#even in adverse situations and if the world seems cold and cruel

[sowearecleariamhere]

your blog feels the same kind of safe as the inside of the main hall at a woodcraft camp whilst the rain is chucking it down and now everyone's gathered by the fireplace because we can't have a campfire and we're singing songs and whispering to eachother and laughing because of the shadow puppet shows and we all feel safe and happy even though we feel cold

That is beautiful imagery! Thank you so much <3

[trishvaylar]

Once you get down to writing anything, it changes your world, or at least your perception of it.

For example, writing a romance novel is never the same as reading one. If we take it right back to the beginning, what is a romance novel really? Is it just a story about a female character meeting a male character, then they both fall for each other, or he falls for her, but something goes wrong and only after learning to appreciate her as she should be appreciated, and "understanding how to please a woman worthy of being pleased" (c) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, the greatest classic romance in English literature, he gets the right to be with her? Is a romance story always about obstacles between the man and the woman, any at all? Or is it about a moral journey, undertaken to prove how much he loves her? What kind of romance novel do we prefer and why? I know I have always fancied those which reminded me less about the multi-episode Brasilian shows, where every episode ended with a cliffhanger and you had to wait until the next evening to find out if he finally told her he was in love with her, or to make sure she survived childbirth or...whatever the scriptwriters put them through, the tougher the better. I always gave my preference to profoundly deep, emotional stories, not neccessarily even with a clear-cut happy ending, but with a journey still within. Romeo and Juliette is one of the greatest tragic romances in the world.

But when I started writing my own novel, which is not a romance novel, or, at the very least, not just a romance novel, but more of a mix of genres, I have come to realize how much I have always craved to read something like that - a story, where, from the moment of meeting each other, two people never, for a moment, doubt they belong together. It is them against the hostile cercumstances of the situation in which they met, it is sometimes them against the prejudices of the society, the cold demeanor of their sorrowndings, of the hostility of other groupps of people who do not see their relationship as love and interfere... It is a story, where the reader never doubts the raw reality of their affection. It is the outside world, testing them but never the way they feel about each other. There is no betrayal, no raws, no cheats, no coldness between them, no male-female rivalry, no hard feeling about it being just her to get up at night to feed and wash and put the baby back to sleep, for he does it also and willingly. The novel tests them as a unity, but not what they feel for each other.

Does that seem boring to some people? 'Cause in fact it is anything but. Two people standing as a mutual front, as a family against all the tests lifd throws at them? That is what I call engaging story. Plenty of cliffhangers and adrenaline, plenty of characters letting the author explore the nature of adverse human behaviour, of the fact how always the past influences the present. Of a man, who is given his one sole chance to start life afrash, to be taught to love in a very special way and to learn to accept that being loved and told he is worthy of unconditional love he never expirienced before is what could could really motivate him to become and to be the best man she deserves. It is a story of a love started in redemption, and of what it takes to bring out an innate goodness in someone who once accepted that he deserved nothing more then to be alone, betrayed, miserable and vengful, always getting into a fight for people's affection and always loosing in the end. It is also a story of a woman who took an obvious and an awful risk of responding to a loud plea for affection she saw in a pair of hazel eyes of a convict she knew must be someone cruel and dangerous. But it never impeded her will to respond. To protect and nurture, that is female way, that is what leads us forward. She took the risk, she never looked away from a plea for rescue, she exteded both her hand and her heart, and he repaid her but loving her in a way she could not doubt.

What is an epic story of redemption? It is when one would give anything up to be good after being called good by someone who lights the way forward, and for whose affection one is ready to give up life but also only learns to appreciate life in all the ways he never did before.

I know that great writers always put emphasis on redemption being iniciated by the inner "pull to the light" of their characters, love seems to be a poor and a way too simple, egotistic motive for decing to wish to atone and to atone, but I believe that there are ways of presenting this differently - for example, for someone who was always deprived of love, only love, mutual and true, could become both the motivation and the source of strenght needed to undertake that path of redemption, which is complicated but rewarding in a way that allows him to feel it, feel worthy of her love which is what makes him see how beautiful and worth living life really is.

Such a story allows one to explore so much without being contrite. Indeed reading and writing are the two perspective-changing expiriences!

[fierce-little-miana]

Why do I like Medea?

@irleughlivelyatalanteangodfan asked “May I ask what you like most about Medea?”

To which my first reaction is what is there not to like?

Of course of course someone might answered me that even in the more positive version of the myth Medea is at the very least a murderer. In the worst version she is a fratricide, infanticide, and mass-murderer. So there are indeed things to discuss.

First I must say that I love Medea the most at her worst. I do believe the academics working on the myth finding trace of older versions in which Medea is not at her worst are producing necessary content because it is solid and necessary academic work. And it is not uninteresting to see how with each newer version her depiction tended to be blacken. There is indeed something to be said of a myth that goes from a mythical magical woman to a murderous vengeful woman, especially when this woman is powerful in her own right (her magic) and foreign (three things that ancient Greeks despised). But that is not the appeal of the character to me.

No I love Medea in her murderous rage. I love everything that “dark” Medea stands for. One of the main thing being:

Feminine Rage:

This the name I give to something that became, without me noticing it, one of my favorite tropes in media. It is when a woman just snaps when confronted for the umpteenth time with something fundamentally unfair, fundamentally degrading, that is only leveraged against her because she is a woman.  

There are ways women are supposed to bear pain, humiliation, or attacks against themselves, that are dignified and are positively recognized by society. Gendered ways. While a man is going to fight against adversity a woman is going to endure it. I personally find it extremely disempowering. Resilience has good sides of course but it is not proactive, it is enduring a situation up until it changes of its own accord. Yet this is what women are taught to do. And women are taught to be resilient in the eyes of a society that covers them with outrages specifically because they are women.

A woman who ends up resorting to violence is a great transgressor. Violence is a transgression that might get women completely shun from the “civilized” world (whereas it is not automatic for men). And yet I think there is a secret fear/desire for a lot of women that they are actually one step or two away to falling into primal violence (I am not saying that all women feel like that obviously but the idea seems to speak to too many to be described as only personal).

I recently found this quote that goes in this sens pretty well:

“almost every woman i have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness, that there is some deep, crazy part within her, that she must be on guard constantly against ‘losing control’ — of her temper, of her appetite, of her sexuality, of her feelings, of her ambition, of her secret fantasies, of her mind”

Elana Dykewomon “Notes for a Magazine”

Women are divorced from their violent impulse, from a part of themselves, for the best and for the worst. This feminine rage is powerful way to reconnect with this part of themselves in a eyes of a society that keeps on tormenting them.

That’s what Medea story is in the end. A total dip in primal violence to avenge all the offenses she had to bear because she is a woman. And she only can regain her dignity, and a real agency through this violence.

Medea’s story is incredibly gendered. Sure there is the theme of who is the real criminal: the one committing the crime or the one not preventing it and benefiting from it? But it is mainly the story of a woman who sacrificed everything she had (rank, reputation, honor, morality) to make her husband and family succeed. She got her husband out of all dangerous situations they faced together, and has even offered him opportunity he wouldn’t have had without her. The story of Medea is the one of an older woman whose husband can’t use her anymore after having made her sacrifice everything.

So Medea snaps and exercises powerful violence on her husband and everyone who is working with him to strap her of what remains: her sense of self (I don’t know if it is in every version but in at least some of them Creusa asks to be able to wear Medea’s wedding dress to her own wedding). She punishes them all and finds herself back in the process. Even if she has to suffer excoriating pain in order to do so (killing her own sons) as long as the others suffer more than her and are punished according to their crimes she will not falter.

Medea is feminine rage at its peak, uncompromising and lethal. There is something extremely cathartic in this for me.

The story of Medea is also the story of a foreigner in an hostile land. It is less important than the woman part for me but still essential. And that is why I really like that in the french comic book by Le Called and Peña they do present her as significantly different from the Greeks women and significantly darker.

Not like any other:

Medea, like most of characters in myth, is related to gods. Circe is her aunt, so she is related to Hecate, which is unsurprising considering that she is a magician (a deeply feminine power in most greek myth). But she is also the granddaughter of Helios (actually all four of her grandparents are gods or close to be). But Medea isn’t just related to gods, she behaves like one.

Medea destroys not only Creon and his daughter but in some of the version she is responsible for the burning of the entire city. Exactly like an angry god who has been disrespected by members of a community and brought their anger on all the community (granted the citizens of Corinth did not like her but still).

But it is the punition that she reserve to Jason that strikes me as the most god-like. In ancient Greek myths gods often punishes humans or other gods who had wronged them with fates worse than death (like Prometheus or Lycaon of Arcadia). This is exactly what she does to Jason. She takes everything from him, everything, but she leaves him alive so he has to live through his punishment. He is left with nothing except maybe the shame of being Jason. Even in the Divine Comedy (written in the 14th century and not directly concerned with the Argonauts or Medea) Jason is placed in Hell for what he did to several women.

Medea is superior to nearly everyone else she runs into in her story and her actions in Corinth is a way for her to reclaim that.

A reasonable women:

Medea most famous deed might have been the killing of her sons in Corinth to annihilate Jason but even in this she keeps on being rational. She might fall prey to primal violence but she still plans and executes it with meticulousness.

After all apparently her name comes from the verbs μήδομαι / mêdomai which means to meditate, and might come from an earlier root meaning: understand/conceive.

Medea is victorious thanks to the power of her reason and cleverness. She doesn’t kill Pelias, she convinces his daughters to do so by tricking them into believing that they are going to make him young and healthy again. She gets the Golden Fleece. She gets the very dreadful idea of how to slow down her pursuing father’s fleet. Medea is not only powerful because she is a great magician. She is powerful because she is a smart, ruthless, dedicated woman.

In Corneille’s version, Pollux (an Argonaut whose role here is to be the confident of Jason) has this to say about Jason’s plan of marrying Creusa :

“Bien que de tous côtés l'affaire résolue

Ne laisse aucune place aux conseils d'un ami,

Je ne puis toutefois l'approuver qu'à demi.

Sur quoi que vous fondiez un traitement si rude,

C'est montrer pour Médée un peu d'ingratitude :

Ce qu'elle a fait pour vous est mal récompensé.

Il faut craindre après tout son courage offensé ;

Vous savez mieux que moi ce que peuvent ses charmes.”

Basically this replica starts with Pollux saying that he knows Jason isn’t going to listen to him but still what he is doing to Medea (repudiating and banishing her) is not cool. He finishes by “We need to fear her offended courage / You know better than me what her spells are capable of.” To which Jason answers something along the lines “no worries, her banishment should be enough to tame her”. To this Pollux retorts:

“Gardez d'avoir sujet de vous en repentir.”

Which roughly translates as “Be careful to not end up sorry about it.” Later in the play it seems that Medea has accepted her fate and she has given her wedding dress as a present to Creusa. Everyone thinks that everything is going great and this what Pollux as to say about this:

“J'eus toujours pour suspects les dons des ennemis :

Ils font assez souvent ce que n'ont pu leurs armes.

Je connais de Médée et l'esprit et les charmes,

Et veux bien m'exposer aux plus cruels trépas,

Si ce rare présent n'est un mortel appas.”

He starts by saying that gifts from enemies are always suspicious and dangerous and then say that since it is something from Medea he is ready to bet his life that it is a deadly trap (and by the way he is absolutely correct). This is how the verse from the middle of the replica translates:  “I know of Medea her spirit and her spells”. We can see that in this version, Pollux is deadly sure that Medea isn’t going to take that laying down and that she is going to be a formidable foe. But it is not only her magical ability that he recognises as dangerous (even if he insists a lot on it), it is her courage and her mind (reason).

Medea isn't cold, she burns bright, but she is still a calculating strategist whose magic is as dangerous as the way she uses her mind.

In the end, Medea embodies one of my favorite trope which is woman giving in to a justified burning anger more than ready to bear the consequences of said anger. She does so while acting and thinking like a god and being the best strategist in the room.

A god-like angry clever scorned woman? What is there not to love in her?

[rydell-lafontaine]

Heartache? Rydell didn’t know the bitch.

Okay, so that wasn’t entirely true. Ry wasn’t completely immune to heartache or oblivious to it. She was all too aware of how much it hurt to have people abandon you and disappoint you; she was also all too aware of how it felt to hate oneself. But it wasn’t inaccurate to say that she understood heartache on a relationship level. Because Rydell didn’t believe in relationships. Fuck who you wanna fuck, be that bitch, but feelings? She definitely didn’t know them. And she definitely didn’t want them.

So, the truth was that she couldn’t understand what Cass was feeling. She tried to. Like a good friend she tried to understand that the woman was hurting; she tried to understand pretty much anything about the situation. (She failed, understandably. Ry had never loved another human being- especially not romantically; she had never gotten close enough to let herself get hurt. It was intentional, of course. A guard she had put up; a wall around her heart to protect herself from the world. But it also left her devoid of understanding with so many things. Genuine affection where friends were concerned was even a newer animal for her. So how could she possibly imagine what heartbreak felt like?) She fell short- she fell very short. But no one could say she didn’t try. It counted for something, didn’t it?

One thing that Ry did know despite her adversity to human emotions was that when things were bad or sad? Everyone and their grandmother tried to comfort themselves in some way. Some chose good ways- Ry always chose the bad ones. But hey, to each their own. But rather than try to encourage Cass down the road of very, very bad coping mechanisms the werewolf decided to play it kind, play it nice. Play it normal. And so that was why she found herself pulling up at the stables outside of town and climbing out with a bag in her hands. She could be a good friend- when she wanted to.

Making her way towards the house Ry spotted her friend heading back towards the door- work there was never done, it seemed. “Someone’s busy,” the brunette called out as she approached her. “Maybe I should take my ice cream somewhere else.” Yes, she was teasing. Even Ry wasn’t so cruel as to deprive the woman of cold, sugary comfort food.

@cassandraxwilson​

[kkotseo]

WORD #01: SURPRISE

Expect the unexpected, they say. How lovely will it be to know what’s exactly around the corner? How wonderful will it be to plan ahead in life and see the results of made decisions and done actions without worrying about running out of luck? How pleasant to not face what goes beyond one’s knowledge and imagination? To be prepared at all times. To have the chance to counter any unpleasant situation. To avoid risks. To avoid taking them. To not meet the unknown. To have the security of knowing. To make the right choices. Always. Anytime. How does one even be able to do so? Think of many possibilities, consequences, scenarios, variants-- how does one come up with all of them? If the entirety can be obtained, then the unexpected mustn’t exist. Silly how people believe they can predict it as its beauty lies in its function. No matter how unpleasant it can be at times.

Seoah has her fair share of it. 

Not that she’s grown into an old lady, bitter about life. Experiences shape beings at any age. Good or bad, they are what were once unforeseen. Maturity doesn’t have to correlate with a loss of melanin in hair, a gain of wrinkles and a lack of proper movement in the joints. ( Thank goodness it doesn’t have to. )

Seoah believes she has a fair share of it. But one can’t choose to draw the line and call it an end-- well, for things that one can fully control, surely. Intangible elements? Surely no. When is enough? How will it be enough? No clue.

Talk about expecting the unexpected.

27 years and counting. Some may call her old already. As a tease, of course. Seoah won’t take it at heart. Though, among idols, a new wave of youth signals another generation in the making. Each their own cycle, they say, meaning there’s a beginning and an end. 

Seoah doesn’t feel offense to the remark. She doesn’t qualify herself as an idol. She fought in order to write and compose her creations. She fought for her liberty as a singer-songwriter. She fought... so why will she be too old to practice her dream career? Going through the hassle of auditioning, getting rejected, picking herself up from dejection to try again only to experience failures. Again. And again. And again. The first refusal wasn’t enough to shatter an innocent’s dream. The realization of reality being cruel, even to a young soul, taught her to persevere until she got an approval of an agency willing to train the budding talent. A success she almost thought impossible after numerous trials.

But that was just the start of her misadventures.

The agency vanished after going bankrupt. To start over after accumulated hours, days, weeks, even months, of practice turned into dust. The worst that could happen to her back then. She knew better not to give up or everything would be a waste. Such a waste. More auditions happened, more rejections piled up. Finally, she found another agency to call home— temporarily, as the trainee learned great things are as ephemeral than bad ones.

27 years and counting. Seven of them as a singer-songwriter, and more to come. Seoah stares at the sun setting, fingers curled around a glass of vodka. The bartender seems to be chatting with the new guests sitting at the other corner of the bar while the place fills up gradually. Rapidly, chatters grow louder. She resumes her trail of thoughts, eyes set on the alcohol swirling to her circular gesture. The hustle and bustle around her gives the opportunity to drown in memories without anyone noticing.

A fortunate event doesn’t last long. It lasts while it can. It lasts as long as its presence remains strong. The moment it gets trampled by misfortune, it no longer exists. It becomes the past. A faint memory.

A faint loving memory.

Her determination has led her this far in life. She continued her training without missing any, juggling with school during the day and practice at night. New challenges came in her way when she moved to Japan by herself to study, only to be seen on the streets with her guitar, busking for a chance to be recognized and appreciated. She performed in bars and clubs whenever jigs were allowed despite being underage. She only went on stage and then left for another 2 hours of walk back home. To avoid paying transportation fees, of course. 

She grew independent, self-critical, self-sufficient. That mindset allowed her to participate in a contest on national TV. In a foreign country, she won and as a reward, debuted with a Japanese EP. Soon followed a series of good fortune: her Korean debut was on its way while someone pulled on her heartstrings for the first time. A musician as passionate as her. Someone with who she could express inexperienced freely, clumsily, with the hope of forever.

A forever crushed in a collision. A forever gone with his last heartbeat.

There went her naivety, her innocence, her entire heart. A blow worse than her first audition failure. Her first ever heartbreak came fatally. No sighs ahead. Nothing.

Nothing in one crude sweep.

The vodka burns the back of her throat. She chugs it down as if that will soothe the phantom pain from within. A broken heart has its missing pieces after all. ❝ Another one please. ❞ The bartender nods, able to hear her small plea among the chaos. 

27 years and counting. Two years of romance gone in a second. Worst has yet to come.

And she thought that it was at that moment. Her world ended right there. It ended without her permission. Such brutality left the young adult facing a new universe she didn’t belong to, where people who she considered friends gave advice when none were experts of healing this kind of wound. Nonetheless, Seoah listened.

She shouldn’t have listened.

Getting out there, exposed to new social experiences, meeting new faces and befriending some were what her friends wanted her to do since mourning only sunk her deeper in her sorrow. Their intentions were good-willed. Definitely. So she tried when she kept herself busy with schedules, hiding behind a smile way too bright. She tried and tried until she met someone else. Maybe, maybe, it wouldn’t be so bad to have another human being to help patch up her broken heart? Perhaps that person would put the pieces back with her? However, more wounds appeared with his encounter. The romance she thought soothing at first was only a guise. ( Or its purity became something else with the influence of jealousy, manipulation and selfishness. Maybe. She would never know. )

Patches of reds, blues and purples became frequent. Shivers and screams. Shudders and screeches. Insults, threats, empty promises. Lies. Flown objects on walls. Shattered glass and broken limbs. Self-loathing. Self-deprecation. Slammed doors and fastened locks for safety. Endless ringtones and notifications. And no love to be seen, heard or told ever since.

Nightmare could take the form of a lover.

27 years and counting. One year of losing oneself to a wicked soul. Seoah still has to deal with the after-effects. The thought alone brings an old habit: to check for any trace of bruises or cuts on her flesh. None. The only marks left on her body were her rose tattoos.

A reminder of her resilience. 

That quality of hers brought her this far. Despite the failures in important spheres of her life, she proceeded with caution. Doubt settled in like spilled ink on paper. Skittish towards love, restless towards stagnancy in her career. No time for proper recovery. Her fight for freedom of creativity continued with hours spent in meetings with the agency’s staff. 

Arguments after arguments, it was brought to her that people could be either blind or deaf ( even both ) on purpose. Label mates comforted her. Her success would come, they said. Good things only happened with preparation, they said.

Oh no. Not when she had inconsistent comebacks and improper promotions. Not when her songs kept getting revised and modified by others. Not when the final product only represented a small percentage of her initial work.

Again, Seoah listened. She needed to heal anyway. She needed to if she wanted to appear in front of her fans without faking another smile. Her schedules would distract her at the very least. They always did, right? Yes, she believed so. She wanted to believe that it would take time for things to happen the way they should be.

Because no one deserved to only experience adversity.

27 years and counting. Six and a half years of fixing herself and counting. Two glasses of vodka done. Returning home won’t be a hassle. Tips left on the counter, the soloist walks out of the bar when it’s still loud. A walk in the cold sounds like a better remedy to alcohol. Besides, when still sober, the tapes of her memory lane rolls at a slower pace, giving her time to reflect on each. There’s no unwanted long breaks either. No uncalled rewinds too.

Her long scarf floats right above the ground, competing with the length of her beige coat. The subway isn’t that far. Just around the corner and down the stairs she goes. At this time, the undergrounds are nearly empty. Only those wanting to return home after a long day, trapped in their bubble, are there, standing or sitting still. The soloist’s steps are soundless, landing like feathers on concrete to prevent disturbance. Silence happens to wrap everyone in an comforting embrace. 

Though, silence’s support won’t be of much help. Her feet guide her to a wall adorned with a lovely wallpaper done by fans for their beloved idol. His anniversary passed for what she remembers, but his group has reached an unequivocal unprecedented popularity, making the entire country proud of their accomplishments. Hence, the sign of celebration and encouragement from the fandom.

When she first met him, it was unintended. When she first spoke to him, it was to become close with her hoobaes. When she became close to him, it was not planned to turn out differently. Out of fear, out of doubt, out of insecurity. Yet, he taught her love, a love that she didn’t believe she deserved at first. A love too pure, too gentle, too sweet. Too good to be in stained hands such as hers. What was a love she longed for came in an untimely manner.

If only she could have fully given her heart to him too. She would. Oh, she would in a heartbeat. If only more time was given to her, so she could open up to him. Alas, the music industry was not the place for romance, not when his career was on the line if their relationship came to light. 

A missed opportunity.

27 years and counting. One and a half year of unexpected bliss cursed with an ambiguous ending. People have the audacity to tell others what they can do and cannot do. People have the guts to entitle themselves judges of one’s life as they please. People are just... people. Filled with flaws, imperfections, regrets, and pains. Each their own misery. Each their own method of coping, recovering, changing.

Seoah knows. She’s like anyone else. Human. 

Closer, little by little, her fingers graze upon his features. Years passed since then. Yet, standing in front of his image awakens a numbing yearning that pulled on her heartstrings weakly. ( How does one completely move on when everywhere they go, they are reminded of their past boyfriend? )

27 years and counting. Roughly four years as a trainee. Seven years as a soloist. Four years under FNC entertainment, three under C9 and counting ( in hopes of better musical independence ). 24 years as Choi Junhee, almost three as Choi Seoah. 11 years of extremes in every aspect of her life. Her depiction of a series of unfortunate events. 

What will come to her next? What will happen tomorrow? In three days? In a week? In six months? In ten years? Will a lovely event show up to her? Will it? There’s not much to answer. She can only wonder with each step lingering to a memory she wishes to return to, walking further away from her last lover. ( She only hopes for him to do well, be well. For him to be happy. ) Home seems far on this lonely night.

Expect the unexpected, they say. If she knew, she wouldn’t have turned into the woman she is now. She would have avoided the bad experiences. But how can one progress with cowardice? Therefore, one should embrace the uncertainty.

Because life is full of surprises. It always has. 

[qlmondmilk]

2q18

Kim Taehyung. Unexplained workings of parallel universes, guilt and confusion all over.

Words: 1624.

a.k.a. a hella rough draft from last year that i wanted to finish

If only the prospects are simple. Yet here you are, clutching your chest – or in better terms, clutching at nothing. There’s no heaviness where a pulse should be, not even dead weight. The walls appear boundless, the lack of pigment staring at how absurd you look; close to a ghost, sprawled on the equally colorless single bed, crying for a reason you’re unsure of. This world is neither ending nor beginning. It’s always morning in the sole window situated in front of you, floating high, almost of your reach. Sometimes you hear the chirping of birds, the casual beat of their wings filling up the wind’s silence. Sometimes you hear crying, and others being in the same interval as you are is the closest guess to whose sad lips the sobs were coming from. Maybe they too woke up in cold sweat, with a thousand questions threatening to spill from their bloodied lips, but no one would answer.

It’s pitiful for fate to allow you to breathe, to leave you while everything sits still. Outside they are still breathing, going on with their lives not knowing the true severity of things. Where there are multitudes of possibilities, a large chance of fault compensates, bringing the balance that nobody asked for. Everyone has something to lose, but at least their memory had enough mercy to remember exactly what they are devoid of, while yours decided to hover dangerously to erasure. A foolish hope for absolution. Foolish. The word is no stranger to you. The reason why, you don’t know. If you frown hard enough and feign exasperation, your mind turns into a pity machine. You’ll remember studying plenty shades of blue and pink. As the colors had no shame of robbing each other of space in the sky, you had no qualms in resting your head on someone’s lap. That version of you didn’t bother looking back at the owner of the warmth you indulged in, choosing to focus on a familiar junction above. A certain smear of pink dragged across the purple breadth, reaching out to a small flickering yellow that peeked from the false edge of nowhere. Perhaps unforgivable thoughts ran through you that time, since he called out to you in a low voice, and when you turned your head to speak, to see more of him, the clarity of the memory ceases. Atonement, maybe, for the sins you can’t remember. You’re a fool for remembering, even more so for hurting, though you know so little.   Everything is in patches that don’t add up, a sparse cluster of realities and thoughts mingling as one unintelligible truth. There are brief moments where you claim to be okay with befriending loneliness. That maybe the reason you got here isn’t worth the fight, because what is there to oppose? Stupid, accepting the perpetual fresh change of sheets materializing from air and the never-ending expanse of white would be the equivalent of admitting defeat. You are having none of that. So you pray to whoever took charge of this timeless cavity within the innumerable worlds. Begging to be spared the pain of spending valueless time suspended in the void, you stand from the bed. You’re tired of clutching your heart, tired of waiting for the good unknown to come. Your legs wobble at first, but you grab the bed’s metal railing to regain proper footing. You aimlessly walk towards the window, yet every step seems to force the morning light father away. The ground is a limitless cold that makes you stumble. A dying light reflected in a pair of brown eyes flashed ever so quickly that you almost don’t believe it. You close your eyes in an attempt to chase after the rogue bit of memory, but it dissipates before you can even recall the shade of brown it had.  During your stay, the room has been feeding you glimpses, and you thought them as unreliable; you were thankful nonetheless. Aware of your disbelief, multiple visions are shoved into your head. The tree-lined avenue gives way for the swaying gaps of sunlight, as far as the eye could allow it. Concrete beneath your feet looks scraped and bruised, with all the markings of the weight that gravity allowed to come undone. The air is no different from the occasional gusts you were graced with by the room’s small window, it still meets you with indefinite force – brushing your cheek, claiming that the cold is their working, ensuring that you keep your hands in your pockets, and causing leaves to flutter by and miss you. You carry on with a sedate pace, never the one to hurry. A crack in the pavement has you stopping in your tracks. This was new, unnoticed. There appears to be a fault line at the curb where a street links to an avenue. It’s a deep fissure in the path; a strong force must’ve fractured it, for a chunk of the curb is elevated a bit. A red light reminds the pedestrians to wait, and the cars come and go. Happy for a distraction, you look down and observe the crack for a while, until a sound indicates clearance. You don’t remember pressing the button to cross. A strong gust causes your hair to wildly whip at your face. Though, not wishing to waste something you did not warrant for, you still cross alone from your side, being the only one heading in the opposite direction. With a vision in dancing cracks, you don’t see the speeding car’s approach, and like the seasonal leaves, it nearly touches – no, collides with you. Sunlight then melts into black, until you’re greeted by the sound of an engine starting. A hand gingerly takes yours, and frustratingly, again, you don’t turn your head to see who you’ve been spending both light and dark with. You have the luxury of steering fate, of letting go. Your focus is on the city unfolding in front of you, rather than the boy squeezing your hand every so often, glad to have you. Heaven’s gates are still open. A drop of water is still within your reach, but you continue holding his hand anyway. The world lets it be. No one told the truth couldn’t be sudden, so red passes by and taints your sight. Something close to fear propelled you into action, and somehow, your fingers manage to touch the damned window. A particular memory surges back. You’re sitting on someone’s bed, in a home worth living in. The sheets are soft and warm, a complete opposite to your single time and dimension defying bed as occupation. You can feel yourself smiling. Instead of your muscles straining with great effort, smiling didn't seem too difficult. Sounds were garbled, as if you were at the bottom of a pool, all coherence drowned out. Among the other pieces of the memory, one little detail could be so easily overlooked, yet you still catch it. An insignificant poster among many others on the wall. And yet, you, you poor ragdoll in the hands of fate, can't avoid the needles poked straight to your sanity, can't avoid fate's transference. You look beyond his blur of a silhouette just to have reality smite you. Perhaps fate is indeed cruel. That wide-eyed creature with a poised grin on their face – that isn’t you. She has the same features, but they are in different regard. With their chin up, a calculated posture showing a readiness to face adversity head on, a testament to that the list of dates that were brought upon by years of enduring setbacks. Years of practicing to know what to do, or at least to keep the impression that they did. What the hell, you can’t sing. The you that wasn’t you had the upper hand, for they were living their dream.  The version of you playing in this memory knew. But they let it be, letting his head rest on their lap. Ultimately securing a place they were never meant to have. Or perhaps fate wants you to think that this pause in time is a prison, but a haven all the same. Maybe you approached fate yourself and begged for a clean slate. But then why torture you with a glitchy mind? Nothing ever makes sense, you’ve established that long ago, when the silence - or in relative truth, the lack of sounds that didn’t come from the raging thing beating in your chest - nearly drove you insane. The birds, you hoped, were only asleep and would wake again whenever they felt like it.

It would be so convenient if only your conscience were asleep, and you had control over its whining. But as a human, a constant voice of conscience was not questionable; it makes sense.

It would be better if you were asleep, and fate couldn’t have their way.

* “Forgive me, for I have sinned.“ There were furrows in his brow, but he still laughed. Your ability to shift moods was ridiculous. Moments ago, you held onto him tightly, resolved to preserve the warmth. You held a distant look in your eyes, the light muted for now. He noticed it, though your hands were everywhere – hair ruffles, gentle strokes passing from his ear to his arms, poor attempts to alleviate the creases in his shirt, then a hasty wandering only returning to purpose every now and then to fix his collars. Ever the observant, he knew the appropriate time to be solemn. “What’s your sin, then, sweetheart?” he asked after a while, and you looked down, finally seeing him well and clear for the first time.   “Soul robbery.” * The world itself is a bad dream, don’t you think?

[nodeleteky-blog]

mercy killing

I work in a child care centre. I’m not bad at my job - I get along well enough with kids and I have my mother’s yelling voice, which helps with behaviour management (that’s a fancy educating word for stopping kids from lighting fires).

A couple of terms ago we were in the middle of vacation care, which is different to regular term-time care because instead of dealing with children before and after school (when they’re at their best - either sleepy or just stoked to not be learning), you’re dealing with them for 8 hours at a time.  A lot can go wrong in 8 hours. 

Every school holidays we have a bunch of chicken eggs delivered by a company called Henny Penny Hatching (a name shared with Henny Penny Foods, a Novocastrian fast food chain suspiciously specialising in fried chicken). At the end of the school break, they’re taken away to ‘live’ (die) at a ‘farm’ (slaughterhouse). The idea is the kids get watch the chicks hatch and then take care of them. This is a misguided attempt to teach them about caring for baby animals, the circle of life and value for living things. I say misguided because:

1) a child is not qualified to care for anything more evolved than a sea monkey (even then I would say that’s an ethical grey area),

2) the circle of life is a vicious, unpleasant circle to be involved with,

3) we ate sausages for lunch that day. Living things are priceless, dead things are $3.80/kg. By the third day of the holidays, all of the chicks had hatched but one. One lonely egg, sitting in the incubator like a drunk on the train that slept through his stop. My coworkers and I assumed that this egg was a dud, but by the afternoon it was showing signs of life. The chick was making his way into this cruel world, one peck of his underdeveloped beak at a time. As the miracle of birth was occurring I gathered the children around the incubator, hoping there would be something vaguely inspirational or educational about watching one of nature’s dumbest creatures leave a room with no door. As time went on, it became increasingly apparent that this bird was not naturally gifted at being born. He managed to peck a small hole in the shell, from which logic (and millions of years of evolution) would dictate his head would emerge. Instead he managed to summon the incompetence to thrust his backside through the opening, widening it with his scrawny chicken feet as he went. 

There was something oddly prophetic about coming into the world butt first: this chicken was falling into something he wasn’t quite equipped or prepared for, even by the standards of baby chickens.

Eventually the chick (whom the children had named ‘Plucky’, either for his courage in the face of adversity or because they knew plucking was something that happened to chickens) managed to struggle his (or her, it’s really hard to tell with birds) abdomen out through the hole, leaving the eggshell stuck on his head like a space helmet. On reflection, this bird was in a very peculiar situation: having just become self-aware, he knew he must break free of the only home he had ever known. Having barely achieved this feat, he thrusts his posterior into the unknown. Then, just when he had earned his freedom - his head was left trapped in the sanctuary that had now become his prison. Can you imagine what would have been running through that chicken’s head? Based on my knowledge of chickens, probably not a whole lot (even the fully grown ones don’t use their brains for much: take for instance that headless chicken that survived for 3 years post-decapitation). But if I’m going somewhere new, I want my head to lead the way. It has the greatest hits of sensory organs - nose, ears, tongue, eyes. All the classics you know and love. If someone offered me a free trip to Portugal, but the offer was only good from the neck down - I would have serious reservations about accepting that offer.

It was at this point the children urged me to intervene. I did feel compelled to act: I had invited them all to witness a new life being ushered into our world, after all. If I had to put my thumb on the scale, so be it.

So I reached into the incubator and grabbed Plucky by his not-yet-fluffy bottom and gently broke the shell-noose away from around his neck. 

It became very clear from that moment that Plucky was not a blue ribbon chick. His head looked too small for his body, like a raisin with a beak. Even so, his neck still seemed unable to support its weight. It rolled listlessly, like a flaccid penis in the afternoon breeze. Despite spending the longest in the proverbial oven, he still looked underdone. Plucky just... wasn’t right.

Thinking he might still just be recovering from his hatching ordeal, I placed him in the pen, under the lightbulb amongst the sawdust and chickenshit. Almost immediately, his siblings approached him for what I assumed would be a fraternal greeting and a congratulatory flap - instead they started to peck aggressively at his eyes. An age old hierarchy had just been established: having been the last to arrive, Plucky had become the designated runt. There is no such thing as being ‘fashionably late’ in the animal kingdom. 

I had now reached an impasse - do I let nature take its gruesome course and allow Plucky to be pecked to death by his kin, in front of a live studio audience of impressionable children? Or do I become God himself - intervening in matters of life and death, disrupting the natural order to preserve the innocence of my young charges? I decided that since I had already violated Star Fleet’s Prime Directive by helping Plucky out of his shell, I had better remove him from the situation until he had his bearings. I placed him in a small box under another heat lamp, safely nestled in more sawdust.

Isolation did not help Plucky’s cause. His breathing was shallow and laboured, like a phone call with my dad. He couldn’t move, though maybe he just didn’t see the point. It became clear that Plucky was dying.

Looking back now, I had no obligation to do anything other than let nature take its course. Children all must learn about death and loss, sooner or later (honestly, they should probably learn about it before their first McNugget). But in a misguided attempt to spare them the emotional torment of watching the slow death of a chick they’d grown inexplicably attached to, I decided to do something I never thought I’d have to. I was going to kill Plucky.

I’ll spare you the details, but I will say I am burdened to this day with the guilt of cold blooded (if well intentioned) murder. When I returned the next morning, I found the incubator was lined by at least a dozen homemade signs, clearly drawn by the naive hands of children. I picked one up - it read:

‘RIP PLUCKY

TOM NEXT’