#embarrassingly and relatably ordinary | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

artemis-pendragon · 4 years ago

Note

wait if you have the time would you mind expanding on the parallels between achilles and patroclus and the ships you mentioned?

OH GOD YES I WOULD LOVE TO THANKS FOR ASKING!! The English Major in me jumped out so here's an absolute novel lmao:

Hannibal/Will:

Hannibal and Will are the easiest to draw direct parallels to because they are textually compared to Achilles and Patroclus in canon. Hannibal draws himself as Achilles and Will as Patroclus, then (because apparently he’s never heard of subtlety) shows it to Will.

Hannibal says that hiding and revealing identities is a major theme in the Iliad. Will asks Hannibal to reveal himself to Jack Crawford; in the same episode, Hannibal begins to suspect that Will has betrayed him, hiding his true intentions behind a façade to bait Hannibal into being captured by the FBI. However, Will isn’t even sure himself what his real intentions and identity is, and eventually betrays the FBI and runs away with Hannibal.

After Hannibal realizes that Will betrayed him (which is also the episode after he talks about how they’re like Achilles and Patroclus), he stabs Will in the stomach. Patroclus was killed after being stabbed in the stomach.

Hannibal and Will’s blurring identities is a major theme throughout the show. Just as Patroclus takes on Achilles’s identity on the field of war, Will takes on Hannibal’s identity in many ways—both intentionally, and unintentionally.

Patroclus dies wearing Achilles’s armor. Will is accused of being the Chesapeake Ripper, imprisoned, and could have been executed for Hannibal’s crimes if Hannibal hadn’t interfered.

Hannibal is a god-adjacent character, while Will is his more human counterpart. Will is Hannibal’s tether to his humanity, just as Patroclus is Achilles’s.

Just like Achilles couldn’t stand to be parted from Patroclus, Hannibal chose to let Will pull him off a cliff to their (probable) deaths. Hannibal would rather die with Will than live without him.

There is a significant amount of water imagery in this show. Will especially has a lot of ties to water: he likes to fish (his mind palace is initially shown to be a stream); he’s knowledgeable about boats and sailing (he sails across the Atlantic to find Hannibal); his dreams and hallucinations often include water and/or blood; he pulled Hannibal off a cliff into the ocean in a last ditch attempt to kill them both; etc. The story of Achilles also has lots of water-related motifs since Achilles’s mother, Thetis, is a sea nymph/goddess of water.

Hannibal didn’t become overtly vicious and violent toward the Great Red Dragon until he threatened to kill (and then actually stabbed) Will. Then he went totally feral and (literally) ripped Dolarhyde’s throat out. This reminds me of Achilles losing his mind and killing then mutilating Hector after Hector killed Patroclus.

Steve/Bucky:

Steve and Bucky have the “legendary beloved heroic superhuman soldier” and “childhood friend turned war companion” parallel down to a T. Steve is like Achilles: he is a born soldier who wants to fight for his country, starting out idealistic and becoming worn down and jaded by war over time. Bucky is far more reluctant to go to war but follows Steve back onto the battlefield because he believes in Steve and wants to keep him safe—especially from his own reckless righteousness. This is very similar to Patroclus’s desire to follow Achilles to war mostly out of a desire to protect and guide him away from his self-destructive, hot-headed tendencies.

Just as Patroclus put on Achilles’s armor to fight (and die) in his place on the battlefield, Bucky picks up and wields Steve’s shield just before he falls off the train to his apparent death.

Steve starts out saying that he doesn’t want to kill anybody, but after Bucky “dies”, he vows not to stop until every member of Hydra is either killed or captured. This is similar to Achilles’s reaction to Patroclus’s death, where he goes mad with grief and kills everyone in his path to get to Hector, who he then violently kills.

Additionally, after killing Hector, Achilles continues to fight recklessly until someone kills him. Similarly, Steve keeps fighting to stop Hydra but ultimately goes down with the aircraft carrying the bombs, allowing himself to drown/freeze. There’s probably ways he could have gotten out of that situation, but instead he kind of just gives in and lets himself “die” (at least that’s my interpretation).

The Captain America movies also have some interesting water imagery. Bucky falls to his “death” in a ravine, most likely falling into the frozen stream. Steve “drowns” after he crashes the plane into the ocean; in The Winter Soldier, Steve falls from the helicarrier into the Potomac, and Bucky jumps in after him. Again, the story of Achilles also contains water-related motifs due to Achilles’s mother being a sea nymph; I’m sure I could write an entire essay about these parallels before I figure out how to verbalize why this is interesting, but I’m too lazy to right now lol.

Arthur/Merlin:

Again, just like with Steve and Bucky, this is an obvious case of “famous royal golden hero of legends” and “less well-known but ultimately extremely important companion who follows him to war”. Like Achilles and Patroclus, Arthur and Merlin meet before Arthur is a famous warrior and become friends long before the “big war” that ultimately tears them apart.

Arthur and Achilles might be the famous warriors, but Merlin and Patroclus are the kind-hearted, brave, fiercely loyal companions who serve both as a fellow warrior on the battlefield, and as a moral compass. Just as Achilles looks to Patroclus for advice and as a tether to the humility and importance of humanity in the face of a great destiny, Arthur looks to Merlin.

Both Patroclus and Merlin seem at first to be ordinary men who (in the eyes of most casual observers) aren’t worthy of Achilles/Arthur’s friendship. However, they both become legendary figures of their own, without whom their legendary heroic counterparts would never have survived.

As I mentioned in the section about Hannibal and Will, the theme of hiding and revealing identities is very important in the story of Achilles and Patroclus. One of the biggest plot points in Merlin is that Merlin can’t reveal that he has magic; he doesn’t do so until the last episode, once Arthur has been mortally wounded.

Just as Patroclus always believed that Achilles would live up to his great destiny, Merlin always believed in Arthur. And even though Arthur didn’t know about Merlin’s true potential and role in his rise to the throne, Arthur believed that Merlin was one of the best, most courageous men he’d ever met. This reminds me o Achilles referring to Patroclus as Philtatos (in The Song of Achilles), meaning “best of men”.

In an inverted parallel, Arthur is the one who is stabbed and ultimately dies. Although Achilles does eventually die in war, it isn’t until after Patroclus dies. It is then implied that they will eventually meet again someday, just as Achilles and Patroclus would meet again in the afterlife after their ashes were mingled together.

Dean/Cas:

In this relationship, Dean is very much the “reckless hero with a pre-ordained-by-the-gods destiny who is actually very flawed and carries a lot of self-doubt” and Cas is the “companion with a heart of gold who is almost embarrassingly devoted to the hero and will do anything for him”.

For Dean/Cas, there is also the parallel of struggling with a toxic parental figure who demands too much while also being emotionally absent and manipulative. For Dean, this is John Winchester, and for Achilles, this is Thetis. Cas also struggles with his relationship with his father (who is literally God lmao) and his desire to be a good soldier vs. his desire to do what’s right and to protect the man he loves.

Patroclus strives to help Achilles see that he’s more than just a weapon, and Cas and Dean both do this for each other: Dean helps Cas realize that he’s more than just another emotionless soldier of heaven, and Cas helps Dean realize he’s more than “daddy’s blunt instrument” (the phrasing of which I will still be laughing at in my grave. Thanks, CW.)

Dean’s godly destiny as Michael’s vessel is determined before he’s even born. Achilles’s godly destiny is also determined before he’s born, and neither one really has any say in it.

Patroclus ultimately dies in Achilles’s place, and Cas does the same for Dean many times. When Cas decides to help Dean escape heaven and try to save Sam and stop the apocalypse, he sacrifices himself to help Dean get away. Of the many times Cas puts his life on the line, it’s usually either to help Dean, or to save him. This is reminiscent of how Patroclus did almost everything not in the name of winning the war, or even the greater good (although he was obviously a good person), but to protect Achilles and keep him from getting himself killed.

Whenever Cas is dead, Dean’s mental health visibly deteriorates. He becomes more violent and unpredictable—a worse version of himself—just as Achilles did after Patroclus died.

Just as Patroclus acts as a tether to humanity for Achilles, Cas and Dean both act as tethers to humanity for each other. Cas pulls Dean out of Hell, restoring his humanity, and Dean helps Cas shrug off his emotionless angel identity and find some humanity of his own.

TLDR: Reckless blonde hero (or villain) with a legendary destiny/reputation and badass fighting skills + their viciously loyal brunette companion-slash-lover who's willing to die for them at a moment's notice = good shipping material

#i literally can't help myself literary parallels are my favorite thing #hannigram #stevebucky #merthur #destiel #stucky #patrochilles #hannibal #merlin #spn #supernatural #tsoa #patroclus and achilles #literary parallels #meta #kind of #artemis speaks #long post

211 notes · View notes

forbidden-sorcery · 4 years ago

Quote

Bookchin’s view of history’s origins are based on assuming the worst about people. Error is overlaid on error, starting from assumptions of the Official Story – the Hobbesian fable of a life “nasty, brutish and short” – and continuing through a misrepresentation of power relations in aboriginal societies, to repeating the embarrassingly simplistic dogma of the inherent superiority of the written tradition. Even if it were true that the elders were regularly dispatched by their children and grandchildren in ways he suggests, how the most vulnerable members of society could have turned themselves into the first power structure is one mystery that doesn’t seem to concern him. His schema is not confirmed by our knowledge of paleolithic societies, and it doesn’t correspond to what we know of most traditional tribal societies, who are known to respect all their members, young and old, male and female, ordinary and eccentric. Anthropologist Paul Radin names “respect for the individual, irrespective of age or sex” as one of the three “outstanding positive features of aboriginal civilizations.” Bookchin’s speculations seem to reflect his own anxieties more than they do aboriginal societies.

David Watson - Beyond Bookchin: Preface for a Future Social Ecology

#David Watson

9 notes · View notes

thessaliah · 4 years ago

Note

who do you prefer as final boss? olga or marisbury?

Marisbury, definitely. Olga has negative charisma to pull off the final boss in a convincing way (U Olga is too embarrassingly goofy), she’s ok as a character but she does not exactly command the screen as Marisbury did immediately. The shallow emotional connection to the cast makes the entire ‘we need to save her why she’s this way’ pretty unexciting as main conflict, to be honest (if was a sideplot, then sure, no problem, like helping Gerda or Patxi). If she had a rich backstory that wasn’t “oh we knew you for three hours and you were already dead, that was too shocking first experience”, then it’ll be fine. But sadly the only ones she could have shared that kind of heavy backstory are already dead (Lev, Roman, her own father, Kirschtaria), so this feels forced instead ofa genuine organic investment like Shirou agonizing about saving or killing Sakura in HF.

(But I’m intrigued by the idea of Goredolf confronting her, instead of her boring dynamics with Mash and Guda, because I felt Goredolf would be able to connect better emotionally because he understands her feelings and position better).

Though there’s the possibility is like FSN and is neither of them as catalyst of what happens even if they are definitely part of the problem. I think I spoke about this here and in some anime forums. This answers to two possibilities (that could complement each other, see FSN):

Humanity wished for it - like Angra Mainyu. Hints of Olga’s Grail nature like Solomon and Justaze brought up in some twitters. The torture of Specimen E (who is most definitely related to Olga) is probably a trigger. Moonlight Lostroom has that torture scene of featureless outlines that match the theory of “The accounts of David Bluebook take place within Chaldeas” - that’s why he’s shot by a featureless outline himself. Also Kotomine kind of narratively compared them, quoting his phrase in HF about the advent of Beast VII (her birth) in LB1 to Kadoc.

The Mastermind, or rather the one who got the ball rolling, was the first Animusphere ancestor. I spoke of this I think in Animesuki forum? I’m not crazy about it because it whitewashes too much to both Olga’s and her dad’s potential culpability just to spare the main named cast of any sins, and pulled a new character from just background hints. That it could be something in their bloodline, the Animuspheres, that make them Evil of Humanity-ish. With or without a Zouken or Jubstacheit that loomed over the “family” to insert their duty/wish/obsession or push the current heir in that direction. Maybe a consciousness that turned into an AI that influences the crest holder or whatever (Zouken does through the Crest of Worms). There are few indications of this: why Holmes said Kirschtaria’s magecraft was probably a reason why he was chosen among the Crypters (the same Magecraft of the Animuspheres) and his insistence Marisbury’s an ‘ordinary person with an ordinary sense of happiness’ (which conflict a lot with his human experimentation hobby, doesn’t it? Wth.); why would Roman insist someone with evil intentions couldn’t have summoned Solomon (if Marisbury was against the Human Order/Panhistory during the time of the War of Fuyuki, it’s unlikely Solomon would have complied his summon; Solomon did have awareness of his unethical nature but it aligned with the Human Order then; but after he became Roman, he was absent for over a year, who knows what changed after Marisbury activated Chaldeas); and finally, Lev in that Melty Blood crossover that whatever the Animusphere did begin 2000 years ago* . So unless Marisbury is revealed to be that old, then he couldn’t be the mastermind, so he occupies a role like Kiritsugu rather than the founders of Fuyuki Grail War or the ones who summoned Angra Mainyu from the plot perspective.

*A similar statement was issued about the Escardos family regarding Flat (who is the result of 2000 years of research). I want to stop to point out Flat has a dual nature, one of which is a world-ending phenomena, and an artificial (?) personality/ego created that became dominant because he interacted with Waver and his class. They speak in different pronouns. It’s possible Olgamarie has a similar nature? Maybe. I like to see that weird crossover as some kind of foreshadowing/outline for the possible end of FGO and part 2. It even covers Sion’s involvement in part 2 plot.

(I still want Marisbury to be the boss because he’s got a perfect design and I want to see more of his cool smug self; him or if number 2 possibility rolls in, whichever ancestor/AI is possessing him).

#fate grand order #lostbelt spoilers #animusphere conspiracy #speculation #meta #fgo spoilers #fgo speculation

25 notes · View notes

raendown · 5 years ago

Link

Last couple days were posted one a sideblog but we’re back to main for day 5 of @narutorarepairweek. Today’s prompt is arranged marriage.

Pairing: ShinoKarin Word count 3359 Rated: G Summary: The war left them all tired and she was far from the only one who had no other place to go. When offered a second chance Karin takes it. It's not the life she asked for, not the life she wanted, but time marches on and the places we stay have a way of becoming home when we least expect it.

Follow the link or read it under the cut!

KO-FI and commission info in the header!

The After Wife

Karin had never given much thought to her wedding day. Even in the sad year she had spent following Sasuke around and mooning over his every word there had been a voice in the back of her mind that knew it would never happen, never let her fantasies go beyond the now. If she had ever given the occasion any thought she liked to think that this was not what she would have imagined.

The little girl deep in her heart cried out that she deserved better than a perfunctory informal ceremony alone in the Hokage’s office, no uchikake but the white dust of travel staining her clothing and no attendants but the two council members standing witness. She deserved more than marrying a man she barely knew the name of to secure herself a home in a place that didn’t want her. And yet here she stood while the Godaime Hokage spoke the bare minimum phrases needed to bind her future to another.

What else was new?

As shitty as the situation was, however, there were several different points which stayed her tongue and stiffened her muscles against the urge to flee. Naruto was the first and biggest reason. The only person who had ever looked at her and truly wanted to know her. He was family, distant and far removed, but a blood relation. She hadn’t known any family since the last of her own gave their life to save another in the depths of Kusagakure. From that day on she had been nothing but an asset, an advantage. Yet Naruto looked at her and saw only the bond he hoped might someday grow between them. The siren call of affection given so freely was embarrassingly difficult to resist after the life she had led.

The second reason that held back the barbs at the edge of her tongue was the idea of rest. Simple and plain, Karin was tired of running. Tired of living her life uncertain of where her steps would take her next and tired of fighting for her right to stay in one place long enough to put down even the weakest of roots. Working for that snake Orochimaru hadn’t been pleasant but it had been the closest thing she could remember to having a place to go back to. Konohagakure had offered her a home and Karin, reluctant and full of pride, wanted so badly to open her hand and accept that offer. Wanted it to be possible more than she was willing to let any of these people know.

Her third reason was much less optimistic than the other two. Her actions during the fourth shinobi war and in the years leading up to it had branded her a criminal. By all rights she should have been left to rot in the jail of whichever village won the right to punish her first. Instead Naruto had campaigned for her release along with several others on the condition they be rehabilitated. This was far and away the best possible option, the road which led to the least misery in her future. So while she was of the private opinion that whoever decided her rehabilitation should include being married off to a clan head was losing their marbles Karin had decided, after much thought, that resistance could only hurt her now.

She didn’t really have many expectations for what married life would be like, not having known her husband until they were corralled in to a room together and legally bound, yet Aburame Shino somehow managed to subvert them anyway. Right from the start she was handed surprises as she learned that not only was Shino unperturbed to be married away to a stranger, he had actually volunteered.

“I find this to be a good solution,” he’d told her. Then he must have seen her naked confusion as he quickly added, “Why? Because my elders had been asking me to find a wife for years now and you need a home. This is a good thing for both of us.”

Karin honestly hadn’t known what to say to that but she was grateful not to deal with someone angry at the very sight of her. His honesty had set the tone for a surprisingly harmonious coexistence. Although they did sleep in the same room Shino easily agreed to separate futons and never once asked more from her than she was willing to give, not even so much as a kiss. They ate their meals together and he complimented her cooking when it was her turn to do so but for the most part they spent their days entirely separate as he went about his business and left Karin to hers.

That wasn’t to say they never spent any time together, although it took the better part of a year for her to even realize that he was doing so. Shino was an unassuming man. Enough so that it was all too easy to underestimate just how subtle and sneaky he could be. It never occurred to her to question the nights he chose to stay in at home, choosing a book and settling in the library where she also spent most of her evenings. She thought little of the absent questions that more often than not drew her in to long conversations before one or both of them yawned their way to bed. Nothing about their situation seemed out of the ordinary until she ran in to Sakura while working at the hospital as part of the mandatory community service that was a condition of being allowed to stay in the village, greeting her one time rival for an undeserving man’s love with a cautious hello. Sakura’s smile for her was surprisingly warm.

“How’s married life been?” the other woman asked. “I don’t see Shino around much these days. Or anyone, really. I’m so busy here!”

“Life’s fine.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth Karin realized that she meant them and that was enough of a shock that Sakura was able to chatter over her for several minutes, going on about a bunch of people she honestly didn’t care about. Just because they were Shino’s friends didn’t mean they were hers. He was smart enough not to force her to socialize when she didn’t want to – and since she knew the general opinion most people had of her here she really didn’t want to socialize with most of them.

When Sakura started bemoaning how their busy lives kept her and Naruto apart most days and how they didn’t get to spend much time together Karin rolled her eyes.

“Seriously? The two of you married for love and I see more of my husband than you do yours?”

The other woman looked at her strangely. “Really? The last I heard of him Shino was screaming busy helping Iruka-sensei overhaul the academy curriculum. Oh but that’s so sweet that he still makes time for you! I’m ashamed to say I never expected he would make such a good husband.”

“A-ah…”

“Sakura-sensei! Come quick! It’s Yuzuki-san!”

“Oh! I have to run!” Sakura turned on her heel and dashed off towards wherever that voice had called from. “Let’s talk again soon!”

Karin didn’t even bother to wave. Her head was spinning, hands lifting on muscle memory as she went back to her own work scrubbing floors in a daze. It wasn’t like she ignored Shino when he spoke to her. She listened very carefully. But she’d never realized that he was quite so busy, enough so that he needed to consciously make the time to come and sit with her in the quiet library where sometimes she didn’t even bother to engage his attempts at conversation.

Community service brought her all over the village doing all sorts of different jobs so there was really no telling what time she would be heading home on any given day. By some kindness of fate it just so happened that she finished today a little before the academy would be letting their students go from final classes. With shame and embarrassment roiling together until she was able to translate them in to indignation, Karin set her feet marching along a path she had only ever walked the one time she was asked to clean out some old classrooms. The closer she got the easier it became to ignore the thousands of chakra signatures around her and focus in on the one she had come to associate with calm and safety without even knowing she was doing so.

She didn’t really have a plan. Karin had always been a woman of emotion and right now her emotions were telling her to go confront her husband. She would figure out what exactly she was confronting him about when she got there. Or that was her line of thinking until she paused halfway across the grassy yard, catching sight of him through an open window and drifting over like a magnet to a lodestone.

Despite the utter chaos of children up and moving about the room seemingly without order Shino stood by the front with a contented smile underneath the visor he wore to protect his eyes from bright lights. With both arms in the air he directed his students like a conductor, voice ringing out his instructions with confidence.

It was a side of him that she had never seen before – or rather that she had never taken the time to see. Shino had taken her in and given her a home, played the part of accommodating husband more perfectly than she could have ever hoped for, and Karin could only think that all she’d given him in return was a few measly conversations whenever she felt like making the effort. Not once had she ever considered whether he might just want to talk after a stressful day. Sure there were other people he could have gone to and she’d assumed all along that’s what he would do but if he chose to seek comfort in her, the wife who was meant to share his life and home? He deserved better than she gave him. He'd certainly given her better in turn.

Whatever energy had brought her marching across the village drained away as she watched her husband at work for the first time. She was almost disappointed when the bell rang and he began to herd the children towards their cubby holes at the back of the room for boots and coats, calling instructions for the night’s homework over the noise. His gaze hadn’t even once strayed towards the window and for a few moments she wondered which exit she would have to meet him at as he left for home. Following his chakra wouldn’t exactly be hard. Then his head turned sideways to look directly at her without warning and Karin was ashamed of the squeak that slipped out between her lips.

Beetles. She’d forgotten about the beetles, thousands of eyes watching the world on his behalf.

He tilted his head but without being able to see the eyes behind his visor Karin was left with nothing but the flavor of curiosity in his warm signature, rooted to the spot while he picked his way across the room to stand on the other side of the open window with hands folded behind his back.

“What brings you here?” he asked in his quiet, unassuming voice.

“I…oh. Should I not have? Do you have work left?” Not having been granted the honor of actually attending the academy in her own home village, she realized suddenly that she had very little idea of what a typical day’s schedule might include for either the students or the teachers. Thankfully Shino looked anything but irritated. It took quite a bit to irritate him, actually, something she had appreciated from the very beginning.

“Yes I have much left to do. Why? Because the children handed in two different assignments today that require marking.” His head tilted ever so slightly again before going on. “If you would prefer, I can finish such work at home.”

Karin shifted her weight and looked away, uncomfortable. What right did she have to ask anything of him? Yet still she heard her own voice answering as quietly as she hadn’t heard herself in years. “Yes. I would prefer you to come home. Please.”

Obviously both of them knew that she had tacked on that last bit as no more than an afterthought. Manners were hardly second nature to her. The last thing she had worried about growing up was learning how to be proper and polite, not when she’d been taught that the way to get something out of life was to be tough and strong, to demand whatever attention and respect she felt she deserved. Life in Konoha hadn’t exactly gained her much respect and the last thing she usually wanted these days was anyone’s attention.

With Shino that was different. Feeling his eyes on her was not a weight she needed to bear up under but a blanket of warmth against the often cold realities that had been her life so far. He was a break against the wind, a mercy, a place to rest. Until that moment staring at him through an open window Karin hadn’t truly understood how much she’d come to think of him as home. Not just that he had given her one but that he, the man, the husband, had become the home she wanted to come back to. It was not a revelation she was prepared to confront. Thankfully he didn’t seem as though he required any explanations at the moment. Even as her thoughts spun and the earth seemed to tilt beneath her feet Shino was nodding and turning to gather the piles of messy assignment papers from his desk, sealing them all in to a single scroll before heading back towards the window.

“May I walk with you?” he asked.

“I…yes?” It seemed a silly question. They were going to the same place, after all. Refusing him would mean walking along the same path anyway but keeping a few paces between them and the very idea of it was ridiculous.

Still, her answer seemed to please him. The smile that curled his lips this time was the sort of soft contentment he usually wore in the evenings as they whiled away the evening shadows in light conversation. Karin was ashamed to admit that it took until they were halfway home, turning from one deserted pathway down another, that she understood his question.

“Were you flirting with me!?” she demanded, almost proud that he didn’t so much as flinch at her sudden outburst. Of course she was also immediately infuriated that he didn’t have the decency to blush along with his simple nod.

“I was.”

“Have you done that before!?”

“I have.”

“When!?”

Shino hummed like he was counting the moments she had inexplicably missed. “Often.”

It was almost offensive how calm he remained while she spluttered and choked on her own surprise. The rest of the walk home was stiflingly quiet. A truly staggering amount of thoughts chased each other through her mind but none of them were able to stick for very long before getting chased away by several more. Karin’s emotions were in a right mess when they made it home, confused and muddled and twisted in a way unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Shino led them in to the library and paused next to his usual seat with a serene air. It wasn’t until he reached up to remove the visor shielding his eyes from the outside world that finally words began to tumble over each other past her lips.

“You flirt with me?” Her tone was a question but she had barely let him nod before she was going on. “I don’t get it. Why? You didn’t want to marry me, you just wanted someone to make your clan elders shut up and leave you alone and I just wanted a–” A home. The word stuck in her throat but he seemed to understand.

“Does it bother you?”

“N-no, don’t be stupid. Why would it bother me? It’s just…flirting.” Never in her life had she heard her own voice sound quite so unsteady.

Shino’s dark, multi-faceted eyes blinked slowly. “Why? Because we are married and I have come to enjoy your company. Because you are my wife and you deserve to be cherished as a wife should be. Because your laughter is hard to earn and all the more precious for it. That is why.”

“Oh,” Karin breathed. “Oh.”

In the time since she had come to this place she had felt like many things. A pretender, unwanted, unneeded, bored, caged, yet despite all those content was much more frequent as of late. Shino’s quiet words rocked her as for the first time she felt something she hadn’t before, not in all the years she spent clawing and scratching out a place for herself in the cruel uncaring world. She felt like a woman. Desired. Wanted for no reason other than her own merits as a human being.

“Do it again,” she demanded softly and it made Shino smile.

“You wish for me to flirt with you?” When she nodded stiffly he echoed the gesture with a serious air. “Very well. Shall I tell you how beautiful I find you? How the scent of you fills our home and eases away all worries of the world outside? Should I tell you that this life we have together is a happy one that I am grateful to have been gifted with?”

“By the kami, I didn’t expect you to lay it on so thick!” Karin covered her face with both hands, mortified to realize her cheeks were warm.

“Ah, my apologies. I sought only to fulfil my wife’s request.”

It took a minute or two before she had collected herself enough to peek out between her fingers but when she did her gaze was as contemplative as his was amused. The shock that had flavored every emotion since her conversation with Sakura faded enough at last that she was able to think past it to possibilities that she could have never imagined before.

“Fulfill my request huh?” Slowly letting her arms fall to her sides, Karin took a deep breath and steeled her nerves. “Well then I have an actual request for you. Um…dinner. If- if you’re going to do this backwards and court me after we’re already married then you should at least do it right. Taking me out to dinner would be a good start.” Though her cheeks felt like they had caught fire Karin stubbornly kept her chin up to watch the curl of Shino’s lips, something deeply content settling in the eyes he showed to so few people. How long had he been falling in love without her noticing?

“Dinner would be my pleasure,” he replied simply.

It would also be hers, she was startled to realize. This wasn’t the fairy tale most girls dreamed of but Karin wasn’t quite as surprised as she should be finally coming to terms with the fact that perhaps this life wasn’t really so bad. Perhaps her husband wasn’t the only one that she hadn’t noticed getting attached.

When she pulled her chair over to sit a little closer that night Shino said nothing about it. And when they went to bed and he held out a hand she laid down to sleep on the same futon as her husband for the very first time without saying a word herself. Their marriage might have been arranged but it was odd to think that the relationship between themselves was only theirs to define. Karin couldn’t remember the last time she’d been handed such control over her own future.

She’d never given much thought to her wedding day but maybe it was time she started thinking about how she wanted to love the rest of her life. If she was allowed her say then it was going to be happy.

#narutorarepairweek2020 #rae writes #shikarin #shinokarin #shino #karin #sakura #fanfiction

49 notes · View notes

dry-valleys · 4 years ago

Photo

S iomadh armunn lasdail treubhach; Ann an Duneidean, am barrail. — Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair.

What is now Holyrood Park has been inhabited since the Bronze Age, as a horde found at Duddingston in 1778 proves, and its earliest inhabitants abut whom anything is known are Brythonic tribes related to, but distinct from, the Gaels and Picts of the rest of what is now Scotland; cousins to the modern Welsh, they are a vanished civilisation, culturally displaced by Anglo-Saxons, who from the 7th century extended their realm, Bernicia, into these parts.

According to the Welsh epic Y Gododdin, they set out from Edinburgh to wrest back Yr Hen Ogledd (The Old North) from the Anglo-Saxons in 598, but were defeated and forced back until Anglo-Saxon king Oswald of Northumbria took Edinburgh in 638; Oswald, who by this time had converted to Christianity along with most of his followers, was keen to expand Northumbrian power and was defeated and killed in 642 when invading my own homeland, Mercia.

Although the Britons failed to recapture their lost lands, and ordinary Anglo-Saxons followed their rulers into the conquered realms, the Picts and Gaels held on in the north and so the kingdom of Scotland which was eventually forged had at least five ethnic groups when we add the Vikings who arrived soon afterwards, after their first attack on Northumbria in 793.

Holyrood Abbey was founded by the mighty King David I of Scotland in 1128. Perhaps inspired or spooked by the Norman conquest of England in 1066, David set out to forge a realm that could defend itself and project his power; the abbey, one of many he founded, was a part of this.

According to legend, he was hunting in the thick woodland which then lay below Salisbury Crags when he fell and was almost gored by a stag, but saved by the cross he held in his hand ('rood' is an Anglo-Saxon word for a cross, hence the name).

David ruled Scotland from 1124 to 1153 and held land in England through his English wife, Matilda, who was half Saxon and half Norman. Through his power, Holyrood became the place of pilgrimage which it remained for centuries after his death, and arguably still is today.

To this time belongs the mysterious St Anthony's Chapel, ruins of which can be seen in , which was once a vast building but little of which remains. The first historical record of this place is in 1426 , though given that Anthony died in 1231, it could belong to any date in this period; sadly, like Holyrood Abbey it fell into disrepair after the Protestant Reformation and was mostly demolished between 1560 and 1570, though on the same site the Palace of Holyroodhouse was to be built (much more on this in later posts!)

After the 1707 Act of Union joined Scotland to England and Wales in the Kingdom of Great Britain (which in 1801 became the United Kingdom after union with Ireland), rulers of Scotland focused on their London powerbase and only cared about events north of the border at times of rebellion, as in 1715 AND 1745 when supporters of (respectively) James Francis Edward Stuart (King James VIII and III to his friends, the Old Pretender to his enemies) and Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie to friends, the Young Pretender to foes.

They were the son and grandson of James VII and II, who had been deposed in 1688, but he and his heirs and their followers never accepted this, and for decades fought against the Hanoverian rulers of Great Britain, in the Jacobite uprisings which finally lost all hope of ever reclaiming what they lost after their defeat at Culloden in 1746.

Although (as above) it’s questionable whether Gaelic speakers ever lived here in great numbers, and the area was settled by Anglo-Saxons from the 7th century, there’s no doubt that Gaelic Highlanders we’re here in force in 1745 when Charles Edward Stuart massed his armies here, holding a council of war at Bonnie Prince Charlie House (rather embarrassingly, I couldn’t find it!) but failing to change the face of Scotland.

It’s worth remembering that while- given that almost no one had what we’d call freedom of speech- we don’t know what public opinion was, many Scots, especially lowland Protestants, supported the union, considered the Hanoverians the best guarantors of their future and were actively or passively hostile to the Jacobites; it certainly isn’t the case that everyone was glad to see his armies in Holyrood Park.

Although many lowland, Protestant businessmen in Edinburgh prospered, and this was the age which produced the Scottish Enlightenment, Holyrood sank back into obscurity until, long after the Jacobite threat had passed, King George IV of the United Kingdom made a great visit here in 1822, landing at Leith and staying at Holyrood.

In the railway age (Edinburgh Waverley station was built in 1846), George IV’s great-niece, Queen Victoria, and her husband, Prince Albert, frequently came to Edinburgh and the Highlands, and Albert- a reforming and hard-working charachter- helped shape the park as it is now.

Albert’s ideas included Dunsapie Loch (manmade-1844) and St Margaret’s Loch, which he ordered to be constructed in 1856, a much better replacement for the boggy marshland which once sat here, and the swampy & disease ridden Nor Loch, which before being drained in 1820 used to sit in what is now Princes Street Gardens and Waverley. By contrast Duddingston is natural.

(1 St Margaret from Salisbury Crags, 2 St Margaret and Anthony’s Chapel, 3 Dunsapie from Arthur’s Seat, 4 Dunsapie, 5 Arthur’s Seat from Dunsapie, 6 Duddingston from Crow Hill, 7 approaching Duddingston Site of Special Scientific Interest, 8-10 Duddingston).

Now the site is largely as Albert left it to us, a place where the energetic can climb Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags, I and my cousin used it to walk to Portobello Beach, though (as long as you don’t let Albert catch you idling!) you can just relax here.

That translation?

There’s many a valiant, daring hero in Edinburgh, well I know it.

#photos #edinburgh #scotland #ecosse #park

3 notes · View notes

massivemalepluspillsreviews-blog · 5 years ago

Text

Massive Male Plus Review

Having a good sexual health is necessary to maintain healthy relationships, Sexual fitness has more importance when it comes to men. If a man is sexually healthy, it has positive effects on their relationships as well as their physical confidence and self-esteem.

Penis size is the most important aspect of male sexual health. Did you know that the normal penis size is 5 inches? Which means a penis of 5 is required to satisfy a woman.

This news will be not entertaining to people with embarrassingly small penises! But, don't panic there is a way we will tell you in this article to increase your manhood and the size of your junk!

The searches related t male penis size increment is skyrocketed in the past few years than ever before. You might have seen extra-ordinary penis sizes of the porn actors, and you might have wondered is it even possible so big as you have seen in the videos? Yes, it possible.

There are many products available in the market that say big things about their products, people who visit porn websites often have knowledge about the ads that are displayed their for penis enlargement with miraculous results, most of them are just hoaxes. Most of the products have side effects more than benefits.

What is Massive Male Plus?

Massive male plus is a dietary penis enlargement supplement with proven results. It is a all-natural ingredient penis enlargement supplement.

What are the results of using Massive Male Plus you might be thinking? Well the results are absolutely surprising! The average results of using Massive Male Plus have shown a least of 3-inch increment in penis size with regular use for a month. Yes, we know that 5 inch is the average size, if you and your partner want to live a life of Just-Okay sexual life.

But, why settle for a 5-inch penis, when you can increase the size of your penis, and you and your partner can have an extra ordinary sexual life. Massive Male Plus can help you increase your penis size, without having any harmful effects! What can be better? Right?

How does Massive Male Plus work?

Many men are confused about how Massive Male Plus supplement works, that in such a short time it can increase penis size up to 3 inches?

Massive Male Plus does not work like drugs such as Viagra, Viagra just stimulates the penial tissues and makes it erect for a longer time. Whereas, Massive Male Plus is responsible for directly effecting the size of erectile tissue, and improve the flow of blood to the penial tissues, which results in the production of more erectile tissues and hence the size of your penis.

Here are the advantages of using Massive Male Plus

By using all-natural Massive Male Plus, you will get:

Intense orgasms and maximum sexual pleasure.

Improved and long-lasting erections.

Bigger penis size for maximum satisfaction.

Improved self-esteem and sexual life.

You would have heard often size doesn't matter! Which is not even partially true. Having a large penis improves your sexual life and when a man is satisfied by his sexual life, he can be more confident and happier!

1 note · View note

howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 5 years ago

Text

Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon

by Frederick Clarkson September 8, 2012

The reporting and punditry in the wake of the death of Sun Myung Moon has left a lot to be desired. Even long, seemingly comprehensive treatments of Moon's life and empire, such as the one that ran in The New York Times, did not delve deeply into Moon's profound far right and criminal involvements; antidemocratic politics; or even the mysterious sources of foreign cash for The Washington Times, and extensive political operations in the U.S. for decades, let alone the Moon organization's broad, insidious affects on American culture and democracy. There has also been some embarrassingly credulous material published about the nature of life in the Church itself, and some odd, unsubstantiated pooh poohery about the problem of cultism.

Of course, history lives, despite the best efforts of some of us not to notice.

Here are a few things from my own knowledge that merit far greater, and better attention than they have generally received so far.

No report that I have seen has gone very deeply into the role of the Moon organization in the Koreagate scandal of the 1970s. A Congressional investigation exposed a massive covert operation and influence buying effort by the government of South Korea against the U.S. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency, (KCIA), some of whose operatives were top leaders of the Unification Church. The church itself was revealed to have been crafted by the KCIA into a "political tool." A notable exception to this unfortunate trend, was a remembrance by a staffer on the Koreagate investigation, published in the MinnPost. The article quotes from a book by Koreagate staff director Robert Boettcher, Gifts of Deceit: Sun Myung Moon, Tongsun Park, and the Korean scandal. For details on the investigation, see the conclusions of the Report by the House Committee on International Relations, October, 31, 1978.

One of the architects of the "New Right" of the 1970s and beyond was Richard Viguerie. He was best known as a direct mail entrepreneur. Much less well-known is that one of his first clients was a front group for the KCIA and the Moon organization called the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation. This group, ostensibly about anti-communist education, was broadcasting KCIA propaganda radio programming into North Korea and Vietnam. Viguerie has had many Moon front groups as clients over the years, and when his businesses foundered in the 1980s, the Moon organization purchased his office building for ten million dollars. (I detail some of this history in my book, Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy.

In 1987 I published an expose in Extra!, the magazine of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, on how top executives of The Washington Times and its parent company [NWC – News World Communications], were current or former KCIA agents:

Three NWC executives are not only top Unification Church officials, but have also had high-ranking posts in the Korean CIA (KCIA). Sang Kook Han, a "personal assistant" to the KCIA director in the early 1960s, later served as South Korea's ambassador to Norway and Panama. In 1984, Han was installed at the Washington Times, precipitating the resignation of editor James Whelan. Currently senior vice president of New World Communications, Han is described by Whelan as the "de facto publisher" and "inspector general" of the Times.

Kim Sang In, another NWC executive, was KCIA station chief in Mexico in the '70s. There, according to U.S. congressional investigators, he functioned as the "control agent" for Tungsun Park, who bribed U.S. officials to gain favors for the South Korean government in what became known as "Koreagate." Congressional probers disclosed that illegal espionage operations linked to Koreagate were carried out by the Unification Church at the behest of the KCIA.

Bo Hi Pak, the president of NWC, served as liaison to the U.S. intelligence community while posted in Washington as South Korean military attache in the 1960s and early ’70s, according to the Koreagate inquiry. Pak is also president of CAUSA (Confederation of the Associations for Unity of the Societies of the Americas), the political arm of the Unification Church. CAUSA was instrumental in providing aid to the Nicaraguan contras.

Although I wish the paper had gotten into it more, The Washington Post's epic coverage of Moon's life and empire offered a few telling details about the way that the Moon organization has intervened in our domestic politics and foreign policy.

During the height of the Nicaraguan civil war in the 1980s, the Washington Times led a fundraising drive on behalf of the contras, a rebel group that sought to overthrow the country’s leftist government. Another church-linked organization, the American Freedom Coalition, paid for a direct mailing to 25 million households that criticized 1988 Democratic presidential candidate Michael S. Dukakis.

What the story does not mention is that Richard Viguerie was an officer of the American Freedom Coalition and did direct mail for the organization. In Eternal Hostility, I discuss how the AFC was, between the collapse of Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, and the creation of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, the leading political organization of the Religious Right; for example, spending millions of dollars printing and distributing presidential candidate scorecards tilted to favor George H.W. Bush over Michael Dukakis in 1988 -- among many other campaign activities.

While the issue of religious freedom is much in the news lately, Moon and his supporters who were waving the bloody shirt of alleged violations of religious freedom to advance their interests in the 1980s. Moon was convicted of tax fraud and served 13 months in federal prison. (I wrote about the case and the subsequent bruhaha at the time, and later in Eternal Hostility.) Moon was shown to have been specifically advised by his attorneys to keep his personal and church accounts separate. He didn't. He diverted contributions intended for church purposes to his personal use; and later supervised the production of a false books. He is a convicted felon. But you would not know that to read most of the accounts of his life.

The Moon organization has played a pivotal role in underwriting vast political and media projects in the U.S. But the sources of the funding has always been mysterious, although every investigation has shown that most if not all of the funding comes from foreign sources, primarily Japan. This includes as much as three billion spent to underwrite the The Washington Times alone over the past 30 years.

Former Newsweek and Associated Press investigative reporter Robert Parry has published a vast amount of material on this, including Moon's involvement with military dictators and drug cartels in Latin America and the Japanese Yakuza.

Parry reported:

But Moon's relationships with drug-tainted gangsters and corrupt right-wing politicians go back to the early days of his Unification Church in Asia. Moon's Korea-based church made its first important inroads in Japan in the early 1960s after gaining the support of Ryoichi Sasakawa, a leader of the Japanese yakuza crime syndicate who once hailed Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as "the perfect fascist." In Japan and Korea, the shadowy yakuza ran lucrative drug smuggling, gambling and prostitution rings.

The Sasakawa connection brought Moon both converts and clout because Sasakawa was a behind-the-scenes leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party. On the international scene, Sasakawa helped found the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, which united the heroin-stained leadership of Nationalist China with rightists from Korea, Japan and elsewhere in Asia. [For details, see Yakuza by David E. Kaplan and Alec Dubro]

In 1966, the Asian league evolved into the World Anti-Communist League with the inclusion of former Nazis from Europe, overt racialists from the United States and "death squad" operatives from Latin America, along with more traditional conservatives.

For more on the World Anti-Communist League, see the book Inside the League, by Jon Lee Anderson and Scott Anderson. For a serious discussion of the role of cultism in the Moon organization, see Combating Cult Mind Control, by Steven Hassan.

The Moon organization has undermined American democracy for decades, and helped to make the conservative movement what it is today. The cult totalism that made ordinary Americans into zealots for a messianic Korean with a fascist political agenda and ties to the people who brought us World War II, is not something to be taken as lightly as seems to be fashionable among some of those who have been asked to comment on the life and death of Sun Myung Moon. As always, there is a battle going on for the narrative of American history, and the role of the Moon organization is part of it.

_____________________________________

Frederick Clarkson September 9, 2012 at 08:20:30 PM

“We are so disconnected from history. Even recent history of great consequence. It is just astounding to me. I had written a great deal about the Moon organization over the years, but was otherwise occupied when Moon died. I figured that much of this would be well covered elsewhere, and I was shocked when it wasn’t.

On reflection, I shouldn’t have been Progressive publications do a somewhat better job than they used to in covering these things, but the mainstream media does much less well.

Progressive political conferences do not much discuss current trends on the political and religious right, let alone how it connects with eye opening understandings of our own history. And I have had people I know and respect adamantly insist that they should not.

I really did not anticipate having to write this diary. But here we are.”

Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”

– Thomas Jefferson, who was attacked by the religious right in the election of 1800. These words are engraved inside the Jefferson Memorial.

_____________________________________

“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy” by Frederick Clarkson

_____________________________________

NPR: Church and State: ‘Eternal Hostility’ with Frederick Clarkson

_____________________________________

Reclaiming and Renewing Religious Freedom in the 21st Century

https://www.dailykos.com/blog/Frederick%20Clarkson/

_____________________________________

RESCUING RELIGIOUS FREEDOM with Frederick Clarkson

_____________________________________

Money and Power and Moon’s Washington Times by Rory O’Connor

Investigations into the Sun Myung Moon / Hak Ja Han organizations

The Tragedy of the Six Marys website

#Frederick Clarkson #Sun Myung Moon #Religious Right #Unification Church #Family Federation for World Peace and Unification #Hak Ja Han

1 note · View note

mooleche · 6 years ago

Note

*crashes into inbox* YOU HAVE MORE OCS THAT I DON'T KNOW ABOUT? TELLLL MEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!

FIRSTLY - Thank you for asking about my babs aaaa

SECONDLY - OH BUD YOU IN IT NOW - These are the current ocs of the week. I have more but I haven’t given them a lot of plot other then ‘I have a mad desire to create this’. Descriptions for them underneath the cut!

1. Nina (Ink)Y’all know this oc. I will never shut up about this oc because she’s the one I put most of my attention to gdslkgdsl Nina is a 24 y/o french american mutant able to control ink that currently resides in New York for college after a bad vigilante bout that left her just wanting an ordinary life. She doesn’t get to enjoy this for long after trying to go toe to toe with Venom in a fight that eventually completely twists her life around for the interesting. She’s a good egg with a chaotic neutral attitude.

2. Ania (Neon)

Ania is Nina’s clone that isn’t introduced until a bit later in her story. Created after Nina was rescued by the X-Men in her teens, Ania was raised to be a sleeper agent for Essex Corp and only activated for assassination and/or bodyguard duties for the higher up scientist that created her. Her mutant power is neon manipulation and uses it with great prowess and has no trouble in taking Nina down, who is often reckless and blunt with her attacks. Her personality in the beginning is very short and closed off, but once she opens up she’s very shy and timid. She enjoys video games and tends to act a bit childish as she wasn’t able to have an actual childhood but Nina takes her in like a sister and treats her as such to keep her happy.

3. Milo (Scout)

Milo is a hot mess. She’s 23, a human, and has stuck her hand in the cookie jar of demons one too many times in order to avenge her family. Thinking it was a smart idea at the time she made a deal with the demon that murdered her parents to gain more power, but makes him stronger in the process. Desperate to right her wrongs she seeks assistance from Dante to take out the demon and spends her days after looking up demonic artifacts and intel for him and any other hunters looking for the good word on the current hot commodity under the wing of J.D. who she refers to as her uncle (no relation). She has her own demonic powers that involves releasing a shadow version of herself that increases her strength and speed, but requires red orbs in order to keep it tamed. She’s energetic, goofy and stubborn as hell, but she’s always got the best intentions at heart and isn’t afraid to speak her mind.

4. Shortcake

Embarrassingly enough I don’t have a lot of information about her yet. I just really wanted a dessert oc and strawberry shortcake gave me a really cute idea to work with. All I can say is that she’s unabashedly horny on main and enjoys baking and modeling off cute clothes for fun sglkdsgls

5. Daisy

This fucking oc. She was my first cowgirl doodle years ago and she’s blossomed into a powerhouse of ideas. She’s 24 and the oldest of her siblings who are next in line to run their family cafe Baiser de Crème. I was going to include them all but there’s SO MANY. Daisy is very bubbly and kind though, and she makes sure all of their customers leave with full bellies and smiles on their faces because that’s what makes her day. She’s also the most forward of her relatives, which many of their customers enjoy, but that’s for another time. But yeah, Daisy lives in a town full of anthro creatures that I’m slowly but surely fleshing out more and more every day for fun, if only to satiate my need to create more monstergirls/boys but she’s one of my favorite ocs and I wuv her.

6. Thriller (Mercy Maye)

An Umbrella Security Service operative and locksmith specialist. Originally a part of the Wolf Pack, Thriller was disbanded for a solo mission involving the capture and elimination of rogue scientists from Umbrellas corporation during the outbreak.She was once a marksman with S.T.A.R, but was soon sought out by the U.S.S. due to her high ranking and impressive skills to get in places she shouldn't be in, Umbrella Corporation included. After breaking into their security system she and and her team were sent to investigate some of the more suspicious experiments before ultimately getting overwhelmed.With the risk of having her entire team being killed on the spot she agreed to switch teams and was taken under HUNKs wing to become a lethal weapon among their ranks. She spends most of her days improving the security in Umbrellas computer systems while exploiting other companies to step down when they threaten to blackmail the company. She uses humor to gain trust and friendship among her ranks but is not one to keep ties for long as she does not want people to be used against her again. During missions she often resorts to dark humor to keep herself rooted and instead channels her fear into blood lust to keep herself and her team alive, later given the codename Thriller as a result. She might seem like she trusts Umbrella Corp on the surface but deep down she’s just looking for the perfect moment to strike them and reveal all of the terrible secrets they’ve kept hidden away from the world.

And that’s about it! I wrote so much I’M SORRY. I just love me babies and I hope I can do more with them in the future aaaa

#oc shit #my writing for them is so messy aaaa #but it was fun getting to draw and write abt them #TY!!#master-sass-blast

24 notes · View notes

mandej · 7 years ago

Note

shryan, number 2? (For the writing prompts)

thank you for sending this in, dear! apologies for any mistakes

Prompt: 2. “I know it’s 3 in the morning, but I can’t find my cat.” (Send me one?)

WordCount: 1,316 (uhh it got a little out of hand?)

Summary:Ryan’s a workaholic, but work isn’t the thing keeping him up right now / AU inwhich Ryan is somewhere other than Buzz/feed and Shane just moved in next door / Alcohol TW (they share a beer)

Of Ryan’s bad habits, his personal workschedule ranked among the worst. Nowadays he was lucky to find himself asleepby four in the morning with enough time to get two hours in before he had to beup again and at the office. It was increasingly hard to put down the phone, banishingthe incessant emails from work when he walked through his front door. All toooften he justified throwing himself into the latest project with an offhandpromise of “one more response” to his inbox that consistently spiraled into anearly morning of spreadsheets and voicemails with every new proposition thatcame to him in the night. However unhealthy, he was damn good at his job.

That night Ryan had done well for histypical standards, powering off his brain from everything work-related andallowing his head to hit the pillow at precisely 2 AM; it was well beyond whenhe finally, truly felt his eyes grow heavy-lidded enough to find rest.

The frantic knocking on his door may aswell have been a voice through bullhorn firing off throughout his smallone-bedroom home. Ryan groaned and sprang up to find something other than theboxers he was (almost) sleeping in, acquiring a t-shirt and pants from thedarkness of his room and fleeing to answer the door, unsuccessfully wiping sleepfrom his eyes as he pulled the chipped white wood open to the visage of afrantically assembled man.

“Look, I am so sorry. I know it’s 3 in themorning, but I can’t find my cat.” From the look of the guy Ryan had almostexpected to hear something about a house nearby catching fire, the panicdripping from his voice uncharacteristic to a person unable to find his cat inRyan’s mind, but the worried, scrunched look the other wore seemed to awaken Ryan.Before him, the man would have stood taller had he not, in the moment, been doubledover with one hand on the frame to Ryan’s front door, obviously running onlymoments before. Between breaths he collected himself running his hand throughhis already mussed hair. “I just moved in, didn’t expect to get her until nextweek and-and she ran out the door because she’s scared of the new house, please,I know it’s a big ask-“

“Hey, absolutely, don’t worry about it.Just, let me know what I can do.” Ryan could easily have closed to door, butthe genuine worry exuding from the other was unlike anything he’d ever seen;besides, he was used to the darkness of the early morning more than anyone elseon the street. The man’s sigh of relief could have woken the neighbors if theyhad been listening for it.

“Thank you, so much. I’m going to take therest of this street and a couple to the right, if you could go left and keep aneye out for the biggest tortoiseshell cat you’ve ever seen that’d great. Shewon’t come to it, but her name’s Ripley. If you find her, she loves these.” Hereached into the pocket of his pants, which in no way matched his shirt, and pulledout a small cat toy. “If you don’t, we can meet back at my place: 314.” Henodded to his left, the house one over from Ryan. The other man begandescending the staircase before stopping in his tracks and turning back to faceRyan. “By the way, you don’t know how much I appreciate this. The name’s Shane.”He took off down the steps of Ryan’s porch into a sprint and turned right justas he had told Ryan he would. Bizarre as everything that had just occurred,Ryan followed the plan that had been laid out for him. An hour and a half passed,and Ryan made it almost to the end of the residential part of the city, callingfor, clicking his tongue, and keeping his eyes wide open for a tortoiseshell catunder the lightening sky, before eventually deciding Ripley wouldn’t have gonethis far from Shane’s house. He found Shane already on his own porch, handsheld over the white railing where he leaned over resting his head, obviouslydejected from his stance but managing to straighten himself up as he heard Ryanapproach.

“I need a drink. Do you want a drink?”Shane’s voice was barely above a whisper as Ryan climbed the last stair.

“It’s 4:30 in the morning.” Ryan eyed him quizzically,worried about just how much the disappearance of his cat was affecting him.

“Ever heard of day-drinking?” The joke wasbad enough for Ryan to accept a beer after their failed search. Shanedelivered.

“You know, I never asked your name, mind ifI get that now?” Shane inquired, returning from inside with two bottles inhand.

“It’s Ryan.” Both managed to crack a smile.

They spent the beers talking to each other,typical friendly questioning in a rather atypical scenario, and they continuedon past the empty bottles until the sun happened to appear over Shane’s house,completely unaware of the passing of time til they sat admiring the sunrise.

“It’s a shame we couldn’t do this ‘get toknowing each other’ for real. I promise I’m a relatively normal guy.” Shane letout a silent breathy laugh after his declaration, looking over to where Ryansat on his porch railing. “I mean, we still could, if you’d like to.”

“I gotta say, dude, this is the strangestway anyone’s ever asked me out.” Ryan smirked over at him, far more ballsy thanhe ever would have been without sleep deprivation. That earned him a realchuckle as Shane raised his eyebrows in a knowing expression.

“Oh, is that what I was doing?” Shane inquiredwith a tone that suggested otherwise, but a face that knew exactly what hewanted.

“Is that what you meant to be doing?” Ryancouldn’t help the panic that welled up at Shane’s feigned innocence, worried hewould forever have to live in the shadow of embarrassingly misreading the signalhis new neighbor appeared to be sending. He may as well move.

“I guess it depends on if I get my catback.”

“Pretty ridiculous, basing your decisionsoff-“

“Ryan. Shut up. Do. Not. Move.” Ryan lookedoffended until Shane practically crawled over him, extending a familiarlycatnip-scented toy down an insanely long arm and drawing Ryan’s attention towhat captivated Shane’s. Ripley, the fluffy mange of a cat, sat at the end ofthe porch rail and stared heavily at the two men as she was drawn to the toyShane had in his hand. Only, as Ripley approached she bypassed the toycompletely and opted to furiously rubbing her head along Ryan’s arm, climbinginto his lap and diverting her attention to paw at Shane as if nothing out ofthe ordinary had happened. Despite the morning they’d had, Shane’s face visiblysoftened, the weight of losing his cat gone and the exhaustion beginning to setin as he lazily reached forward to pet her, leaning in close to Ryan’s stomachto plant a kiss on her head. Ripley purred in his lap, and Ryan tried his bestnot to blush as Shane looked up at him and smiled.

“Did you say something about a date?” Shane’swords passed through a goofy, tired grin.

“I thought you did.” Ryan teased, runningan appreciated hand down Ripley’s back.

“Is that a yes?” Shane picked Ripley up,and although she meowed in protest, she quickly grew complacent in his arms.

“Absolutely.” It was all Ryan knew how tosay.

#shyan #skeptic believer #shyan fic #shyanlibrary #ari speaks #ari writes

26 notes · View notes

coreymichaelsmithson · 3 years ago

Text

One Of Those Years

My favorite line from the musical “GYPSY” is from the song “Some People”, when Mama Rose sings, “Some people sit on their butts / got the dream, yeah, but not the guts.” And that’s how I’ve felt for my entire adult life: go, go, go, move, jump, strive, question, explore, try, fail, try again. Just keep trying, damnit. Even if I sometimes fall on my ass … even if I frequently, publicly, embarrassingly fall on my ass … I’m gonna keep trying. I do this because I know that real life is happening right now, right here. I know that life is quickly slipping away, disappearing into all those boring ordinary “in-between moments” of everyday existence. With every passing second the opportunity to make choices gets narrower and narrower. I know, way down deep inside, that the magic ice cream truck of death is already making its way towards me, as it does for each of us, and soon enough there will be no more choices to make or time to kill or tinsel to hang. I ain’t going down without a good story.

Without a doubt, 2021 has been "one of those years". One of those years that seems to stand out above the others, one of those years with a special richness and density.

I spent January 1st standing naked on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean ... letting it all hang out, so to speak ... at a clothing-optional beach in Florida, and I'll be wrapping up this December in a tiny town in rural Tennessee, safely nestled in the tattooed arms of my beloved, sharing a bed with him and his four special-needs dogs. It's been a jam-packed, blazingly intense, truly miraculous chapter of my life story, and I can't wait to share what I've learned. Here goes.

Let’s start by getting back to my bare ass on New Year's Day. I'd spent the previous evening, the last night of 2020, at a cassowary breeding ranch owned by two gay men in Central Florida. Cassowaries, in case you hadn't heard of them, are the world's most dangerous birds. Native to Australia, they're basically murderous dinosaurs with fancy plumage and daggerlike toenails. They can jump six feet straight up in the air and disembowel you with a single kick. So that was how I rang out the previous year: staring down enormous flightless birds that wanted to gut me with their foot knives. Anyway, while visiting this farm, I also got to hang out with a very good friend, a fellow wanderer, and together we decided to greet the New Year in typical scary hairy fairy style ... frolicking gaily in the altogether, warmed by the sun, two bearded furballs wearing only smiles and sunscreen. It seemed like a strangely auspicious opening to January. As I stood in the surf, facing my maker, arms akimbo, fully exposed, I looked up into the big blue sky and said, "All right, 2021. Do your worst."

As it so happened, though, this ended up being the year of me finally getting my shit together, on many fronts. I cannot say for certain why I felt so compelled this year, this one year out of so many, to start making some long overdue repairs, to improve some lifestyle habits, to advance to a new level of adulthood. But that's what happened.

Perhaps the most significant transformation was a physical one. I joined a gym, and started working out at least five times a week. Three weeks into my new regimen, I reached the maximum weight on two different machines, outgunning the sort of big beefcakey guys who had once scared me away from all things exercise-related. I bought a motorized standing desk, rearranged my home office, got a weight bench and dumbbells for home use, changed my diet, and got vaccinated for COVID. I finally addressed my teeth, tackling some long-standing dental problems that had been plaguing me for years. After some root canals, crowns, fillings, and some periodontal work, my smile has been vastly improved. I'm still missing some teeth, and I won't win any beauty pageants, but my mouth is no longer the train wreck it once was.

I celebrated my ninth year of sobriety. I also sought professional help for my depression, seeing both a psychiatrist and a therapist, before acknowledging that neither of them were a good fit. I briefly experimented with antidepressants, and then stopped taking them when I realized that they would never address the core issues I was facing. I decided instead to focus my energies on other mechanisms of self-improvement.

I hired an accountant, who helped me take on the steep mountain of my tax debt. This year, I paid off the entirety of my outstanding state taxes from my New York days, breaking a $10,000 shackle around my ankle, and I started chipping away at what I owe Uncle Sam.

2021 brought many new adventures for my minivan Pamela and I. We celebrated our fourth year and 83,000th mile together. My girl, like me, has had a lot of work done this year ... new hubs and bearings, a new power steering pump, new rack and pinion, and her exhaust system got patched up. Our first big foray this year didn't turn out so great, though.

We took an ill-starred roadtrip to the coast of North Carolina, and we almost didn't make it back. I turned 47 at Kitty Hawk, the site of the Wright Brothers’ first flights. Though I went up there intending to see the famous wild ponies of the Outer Banks, my plans were thwarted by off-season closures and Pamela's lack of four-wheel drive. Instead, I stood beneath the Bodie Island and Cape Hatteras lighthouses, visited a museum about shipwrecks (and photographed two actual shipwrecks), watched dolphins leaping above the breakers, and took a nausea-inducing ferry to Ocracoke Island. Despite these highlights, nothing quite went as planned, and the entire "vacation" was marred by ceaseless rain, chilling winds, and shitty food. Most upsetting of all, though, was a deeply disorienting and mysterious experience in the dunes of lower Bodie Island, when I got lost in a maze of scrubland and somehow blacked out while trying to bushwhack my way through the briers. There is still a blurry-edged hole in my recollection of that place; I must have seen something there that shook me to the core, something so shatteringly awful that my mind simply will not allow me to remember it. I have never experienced this kind of traumatic amnesia before, and I remain fearful that the memory may eventually resurface, at the least opportune time, and I'll suddenly be treated to a widescreen Technicolor recap of whatever it was I'd encountered in the dunes. Aliens? A dead body? A goblin crouching over an injured horse? On the return trip, Pamela's alternator broke down, right in the middle of a severe weather outbreak. We punched through nearly 700 miles of tornadic thunderstorms, sometimes driving in the downpours without headlights or windshield wipers, on a string of five brand-new ($$$) car batteries. In all my driving, even with all the stormchasing and white-knuckled rides I've lived through, this was by far my most terrifying night behind the wheel. Honestly, I'm grateful and amazed that we survived it.

Twelve days after my forty-seventh birthday, I celebrated a sad but significant milestone: I had outlived Judy Garland.

In 2021 I visited Ravine Gardens State Park, Natchez Trace State Park, Devil's Tower National Monument, a replica of the Parthenon, and the house that Grant Wood used as the backdrop for "American Gothic". I went white-water rafting down the Nantahala River, got lost in a mirror maze in Gatlinburg, saw a trio of bored bears in Smoky Mountain National Park, climbed to the top of Clingman's Dome, and hung out with bison and elk in Yellowstone. I outran a monstrous line of hailstorms on a farm road in rural Kansas, fled at midnight from an ugly misunderstanding in Montana, and ran over a dead skunk. Pamela killed an armadillo. I got a good haircut in Wichita, from a spunky lady who called my beard "calico", and a not-so-great clipper job from a three-fingered barber in Des Moines. I was also groomed by a monkey on Christmas Day, but that’s a story for another time. During various outings, I saw Key West, Nashville, Tulsa, Casper, Billings, Little Rock, Omaha, and Montgomery. The state of Alabama, which I crossed three times in less than a month, proved to be full of surprises: I stood beneath a Saturn 1B rocket at a rest stop, drove through an eerily empty town blanketed in windblown cotton, and watched an eight-year-old expertly maneuver a riding mower around the narrow grass berms of a Waffle House parking lot. I witnessed the aftermath of the devastating flash floods that took out much of Waverly, Tennessee, a town that was nearly wiped off the map entirely. I gritted my teeth through a disappointing attempt at shamanic "journeying", rescued a gecko, and sported a hoopskirt for a stormy photo shoot on the beach.

Meanwhile, my professional life has never been busier. My largest client, the Bank of America, really kept me hopping this year. In addition to working on a full-length documentary about the bank's history, and numerous presentations about its corporate support of the arts, I also edited short episodes on the works of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Joan Mitchell, Diego Rivera, Georges Seurat, Mark Bradford, Katsushika Hokusai, William T. Williams, Frida Kahlo, Rembrandt, Allan Houser, Caravaggio, Thornton Dial, Archibald Motley, Harry Fonseca, and others. I did logo designs for nutritional supplement peddlers in New York, Colorado, and Connecticut. I started a new side hustle as a paralegal, interviewing accident victims and then telling their stories through essays that helped humanize their insurance claims. I cut a sizzle reel for a new cooking show, did post-production on a music video for a talented genre-bending artist, and proofread a friend's graphic novel.

I finished three painting commissions: a dual portrait (“Cheers”), a floral study (“Sally’s Bouquet”), and a giant Sedona landscape (“The New Eden”). I debuted a new short film, “EACH MISSISSIPPI”, which I'd co-created last year with a gifted local actress, and wrote dialogue for a collaborative screenplay, “THE LAST BONANZA”, with a director in Minneapolis. I moved the needle forward on my fourth novel, “THE FABULOUS MEDICINE SHOW”, and finished a short essay for an upcoming book about artists in Memphis. I spent a great deal of 2021 hunched over my easel. I continued work on two series: "BLUE ANGELS”, which are a group of 30"x40" blue and white abstracts, and the [C] deck, which are one hundred 12"x12" black and white illustrations for a modern-day Tarot. I applied to a poetry contest, a photography contest, a painting contest, all of which rejected me. I tore out and replanted a garden, which promptly died after I left town for a few weeks. Sorry, snapdragons. Sorry, daisies.

One of the centerpiece moments of my career happened this autumn, when I was invited to deliver a lecture about my work at the University of Memphis. As a visiting artist, I got the chance to work with a cohort of graduate students, visiting their studios and critiquing their latest work. The honorarium for the gig didn't come anywhere close to meeting the expenses of the trip, but none of that mattered: this was a major professional honor. I learned so very much from this experience, perhaps even more than the students did, and I made some amazing new friends.

In fact, 2021 was full of friends. Chock full of 'em. Figures coming back into my life after long absences, splendid smiles, hugs and tears and laughter.

I met so many fascinating people. A friendly but jittery hippie tripping on mushrooms. A recent widower with crazy white hair and an apparent case of priapism. A sad-eyed Venezuelan in the midst of a messy divorce. A peaceful MMA fighter who just wanted to talk about turtles. I learned about the tragic dimensions of Carmen Miranda’s career from a gifted Brazilian artist. I hung out with a kayak eco-tourism guide, and we chatted about ecology while viewing a tranquil stretch of marshland. I pierced a transwoman's ears with a store-bought gun, and then we raced up the coast road together in her busted-ass Durango, joyfully shouting the lyrics to "WAP", easily the most vulgar song I've ever heard, while the wind blew her wig askew and the locals stared at us with either incredulity or envy.

I hopped down to Orlando, and spent a giddy bachelors' weekend with two dear old buddies, hetero life mates from my Memphis days. We visited Disney's Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, and Hollywood, spazzing out about the dark rides and the density and the amazing artistry of it all, and together we endured the worst dinner theater experience ever, a Prohibition-themed environment that was so unbelievably corny that we bailed before the curtain had even lifted on the actual show. I had an unexpectedly vibrant reunion with a high school classmate, one in which we commiserated about the many nicks and dents of fate, while walking through an eerily fogbound stretch of beach. We came upon a labyrinth drawn in the sand, which seemed apt for our mood.

To my surprise and delight, I discovered that a college chum and fellow artist from Massachusetts had recently moved to Jacksonville, less than an hour north. We started a tradition of sharing many wonderful beach walks and sushi dinners together ... enjoying long philosophical meanders, pondering our careers, our purposes, and our place in the grand scheme of things. In a short while, we became soul brothers, deeply invested in each other's artistic legacies. And in the spirit of cosmic awakening, my bro and I shared one of the most mind-blowing experiences imaginable: we underwent an ayahuasca ceremony. Ayahuasca is a potent shamanic hallucinogen, one used by indigenous tribes throughout South America. It took six weeks of strict dieting (no sugar, meat, dairy, dried fruits, carbonation, fermented foods, spice, pepper, salt) and two weeks of total celibacy (which was for me, as you can imagine, a big goddamned deal) to prepare for the ceremony, which took place at a non-profit facility in Orlando ... but the spiritual and psychological payoff was beyond all measure. I received many important messages from The Great Beyond, a few of which I hope I have successfully transmitted, and I saw illuminated in golden lines my road to a much healthier lifestyle.

2021 took many loved ones away. I lost a former coworker, a sweet and sassy gal with sparkling eyes, who once gave me an unsolicited lap dance at an office Christmas Party. One of my favorite dog friends died, along with a surrogate mother figure from high school, and a tattoo artist (who had once photographed me naked and drenched in fake blood), and one of my very best clients, and one of my biggest teenage crushes. This last one hit especially hard, as my erstwhile crush had been posting a lot of great content online over the last few years, giving his lucky friends a keyhole view into his thoughts. His social media feed had become a flea market: crammed with antiquities, pop culture tidbits, great architecture, paintings, vintage photographs of hot dudes, food, gaiety, and tons of goodwill. His was a life full of engagement and creativity.

The town I live in, St. Augustine, has a lot of fascinating features, many of which I hadn't explored yet. This year, I finally toured our most famous building, the Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort. Dating back to 1672, it's an imposing stone structure, shaped like a four-pointed star, surrounded by a grassy moat and crowned by cannons. A visiting friend and I got to wander through its many dim and evocative chambers. I checked out our community theater, and saw charming productions of “The Odd Couple” and “A Closer Walk”. I spent as much time as I possibly could on Anastasia Island's pristine beaches. On a few occasions, I saw a right whale and her calf spouting as they swam the waters between Jacksonville and Ormond-By-The-Sea. I also found a shark tooth, and then a bigger one, and then a much bigger one. I saw two sharks caught on the beach, one of which I actually got to hold down as the fisherman struggled to unhook its jaw from his line. I saw a human tibia wash up in the surf.

Speaking of body parts ... I will definitely remember 2021 for another reason.

Men.

I mean, even for a guy of my gargantuan appetites, with a standard of promiscuity that would make a brothel madame blush, this year was one for the books. 2021 was full of sex, sex, more sex, abortive romances, bad dates, great dates, fun games, friendly exploration, dumb ideas, misfires, bad choices, one of the most crushing disappointments of my life, and finally, finding my true heart's desire. In twelve months, I ran through a bewildering gauntlet of dudes. I hooked up with a shy Pokémon nerd, a furry and friendly hairdresser, an upholsterer, the son of a preacher man (no kidding), and a kindhearted traveling store merchandiser who used his drawing skills to turn my name into a stylish maze. I bedded a former military man with a cute little chihuahua, shared a glorious orange moon with a Turkish musician/healer, and enjoyed a wondrous encounter with a licensed sex therapist. I had short dalliances with two "straight" guys, including a weird string of assignations where I was asked to tiptoe through my host's house in the middle of the night, sneaking into the guest bedroom, while his family slept nearby. I bounced around with a charming couple, a pair of real sweetie-pies with whom I remain good pals; our rambunctious little playdate was followed by an astonishing dinner conversation about defeating death, one that made me relax all of my anxieties about the remainder of my life. I got caught up in an absurd bit of drama with an unemployed actor, who became so screechingly shrill and clingy and histrionic that for the very first time in my adult dating life I actually had to tell the other guy to dial it down. I got stood up on two dates by two different jerks, and caught a case of crabs from a nomadic retiree while parked behind a Cracker Barrel.

I rented a car (for the first time in my life) and drove down to the Florida Keys to share a romantic weekend with a witty entomologist of Indian descent. We held hands while snorkeling over Sombrero Reef, eight miles off the shore of Marathon. I swam alongside a sea turtle in the shadow of a massive steel lighthouse, ate delicious grilled octopus, and visited a butterfly sanctuary, where a dazzling Morpho eugenia landed upon my forehead. We remain devoted friends, and our shared love of the English language keeps our conversations peppered with swishy double entendres and taxonomical puns. Many months later, I shared a superb week with another Indian man, this one a product manager visiting from Utah. We snuggled and laughed and watched our favorite movies together ... I introduced him to "Meet Me In St. Louis", and he showed me the legendarily beautiful actress Sridevi. Truly one of the loveliest humans I've ever met, he went back home with a piece of my heart stowed in his luggage.

Sadly, though, 2021 was also a year of profound romantic failure. I'm sorry to report here that one of the most painful disasters of my love life happened in 2021. And considering all the flotsam and jetsam I've left in my wake, that's really saying something.

One sunny day in May, I met a handsome theater director, visiting from Moscow, as he emerged dripping wet from a swim in the Atlantic. In the course of a few days, he and I found ourselves lost in a delirium of lust, a state of heated and perhaps irresponsible ecstasy that still makes me close my eyes as I recall it. We climbed to the top of Anastasia Island's lighthouse, swam nude under the blue lights of my backyard pool, shared tender kisses under a full moon, and made exciting plans for me to visit Russia. In earnest, I began to study the Russian language, practicing every day, making tremendous advances in the space of a few weeks, even writing my first poem in a foreign alphabet. We jammed our phones with video messages, spoke with an increased earnestness, began to share the most intimate dimensions of our lives. Alas, just a few months later, the dark knight revealed his true nature ... callous, selfish, cruel, and impatient ... and my heart was dashed to the rocks. Again.

But no matter. If there is one thing I've learned in 2021, it's that the human heart is miraculously resilient thing. You can keep breaking it, over and over again ... yet with just a dash of hope, and a lot of faith, it rebuilds itself anew.

Which brings us at last to my current sweetheart, the guy with whom I am sharing the final days of December. He is, without a doubt, the biggest and bestest prize I’ve won at the carnival that was my 2021. I first met this man nearly thirty years ago, when I first arrived in New York City as an impressionable eighteen-year-old rube from the hills. A singer-songwriter, gifted with an extraordinarily supple voice, his star was on the ascendant in those days, and he was starting to taste some fame in the East Village scene. We started chatting during a video shoot for the NYC Anti-Violence Project, a non-profit organization dedicated, as the same suggests, to reducing the risk of violence against (and within) the LGBT community. Right off the bat I found him absolutely arresting ... so bright and charismatic, so sexy and funny and sweet-natured. That night I ended up going home with a different man (a gem of a guy who remains one of my most beloved friends to this day) but I couldn't get that cute little punk rocker out of my mind. I've never forgotten that first impression I had of him, and nothing I've discovered in the subsequent years has changed it. Back in 1992, I had somehow roped him into posing for my camera, in a series of portraits, long before he covered his entire body with elaborate and colorful tattoos, like The Illustrated Man in the sideshow. My infatuation started right then and there ... and to be honest, it never really went away. We kept in touch over the following decades, casually checking in with one another on various social media platforms. Every year, for his birthday, I'd send him a very enthusiastic message, letting him know how beautiful and special he was, how much I admired his music and his spirit, hoping he was finding happiness. I always carried a torch for him ... but, frankly, I kind of thought he was out of my league. He was a celebrity, after all, and so damn gorgeous, and practically everybody in town wanted a piece of that cake. So I put the possibility far out of my mind. "You may as well try to date Marlon Brando," I said, with a sigh, "circa 1951." But this year, as I was making my way through Tennessee, our paths crossed again, quite by chance. And this time, the electricity between us was undeniable. Our friendship suddenly came to crackling, vibrant, buzzing life, and in the subsequent months it became something else altogether.

Let me tell you a little bit about this guy. He makes me laugh so hard that I cry or snort or both. He cares for four dogs with varying degrees of blindness, deafness, or … uh … specialness. He cooks excellent omelettes, and he makes homemade holiday fudge for the locals, and he helps elderly neighbors move their heavy furniture, and his singing voice makes me go weak in the knees. Just like me, he's had a string of relationships, with varying degrees of success. Just like me, he's sober, in an ongoing program of recovery. Just like me, he's at a crossroads in his life, trying to strike a balance between artistic fulfillment and survival in an end-stage capitalist society. Just like me, he gets teary-eyed watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” but thinks “The Bad Seed” is hilarious. We're holding onto one another firmly, like two men who have found a raft in the middle of a turbulent sea, and hoping for the best. It seems like we’ve both arrived at the place in our lives where we’re truly ready to make a go of it.

After all … what have we got to lose?

And so, in the spirit of adventure, in keeping with my ongoing quest to learn and grow and travel far beyond my comfort zone, I took one last great leap of faith in a year full of great gutsy leaps. I proposed to the crooner on Christmas Day. And he said “Yes.”

That was my 2021. I started it off by standing naked on the ocean, asking the fates to surprise me, and I will likely finish it curling up naked (and engaged) in a Tennessee musician’s bed. Between those two moments of literal and figurative exposure stands one of the best years of my life. Thus far, at least. Thanks for taking the ride with me. I love you.

0 notes

theyearsiturnedintoaghost · 3 years ago

Text

These are my thoughts in a long form.

Do people still get excited for stuff as they get older?

Like I literally realized today, while making a rice concoction that I came up with years ago when I was supppppeeerrr broke, stoned, and very hungry with only leftover ordered in white rice sitting in the back of my beige fridge - which while totally disgusting, and embarrassingly unhealthy; I do not care - that I can’t remember the last time I was honestly excited for legit anything.

I mean, sure, I’ve been happy for events that have come up, like peoples weddings, their newborns, a TV show releasing a new season, even a band putting out a new album, but apart from the understanding of a feeling of some kind of form of happiness in my system, I honestly cannot remember the last time I was excited for anything.

Like that kind of excitement that exists in your bones. Where your entire body feels palpable to it. Where it radiates in the pit of your stomach and makes your whole being buzz with an aura of glow-up radiance. Like the feeling of being at the top part of the rollercoaster, right before the weight brings the entire car speeding down the hill and kinetic energy takes over and makes you feel like your in freefall. That kind of excitement feels like it left me in childhood. Like the days you’d get to school and see the Book Fair setting up, the last day of school with a whole summer waiting wide open full of so much possibility, or when I was in the 4th grade and they brought a Planetarium to our school. This inflatable grey blob made basically out of tarps, glue, and an air mattress pump, would come into the school every year and be set up on the stage, all droppy and unappealing just sitting there off to the side of the lunchroom foldout picnic tables, until one day - BOOM - the lesson plan reached the constellation phase and all the Greek Mythology that came with it and suddenly that heap of grey shimmery tarp inflated to this magical bubble of wonder. And for like one whole month your whole world was a new galaxy full of so many stories and dreams littered in starry skies. And since this was something you only did in the 4th grade, it was about the biggest deal in a elementary schoolers life.

And the climb in. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph; that fucking climb in. Which was really a crawl at the slowest of paces because you were school children going at a speed of about .05 mph and one at a time, but only after your about 60-something year old teacher had crawled in and motioned for you specifically to follow when it was your turn, but holy mother of pearl, was that the most exciting thirty seconds of my life up until that moment the first time we were allowed to go into the Planetarium. And then the minute those stars shot across the black inside of the bubble, I really think I fully peaked at that moment.

I think I’ve been chasing the high of that feeling of excitement ever since.

And part of me is slightly worried that I can’t really think of anything in recent years that has made me feel... excitement. Not a date, not a job, not a piece of art.

Well, maybe that last part isn’t fully accurate. I did sort of paint something recently that made me... feel something. But I ‘gave it away.’ And I use quotations around that because I’m unsure if the person who it was made for - who I think it actually belonged to; someone that I had a dream about and painted the dream - ever actually received it. Either way, in the grand scheme of things, I knew the painting didn’t really belong to me. I mean, I was very proud of it - one of the few pieces of art I’ve ever created that I was actually proud of in a way that made me feel... accomplished or something - but just because I made it, I knew I couldn’t keep it. Regardless, I hope the person it was intended for did actually receive it, but I guess I’ll never really fully know.

Either way, maybe that was the last time I felt... some kind of feeling close to excitement. Maybe it was more of a hopefulness for the unknown. I’m unsure. Whatever it was, it was the closet thing I can correlate to the feeling of excitement.

Granted, deep down, I sadly knew it wouldn’t amount to anything, just another thing I created that in the end didn’t really mean anything. I guess that was goodbye to just another fleeting feeling of pretty much anything.

If that person is out there, and ever sees this, I hope it made it to you. With no obligation about what you did with it from there. I just had to throw the Hail Mary.

I think I’m a little worried that I won’t have that feeling of excitement again. Like what if I am a person who never falls in love, or has a baby, or gets my dream job, the promotion you deserve, or even the home you saved so long to buy - or create. What are the small things I keep searching for that will allow me to feel excitement? I’m just... afraid all of the truly exciting things are behind me.

And I don’t want to sound like there is nothing to live for, just nothing that truly excites me. Not in the way that makes me feel potential.

Maybe that’s why I started this? After all the therapy sessions, drunken deep conversations, self introspection, crying in my car alone in parking lots of malls, offices, churches, parks - maybe I just felt like I needed to provide myself some kind of potential for... anything.

Like what if the excitement I had about ‘becoming a writer,’ or whatever other dreams I’ve had in my life, needed to be re-examined and relooked at after all that time. What if it took me this long to think I was capable of even being close to those childhood dreams, or fantasies, because I am far enough removed from them to look at them in an actual insightful way, and not as a fucking dramatic end all be all of who I was during those moments, embarrassed, ashamed that I wasn’t perfect, or on the same path as all the people around me who were accomplishing things, getting promotions, finding love, creating lives, while I was just - slogging through work days in hot kitchens, sticky stained bar counters, random office jobs where I was making no difference to anyone or anything, and just hoping to make it to my days off, have a few laughs with the people I loved, enjoy a mid-grade priced bottle of wine with a roommate, and smoke a bowl or twelve while still trying to figure out where I belonged in all of this complex existence.

Maybe you can’t really live through something and be fair in your judgement of it at the same time. Maybe removing yourself from it - even by about a decade - allows you to actually see it for what it was; part of just the timeline that turned you into whatever you are now.

I guess I’m still unsure what I am. I’m not really... good, or bad. I’m not really super smart - or fully stupid. I’m just me. And even though I know myself, my actual self and not the drug riddled one, or the imaginary dream life living one, or the one people assume me to be, judge me to be, or create in their own mind about me based off of whatever they’ve seen, heard, or think; I do know myself. But I am still learning new things about my own brain, and heart, all of the time. And some of that comes from looking back on the part of me that existed before, the past. It doesn’t mean I want to live in the past again, or that I can’t get beyond the things that happened, but maybe I just never got to fully imprint them into the stories I wished I could have written while I was going through all of it. Maybe I just didn’t know how to be honest and objective about it; not in the way that would make someone care or relate to it.

Maybe I was just afraid that I felt so sad, lost, scared, and like I was always failing at everything I tried; that everything I wanted would always be out of reach, and that I just wasn’t on par with everything everyone else was achieving in their real life - not even so much their online social media portrayal of their lives. I guess I just thought other people wouldn’t understand, or even care, why I felt any of these ways. That one person experiencing anything at all meant nothing to any one else’s journey or story.

Maybe that’s when I really stopped feeling excitement, when I equated excitement, or hopeful possibility, to the end result being disappointment.

I guess I’m trying to work on that.

I’m trying to remember that excitement can happen for the most ordinary things. I’ve just got to remember to be present for those ordinary things to feel it.

Anyway, I guess I’ll have to keep working on it. I hope that means something.

1 note · View note