George B. Wilson at the Gasoline Pump,' or something like that."

Catherine leaned close to me and whispered in my ear: "Neither of them can stand the person they're married to."

"Can't they?"

"Can't stand them." She looked at Myrtle and then at Tom. "What I say is, why go on living with them if they can't stand them? If I was them I'd get a divorce and get married to each other right away."

#Chaos #the book of bill #gravity falls #bill cipher #first post

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sillypuppetmeister · 5 months ago

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In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”

He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

And, after boasting this way of my tolerance, I come to the admission that it has a limit. Conduct may be founded on the hard rock or the wet marshes, but after a certain point I don’t care what it’s founded on. When I came back from the East last autumn I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart. Only Gatsby, the man who gives his name to this book, was exempt from my reaction—Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn. If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life, as if he were related to one of those intricate machines that register earthquakes ten thousand miles away. This responsiveness had nothing to do with that flabby impression ability which is dignified under the name of the “creative temperament”—it was an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as I have never found in any other person and which it is not likely I shall ever find again. No—Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short winded elations of men.

* * *

My family have been prominent, well-to-do people in this Middle Western city for three generations. The Carraways are something of a clan, and we have a tradition that we’re descended from the Dukes of Buccleuch, but the actual founder of my line was my grandfather’s brother, who came here in fifty-one, sent a substitute to the Civil War, and started the wholesale hardware business that my father carries on today.

I never saw this great-uncle, but I’m supposed to look like him—with special reference to the rather hard-boiled painting that hangs in father’s office. I graduated from New Haven in 1915, just a quarter of a century after my father, and a little later I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. I enjoyed the counter-raid so thoroughly that I came back restless. Instead of being the warm center of the world, the Middle West now seemed like the ragged edge of the universe—so I decided to go East and learn the bond business. Everybody I knew was in the bond business, so I supposed it could support one more single man. All my aunts and uncles talked it over as if they were choosing a prep school for me, and finally said, “Why—ye-es,” with very grave, hesitant faces. Father agreed to finance me for a year, and after various delays I came East, permanently, I thought, in the spring of twenty-two.

The practical thing was to find rooms in the city, but it was a warm season, and I had just left a country of wide lawns and friendly trees, so when a young man at the office suggested that we take a house together in a commuting town, it sounded like a great idea. He found the house, a weatherbeaten cardboard bungalow at eighty a month, but at the last minute the firm ordered him to Washington, and I went out to the country alone. I had a dog—at least I had him for a few days until he ran away—and an old Dodge and a Finnish woman, who made my bed and cooked breakfast and muttered Finnish wisdom to herself over the electric stove.

It was lonely for a day or so until one morning some man, more recently arrived than I, stopped me on the road.

“How do you get to West Egg Village?” he asked helplessly.

I told him. And as I walked on I was lonely no longer. I was a guide, a pathfinder, an original settler. He had casually conferred on me the freedom of the neighborhood.

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.

There was so much to read, for one thing, and so much fine health to be pulled down out of the young breath-giving air. I bought a dozen volumes on banking and credit and investment securities, and they stood on my shelf in red and gold like new money from the mint, promising to unfold the shining secrets that only Midas and Morgan and Mæcenas knew. And I had the high intention of reading many other books besides. I was rather literary in college—one year I wrote a series of very solemn and obvious editorials for the Yale News—and now I was going to bring back all such things into my life and become again that most limited of all specialists, the “well-rounded man.” This isn’t just an epigram—life is much more successfully looked at from a single window, after all.

It was a matter of chance that I should have rented a house in one of the strangest communities in North America. It was on that slender riotous island which extends itself due east of New York—and where there are, among other natural curiosities, two unusual formations of land. Twenty miles from the city a pair of enormous eggs, identical in contour and separated only by a courtesy bay, jut out into the most domesticated body of salt water in the Western hemisphere, the great wet barnyard of Long Island Sound. They are not perfect ovals—like the egg in the Columbus story, they are both crushed flat at the contact end—but their physical resemblance must be a source of perpetual confusion to the gulls that fly overhead. To the wingless a more arresting phenomenon is their dissimilarity in every particular except shape and size.

I lived at West Egg, the—well, the less fashionable of the two, though this is a most superficial tag to express the bizarre and not a little sinister contrast between them. My house was at the very tip of the egg, only fifty yards from the Sound, and squeezed between two huge places that rented for twelve or fifteen thousand a season. The one on my right was a colossal affair by any standard—it was a factual imitation of some Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, with a tower on one side, spanking new under a thin beard of raw ivy, and a marble swimming-pool, and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. It was Gatsby’s mansion. Or, rather, as I didn’t know Mr. Gatsby, it was a mansion inhabited by a gentleman of that name. My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore, and it had been overlooked, so I had a view of the water, a partial view of my neighbor’s lawn, and the consoling proximity of millionaires—all for eighty dollars a month.

Across the courtesy bay the white palaces of fashionable East Egg glittered along the water, and the history of the summer really begins on the evening I drove over there to have dinner with the Tom Buchanans. Daisy was my second cousin once removed, and I’d known Tom in college. And just after the war I spent two days with them in Chicago.

this is such a good passage i love this book. a must reread.

Antinous just kind of… listens, for once. He’s been so scatterbrained with Penelope on his heels (for good reason) that he’s just.. tired. So he listens, and seems surprisingly attentive, muttering something about ‘I like this Gatsby fellow’ before nodding off.

#this is funny but also unironically shit antinous definitely needs to hear #antin’s antics #antin sillies #me

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odinsblog · 11 months ago

Text

“How about, for balance, encouraging Putin to have the courage to withdraw his army from Ukraine?” Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski wrote on X. “Peace would immediately ensue without the need for negotiations.”

Leaders in Ukraine vehemently rejected Pope Francis’s suggestion of negotiations with Russia to bring an end to the war — his use of the words “white flag” drawing particular scorn — reiterating that the country would never surrender.

In a recent interview, Francis used the term “white flag,” repeating the words of a journalist, which some read as a call to surrender.

President Volodymyr Zelensky responded to the pope without naming him in his nightly address Sunday.

Praising Ukrainian chaplains on the front line, Zelensky said: “This is what the church is — it is together with people, not two and a half thousand kilometers away somewhere, virtually mediating between someone who wants to live and someone who wants to destroy you.”

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the Vatican to support the Ukrainian people “in their just struggle for their lives,” writing: “Our flag is blue and yellow. Under it, we live, die, and triumph. We will not raise any other flags.” He thanked Francis for his prayers for peace and urged him to visit Ukraine.

The pope’s remarks were made in an interview with Swiss broadcaster Radio Télévision Suisse, recorded in February, part of which was released Saturday. The full interview is set to air March 20.

According to a transcript translated and shared by the Vatican news agency, interviewer Lorenzo Buccella asked Francis: “In Ukraine, some call for the courage of surrender, of the white flag. But others say that this would legitimize the stronger party. What do you think?”

Francis responded by saying that, in his opinion, the stronger side is the one “who has the courage of the white flag, to negotiate.”

The controversy prompted a clarification from the Vatican.

“The Pope uses the term white flag, and responds by picking up the image proposed by the interviewer, to indicate a cessation of hostilities, a truce reached with the courage of negotiation,” spokesman Matteo Bruni said in a statement, adding that the Pope stated that negotiations are never a “surrender.”

Though he has often condemned the war in Ukraine, Francis has provoked debate within the church over whether his messaging on the conflict has been too cautious and too focused on maintaining ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. His supporters argue that maintaining neutrality has long been at the center of Holy See diplomacy.

In May 2023, after his first private meeting with Francis following the outbreak of war, Zelensky said any peace formula “must be Ukrainian” and any role of the Vatican must be in service to Ukraine’s peace formula.

Ukrainian church leaders and Ukraine’s allies, too, pushed back against the pope’s latest remarks.

Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the head of Ukraine’s Greek Catholic Church, told a prayer gathering in New York that no one in Ukraine “even thinks of surrendering,” the same day that part of the interview was released. A later statement by church leaders said they would not “dwell” on the pope’s remarks and instead emphasized that Ukraine is a victim of Russia’s aggression.

(continue reading)

#surprise - the catholic church is siding with authoritarian dictators AGAIN #politics #ukraine #russia #pope francis #russian invasion of ukraine #war crimes #russia is a terrorist state #vladimir putin is a war criminal #russian fascism ☭#settler colonialism

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winterreigned · 7 months ago

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"I can tell when somebody still wants me." modern theonsa! @prodigum

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐀𝐍𝐓 𝐏𝐑𝐈𝐂𝐊 𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐁𝐄, her eyes roll out of irritation. though frustration lies within herself , for he is entirely right in his accusations. sansa lingers in her dormitory door way , body leaning against the doorframe. slender arms cross over her center to signal her disinterest in the man before her , though clearly her acting skills could still use some work. in truth , theon greyjoy hasn't left her mind , he's plagued dreams and thoughts for three days now. sansa can still feel him , can hear words murmured for her ears only. these memories have been locked away , a private film for herself to enjoy in the late hours of night...

despite it being a night of indulgences and ecstasy , redhead has vowed to never allow it to happen again. theon had been abundantly clear , there would be others in her bed. it wasn't the sacred sanctuary to him that she had donned it to be for her. she was so high on pleasure she didn't truly take his words for what they were , and sansa was no fool. she would never yield to him again , it is self preservation. she truly fears the risk of falling , the risk of growing reliant on him. walls would be erected , she was good at that , after all. besides , she didn't think it would be too much an issue. he seemed eager to make this a one and done.

his text surprises her , asking what she was doing. it could only mean one thing to sansa , they didn't have that type of friendship before. he was always just sort of around , she cannot quite remember a time where there was no theon greyjoy. yet , she's now desperate for a time where she can forget him : just enough to ease this transition. when sansa replies to his text , she offers that margaery went back to highgarden for the weekend. what she hadn't expected was how quickly he had shown up at her dorm ( truthfully , she wasn't even sure he even knew where her dorm room was ). but , here they were now , all the same. sansa had invited him over to gloat , theon very clearly had other ideas.

seeing him in daylight is blinding , regret and yearning , annoyance and lust , they're all a discombobulated coat she wears so thickly. sansa is eager to rip it off , falling victim under the weight of it. ❝ ──── oh, can you? ❞ she leaves him in the doorway , retreating back inside. she is intentional in avoiding the bed , refusing to give him such opportunities and liberties once more. instead, sansa settles on sitting atop the tabletop of her desk , an obvious distance put between them. she isn't sure who she trusts less , theon or herself. still , walls and guard are up. sansa refuses to be another scorned lover of his , she must maintain dignity in this situation while she still has it.

❝ tell me , theon , what is it that tells you i want you? in all honesty , the only thing i want from you is to shut up. ❞ blue eyes watch him cautiously , like a predator stalking its prey. ❝ i get it , i left you wanting more , but as you said , i have pretty boys to go screw. ❞ her words are pointed , intended to be a strike to his exterior. I HADN'T FORGOTTEN , she says without having to truly say it. sansa pauses , afraid this exposes a layer of hurt she will not allow him to see. a quick save is offered up instead , ❝ you must be really bored with robb away that you're coming to hang out with me. ❞

#sansa: i don't want u lol #also sansa ten minutes later: fucks him again #bfejkfbBJDWKB #also like if we want this to be right after our first thread?#03. answered | a raven from the north.#08. modern | taking the political world by storm.#prodigum : theon #prodigum

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speaker-of-the-void-cats · 2 years ago

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"When he reached a displacement of eight he told us he was dead."

"He sees the wolves have formed up around him. Eight of them."

"The greatest gaiaforms of our solar system are eight in number—or, if you prefer, [N]ine—but asteroids and minor planets have them too. And in their sidereal generosity, these gaiaforms will protect us, if we ask them."

Fist of Eight Moons

"Only in the Ascendant Plane—where a well-defended idea is a reality—do these moons, in this small way, still exist."

"Eight Barons and an Awoken prince - and only one of you. I so dislike betting on the underdog… But you are resourceful…"

"The man turned to his left and saw a familiar, weathered face staring up at the eight Barons of the Tangled Shore."

[...]

"’Sundance’ appears to be the victim of a single, catastrophic wound from a Devourer Bullet, modified to fire from a Scorn launcher. Projectile classified as ontological.”

“Define Devourer Bullet.”

“Payload matches the ballistics of a Weapon of Sorrow or a comparable Hive implement.”

"We are all pinched silhouettes impaled on the twitching of infinitely long spiderlegs."

"You must reckon with yourself. Can you see the path ahead?

Do you know the shape of your trial?"

Auseklis

Ogdoad

Guñelve

Arevakhach

Schläfli

Compass rose

Isotoxal | edge transitive

Eightfold Path

The Star of Lakshmi

The Star of Ishtar

The morning star

First light of the new dawn

Venus

[Consult Cryptarchy's pre-Golden Age stacks for more information]

"Is it a simple answer? Perhaps none who serve you have the capacity to grasp your vision. And so, rather than waste more of your time and attention on explaining something they will never hold, it is enough that they act as you will. The Witch and her Hive carving single-mindedness out of the cloth of the universe, that whispering Nightmare seeking the fullest gamut of existence, the Upender destroying all differentiation. Shadows on the wall.

In this case, it would be hubris to think I have understood your work, that I alone among your Disciples have grasped what purpose it is we serve. All of us must see darkly reflected.

But there is relief in simplification. There is kindness in winnowing. So then, why is this proliferation permitted?

The shadows, showing the truth by their casting. [...]

There: I have resolved the conflict within my thoughts, and I am at peace again. Once more, I am only your violence and nothing more.

The Final Shape will realize us as we strive."

—Unknown Disciple of the Witness, Inspiral

Who am I?

Call me Coyote. Call me mantis, serpent, Cagn, Anansi, call me Sri-cleans-his-brother's-stomach. Call me the grandmaster of semiosis, the jeweler's hammer which gilds the signal, a purposeful mob none of whose members know its purpose, the infinite regress of enigmas, a self-questioning answer, the word not spoken, black ice, cataract of mimes, the ache and fever of overthought while bedridden with illness, the intolerable thorn of frustrated inquisition, gray regret at the end of a fruitless day, the thing which is unlike your beloved but arbitrarily recalls your beloved to agonizing effect, architrave of the no-window, needle driven in flush with skin so that desperate fingers cannot pull it out, sweet petal, unmemorable, crystal death, the provably improvable.

Here at the center, I lie to you the truth. You have everything you need to know it, but I will give you a clue, as the duelist gives warning before she draws. The answer you seek to the Dreaming City is simple, not complex.

In primordial space, timeless creatures made waves. These waves created us and the others. Waves were the battles, and the battles were waves. Fleeing all W'rkncacnter, Yrro and Pthia settled upon Lh'owon. They brought the S'pht, servants who began to shape the deserts of Lh'owon into marsh and sea, rivers and forests. They made sisters for Lh'owon to protect and maintain the paradise. When the W'rkncacnter came, Pthia was killed, and Yrro in anger, flung the W'rkncacnter into the sun. The sun burned them, but they swam on its surface.

Marathon 2, Six Thousand Feet Under terminal: ax1-40^23<094.95.28.85>

Oryx went down into his throne world. He went out into the abyss, and with each step he read one of his tablets, so that they became like stones beneath his feet. He went out and he created an altar and he prepared an unborn ogre. He called on the Deep, saying: I can see you in the sky. You are the waves, which are battles, and the battles are the waves. Come into this vessel I have prepared for you. And it arrived, the Deep Itself.

Books of Sorrow

XXXI: battle made waves

Verse 4:1 — battle made waves

#trace the vermicular path #follow the daito rabbit #destiny the game #destiny #destiny 2 #destiny2 #destinythegame #destiny lore #the traveler #Ishtar Collective #destiny speculation #the veil #the witness #the numbers mason what do they mean #crashing my scion tc into the witness at 100mph #macrocosm #eight points

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vibratingskull · 1 year ago

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Imperial secrets

Part1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Tags : mention of cheating, reconciliation

FemaleReader x Thrawn

You decide to take matters in your own hands and discuss your fiance with someone who might know him for longer times

You wait at the dinner, hiding under your hoodie and some sunglasses. You twirl your straw in your drink, awaiting. You side eye the dinner, you know some of your friends come and work here, you’d rather not be seen. But that’s where she chose to see you. You sigh and slouch in your seat, is it reasonable? You wonder. You don’t know what Arzel said to them, but all your friends stopped talking and texting you for some day now. You didn’t realize you would lose so much by getting on his bad side…

"Lieutenant commander (y/l/n)?" A woman appears at your side, in a black trench coat complimenting her black hair and green eyes.

You rise up in a jump.

"Yes! It's me, Captain Hugtan."

She sat down in front of you, without removing her coat. She looks at you with piercing inquisitive eyes. You always thought she was beautiful, she is even more that close. She could still model for the Empire posters, like before. Your cheeks fluster as your old crush comes acting up again.

"So?" She ask impatiently

"Yes. I wanted to ask you about Nather Satlove."

She looks ultimately uninterested.

"And what do you want to know about him ?"

"You frequent him for longer than me, has he ever appeared… strange to you?"

"When was he never strange? He's a whole circus by himself." she snarls. Maybe their relationship is not as good as you first thought. "He always has been a self centered prick and if I'm judging by the latest news I heard about him, he didn't change."

You lower your head a little, that sounds like your man.

"Well" You start. "I'm sure he has some qualities…"

"Oh, he does! I have an immense respect for his work methods, that doesn't help the fact that he's insufferable."

You pout.

"Okay, has there been a period where he has been especially… Insufferable ?"

She takes a ciggie out of her pocket, lights it up and takes a deep puff of it. You cough because of the smoke but she doesn't stop.

"Well, you realize I can't disclose information about a respected Governor of the Empire to you like that."

"I'm his fiance" You retorted.

She looks at you dubious. You decide to show her some pics of Arzel and you together. You're a bit annoyed having to display your private life like that, but you swallow your pride. She looks at them with a raised eyebrow, and gives you back your community with a grin.

“I see every taste is in nature…”

“We’ll talk about my taste another time.” You respond, losing patience “What can you tell me about him?”

She stares into space for a moment, surely gathering her memories.

“We did our study together at the Academy, even though I was two years ahead of him. As far as I can remember he has always as been a free spirit, with a talent to gather people around him. He regularly spoke about the treatment of the aliens, which had the effect of enraging the teachers and some students. But what can I say? A solar personality and an influential family can melt any ice, and he was popular, except for one other thing…” She takes another puff of her cig. “He was a fucking classist.”

You look at her in surprise. You already knew he had a military education and he used to go to the Academy, but you didn’t suspect this aspect of him. You let her continue.

“Despite being his elder I was a victim of his scorn and disdain because I came from the working class, with other students. He finally showed some respect when some of us graduated.” She pouts.

You don’t feel rancor in her speech, only a profound lassitude. You sip on your drink, all ears.

“For him we didn’t have our place in this elite space and only the ones overcoming the odds deserved his respect.”

Now that you think of it, he never lingered too much in your former neighborhood and speaks to a restricted number of people in church.

“We lost sight of each other when his family “introduced“ him officially to this weird church…” She continues.

“His family?” You're surprised, a bit disappointed even “He never speaks to me of his family…”

She tuts, clearly unsympathetic.

“Well they're all in this weird cult. It’s a family thing apparently, if I remember correctly it’s one of his grandmas that started it with some other illuminated priests.”

“Belegs.” You correct her with anger lingering in the tone.

She squints at you and sneers.

“Of course, you’re part of it.”

“You have a problem with that maybe?”

“No, absolutely not. It’s just another proof that birds of a feather flock together.”

You breathe deeply through your nose. Keep calm, you think, she’s a superior…

“Either way, it appears he selectively chooses his friends after that, and would you look at that : they all come from his circle, except for those who overcame the odds, with whom he looks like he has a weird adoration thing.” She takes a puff.

You keep silent, digesting what you just heard. She looks at you with what you think is pity melt with amusement.

“Oh don’t be sour, if he didn’t tell you about all that it’s because he thought you weren’t ready.”

You snarl at that comment, you hope it’s not that.

“That, or he doesn’t actually trust you…”

Your eyes widen, Eli’s kiss flashing in your mind. You quickly chase this thought, don’t think about it…

“Say, it’s not that I’m bored but I hope you didn’t bother me just for heart reasons.” She throws.

“In fact not.” You respond, straightening your back and with a hard gaze. “Tell me everything you know about the Rear Admiral Marttilf…”

________________________________________________________________

You're curled up over yourself, completely entranced by your screen. It's the only light in your chamber, reflecting on your face and walls. You corroborate all the data you have with the new ones recently obtained, and more importantly the ones about Martlif.

The Empire is losing slaves, or assets as Thrawn would have said. Either way, the Empire is losing precious resources and you’re sure Martlifs is part of that problem, accomplice of those pirates that you chased after for so long and the underworld of Tyrahnn.

You compile everything on a data card and decide to head toward the ISB. You take your airspeeder and fly at full speed on the streets of Coruscant, your mind wandering just as quick. The recent events shined a light on some truths about your situation and yourself. Losing Azrel is losing his love, your friend group, your home, your moral support, stability… And it is too much at once. Your whole life would be in ruins, so you had to take the next logical step : presenting excuses.

You stop in front of his office, looking at the window pensively, ready to forgive him all of his slips for a better life. You take a big breath and get in, you have to act like a proper adult from now on you decide, being the bigger person…

As you walk in the hallway you see someone leaving Azrel’s office, someone you didn’t expect.

“Eli…” You say in a breath.

He sees you and his whole face brightens, he embraces you with joy.

“(y/n)! What an unexpected pleasure to meet you!” He laughs “What are you doing here?”

You gulp, all your defenses going down in front of that smile. How can you be mad at that face? You feel yourself melt in front of him, and your heart drops in your stomach. You don’t want to hate him.

“I came to see Azrel.”

“Who?”

“Nather.”

He nods comprehensively. After all that time, anger led to acceptance and confusion. You’re not even sure of what you saw anymore, there was so much steam and they were away from you. After replaying this scene in your mind so many times, the memory got corrupted. Beside you have no proof of what you saw, all you have is some foggy memories of a moment of vulnerability.

"I thought you were on duty." You manage to say.

"We'll depart in one month, the Chimaera is in repairs. I just wanted to chat a bit with Nather."

Your heart pinches, you want to believe him, you want to believe Azrel. You want to believe a future is possible for all of you.

Eli looks at you with tenderness.

"I'm gonna be honest, at first I didn't like him all that much. But talking to him and his political views, I came to appreciate him." He ruffles his hair with a chuckle, like he didn't want to vex you.

You nod with a faint smile.

"Yes, he really feels strongly about some subjects…”

He put his hand on your shoulder.

“He’s a good man. Strange, but fine.” He hits your shoulder lightly and bids you farewell.

Hand on the door handle you look at Eli walking away in the hallway. You shake your head, take a deep breath and enter.

“Azrel?” You ask, passing just your head through the door.

You see him raising his head from his screen at the mention of his name. He recognizes you and raises an eyebrow.

“(Y/n)...”

You pout. (Y/n) not Roween. He opens his fan in a clac that resonates and hides his face behind it, letting only his eyes visible. You approach with little steps, trying to put a front.

“I came to see how you are since the last two weeks…” You start.

“Good.” He retorts shortly, his eyes following you walking inside his office.

“Good, good.” You pout, licking your teeth trying to continue the conversation.

He slouches on his chair, crossing his legs on his desk, waiting for you to state your true intention.

“I…” You stop and look at the beautiful sunny day through the transparisteel wall behind him, taking inspiration from nature.``I also wanted to present my excuses for what happened last time, I shouldn’t have sold short our principles for a simple date night with a friend, a friend you judge improper for our cause. I just wanted to reassure you that I still firmly believe in it and that I will do what you all judge necessary for it to advance.”

He stares at you in silence. You release a deep breath trying to stay calm in this agonizing moment. Finally he stands up, lowering his fan and shakes his head.

“No. It’s me who should present to you my excuses. I judged harshly someone who thinks differently than me, someone you hold in high regard. I shouldn’t have done that, and I wanna say I am sorry.” He looks at you with a small, pained smile.

You didn’t expect him to say that. You’re pleasantly surprised and taken aback at the same time, you don’t know what to say at first.

“Oh, well… I forgive you.” you whisper.

“So I took the liberty to speak to him.” He continues in a joyful tone that takes you off guard.”Him and his aid. Fascinating duo, those two! They will surely go far!”

“Huh… Yes?” Your eyes open wide at his speechify cheerfulness.

“Besides, that’s not because they aren’t part of the church that they can’t help. Take the Admiral, only by succeeding as he does in his career he contradicts all those pesky cliches about aliens, and therefore helps us in a way!” He walks beside you, with grand theatrical gestures “Really a fascinating man, I understand now why you hold him in such high regard. His aid too, really intelligent. He just told me ten minutes ago that he envisioned himself as a supply officer at first. Can you imagine? What a waste of his talents!”

Hearing him complimenting Eli makes your heart pinches once again and the kiss flashes in your mind. You hug yourself.

“You seem like you appreciate him really much…”

“I do. He’s even interested in the church and what we believe! It would be marvelous if we three could all go to the temple together at some point!”

“Surely…”

“But like you, his career takes all his time. It’s a good thing that this Thrawn is your superior after all, his aura and his victories could shine upon you and propel your career!”

You grimace at that and the word of Hugtan comes to your mind.

“Say, it’s not the first time you speak about propelling my career. You already talked about it at the Opera back then. Are you…” You gulp, is it why he looks interested in Eli? “Are you ashamed of me, in some way?”

He stops in his movement and considers you like you just spit in his face.

“What kind of idea is that?” he asks, horrified.

“Nothing. It’s just that it looks like you're dissatisfied with the speed of my career. I know it slowed down tremendously. That I would look bad at your arms just being a low lieutenant commander…”

He almost runs to you and caresses your cheek, forcing you to look at him. You only see a bit of pain and sympathy in his eyes.

“Do I need a reason to use my influence to positively push the career of the woman who shares my life? Especially if she deserves it?”

You pout, feeling a bit bad now.

“Probably not.”

He looks at you with a light smile and strokes your cheeks with his thumb.

“All is forgiven?” he inquires full of hope.

“All is forgiven.” You nod.

You embrace each other and you sigh of contempt that everything is back in place. But deep down, buried deep in your mind a light flickers in bright red. You snuggle against him, debating if you should ask…

You throw yourself in waters

“Azrel?”

“Hmmmm?” He hums, caressing your hair.

“Do you consider our relationship seriously?”

His hand stops caressing you, remaining at the top of your head.

“Why?” He’s rigid under your touch.

“Did you..” You part with him to look him in the eyes

Did you kiss Eli, is what you want to ask, but you’re at a loss for words. Maybe if you don’t know you could cover it and pretend nothing happened? You try to sound his gaze but you only see confidence.

“Why did you never present your parents to me?”

His shoulders lower.

“You never even told me one of your family members is part of the founders of the church.”

He pouts.

“Who told you that?”

“It’s not important.”

He sighs.

“Well, I wanted it to be a surprise.” He admits. “I wanted them to see you at the feast I told you about, since it will be a gathering of all the upper crust of the church of all planets.”

“But why not before?”

“They are really busy people that rarely leave Tyrahnn. But I promise you I planned this for a long time.” He kisses your forehead.

This will have to do.

“Can I steal you for dinner at the restaurant?” He asks, all cheerful.

“I’m sorry but I have to go to the ISB quarter. I have something to give them.”

“Oh!” He raises an eyebrow “What that might be?” He demands with a conspiratory tone.

“If I’m not mistaken, the solution to your pirate problem, around Tyrahn.” You show him the datacard “But I need an in-depth investigation to gather real proof.”

A smirk slices his face and a light shines in his gaze.

“Would you look at that? Everything works out in my favor today, I secure a deal with an important import company back home, I get you back, and you bring me the solution to my problem.” He open his hand for you to give him the card. “Give it to me, I will give it after my shift.”

You hand it to him at first, then decide otherwise.

“No, sorry. I will give them now. The sooner, the merrier.” You put back the card in your pocket, his hand keeps open an oddly long second before getting back to his side, his smile disapearing.

You decide to leave but before that, you have a vengeance to execute. A vengeance for those two weeks of solitude and isolation.

“Say, what do you think about giving the church fundraising initiative to the lower neighborhood where the poor need it the most?” You ask innocently.

“Sure, we will give the check to a brother or sister that will lend them it.” He smiles.

“No, I meant giving the check ourselves.”

His smile remains, but you see his eye twitch. Touche!

“You want us… To go… there?” He demands, incredulous.

You play with his collar with puppy eyes.

“Please. It would be a good action to celebrate us making up.” You coo.

He throws his head back with a sigh.

“Okay, Roween… But that’s because you asked for it.” He reluctantly gave in.

You kiss him on the cheek, smiling and wave him goodbye. You exit the building relieved, but with an unknown bitter taste in your mouth. It’s at this moment that your comlink vibrates, it’s Thrawn.

“Hello, sir.” You salute gleefully

“Hello, lieutenant commander (y/l/n). I hope I do not bother you.”

“Not at all. What can I do for you?”

“I need you for a service. I would like you to observe Admiral Konstantine and report to me your discoveries.”

You enter your airspeeder and put your hand on the wheel, disturbed.

“You want me to spy him?” You inquire dubious.

“It would prove most useful to me.”

“I… Can I know why?”

He remains silent for a second.

“I need intel on my different colleagues. I can only ask that to my most trustworthy comrades.”

Those words resonate in the airspeeder. My most trustworthy comrade…

“Alright.” You sigh. “I accept.” A lightning flash in your mind. “Wait, should we really speak about that on our comlinks?”

“I am scrambling the signals, do not worry.”

“Ah.” You lean in your seat. “Do you need anything else?”

Once again he remains silent for a moment.

“I appreciated our evening at the gallery the other night. We should do that more often.”

It feels like your heart beats faster at the mention of the date. He liked it, he wants to see me again, your mind whispers. A chance Azrel gave you his blessing.

“Sure! Whenever you want.”

“Why not next week? There is something I need help with, I could use the presence of a friend. Let us meet at the Chimaera at dockyard seven.”

You note it

“Dockyard seven, noted.”

“If I can do something in compensation, let me know.”

“Well… Do you know anyone at the ISB? I need an investigation pronto.”

@bluechiss @justanothersadperson93 @al-astakbar @thrawnspetgoose @readinglistfics @twilekchiss

#thrawn x reader #thrawn x you #thrawn x y/n #thrawn x f!reader #thrawn #grand admiral thrawn #mitth’raw’nuruodo #fanfic #vibratingskull

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taffywabbit · 11 months ago

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I generally agree with most of the things you post about, but that recent reblog just really rubs me the wrong way. I think I understand the frustration's the OP got, but I don't know, it sorta comes across to me as "I just WISH people would've came to this realization in THIS SPECIFIC WAY" which is just...unrealistic? I feel as though it's almost a slap in the face to Bushnell himself, who probably knew exactly why he had to do what he did. He knew a lot of people WOULDN'T pay attention unless someone like him did something. An unfortunate reality, but, one that seems to at the very least worked. It is sad that he had to do such a thing, but at the same time I don't think it's in the right place to blame such people for not coming to this realization beforehand. I feel these people are vindicated for having been able to be drawn to whats happening. HOW they were drawn in really shouldn't...matter? I think there are people far more worthy of criticism and scorn than those whose eyes were opened by something closer to home than our own. And I think it's extremely disrespectful to Bushnell's act to look at the reaction of it and complain that it served as a catalyst for some people when they should've been more aware from the get go. Should they have? Yes. Is it realistic to expect the vast majority of the North American populace to be that aware of whats going on? No. Sadly. It isn't. Which is exactly why Bushnell did what he did.

i didn't really take it that way, i read it more as merely regret that it took this long AND such a blatant, violent display of protest for the reality of the situation to finally reach a lot of people (particularly in light of how much western news media outlets have been trying to keep the specifics and severity out of the public eye). i looked at that post not as any sort of disrespect towards Bushnell's sacrifice, but rather a frustration with how numb people often are to seeing faceless numbers and statistics in connection with tragedies these days. most american/canadian/british/etc news media LOVES to focus on "main characters" - people you can easily put a name and face to and plaster all over the headlines for people to discuss - and until there's someone like that to latch onto, folks are conditioned to feel like it's none of their business and those big numbers are merely an ongoing fact they cannot change.

if Aaron Bushnell's public suicide was the tipping point for someone to take more active interest in the Palestinian struggle, and reconsider the distorted/suppressed information they may have been receiving about it, that's undeniably a positive outcome and it would be wrong to assert otherwise. that was the goal, that was what he set out to accomplish. the risk comes from overemphasizing him as an individual martyr in all of this, at the cost of pushing the direct victims of the genocide out of the spotlight. considering (as far as i'm aware) the OP of that post i reblogged IS Palestinian, has personally lost loved ones to Israel's violence, and has been a consistent and invaluable resource over the past few months for educating people about the context and history of Palestine's struggles, i'm inclined to try not to take their post about this in bad faith. it doesn't really feel like my place to police their tone, frankly.

ultimately i can't speak on OP's behalf and i also can't control whether other people take away the same things i did from that post. but my personal belief is that Aaron Bushnell's act was bold and selfless and it's deeply unfortunate that things have reached a point where he felt it was necessary. i just also believe that he didn't do it to make himself the center of attention. i have no doubt that his status as a white american military serviceman is a factor in why many people are finally taking this as a wake-up call when they ignored all the previous ones, but i also think he understood that himself to some extent, and used that position of privilege (as well as the shock factor of defying what many americans expect from a man wearing their flag on his shoulder) to help ensure the message was heard by demographics of people who otherwise might not listen. to treat his sacrifice as a singular unique act, rather than one in a chain of many, and to give it special attention and fanfare when that energy could instead be turned to those who are still in need of it, feels like it runs directly counter to his goals. i think we should acknowledge and appreciate Bushnell's effort to sway more people in Palestine's favor, but not let it derail the greater conversation too much for those of us who are already engaged in this cause and do not need further convincing. he used his position to reach people, and it's our job to continue the momentum and help make sure those people know what their newly altered perspective should lead them to do. mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living, as they say

#ask #chokovit #hopefully i'm not too far off-base with this #again i don't know the thoughts of the person who posted the thing i reblogged but i'm inclined not to tone-police a palestinian about this #and i felt it was important to elevate their perspective amidst the others i was reblogging #but for whatever my own thoughts are worth i can at least make them clear here. hopefully this clears that up one way or another #current events #long post #free palestine

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hellsite-library · 9 months ago

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The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) - 1/3