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umichenginabroad · 7 months ago

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Week 10 Reflections: My Personal City Rankings

"Wandering, Wondering, and Ranking: My Take on the Cities I've Ventured Through"

As I've woven through various cities, each has spun its own unique yarn. From the azure coasts of Split to the bustling markets of Marrakech, each place had its charm. Here's my take on them, complete with little anecdotes that stick out in my memory.

1. Split, Croatia

Favorite Memory: Sitting on the ancient steps of Diocletian's Palace, gelato in hand, watching a street performer juggle fire as the sun dipped below the Adriatic. We proceeded this by going on a boat tour taking us from island to island as we drank and partied on each. Split stole my heart with its seamless blend of the old and the new, a city where history lounges in the sun. I need to go back to Croatia ASAP, and if you’re in Europe, any one of Croatia’s cities is a must.

2. Amsterdam, Netherlands

Standout Experience: If you’re studying abroad in the spring, King’s Day in Amsterdam is a must. Imagine Michigan gameday, but the ENTIRE CITY of Amsterdam is dressed in orange on the streets. They literally change laws for one day and when I say almost anything goes, almost anything goes. Aside from that, Amsterdam’s charm lay in its freedom and artistic heart, a city that cycles gracefully through life. Renting a bike through the city is also a must. The bike lanes make it easy, but still, traversing the tiny cobblestone streets is such a vibe.

3. Vienna, Austria

Memorable Encounter: Attending a waltz class on a whim and stepping on far too many toes. Vienna was elegance personified, a city that prides itself on its imperial history and its vibrant present. The amount of insane villas I saw in the span of three days has to be studied. Vienna gets a reputation of not being a party city, but trust me, go to the Travel Shack and Prater Dome, and you’ll have a great time.

4. Prague, Czech Republic

Do I have to say any more? The homiest city out of all the ones on this list and truly a breathtaking wonder of its own. You’ve seen plenty of my love for Prague in my other blogs so I’ll end it here, but trust me, study abroad here.

5. Marrakech, Morocco

Unforgettable Moment: Going on a 3 day desert tour in a big van with all my friends through all the small villages and into the Sahara was probably the most unique experience of studying abroad. If you are not doing any excursions outside of Marrakech, honestly the city gets a little boring. The most surreal experience: going into the desert at 1 am with everybody to the tallest dune we could make it in the dark. The only thing we could see of our campsite was a faint white light lit up in our tents. Could we have gotten lost in the middle of the Sahara desert with no way to get back, yes. Did we, however, no, and that’s all that matters.

6. Paris, France

Cherished Memory: I went there with my parents and a highlight was watching a painter on Montmartre, who, after noticing my interest, gifted me a small sketch of the skyline for free. Paris, with all its romantic clichés, delivered an experience as rich as its history. I went for five days and even that wasn’t enough. There is soooooo much to see with all the museums and monuments. Definitely a place I have to go back to asap.

7. Barcelona, Spain

Highlight: We celebrated Saint Patrick's Weekend here and played Pub Golf, moving from pub to pub with a unique drink at each. The good weather and beach vibes were amazing and seeing the La Sagrada Familia was breathtaking as well. Must go for anybody who wants a plethora of partying, mixed with good weather and vibes. I did hear from my friends who went to both that they did like Madrid more, however, so take that with a grain of salt.

8. Krakow, Poland

Poignant Memory: Lighting a candle in the quiet of St. Mary’s Basilica, feeling the weight of history and the resilience of the human spirit. Krakow was a tapestry of poignant histories and vibrant contemporary life, being so close to Auschwitz while still being a city of the future. One downfall, however, is that even a weekend here feels like a lot. You can explore the entire city in just a few hours and are really reaching for things to do by the end of it.

9. Munich, Germany

Fun Times: Trying (and failing) to keep up with an elderly Bavarian couple on the dance floor during Springfest. Munich was a blend of hearty traditions and modern innovations, all shared over a good stein of beer. Go to either Springfest (if you’re studying abroad in the Winter semester) or Oktoberfest (if you’re studying abroad in the Fall semester). Being in a massive tent and drinking beer with thousands of people is insane, but just remember to bring cash. Munich as a city I can’t say much about, as the majority of our time was spent at the tents, but I will say this, it still felt underwhelming.

10. Budapest, Hungary

Night to Remember: All my friends visited this weekend, and going out in a group of 19 people was truly a highlight. Seeing Buda castle was really cool too, but I honestly did not like this city all that much. Clubs and bars were overrated and too crowded and the city just felt like an industrial city with no soul. One of the less enjoyed cities in my opinion, though, I know some people do disagree with me.

11. London, England

Quirky Tale: Rushing to catch the changing of the guard was a mistake to begin with. As I said in one of my earlier blogs, I want an hour of my life back. London was an eclectic mix of history, modernity, and a touch of royal chaos, but it felt too touristy and too similar to the US. I felt like I visited the little sister of New York City and all the monuments felt overrated as well. Our friend was there to show us all the fun spots, but without her information and tour guiding, not sure how much I would’ve liked the city.

12. Plzen, Czech Republic

Simple Joy: Tasting the local Pilsner where it was born, and understanding why the city prides itself on its golden brews. While Plzen didn’t dazzle like Prague, it offered a quiet nod to the simpler pleasures of life. Also, we went as an entire program in school and getting to know each other better at the beginning stages of this trip was nice as well.

Wrapping Up

Ranking these cities has been like revisiting old friends, each memory a reminder of the times shared. As my time in Europe comes to an end, I’m sad to say that these are the end of my travels to new countries and will be in Prague as I only have one week left. From the peaceful to the chaotic, each city offered a piece of its soul, and I thank it for that. Here's to the streets walked, the friends made, and the memories cherished.

Merry travels,

Rachit Khandelwal

#UmichEnginAbroad #IPEcsPrague #RachitKhandelwal #IPEWinter24 #CzechRepublic

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ghosttotheparty · 4 years ago

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when everything falls into place and youre finally within reach

Abed takes another deep breath, blinking at himself in the mirror. His fingers rub on the fabric of his hoodie, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth over the subtle ribbing on the cuffs of the sleeves. Sleeves that belong to his hoodie, not Troy’s, though the hoodie he wore yesterday was Troy’s. And the day before. And the day before. And most of the days before that too. He knows Jeff and the others noticed, but he appreciates them not saying anything, not pointing it out.

He also knows it must have been hard for Britta to not say anything, to not use her master psychology skills to talk about the effect his missing Troy has had on him. (If she did talk about it, it would take hours. If she wrote a thesis on his missing Troy it would be encyclopaedia length. Pages and pages and pages and pages about him and the damn hoodies, him and the photos on the walls, the photos he took with him to L.A. for a year and then took back, because he couldn’t handle being away from a place Troy had called home.)

He’s counted the days. And the hours.

He spent four hundred seventy days, twenty hours, and twenty-four minutes in L.A.

It didn’t feel like home for a second.

He does miss it on occasion, just specific things. The park near his apartment building that has geese. The water pressure in his shower. The nice old lady that worked at the cafe, that always handed him his coffee with a smile. But he doesn’t want to move back. It was noisy. There were always more people than he anticipated, especially at the grocery store. He ended up buying earplugs to use on his grocery runs, to muffle out the radio, the people talking and laughing, the sounds of cards squealing on the tile floors and bumping into each other, the electric buzzing of the lights and refrigerators. Overwhelming.

And it’s been one thousand, seven-hundred, thirty-seven days, nine hours, and thirty-six minutes since Abed saw Troy last.

Too long.

Abed started to ache just a few days after he left, a soft ache in his heart and in his arms. An ache he could only describe as longing, if he had described it to anyone out loud. It’s a persistent ache, and he still feels it as he takes yet another breath, listening to the voices outside the bathroom. Britta and Jeff’s bickering, Annie whining, “You guys…” and Shirley saying “Hands off,” aggressively, presumably to Frankie, who, Abed has discovered, has a propensity to sneak bites of food before it’s ready.

He feels happy, even with these aches and anxiety, happy that Shirley is back, even just for a visit. Her hugs are warm, and she always smells good, even if the scents are strong and overpowering to Abed. She squeezed him around the middle when they reunited, and he had giggled, letting her sway them back and forth before letting go and letting her pinch his cheeks.

And he’s happy Annie moved back too. He remembers saying goodbye to her at the airport, hugging and watching, unsure of what to do, as she wiped tears from under her eyes. She had been smiling as she cried, though, which only confused him further. She seemed to understand. “I’m going to miss you, Abed,” she’d said. “Promise you’ll email?” And he’s hooked his pinky around hers, nodding and pulling her into another hug, finally letting go and watching her disappear before finding his way to his gate. She’d squealed loudly when they reunited, much like Shirley, and she’d jumped, tackling him in a hug.

Abed is startled out of his memories when Frankie calls his name gently from the hallway.

“Abed? You okay?”

“Coming!” he calls back, not breaking eye contact with himself, and his mouth twists as he adjusts his hoodie, unzipping it a little, trying to look… at ease.

His heart hasn’t stopped pounding since this morning, since Britta and Frankie arrived. His therapist (not Britta) says excitement and anxiety often feel the same: racing heart, shaky hands, breathlessness, restlessness. It’s frustrating. Abed knows he should be excited; Troy is coming home for fuck’s sake. Finally.

But as he walks to the kitchen to join the others, he can’t help worrying.

What if he doesn’t like how Abed redid the apartment? (It’s the same apartment they lived in before Abed went to L.A. It’s different, though; there’s no blanket fort, the photos are rearranged on the walls, the TV is in a different place.)

What if he doesn’t like Inspector Spacetime anymore? (The thought of it runs a jolt through Abed. He doesn’t know how he would deal with that.) What if he’s just different? Over four and a half years. He must be different. They’ve emailed, of course, and Troy even sent Abed postcards, from Venezuela (Troy said on the back that he finally got the opportunity to use some Spanish), Morocco, France, and Italy (“You would love the pasta here, Abed.”).

Abed forces a smile onto his face as he enters the kitchen, looking from Annie’s beaming face to Shirley’s focused face as she rolls out some dough. Jeff and the others have given up on the whole baking can’t be a personality trait thing. Shirley’s pies are too yummy. Abed looks at Jeff’s face, and Britta’s face, and Frankie’s face, which smiles when their eyes meet. And Chang, who somehow became invited. (Abed thinks it was something like a default invitation.) They all appear to be excited, which just pulls the knot in his stomach tighter. Why is he the only one feeling nervous? Frankie doesn’t even know Troy, shouldn’t she be the nervous one? She’s at a Welcome Home party for a stranger. (Though a part of Abed disagrees. Abed loves Troy, and Abed loves Frankie, so really, they’re a family, even if they’ve never met.)

“Smells good, Shirley,” he says, leaning against the counter and tucking his hands in his pockets. “What time is it?” he asks Jeff before Shirley can respond.

“Almost six-thirty.” Jeff takes a sip from his glass of scotch. “He should be here any second.”

Abed’s stomach takes another dive and he nods as Annie squeals.

“I’m so excited,” she says, bouncing up and down on her feet.

“Me too,” Britta says from where she’s perched on the counter. “I bet he has a ton of stories of crazy adventures and--”

“He’s been on a boat for four years, Britta,” Jeff interrupts. “Let’s calm down.”

“Storms, Jeffrey.”

“Yeah, true.”

There’s a knock at the door, and Abed thinks he might throw up.

Britta and Annie both scream, and Britta jumps off the counter, stumbling as she lands on the floor, trying desperately to beat Annie to the front door, and Shirley squeals, rushing to rip off her oven mitts and untie her apron, and as Jeff yells, “Trooyyy!” Frankie moves out of the way, pressing herself against a counter as she laughs. Abed hangs back, following Shirley into the living room to watch as the front door opens and--

Cool.

Cool cool cool.

Troy is standing there, grinning with his shoulders hunched, his arms already raised slightly, ready for Annie to leap into, and Abed is sure everybody in the building can hear her high voice exclaim, “Oh my god!”

And Abed is frozen, watching. Noticing.

Troy’s hair is longer, tight curls circling his head like a halo, and he has a short beard, scruffy and soft-looking. It’s still Troy. Effortlessly beautiful.

Abed is jostled out of his trance by Shirley, accidentally pushed as she sprints to the door, shoving Britta out of the way to jump on Troy, screaming.

Frankie steps up next to Abed, and he can feel her eyes on him but he can’t look away, still staring at Troy, and everything in him is crashing together, his heart is beating and beating, and every thought he’s has in the past one thousand, seven-hundred, thirty-seven days, nine hours, and thirty-seven minutes, every beating and pulsing thought of Troy Troy Troy Troy Troy Troy Troy Troy is standing there in front of him.

He faintly hears Jeff say something, some teasing comment about how Troy is a real man now that he has a beard, about how Jeff needs to shave so they don’t match, and his eyes catch on Troy’s lips, curving into a bashful smile. Abed’s breath stutters in his throat and he accidentally coughs, trying his best to keep his heart beating because if he doesn’t try he might just fall dead to the floor.

RIP Abed Nadir

Cause of death: Troy Barnes’s existence

And then Troy is in front of him, and it’s quieter than it’s been in the apartment for hours, and Abed can feel not just Frankie’s eyes on him, but also Shirley’s, and Britta’s, and Annie’s, and Chang’s, and Jeff’s, but none of that matters, because Troy’s eyes are on him too, locked on his, soft and dark and gentle, and Abed doesn’t know what to do.

“Hey, buddy,” Troy says softly, and Abed finally exhales, feeling his heart pound away in his chest.

“You sailed around the world,” he says, in a more chipper voice than he thought he could, and Troy grins.

“Yeah, I did.”

“...Awesome.”

And then their hands are slapping together as their other hands hit their own chests, and Troy is giggling and Abed is grinning, and Troy’s hand catches Abed’s pulling him into an embrace.

And Abed sinks into it.

His arms wrap around Troy’s neck and Troy’s arms wrap around Abed’s waist, squeezing him and pulling him closer, ignoring everyone else watching them.

“I missed you so much, Abed,” Troy murmurs, just for Abed to hear, like it’s a secret, and Abed buries his face in Troy’s neck. They sway slightly, and Abed squeezes his eyes shut.

When they finally pull away, after seconds or minutes or hours, Abed doesn’t know, they both take a breath and smile at each other. Abed staps back, looking behind himself to see Frankie, looking oddly sentimental, and he says, “Oh.”

He points a finger and says, “Frankie.”

She steps forward.

“Hi,” she says, extending a hand to Troy, but he opens his arms slightly and shrugs.

“Study group family right?”

She laughs, stepping forward and embracing him, saying, “It’s so good to finally meet you, Troy.” Abed moves back, watching with a smile on his face, his fingers laced in front of himself. Everything is falling back into place. Everything makes sense.

“Oh,” Shirley exclaims, clapping as Frankie and Troy part. “I need to check my pies!”

“Pies?” Troy says excitedly and Jeff steps past him to grab his suitcases from the hallway. Shirley goes into the kitchen and ABed hears her hum a happy “Mm-hmm!”

“Hiii…” Chang steps out from the kitchen shyly and Troy points at him, confusion painted across his face.

“Uhm…?”

“Oh, don’t worry about me!” Chang says, holding his hands out in his defence. “I’m on three antipsychotics and I have biweekly therapy.”

Troy pauses, still staring at Chang in confusion (and Abed suspects a little worry), before dropping his hand and saying, “Good for you, man,” and Chang steps forward, holding his arms out for a hug. Troy obliges and looks at Abed with wide eyes and a smile over his shoulder.

“I made some yummy pies,” Shirley says as they all enter the kitchen area, Jeff dropping Troy’s luggage in the living room, “because I thought it would be a nice par-a-llel, as Abed would say--” (she shoots him a glowing smile), “to when you and Abed first moved in here. You remember, the house-warming party, and Jeff tried to trick us all with the dice, and--”

“We danced to Roxanne for longer than is reasonable,” Annie finishes for her.

“Yes, that was fun.” Shirley sets the pies down and Abed leans against a counter, sticking his hands in the pockets of his hoodie. Troy stands next to him, bumping his shoulder and then resting his back against the counter, their arms pressed together. “Well, no one really ate the pies that night but I suppose I was just getting started with baking, maybe they weren’t that good.”

The others, except Frankie and Chang, exchange glances, silently agreeing to secrecy.

“They smell delicious, Shirley,” Troy says and she beams at him.

---

Jeff ordered pizza a while ago, and rather than using a die to choose who goes down to get it, Frankie volunteers. She comments on how weird the delivery man was but says it’s worth it because of how hungry she is. They eat around the dining table, and Troy sits next to Abed. As Britta asks about his “adventure,” (she wiggles in her seat as she says it), Troy’s leg presses to Abed’s. At first he thinks it was an accident, but when Abed shifts his leg, Troy’s doesn’t move.

“I mean,” Troy says, pausing to swallow a bite. “We were only captured by pirates twice, and other than that it was mostly smooth sailing.”

Britta lets out a loud “A-haaaah!” and reaches across the table to high five him while sticking more pizza in her mouth. Jeff rolls his eyes and it takes Chang a second to process it before snapping and cackling.

“Wait,twice?” Frankie says, lowering her slice and looking at him, her expression scandalized.

“Yeah, once in the Gulf of Mexico and the other time somewhere in the Pacific I think, I don’t really remember.”

“How’s LaVar?”Annie asks.

“ He’s good!” Troy’s leg hooks around Abed’s under the table. Abed almost wants to reach under the table and hold his knee or his thigh, but he doesn’t, leaving his hands on the table and letting his other leg drift until it tangles with Troy’s. “I asked if he wanted to come but he said he was just gonna take it easy tonight.”

“Do you think he’ll want to come another time?” Jeff asks. “I was thinking we could have a small party back at Greendale, at the study room. We can retake that photo we took before you left.”

“Oh, yeah!” Troy says excitedly, grinning. “Can we invite the dean too? I miss that funky little dude.”

“...Sure?” Jeff swirls his glass and takes a sip.

There’s a moment of silence as they all dig into their pizza, and Troy sighs happily.

“It’s good to be back,” he says, looking around at all of them. “I missed you guys so much.”

Shirley and Annie both let out their signature “Awww,” and Jeff jostles Troy’s shoulder like a little brother.

“What’s new with you guys, though?” Troy asks. “I mean you told me a lot in your emails but what else?”

“Shirley spun off,” Abed says, pointing a finger at her, and he revels in the way Troy grins at him.

“That’s… true, I did.” Shirley folds her paper napkin and places it delicately in her lap. “I told you about that detective I cook for.”

“Yeah. That’s so cool,” Troy says, leaning forward with emphasis.

“And Annie kind of spun off but she came back,” Abed adds.

“Didn’t you kind of spin off too?” Frankie asks, and Abed shrugs.

“I guess, but I think I kind of knew I was coming back.”

“I am still doing the internship.” Annie clarifies, bouncing in her seat. “It’s just… different. Most of it is virtual, like online and stuff, but every other weekend I go down to the headquarters to work.”

“You’re gonna save the world someday,” Troy says. “Don’t forget about us when you do, okay?”

“Troy, you sailed around the world for four years and I didn’t forget about you.” She pauses. “And you didn’t forget about us either.”

“Of course I didn’t forget about guys, I could never.” Troy looks around the table, at all of them and their greasy pizza. Chang seems more focused on the pizza than anything, but the others are listening intently. “You guys are my family.”

“I’ll drink to that,” Jeff says before Shirley can get an Awww in. They all lift their glasses, and as Jeff says, “To family,” dramatically, Abed feels Troy’s fingers squeeze his knee under the table.

---

Britta suggests they watch a movie, and Troy asks if Abed still has The Breakfast Club.

“Do you guys remember the day we met, and Abed got us all to shut up by reciting a scene from The Breakfast Club?” Annie asks as they migrate into the living room.

“Yeah,” Jeff says, sitting in the middle of one of the sofas. Abed has always wondered how someone can be comfortable like that, legs out, feet planted on the floor, lap empty. But to each his own, he supposes. “Because you guys were arguing so loud the only thing that got you to be quiet was Abed saying ‘No Dad, what about you?’ like young Judd Nelson.”

“He slammed his hand on the table first,” Britta says, flopping onto the sofa next to him “That’s what got our attention.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“You guys were already arguing then?” Frankie says. She sits on Jeff’s other side, crossing her legs.

“Day one,” Troy says, sitting on the other sofa. Abed hadn’t replaced the armchairs they used to sit in. Part of him wishes he had; maybe things would feel more normal. But another part of him doesn’t care, because Troy didn’t sit at the armrest, and he nods to it when Abed faces the sofa. Abed sits between him and the armrest, and his weight on the sofa makes the cushion cave, and he and Troy fall into each other. Neither of them move. “One of the first interactions we had in that room was all of us yelling over each other.”

“And you still argue to this day,” she said in wonder.

“Like a true family,” Jeff says in that I’m being sarcastic but you can take me seriously if you want voice with a matching, arrogant smile.

Shirley lets out a sweet, “Yeah,” and she grins.

Abed pulls his legs up on the sofa, his knees bent in front of him as he leans against the armrest, and Troy’s shoulder bumps him gently before staying, pressing. It stays there as the movie starts, as the others quietly talk, and Abed doesn’t tell them to be quiet, because if he’s honest he’s only half paying attention anyway, his mind too focused on the feeling of Troy’s shoulder against his.

It shouldn’t affect him like this. Before Troy left, they were constantly touching: shoulders pressed together as they next to each other like now, hands clasped as they navigate crowded hallways. Troy always went to find Abed’s hand. Once he accidentally grabbed Annie’s and despite her flustered blushing and giggling, he simply said, “Oh, sorry. Thought you were Abed. There you are, buddy!” and pushed past Annie to reach for Abed’s hand. They’d even cuddled, especially after Abed had had a particularly hard or exhausting day. There were some days he just dropped his bag on the floor and climbed into Troy’s bed, waiting until Troy changed into his pyjamas, or finished his homework, or ate dinner, until Troy climbed in next to him and wrapped his arms around him. They knew about the rumours. (Rumours that everyone in the study group had the decency not to bring up. But Abed suspected Pierce somehow never caught wind of them. Thankfully.)

But now it makes Abed’s heart beat too fast. It makes his hands shake. He clasps them in his lap.

He realises the room is dark, and Chang sits on the floor next to Annie, who’s holding a bowl of popcorn. (When did that happen?) She smiles and holds the bowl out for Chang to take a handful, and Shirley sits next to Troy.

“Abed,” Troy’s voice says quietly, and Abed is shaken into himself.

“Hm?”

Troy’s eyes are soft on him, dark and shining with reflections from the TV.

“You okay?” He’s whispering, and Abed nods, smiling. Troy hesitates, smiling back, and he leans forward, bumping their forehead together lightly before shifting in his seat, moving so he can lay his head on Abed’s shoulder.

As the movie goes on, Abed’s heart slows down until it’s somewhere near normal. He sighs, dropping his head onto the back of the sofa and letting it roll until it’s resting on top of Troy’s head. His hair is soft, and it tickles Abed’s face, but he doesn’t move. He wonders if his beard is as soft as his hair.

“Hey Abed,” Jeff calls across the room as the characters dance on top of a table. “Remember when we did that with the pizza guy?” Abed can hear his amusement in his voice, can hear him grinning.

“Vaguely,” he says back.

Troy’s breathing evens out. Abed thinks he might be asleep, and he doesn’t blame him. But after a few minutes there’s a gentle brush against Abed’s finger, his hands curled up between his chest and his legs, and he looks down to see Troy’s hand resting between him and Abed, his finger ever-so-slightly touching Abed’s. Abed uncurls his hand, extending his fingers just enough to pull Troy’s, tugging his hand into Abed’s lap and clutching Troy’s thumb in his fist as Troy’s fingers brush over the back of his hand, sending chills through his veins and down his spine.

Troy sighs, and lightly rubs the back of Abed’s hand.

Abed is almost falling asleep by the time the credits are rolling, and Jeff loudly states, “Well, I should be off.” He stands and shuts off the TV with the remote, which Abed forgot he had, and Troy lifts his head from Abed’s shoulder. “I have work in the morning.”

“Me too,” Frankie says. “You’re not special.”

“And I have class,” Britta says, standing as well.

“Me too,” Shirley and Annie say simultaneously before looking at each other and saying “Ohh,” in high-pitched voices.

“Me too,” Chang says, pushing himself up from the floor. He accidentally hits the bowl of popcorn, and it tips, spilling kernels on the carpet. Abed shakes his head.

“Ben, what do you even do at Greendale?” Jeff asks. (Troy mumbles “Ben?” next to Abed.)

“Uhm…” He finishes standing, about as ungracefully as humanly possible, and dusts his hands off on his legs. “You should ask the dean when we get there because I honestly don’t know.”

Everyone seems to collectively decide to let that pass as an answer. Annie shrugs and steps to the sofa, holding her arms out to Troy. Troy’s hand detaches from Abed’s, (who forgot they were holding hands. It feels so natural. Like it’s how their hands are supposed to be.) and he stands, hugging Annie tightly before she steps back and Britta takes her place.

“You’ll come by Greendale tomorrow right?” she asks as they rock. Jeff hands Annie her jacket behind them and he pulls his own over his shoulders.

“Yeah, of course,” Troy says, letting go of her. Shirley reaches up with grabby hands and Troy chuckles, wrapping his arms around her. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Haaaaaah,” Britta, saying, tugging her leather jacket on. (Abed doesn’t think it can keep her that warm.)

“It wasn’t that good,” Jeff says, shaking his head, and she makes a face at him.

Troy even hugs Frankie and Chang before everyone leaves, after drawn-out goodbyes, I’ll see you tomorrows, and more I’ll see you tomorrows.

When the door clicks shut, the apartment is silent, and Abed takes a breath before turning away from the door, to where Troy is standing. He’s smiling when Abed looks at him, looking like he’s waiting, and Abed steps closer, hearing only his and Troy’s quiet breaths and the gentle whir of the television. Abed doesn’t realise that Troy is moving closer too, until their forehead are pressed together, and they’re breathing the same air, and Troy’s arms are wrapping around Abed again and Abed’s are wrapping around him.

Abed’s eyes close again, and he hides his face in Troy’s neck, and Troy sighs, humming quietly, and Abed wonders why people question existence, because this is it. This is everything.

They stand there for a while, holding each other like they’re scared to let go, like if they let go they might fall apart, or Troy might disappear for another one thousand, seven hundred, thirty-seven days, until Troy’s arms slide so his hands are holding Abed’s waist, gentle and strong, and Abed pulls back, looking at him.

“Can I touch you?” he whispers softly, looking back and forth between Troy’s dark eyes, and Troy smiles, a soft, sleepy, almost lazy smile, and nods, so Abed places his hands on his cheeks, gently brushing over his beard with his fingertips. He was right. It’s very soft.

Abed can feel Troy’s thumbs brushing back and forth over his waist, slow and gentle, like Abed is fragile, and he realises he’s staring at Troy. It’s probably been too long, Abed thinks, but he doesn’t stop staring. He can’t. Usually, when he stares at people for what they consider to be too long, they get weird. They make faces at him, faces that confuse him, or they walk away, disgruntled or miffed. They scoff, wave, ask What? in rude voices. Even if Abed is staring because he thinks they’re beautiful. But Troy doesn’t seem weirded out right now. He’s still smiling, and he looks sleepy. Eventually, as Abed’s fingers gently scratch over his cheeks and jaw, Troy’s eyes drift shut. His thumbs don’t stop moving on Abed’s waist.

“Troy?”

It takes a second, but Troy’s eyes open, hazy, and then they focus on Abed, and his smile grows.

“Mm-hmm?”

“Are you tired?”

Abed would understand, It is getting late, and Troy has been through a lot. Reunions with six people, and meeting a whole new person, even a person he’s heard about, would take a lot out of Abed.

“I’m happy,” Troy says, like that explains it, and Abed hums. “Do you want to sit? Hang out?” “Sure.”

Troy pulls at his waist, and they go to the sofa, and Abed is a little disappointed because it means he has to stop touching Troy’s face. Troy sits first, looking up at Abed, and Abed can’t not smile at him, because he’s finally here.

Home.

He sits next to him, facing him with a leg bent between them, and Troy looks at him, and Abed smiles.

Abed asks, “Can I touch your beard again?” and Troy says, “‘Course,” and Abed smiles.

He touches his beard, first with the tips of his fingers, before smoothing his hand over his jaw, and Troy’s eyes shut again, and Abed smiles.

Troy bites his lower lip, letting his head fall back, and he looks so happy that Abed smiles, and smiles, and smiles, and smiles.

“Talk to me,” Troy says finally, turning his head slightly so he can look at Abed, and Abed cocks his own head, thinking, brushing the back of his hand over Troy’s cheek.

“I’m officially diagnosed with autism,” he says, watching as Troy’s eyes fly open and he looks at Abed, grinning.

“Yeah?” “Mm-hmm.” Abed sighs. “I talked to a psychiatrist in L.A. Jeff was right.”

“That’s great, buddy!” Troy rests his head on the back of the sofa, still looking at Abed.

“But they don’t use Aspergers as a diagnosis anymore,” Abed continues. “Apparently the guy it was named after was a nazi or something.”

“Oh. Gross.”

“Yeah. I doubt Jeff knew that when he said that to me, though.” Abed looks away from his eyes, watching his own fingers brush over Troy’s jaw.

“I mean, I doubt anyone in the study group really knows much about it in general.”

“Britta.”

Troy furrows his brows.

“Really?” “Yeah, when I told the group she was super excited and did a ton of research. I think she knows more about it than I do.”

Troy chuckles, subtly shifting so he’s closer to Abed on the sofa.

There’s a beat of silence and Abed looks up from his hand to Troy’s eyes, and they lock. Troy’s eyes are smiling.

“I thought about giving up so many times,” Troy says. “Giving up and just coming home.” “I’m glad you didn’t.”

“Why?”

“I know how important it was to you. That you go out and become your own person, cement your own existence. Like a coming of age film but… in your early twenties.”

Abed hesitates for just a split second, and then moves, setting his hand on Troy’s shoulder and lifting a leg and moving so he’s on Troy’s lap, his legs on either side of him. Troy’s hands wait in the air until he’s settled, and then they’re on him, sliding up his thighs until they’re on his waist, slipping under his jacket and pulling him close. Abed touches his hair, closing his eyes as he feels Troy press his forehead to Abed’s chest, just under his throat.

“I thought about you every day,” Troy murmurs, and Abed tugs softly. A rush of warmth goes through him, and he knows Troy can feel his heartbeat. “Every fucking day.”

“I counted them,” Abed admits. Troy lifts his head, looking into his eyes.

“How many?” he whispers, just a breath.

“A thousand, seven-hundred, thirty-seven. And nine hours.”

Troy exhales, leaning forward and pressing his lips to Abed’s throat, as high as he can reach. When he pulls away, the spot gets cold.

“Troy?”

“Yeah?”

“May I kiss you, please?”

“Please,” Troy breaths, his eyes dropping to Abed’s lips. “Please, please, please, please, ple--”

So Abed does.

Their mouths crash together, and Abed’s hands trap Troy’s face, his palms pressing to his jaws, tilting his head for a better angle, and he feels Troy’s hands press into the small of his back and pull him closer. Troy gently bites his lip, and he licks into his mouth, and it’s nighttime and buttered noodles and Inspector Spacetime and Pulp Fiction and a warm jacket and a pretty die and the colour blue and it’s everything Abed loves and has ever loved right on Troy Barnes’s tongue.

And all Abed can think is finallyfinallyfinallyfinallyfinallyfinallyfinallyfinally.

That this is what they should have done the night before Troy left, instead of just laying together, their arms wrapped around each other, their legs entwined, neither of them really sleeping because neither of them wanted to wake up and find that they had run out of time. That this is what they should have done before exchanging hoodies so Abed could keep Troy there with him and so Troy could bring Abed with him, before zipping up Troy’s bags.

That this is what they should have been doing for years and years, that they should have found each other in the world before Greendale, before Spanish class, before that chapter, just so they could do this sooner.

But every single thought is pushed out of Abed’s mind as Troy pulls away for a gasp and pushes back in, running his tongue over Abed’s lips, smiling gently as Abed buries his fingers in his hair, as Troy lifts a hand from his waist and places it on his face, touching him so gently, carefully, thoughtfully that Abed thinks he might cry.

He doesn’t realise he is crying until Troy is pulling away and gently, carefully, thoughtfully, wiping at his cheeks and under his eyes, murmuring “It’s okay,” and “I got you.”

Abed’s fingers are suddenly clutching at Troy’s hood, and he can’t see because the world is underwater, and there’s a soft whining sound that he realises is him when Troy quietly says, “I know, baby.”

Troy pulls at his neck until their foreheads are pressed together, and Troy is warmwarmwarm and Abed can’t stop. His mouth is talking without his brain telling it to (“Please don’t, just-- Don’t--”) and his hands are shaking, and everything is falling down and falling into place.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Troy says gently. “I’m home.”

And then he’s pushing Abed’s hair back and pressing his lips to his forehead, and his cheeks, and his nose, and then his lips, lingering until he pulls away and Abed subconsciously leans in, trying to catch him.

“I love you so much,” Troy whispers when Abed finally stops crying. “So fucking much.”

Abed slips his hands over his neck, brushing his thumbs back and forth over his jaw. He closes his eyes, pressing his lips to Troy’s before pulling away to breathe and resting his forehead on Troy’s, feeling his hands run over his back and his hips and his thighs and then back again like they’re mapping him out.

They stay there, while the stars and street lamps and stop lights shine outside, while cars and motorcycles and bikes speed by, while the wind blows and the rain falls, they breathe and breathe and breathe and exist and exist and exist.

Home.

#so imcurrently obsessed w community #i started watching it last year but its like all ive watched for the past month #and abed has become one of my top comfort characters #and im just very emotional #that is all #thank you for coming #(i might start posting more community stuff btw sorry in advance to ppl who followed me for skam #community #troy barnes #abed nadir #trobed #troy and abed #troy and abed in the morning #:)

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hecra · 3 years ago

Photo

𝐉𝐀𝐃𝐀 𝐖𝐈𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐍 / 𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐀

name : jada winston / nicknames : jade / age : 36 / pronouns : she + her / sexuality : bisexual biromantic / birthday : september 25th / stature : five feet three inches / zodiac sign : libra / occupation : owner of elysium spa / residency : white poplar village / pet ( s ) : cane corso named boof, lipizzan horse named blossom / deity : hera / status : queen of the gods, goddess of women, marriage, the sky and stars / ability : increased hearing abilities, impeccable balance, and mimicry of the local birds around her

you came into the world screaming, swinging your arms and, as your mother would say, ready to rumble. you were the child that seemed to grow too fast, know too much, could speak too soon and always felt a bit different. aspirations and goals always loftier than you could see, greater than what most of the people around you could imagine. you were considered a queen bee growing up —— known for not just being beautiful, but smart and quick witted ; captain of the cheer squad, but the of the quiz bowl to boot. you knew from a young age that despite the splendor of new york, it wasn’t where you would always stay. there was a wanderlust for more, to see egypt, morocco, france, italy —— all of the places that you felt you could only dream of. when you got accepted to dartmouth on a full scholarship there was never any hesitation. you packed your things and left for new hampshire, only returning to your native harlem on the holidays where you weren’t allowed to stay on campus. from literature to maths to business, you felt that you were finally in your element and where you needed to be for your dreams to be recognized and when you graduated with a bachelor’s in physics and astronomy, you carried your diploma with you everywhere proudly, your next steps having you headed to nasa where you realized that all that glitters isn’t gold.

you always knew it would be hard, always knew that you had to be two steps ahead at all times or you would wind up five behind. you were good at that, and always had been, but nothing had been able to prepare you for the realities of the real world and the responsibilities that came with it. crying almost every night in a brand new environment, self isolating despite wanting to be around people cut your tenure short just shy of five years. it had taken a toll on your mental health, one that you hadn’t wanted to acknowledge until you’d woken up in the hospital with only your boss to tell you that your body had crashed due to exhaustion. a kind voice telling you to take a break, to go back and home and re group —— so you did. for the first time since leaving for college you went back to harlem, returning to your roots and where everything had started. your mother told you you could do it, that you had never been a quitter and if you weren’t going to go back to do it on your own terms and that was exactly what you did ; you got back up. sent in your resignation and travelled like you had always longed to. your saw the pyramids, the eiffel tower and the mona lisa, saw the versailles gardens and the leaning tower of pisa ; visited the ruins in greece.

if you tried to explain how you wound up on magnetic island you couldn’t, only saying that the wind had blown you there and expected for it to blow you right back out, but now after ten years, a spa, and a reputation to your name you doubt you’ll leave again.

tldr : jada is the vassal for hera, and somewhat knows it. she’s a former science kid and at all times would rather be in the lab or at her telescope as opposed to in a club or a bar. she owns and operates elysium spa and works hard to make it a calming oasis for everyone that steps foot in it. she’ll often refer to anything before her time on magnetic as ‘ her past life ’ and doesn’t talk much about it unless it’s with people that she trusts a lot, but she can be heard on facetime with her mother often if you ever happen to walk by her office. can come across as having a holier than thou persona, though most of the time she really doesn’t mean to. as with her counterpart, can be extremely jealous and possessive, especially over people that she really cares about and is known to hold a grudge.

#eternal! intro #« ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀queen of the gods ⠀ ⦙ ⠀ isms ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ ⠀ »#sexism tw #hospital tw

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incorrectcats · 4 years ago

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I have 10 questions for Kasmir and Lorenzo.

1. What do you usual get at 7-eleven?

2. Favorite Season?

3. Dream Vacation?

4. What would be your last meal?

5. Favorite color?

6. Favorite clothes to wear everyday?

7. Play sport? If so, which you like the most?

8. What is the craziest thing you did?

9. What annoys you the most?

10. If you trade for a millionaire person for a day, what's the first thing you'd do?

Omg you’re spoiling me!!! Thank you so much ;; Let’s go!

(Note: I’ll answer some of this based on their human AU, because otherwise they wouldn’t know how to answer as cats ksflkjs)

1. What do you usual get at 7-eleven?

Kashmir: KitKats of every flavour avaliable, ramen and persimmons.

Enzo: Custom greeting cards for every holiday/celebration, vegan sausage rolls and cheese. Lots of cheese.

(To be fair, they’re British, so instead of a 7-elevn, I’ll think of... Idk, Aldi or Sainsbury’s, those are the two stores I went to in the UK sdhvbhsk sorry)

2. Favorite Season?

Kashmir: Autumn!

Enzo: Winter. He’s a cozy boy and likes the warmth of the fireplace!

3. Dream Vacation?

Kashmir: Anywhere out of London would be awesome for her. I think she’d enjoy Spain, Portugal and France, and maybe Morocco too.

Enzo: Athens, Florence, Venice or Edinburgh! He also would like to visit India and Thailand, but he’s kinda scared of traveling so far away.

4. What would be your last meal?

Kashmir: A full English breakfast, Chistmas pudding, “pigs in a blanket” and scones with cream and jam. Childhood dishes all of them.

Enzo: Honey garlic glazed salmon with a side dish of grilled vegetables, a variety of cheese, roast beef, seafood and strawberry shortcake.

5. Favorite color?

Kashmir: Lilac, burgundy, silver and gold.

Enzo: Prussian blue, purple and silver.

6. Favorite clothes to wear everyday?

Kashmir: Anything with velvet, embroidery or lace. An Afghan coat and boots.

Enzo: White shirt, vest or suspenders, trousers (never jeans), shoes must be dark and matching the belt, and a tweed jacket. Socks might get a bit more creative. A bow tie is never too much!

7. Play sport? If so, which you like the most?

Kashmir: Ice skating and ballet as a kid and teenager.

Enzo: This poor boy is not the most skilled of all. However, he trains on his own from time to time!

8. What is the craziest thing you did?

Kashmir: Defying Macavity, because she really thinks she’s smarter than him (she’s not). Someday I’ll write this fic I promise fdhjskfjs.

Enzo: Running away from his human home searching for his sister who, at the time, didn’t know about him.

9. What annoys you the most?

Kashmir: Not being the centre of attention or, on the contrary, not being left alone when she’s upset.

Enzo: Getting his fur or paws wet. He hates it with a passion.

10. If you trade for a millionaire person for a day, what's the first thing you'd do?

Kashmir: “I’d take the money, run away and never come back, so I keep it all.”

Enzo: “Isn’t that... Stealing?”

Kashmir “... You shut up. And he’s already rich, so he doesn’t have to answer.”

Enzo: “...”

Enzo: “Okay, yeah, fair enough.”

Thank you so much for these questions!!! I loved every single one of them and I had a blast answering them! 💜💜💜

#jellicle oc #kashmir #lorenzo #roselessart #ask answered

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justforbooks · 5 years ago

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Sir Stirling Moss, F1 great, dies aged 90

He was content to be known, he often said, as the man who never won the world championship: a way of distinguishing him from those of lesser gifts but better luck who had actually succeeded in winning motor racing’s principal honour. But it was the manner in which Stirling Moss, who has died aged 90, effectively handed the trophy to one of his greatest rivals that established his name as a byword for sporting chivalry, as well as for speed and courage.

It was after the Portuguese Grand Prix on the street circuit at Oporto, the eighth round of the 1958 series, that Moss voluntarily appeared before the stewards to plead the case of Mike Hawthorn, threatened with disqualification from second place for apparently pushing his stalled Ferrari against the direction of the track after spinning on his final lap. Moss, who had won the race in his Vanwall, testified that his compatriot had, in fact, pushed the car on the pavement, and had thus not been on the circuit itself. Hawthorn was reinstated, along with his six championship points. Three months later, when the season ended in Casablanca, he won the title by the margin of a single point from Moss, who was never heard to express regret over his gesture.

Such sportsmanship had become part of his appeal, along with the devil-may-care charisma formerly associated with Battle of Britain fighter pilots. His public image was enhanced by his willingness to invite feature writers and TV cameras into his town house in Shepherd Market, the district of Mayfair in central London where he lived, even when married, in a kind of bachelor-pad splendour amid a panoply of hi-tech gadgets.

The aura continued to surround him long after an accident on the track truncated his career at the age of 32, when he was still in his prime. The sight of Moss, in his later decades, entering the paddock at a race meeting, accompanied by his third wife, the effervescent and indispensable Susie, never failed to draw shoals of fans, photographers and journalists keen to hear his opinion on the latest controversy.

He loved to fight against the odds, and the greatest of his Formula One victories, at the wheel of an obsolete, underpowered Lotus-Climax, came in 1961 at Monaco and the Nürburgring, two circuits that placed the highest demands on skill and nerve. Those wins could be set alongside the epic victory in the 1955 Mille Miglia and the historic triumph in the 1957 British Grand Prix at Aintree, when he and Tony Brooks became the first British drivers to win a round of the world championship series in a British car, prefacing a long period of British domination.

Before his retirement as a professional driver in 1962 he had competed in 529 races, not counting rallies, hill climbs and record attempts. He won 212 of them, an extraordinary 40% success rate. Of the 66 world championship grands prix he entered between 1951 and 1961, he won 16, a ratio unfavourably distorted by early years spent in uncompetitive British cars and by a pronounced share of mechanical misfortune.

He was born to parents who had met at Brooklands, in Surrey, the great cathedral of pre war British motor racing. His father, Alfred, was a descendant of a family of Ashkenazi Jews known, until the end of the 19th century, as Moses. A successful dentist, Alfred Moss also possessed a passion for motor sport, and competed at Brooklands in the 1920s; while studying in the US, he entered the Indianapolis 500, finishing 16th. His wife, Aileen (nee Craufurd), was the great-great-niece of “Black Bob” Craufurd, a hero of the Peninsular war in the early 19th century; an equestrian, she also entered races and rallies in her own three-wheeled Morgan.

When their son was born they were living in Thames Ditton. Two years later, after the birth of a daughter, Pat, they moved to a large house in Bray, Berkshire, called Long White Cloud. Both children rode horses competitively from an early age (Pat was to become a champion horsewoman and rally driver). Stirling, educated at Clewer Manor prep school and Haileybury, Hertfordshire, neither enjoyed nor excelled at academic work. It was at Haileybury that he was subjected to antisemitic bullying for the first time.

He was nine when his father bought him an old Austin Seven, which he drove in the fields surrounding Long White Cloud. At 15 he obtained his first driving licence and, with £50 from his equestrian winnings plus the proceeds from the sale of the Austin, bought his own Morgan. It was followed by an MG (in which he was discovered by Aileen Moss while attempting, aged 17, to surrender his virginity to one of his father’s dental receptionists) and then, in the winter of 1947-48, by a prewar BMW 328. This was the car with which he entered his first competition, organised by the Harrow Car Club, winning his class.

Resistant to the lure of dentistry, he worked briefly as a trainee waiter at various London establishments. But motor racing was where his heart lay, and for his 18th birthday his father bought him a Cooper-JAP, powered by a 500cc motorcycle engine, with which to compete in the new Formula Three series. After a couple of good performances in hill climbs, he entered and won his first single-seater race on the Brough aerodrome circuit in east Yorkshire on 7 April 1948.

Ruled out of national service by bouts of illness, including nephritis, Moss was soon a regular winner against fierce competition and before long he was making occasional trips to races in Italy and France. In May 1950, when a race was held in support of the Monaco Grand Prix, he set the best practice time, won his heat and then won the final.

As his reputation grew, he was approached in 1951 by Enzo Ferrari, who offered him a car for a Formula Two race at Bari, as the prelude to a full contract for the following season. Moss and his father made the long journey down to Puglia, only to discover that the only Ferrari was reserved for another driver, the veteran Piero Taruffi. No explanation was offered and Moss’s fury at such treatment led to a lasting rift and a special sense of satisfaction whenever he managed to beat the Italian team, particularly in a British car.

A victory in the 1954 Sebring 12-hours, sharing the wheel of an OSCA sports car with the American driver Bill Lloyd, opened the season in which he made his international breakthrough. Deciding to take the plunge into Formula One, he and his manager, Ken Gregory, first offered his services to Mercedes-Benz, then on the brink of a return to grand prix racing. When the German team politely indicated that they thought he needed more experience, Gregory and his father negotiated the purchase of a Maserati 250F, the new model from Ferrari’s local rivals.

No racing driver can have invested £5,500 more wisely. Moss and the 250F bonded instantly, and he was soon winning the Aintree 200, his maiden Formula One victory. By the time he entered the car for the German Grand Prix, he was being supported by the official Maserati team, which had recognised his world-beating potential. At Monza that September he was leading the Italian Grand Prix and looking a certainty for his first win in a round of the world championship when an oil pipe broke with 10 laps to go.

Mercedes had taken note, however, and signed him up for 1955, as No 2 to the world champion, Juan Manuel Fangio. Although neither spoke the other’s language, a warm respect grew between them. At Aintree, having won three of the season’s first four races and assured himself of a third world title, Fangio took his turn to sit in the slipstream as Moss became the first Briton to win his home grand prix.

In 1955, too, Moss won the Mille Miglia, the gruelling time trial around 1,000 miles of Italian public roads, in a Mercedes 300SLR sports car. During two reconnaissance runs his co-driver, the journalist Denis Jenkinson, prepared a set of pace notes that were inscribed on a roll of paper, held on a spindle inside a small aluminium box. As they charged from Brescia to Rome and back, Jenkinson scrolled through the notes and shouted instructions to the driver. They completed the course in 10 hours and seven minutes, at an average speed of 97.95mph – a record that stands in perpetuity, since the race was abandoned after several spectators were killed two years later.

When Mercedes bowed out of Formula One at the end of 1955, Moss returned to Maserati while Fangio went to Ferrari. Moss won at Monaco and Monza, finishing runner-up to Fangio in the championship for the second time in a row. However he had always hoped to win grands prix in a British car, and for 1957 he was happy to accept an invitation to drive a Vanwall, a Formula One car built by the industrialist Tony Vandervell at his factory in Acton, west London.

At Aintree, after a patchy start to the season, he fell out of the lead with a misfiring engine. Taking over the car of his team-mate Brooks, who was still suffering from the effects of a crash at Le Mans, he resumed in ninth place and eventually took the lead with 20 laps to go after the clutch of Jean Behra’s Maserati disintegrated and a puncture delayed Hawthorn’s Ferrari. More conclusive were the subsequent victories at Pescara and Monza, when the British car and its driver beat the Italian teams on their home ground.

After Fangio’s retirement in 1958, Moss became his undisputed heir. When Vanwall did not attend the first race of the year, in Buenos Aires, he was allowed to drive a little two-litre Cooper-Climax entered by his friend Rob Walker and, through a clever bluff involving pit stops, managed to beat the Ferraris. Back in the Vanwall, he won the Dutch, Portuguese and Moroccan grands prix, but was again condemned to second place in the final standings, this time behind Hawthorn.

Vandervell was so distressed by the death of Stuart Lewis-Evans, the team’s third driver, in Morocco at the end of the season that he withdrew his cars during the winter, leaving Moss without a drive for 1959. The solution was to form an alliance with Walker, the heir to a whisky fortune, whose Cooper-Climax would be looked after by Moss’s faithful mechanic, Alf Francis, a wartime refugee from Poland. The dark blue car suffered from unreliability until late summer, when Moss took it to victories in Portugal and Italy.

Moss and Walker remained in partnership for 1960, but a fine victory in Monaco with a new Lotus-Climax was followed at Spa by a bad crash during a practice session, the car losing a wheel at around 140mph and hitting a bank with such force that the driver suffered two broken legs, three crushed vertebrae and a broken nose. To general astonishment he was back at the wheel inside two months, winning his comeback race in a Lotus sports car.

In 1961 his virtuosity overcame the limitations of Walker’s ageing Lotus and its four-cylinder engine. Twice he outran the V6 Ferraris of Wolfgang von Trips, Phil Hill and Richie Ginther, first in a mad chase at Monaco and then, on a wet track, at the 14-mile Nürburgring. He was at the height of his powers and the only problem was to find cars good enough to match his brilliance.

Before the start of the 1962 season Enzo Ferrari offered to supply his latest car, to be run in Walker’s colours. Old resentments were cast aside and Moss accepted this rare invitation. But an accident at Goodwood, at the wheel of a Lotus, meant that it was never put to the test.

No conclusive evidence has ever emerged to explain why, on that Easter Monday, his car went straight on at St Mary’s, a fast right hander, and hit an earth bank. It took 40 minutes to cut his unconscious body out of the crumpled wreckage.

The outward signs of physical damage – severe facial wounds, a crushed left cheekbone, a displaced eye socket, a broken arm, a double fracture of the leg at knee and ankle, and many bad cuts – were less significant than the deep bruising to the right side of his brain, which put him in a coma for a month and left him paralysed in the left side for six months, with his survival a matter of national concern.

After lengthy treatment, convalescence and corrective surgery, he started driving on the road again. And in May 1963, a year and a week after the accident, he returned to Goodwood, lapping in a Lotus sports car for half an hour on a damp track. When he returned to the pits, it was with bad news. The old reflexes, he believed, had been dulled, and without that sharpness he could only be an ex-racing driver. In the fullness of time, he came to regret the decision. Had he postponed it a further two or three years, he felt, his recovery would have been complete and, at 35, he might have had several seasons at the top ahead of him.

Instead he occupied himself with his property company. There was also the well remunerated business of being Stirling Moss, constantly in demand for commercial and ceremonial events. He participated in races for historic cars, taking advantage of a special dispensation that allowed him, and him alone of all the world’s racing drivers, to ignore modern safety regulations by competing in his old helmet and overalls and doing without seat-belts.

He celebrated his 81st birthday by racing at the Goodwood Revival; a few months earlier he had fallen 30ft down the lift shaft at his Mayfair home, breaking both his ankles. Towards the end of 2016, however, he fell ill during a trip to the far east. After several weeks in hospital in Singapore he was flown home to London and his withdrawal from public life was announced.

Always enthusiastic in his pursuit of what, refusing to abandon the vernacular of racing drivers of the 50s, he referred to as “crumpet”, he was married three times. The first marriage, in 1957, was to Katie Molson, the heir to a Canadian brewing fortune; they separated three years later. In 1964 he married Elaine Barberino, an American public relations executive, with whom he had a daughter, Allison, in 1967, and from whom he was divorced the following year. He married Susie Paine, the daughter of an old friend, in 1980; their son, Elliot, was born later that year.

Appointed OBE in the 1959 new year’s honours list, and named BBC sports personality of the year in 1961, he was knighted in 2000.

He is survived by Susie and his children.

• Stirling Craufurd Moss, racing driver, born 17 September 1929; died 12 April 2020

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

#JUST FOR BOOKS #Stirling Craufurd Moss

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ask-de-writer · 5 years ago

Text

THE HOUSE, (part 2 of 3), a tale of Flocking Bay

Return to the Master Story Index

Return to Flocking Bay

THE HOUSE

De Writer (Glen Ten-Eyck)

7357 words

Written 1990

Reproduction in any form, physical, electronic or digital is prohibited without the express consent of the author.

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Users of Tumblr.com are specifically granted the following rights. They may reblog the story. They may use the characters or original characters in my settings for fan fiction, fan art works, cosplay, or fan musical compositions. I will allow those who do commission art works to charge for their images.

All sorts of Fan activity, Fiction, Art, Cosplay, Music, or any other thing is actively encouraged!

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Next, I began to check the walls for hidden panels or the like. The walls of the parlor, sitting room, and kitchen were smooth with elaborate flocked paper. The wainscots were all of solid, if elaborate, woodwork. That left the study, dining room, and library. I set eagerly to work. The paneled walls of the study proved depressingly solid.

I was delighted when I finally found the basement stair in the library. A bookcase camouflaged a hidden door with the spring catch concealed as one of the few knots visible anywhere in the wood of the house.

Flashlight in hand, I ventured down the short flight of stairs. The basement proved to be small and bare. It had mortared stone walls and a cement floor. There were no hiding places, even the space under the stairs was empty, no rats, no dust, and no cobwebs … Slowly I went back up the stairs to the library.

I put away my flashlight and went to the study to look at the land records again. The papers revealed that the house’s first buyer was George Oates. His brother and sole heir sold the house seven years later. His name was Harold.

As I am something of a bibliophile, I decided to give the house’s library a detailed look. I was more than pleasantly surprised. Not one book was published later than 1866. Many were far older. Some of the books went back to the 1400’s. Mr. Wickes was apparently somewhat dishonest, intellectually. He had signed and dated the flyleaf of each book, for example, “Hiram Wickes, acquir’d 1565.” Some of the dates went back to 1540 in books published from 1483 to 1497. He would have to have been over 300 years old, if the inscriptions were true.

Hiram was heavily into the occult. There was little that did not pertain to the various occult ‘sciences.’ Even the books in foreign tongues, and there were many, had illustrations that indicated that they belonged to this awesome collection of lore. The impression was that Hiram had read all or most of this collection. His marginal notes were in a wide range of languages, often not the language of the book in question. From scanning the shelves, I deduced that there were over twenty five hundred books in the library.

My near drenching of the day before had taught me that it was wise to take my car into town. Mrs. Alderman greeted me at the slightly shabby old counter that served the library for a check-out desk. “My goodness, young man, how did you get on when the power went out? I have a gas range, ‘cause you never can tell when, hereabouts, the power might go.”

“I’ve got gas where I’m staying, too,” I told her, “I made out okay.”

“Well,” she said knowingly, “the radio says it’ll be another two-three hours before we got power again. Why don’t you go sit by that window? It’ll give you light all morning.”

I thanked her and turned at once to the death certificates. Bingo! George Oates, his wife Wilfreda, daughters - Caroline and Charity, and son Harold (named for George’s brother in Boston), had all been declared legally dead, seven years having passed since their disappearance, and all reasonable attempts at contact having failed. Now, the reason for that malevolent plaque came into focus.

Turning to the letters, I started with the earliest. The Post Office had saved Hiram’s mail in the hope that it would yield some clue to his whereabouts. This practice was followed in the disappearance of all subsequent owners of the house. Hiram’s mail was of considerable interest to any who might know a bit of the occult and something of rare books, as I did. The first letter follows:

My Dear Hiram:

It is with the utmost concern that I read your last communication. You were always my most talented pupil and are a valued associate. I pray you, please, reconsider the rash course that you are now contemplating.

Remember, your copy of Alhazarad is not a good one. The edition of 1784 contains many minor lacunae. Before you attempt anything, consult also the Pnakotic Manuscripts and collate what you learn there with Von Junst.

I know that reading the Pnakotic Manuscripts is a difficult and time-consuming task. Never forget that the source of your present wealth and mine lies in those ancient pages. There is much wisdom there for those with the courage to seek. Everything must be checked against other knowledge.

To call upon Him Whose Name Must NOT be Uttered for so trivial a task is a sure way to serious mishap. Remember, your Alhazarad is incomplete!

In concern for your welfare,

I remain, Richten

At Darkhouse, Arkham, Mass.

Unfortunately, the authorities were unable to trace the mysterious Richten or his address. Arkham, Mass. is, of course well known to all scholars and bibliophiles as the home of Miskatonic University, with its astounding collection of rare books of occult lore.

I had never heard of the Pnakotic Manuscripts but the other items mentioned in the letter were familiar to me. Alhazarad could be none other than the author of the infamous Necronomicon. The 1784 edition survives only as a fragmentary copy in the vaults of Miskatonic University. Von Junst could only be the almost as infamous Black Book. This book also survives in only a few priceless copies. Two of the best ones lurked in the vaults of the rare book collection at Miskatonic. They were separate editions, published a century apart.

Another letter, about a week later than the first, was a bit more specific. Richten started in much the same vein as before but went on:

Calling so mighty a being for so trivial a task is absolutely insane. I know that you enjoy tidiness. Who does not? Yet He Whose Name Must NOT be Uttered is not a mere servant and can be disastrously literal, even when all else is done perfectly.

Binding Him, as you have, cannot please Him. What you have learned from the Necronomicon and the Pnakotic Manuscripts has enabled you to compel Him to bring you gold. The first time that He did was almost fatal. Remember, being able to compel is not the same as being master.

For your own safety, Do Not Do This!!!

Wishing you the best,

Your friend and former Master,

Richten

At Darkhouse, Arkham, Mass.

There were also, unfortunately, not translated, letters from Korea, China, India, the 0ttoman Empire, Germany, France, Morocco, and several places in South America. Apparently our Mr. Wickes had been something of a polyglot and did in fact read all of the languages of the books in his library.

It appeared that a careful search of the house, attic to basement, was in order. If there were any chance that I might find a copy of either the Necronomicon or the Black Book, I could turn a fine profit. Either book in almost any condition, was worth in far in excess of mere $45,000.00 that I had paid for the house.

Turning to the newspaper clippings, I found mostly stories of the disappearances of people who had bought the Wickes place. The George Oates family was only the first. They were not alone. The clippings gave some flesh to the legal death declarations. There was another detail to add to my list. No trace was ever found of the possessions of any person who vanished.

Electric wiring had been installed. Several times. It too had vanished without a trace. After each disappearance, the house was exactly as it had been when Hiram Wickes vanished. Even if the furniture and books were sold or even burned, everything always came back.

The Reverend Orville Olson piled all of Hiram’s books and furniture on the lawn and burned it all. He then exorcised the whole place of the “evil ghost of Hiram Wickes.” To prove that the evil was gone, he spent the night in the house. The burn scar on the lawn and the Reverend Olson both vanished. The furniture and books returned.

I made careful tracings of the strange gold coin in the file and made longhand copies of such of the letters as I could and included all of the oddments that I knew of Hiram Wickes and the Wickes house, and prepared the lot for mailing. I addressed it to Professor Gordon Wetherbee at Miskatonic University.

He was a sort ‘uncle’ to me. He and my father had been close friends since long before my birth. That friendship had been extended to me as I grew and was largely responsible for my love of books and learning. I did not know all or even a fraction of what ‘uncle’ Gordon knew or did but I trusted him absolutely.

I did know that his research had taken him all over the world. He knew more of the occult than any other man of my acquaintance.

One set of clippings caught my eye. “BOY GOES MAD!!” Curiosity piqued, I read on. In essence, the story was this:

It was a fine day in April, 1896. Willie Asphel, age 10, was in the mood to get into trouble. He sneaked off to the Wickes place to break windows. Apparently he missed the house with the first stone, as there was no crash of glass or thump of stone on board. He took precise aim and watched carefully where the stone went. Ever after, his hair was stark white, his eyes crossed, and even after he stopped raving, his mind was never fully normal. He demonstrated a talent for seeing into closed containers and the like.

He died of a brain hemorrhage at the age of fifteen.

The power which had failed last night, came back at 3:30 p.m. I felt a need to digest the tale of Reverend Olson and young Willie Asphel, so I left the library. I walked up the street in the sunlight. Cobbles could be seen here and there through old cracks and holes in the paving. Stepping around the occasional weed, I followed the sidewalk to the Post Office. There I mailed my letter to uncle Gordon.

Thoughtfully, I retraced my steps. My car awaited me. No sooner had I got into it than a gust of wind slammed the door. The impact caused the glove box door to fall open. Inside were five gold coins exactly like the one in the file

To say that I was stunned by this occurrence would have been an understatement. A breeze plucked at my right hand, almost as if it were guiding me to the gold. The moment that I took the gold in my hand, the breeze died away. Only then did I notice that my car windows were closed.

My first response was to say, “Thank you, whoever or whatever you may be.” I drove home slowly, mulling over the day’s events. The clouds roiled overhead like fighting dogs.

Once home, I got my flashlight and went straight to the attic. At the stairs, my light would not shine. Somehow, I must have left it on when I last put it away. Irritating.

I had lots of candles down in the kitchen. For a prize like the Necronomicon or the Black Book, I could search by candlelight. An obsession to find those books seized my spirit.

I hurried down to the kitchen and set up a candlestick, which I took back to the attic. The soft glow of the candlelight revealed the same boxes and trunks that I had seen before. There were still no dust or spider webs to be seen. I heard what sounded like a hundred rats on the floor below. A glance out an attic window showed that night had fallen. The ‘spectral brigade’ never started before dark.

The boxes and trunks contained the curios, mementos and journals of travels on six of the seven continents (only Antarctica was not represented.) Glancing through the journals revealed that although Hiram was meticulous at recording detail and observations, he was also quite secretive about the object of his searches and research. It was both fascinating and frustrating.

Some of the boxes contained disturbingly carved stones and other artifacts. Many of these were only disquieting to look at but a few were truly mind twisting. A number of the journals contained finely drawn sketches in ink of architecture that Escher would have loved, had it not caused actual nausea when studied too closely. Many of the drawings were of ruins but they still retained their otherworldly power. Their geometry was subtly skewed from any earthly construction. There was little else, aside from literally thousands of the above mentioned journals. Valuable to the right collector perhaps but not the precious books that I was seeking.

I tried the second floor next. Both bedrooms, the bath, and the large room that I had dubbed ‘the work room’ all proved to have no secret hiding places. If there were any hidden doors or concealed panels they defied me.

The ground floor was next. I started with the kitchen. The parlor got a once-over walls and ceiling. (I had done the floor when I searched for the basement.) The same was done with the dining room, sitting room, and study. Then it was the library’s turn.

Looking at the wall to wall, knee to ceiling, cases of books with their sliding ladders, I despaired of finishing my search that night. There were over twenty five hundred volumes on those shelves.

I stared at the sea of brown leather backs, some stamped with gold, and decided to start at the right of the door and work my way around the room. Each book had to be inspected to be sure that it was not concealing another book in innocent appearing binding. Many of them were valuable in their own right but none could compare with the Necronomicon or the Black Book.

I did not get far before I was too tired to continue. The books that I was seeking had waited for century and a third. They could wait until morning.

The next day, my inspection of the library resumed. Here, at least, Hiram had achieved order. The books were shelved by subject and author, regardless of language. There was precious little of outright fiction though many were obvious foolishness in the light of modern knowledge. At ten in the morning, I stopped, arms aching and eyes swimming. I was less than a quarter of the way through the herculean task.

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Return to Flocking Bay

#THE HOUSE #part 2 of 3 #Flocking Bay #Written by De Writer

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halfasleepoetry · 5 years ago

Note

I wish you would write a fic where Ben and Joe go on holiday together. As a couple or as friends with feelings for each other.

Because I am unlike any sane person who answer asks normally, here you go, a 4K+ word count answer.

One Year Of Love

Joe and Ben found out early on in their friendship that they like travelling together. They make compatible travel buddies; Joe would do the research and Ben would plan the heck out of the trip down to the details and both of them try as much as they can to get everything to work out according to their plan and following their schedule. So far, they have successfully done so each time, until they decided to go to Morocco. They’ve been to almost all European and American destinations that they had wanted to see together, so they decided that the next downtime they have would be the best time to branch out a little, see new places. They had a few countries in mind, but ultimately chose Morocco for obvious reasons (“Casablanca!” Joe said, being the biggest fan of old, classical films), but after much research, they decided ultimately that they would go to Agadir, because Ben loves seaside towns and beaches.

“Do you know that Agadir’s weather is like LA’s?” Joe asked without looking away from his phone.

“No way,” Ben said after swallowing his food. “We’ve picked the perfect place.”

So when they got to Agadir and realized that the chill seaside town is exactly what it is; laid back and operates on its own concept of time, they met their first stumbling block. Their taxi was late, their room not ready for checking in. But the people smiled and carried on as if there’s nothing inherently wrong with a little tardiness here and there. “People around here are really that chill, huh?” Joe recognized the hint of irritation in Ben’s voice instantly. He’s tired. They both were. So he distracted the blonde by dragging him to the rooftop patio of their hotel, where it is also a lounge cafe during the day and a bar at night.

“The sunset here is going to be amazing, don’t you think?”

And Joe was right. They spent the evening looking at the amazing view from the rooftop before going along and around the promenade on a rented scooter, Joe at the front and Ben with his arms around Joe’s waist. They returned to their hotel when it’s pretty late, but the seafront never sleeps, it seems. They stayed out because it’s a shame not to do so, the sound of waves in their ears and night sky lit with stars and a silver crescent moon as they sipped wine and talked quietly and share comfortable silences as they tend to do whenever they are alone in each other’s company.

Morocco is both everything and nothing they had expected it to be; it’s breathtaking and different, quaint and modern, quiet and bustling. They explored the kasbah during the day, went through the restored ruins and returned to the promenade on the second evening, this time staying out longer to enjoy the nightlife. They went hiking at the Paradise Valley, taking in the view of square mudbrick houses and almond trees and olive orchards along the way. Joe had fallen in love with Moroccan mint tea, and even Ben, who isn’t a tea drinker, found himself liking its fresh and charming taste. They, or Ben in particular, had quickly forgotten the initial wariness towards the local’s warped sense of time and tendency to be over-friendly and inquisitive towards tourists. Partly because Joe is very good at handling both the situation and Ben in times like this, and partly because Morocco breathes its old magic everywhere and into everyone who sets foot on its soil. It’s impossible not to be lulled into its spell, as if they’ve drifted out of their lives into a completely different existence, especially as they make their way to Ouarzazate. Moroccan’s Little Hollywood. Games of Throne season 3, Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator and a long list of Hollywood movies were shot there, according to Joe’s research. Joe is driving.

“I feel like--” he started.

“No, don’t say it,” Ben tried stopping him.

“--what, my inner Daenarys is coming out.” Ben groaned and Joe laughed.

When they stopped en route at Taroudant, they walked into the souq. Ben hasn’t stopped taking pictures since morning. He must have taken hundreds of pictures for the last few days, maybe thousands. Joe navigated the way, and they stopped by at a cafe to have mint tea. They--no, Joe--struck a conversation with a couple in their twenties, they’re from France and travelling on a tight budget, so Joe offered them a ride, which they gratefully accepted. They drove on to Taliouine, where they stopped by to try the freshly-made saffron tea, and it’s like no other. Joe bought some saffron stored in dark glass jar for his mom from the local seller before driving on to Ouarzazate, arriving at their riad late in the afternoon. The couple stayed at a budget place nearby, but Joe asked them to join him and Ben for a dip in the riad’s outdoor pool, and dinner later. They talked late into the night before parting ways, and later on as they were lying down on their respective beds in their room, Ben was about to fall asleep when Joe suddenly turned on his stomach and called his name. He told Ben the guy, Louis, told him earlier that he will propose to his girlfriend, Chloe, at the end of their Moroccan trip.

“That’s sweet.” Ben said, yawning.

“Get ready to be invited, if things go well for him.”

“What?”

“I exchanged phone numbers and emails with them.” Ben would have laughed if he wasn’t too sleepy.

“We could have another trip to the French countryside.”

Ben hummed an affirmative noncommittally.

Joe continued, “You know what’s funny?”

“What?”

“Chloe asked me if we’re together.”

There’s a pause before Ben says, “Oh.”

“Anyway, not the first time.” Joe turned to lie down on his back again. “Good night, honey.”

“Asshole.”

“Sleep tight, don’t let the bed bug bite.”

“Shut up, Joe.”

It’s dark but Ben thought he could see Joe grinning. He turned away to face the wall, closed his eyes, but it took him a long time to finally fall asleep.

The next day Ben let Joe slept in as he got up early to jump into the pool, work himself a little before eating breakfast. He ate quickly. One of the older and friendlier staff that Joe had struck a conversation with the evening before, approached him and asked about Joe in broken English. When Ben told him that he’s still asleep, the staff asked if they could send breakfast upstairs for him and Ben thanked him for the kind gesture, endlessly amused by the fact that no matter where Joe goes, he always manages to get people to spoil him.

“Wake up sleepyhead, we’re exploring the citadel today.”

Joe grunted, nodded and sat up, eyes still closed.

“Still tired?”

Joe nodded. Ben sighed.

“Want to sleep in a little bit more?”

Joe shook his head.

“They’ll send your breakfast upstairs.” When Joe neither moved nor made any sound, Ben called his name. He turned his face to Ben’s direction, eyes still closed. He’s pouting a little.

What a baby, Ben thought, but he kind of like this Joe. At least he’s quiet. “Try to wake yourself up while I got our stuff ready for the day.”

Exploring the citadel turned out to be one of the most fun they had as they endlessly struck poses reminiscent of movies they could recognize were filmed there. There were lots of silly ones, especially the ones with Joe and his ‘inner Daenarys’ coming out. They spent the entire morning there, and as the afternoon got unbearably hot, they returned to the riad to soak themselves in the cool water of the pool. Ben let his body float, buoyed by the gentle swaying of the water as Joe submerged himself completely under. His body was rocked by more pronounced swaying as Joe came up and out of the water.

“I could get used to this.” Ben said.

“The pool?” Joe asked.

“And the palm and olive trees. Cool water, hot afternoon, desert heat. All this.”

They spent the evening relaxing, enjoying dinner with wine before turning in early, they would have to be up by dawn to leave for the Sahara desert. That early in the day, the desert is windy and cold, and Ben made sure Joe is properly layered and covered for the journey, using his experience on location in Dubai, filming in the Arabian desert, to good use. As the day breaks and got hotter they lose the layers, which they would need again later at night. Their Berber travel guides made sure their journey went smoothly. They passed by Draa Valley where there are more kasbahs to be seen, palm groves and a village where pottery-making is the mainstay.

They arrived at the camp where they’re staying for the night as the sun set; it’s set up like nomadic tents fit for ancient royals. There’s clean water, delicious food, more wine and Berber traditional drum beats, conversation with fellow travellers. Joe practiced some of the Berber phrases he learned, much to their guides’ delight. As expected, a little bit of wine was all the encouragement he needed to start joining the Berbers and their tribal desert music, moving in time with the drum beats as Ben watched on with a smile on his face. He’s happy, contented and possibly a little bit in love.

The wine and the desert night must have gotten to my head, he told himself.

The bonfire crackled and shone golden-red on Joe. Ben thought the older man looked darkly ethereal, and he’s ready to fall beyond in love with him, ready to go right into the fire. The desert was magic, Joe its sorcerer. And Ben was spellbound.

As the night got deeper and colder they slept under the tent, cozy and warm under their blankets. The bonfire kept on burning. Ben wanted to know if he would still be under the desert's spell when he wakes up tomorrow.

“Ben.” It’s Joe. “Did you drink too much wine last night?” He could hear the tch-tch in his voice, but there were also fingers in his hair, rubbing his scalp, and he almost purred in sheer, unadulterated happiness. Everything is dim, almost dark. “Don’t want to miss the desert sunrise now, do we?” For a moment, he didn’t understand what was happening. And why was his head so heavy and foggy? He was holding on to something warm and soft, an arm and a leg thrown over it almost possessively, and he didn’t want to let go--

--until he realized it’s Joe that he was holding on to.

That jolted him out of sleep right away, and he sat up almost immediately, only to be greeted by a long, numbing pain in his skull. He had to put his head in his hands for a while. Joe sat up too and started massaging his head. He put both hands on Ben’s temples, kneading gently, moving across and around, on the sides of his head, at the back, down to his neck. This feels so good. He didn’t realize he had said it out loud until he heard Joe chuckling. “I should have told you to go light on the wine. They’re local, pretty strong stuff.”

He wanted to tell Joe, no, this doesn’t feel like a hangover at all, but he didn’t want Joe to stop either, so he merely grunted and lied down again, putting his head on Joe’s lap.

He could definitely get used to this.

They got up and moving when one of guides drew the curtain slightly open with his hand, not looking in, just letting them know that they’re ready to go anytime now. Joe replied and thanked him.

The guides brought them a little eastward on camels to see the desert sunrise. The sun came into sight as if it was lighting amber fire that burned across the vastness of the sand and sky all around them. It was magnificent. On Joe’s pale skin, it looked like he was bathed in gold.

Ben continued clicking away on his camera for a while.

When Joe turned to him he was smiling, and Ben found himself smiling too.

“That was bucket-list worthy,” he said, and Ben agreed.

They continued moving until they reached an oasis town, a quiet, rustic place with friendly dwellers, always with mint tea at hand. After looking around the oasis and the buildings, some lived in, some abandoned, they made their way back to Ouarzazate again, through Draa.

It was late afternoon when they were back at the riad; almost evening. Ben missed the clear-water pool and Joe joined him. They had more mint tea, Joe was again chatting away with seemingly everyone over dinner, and Ben was happy to occasionally interject. But mostly he was smiling and laughing. He couldn’t remember the last time he felt this relaxed and happy, and each time he looked at Joe talking and charming everyone at the dinner table, the feelings seemed to amplify.

When they went to bed that night it took a long time for Ben to finally fall asleep, but when he did, his sleep was dreamless and uninterrupted. He woke up feeling fresh and rejuvenated, ready to hit the road again. This time they’re driving to Marrakech on the winding road around the High Atlas mountain range. The view was amazing; snow-capped mountains lining their sight, punctuated by small villages clinging to the mountainsides. Joe decided earlier on to take a slightly more challenging route to Telouet through the Ounila Valley, where they were greeted with terraced valleys and orchards, abandoned houses carved deep into the mountains and more kasbahs, still very well preserved, sprawling and magnificent in their ruins. Ben hoped his camera wouldn’t run out of memory anytime soon.

When they arrived in Marrakech they immediately headed to the riad they’re staying in. It’s in a relatively quiet part of the city, which is saying a lot, since Marrakech is densely populated and its spirit is one of an endless open market. It’s also a lot more colourful than the sienna-hued desert areas and brown-grey of the mountainside. Shops filled with goods and trinkets of all kinds and shapes and small cafes lined the street, with people going in and out constantly. The walls are painted bright white or pastel hues, colourful tiles and geometrical shapes as interior decor. Ben immediately started clicking away at his camera the moment they arrived. Once they entered the riad, they were greeted by the indoor pool in the middle of the open courtyard, its edges tiled green, turquoise and white. It’s not as large and deep as the outdoor one in Ouarzazate, it’s more of a dipping pool if anything. Ben snapped a photo, and checked the display screen.

“We’re gonna have to get a new memory card.”

“Let’s get it when we go out to eat later,” Joe said, looking up and around the courtyard. “It’s gonna be hard to leave this place.” He shook his head apologetically.

They head upstairs, walking along the quiet and empty balcony to their room. The entire riad seemed to belong only to them, no other soul in sight, no sound heard from other rooms. Their room is spacious, with a large bed and a lounge chair big enough for an adult to lie down comfortably on. It’s decorated tastefully in that distinctively Moroccan style; the tilework beautiful and intricate and lining the walls and covering the floor, even in the bathroom. They decided to book this room despite the large bed because of the size and the view; the room with two single beds were much smaller too.

Joe let himself fall down on the bed, while Ben drew the curtain to the balcony. The view is of many other adobe buildings, rooftop patios and far beyond it is the High Atlas, still so majestic in its shadow. Ben began stripping down and out of his dusty travelling clothes, grabbing a pair of shorts from his bag and one of the towels provided in the room.

“Heading to the pool already?” Joe asked, sitting up with a groan.

“Yep.” He ran a hand through his hair, there’s fine dust in them. “You coming?”

“Yeah. Will join you in a minute.” Joe got up and grabbed his bag. Ben didn’t want to wait around for him to get undressed and changed so he went ahead and downstairs to the pool.

He got in and submerged himself completely in the water, and his entire body sighed at the cool relief that it’s been given. He likes the complete, bottled up silence underwater. Soon, from under the water, he could see Joe’s feet, making his way to the edge of the pool, sitting down with a small book, and two red apples in his hands. The thin book is a phrasebook he has been carrying around with him. He took one of the apples and bit into it.

Ben came up and out of the water.

“Look what I got,” Joe said, smirking and showing off the red apple in one hand.

“Were they from the room?” Ben asked, not recalling seeing any. Joe gestured to give him an apple, but Ben shook his head.

“No,” Joe answered around a mouthful. He swallowed before continuing. “Got them from a staff as I was coming here. There’s a kitchen apparently, but it’s hidden a little further away from the courtyard. She was carrying groceries and fruits so I helped her.”

“Been sweet-talking again, haven’t you?” Ben shook his head, but he’s smiling.

“Hey, I helped her.” Joe was indignant. “Even asked for another apple for you.”

Ben waded through the water to come closer to Joe. He stopped in front of the redhead and put an arm across his bare lap. Is it him or is Joe’s skin a lot less paler now since they got here? He seemed to have gotten a bit of healthy colour on them. He leaned forward and stole a bite from the apple in Joe’s hand.

"Hey!" Joe laughed before shaking his head disapprovingly.

“I’ll eat mine later,” Ben said, a little cheekily, but clearly liking the apple’s taste and sweetness.

“No way,” Joe protested, chuckling. “They’re both mine now. Thief.”

Ben just smiled, clearly up to something. “Put that down, I’m pulling you in,” he said suddenly, hooking his arm behind and around Joe’s knees.

“What--” Joe let out a surprised yelp as the younger man pulled him into the dipping pool. It wasn’t that the pool was deep or even remotely dangerous; Ben could stand perfectly fine in it and the water goes up just until his chest, but Joe had noticed an undercurrent of irritation and strain in Ben’s mood since they were in Agadir and then in Ouarzazate, but suddenly it seemed to have disappeared completely in Marrakech, replaced by this cheeky playfulness that Joe hadn’t seen for quite some time. Not since the last time they had taken a long trip away together like this, at least.

It took him awhile to realize that the sudden jump had their bodies pressed close together now, Ben’s arms around him and his arm around Ben’s neck, in each other’s attempt to not let the other person fall down into the water earlier. Ben always came up with some childish, playful ideas like this when he’s in the right mood. How immature, Joe thought, but he likes this Ben better anyway.

He told himself that he should pull away from Ben now, suddenly realizing that not only they’re too close, they’re also wet and almost naked. But neither of them seemed to want to move.

“Hey,” Ben said, and Joe thought he could hear his voice shaking a little, “Remember you told me the other day Chloe thought that we’re together?”

Joe looked straight and unwaveringly into Ben’s green eyes. “Yeah.”

“Do you--” he started and paused, swallowing. “Do you really think it’s funny?”

“No.” He didn’t know why it came out of his mouth almost like a whisper. Suddenly it seemed like the pool water he’s standing in had turned warm, or maybe it was Ben’s arms around him, or the heat he could feel pooling at the base of his gut, and now spreading everywhere in his body, to his head, and colouring his cheeks.

On the other hand, Ben looked like he had lost all colour from his face.

“Me neither,” he said. It must have been barely a whisper too, considering how closely they’re standing in each other’s arms right now, but Ben’s voice sounded too loud in his ears, like the sheepskin drum banging and clear voiced singing piercing the silence of the desert. Ben had been unusually quiet the entire first day they were out on the Sahara, and Joe had tried every little, subtle trick he knew to lift the mood of the younger man, to no avail. He ate less than usual, and had been steadily sipping glass after glass of wine, and his eyes--Joe knew Ben’s eyes better than anyone--they’re filled to the brim with things that were threatening to break and spill anyway no matter how much he--or they, for that matter--tried to hide.

“Joe, I--”

It felt like this conversation that they’re struggling to have, with stuttering words and half-whispers, was the only conversation they have been waiting to have since forever. Since they first met and Joe thought Ben hated him, the American actor who’s playing the bass player of a British iconic rock band. Since Joe’s birthday when Ben apologized and kissed him with an apple between their mouths. Since they hate being away and apart from each other’s side. Since they started using endearments in texts, like they don’t really mean it. Since they first snapped a photo of Ben kissing Joe’s cheek and sent it to Gwil, and it became a normal thing for them to do to rile the poor man up. They’re all just a joke, after all. Joe used to think it didn’t matter, the feelings he had for the younger man, until he learned to read Ben’s eyes, and he could see something more in them. But he kept telling himself it was absurd, it was all merely his imagination.

That is until they found themselves standing here, in a dipping pool with the sun shining through the open, unroofed courtyard, arms around each other, him looking straight into Ben’s eyes and the younger man looking like he’s about to stop breathing, stumbling and choking on his own words.

So Joe did the only thing he could think of. He leaned in, as close as possible without actually touching Ben’s lips, closed his eyes, and kissed him.

There was that initial second where they pretended like they were playing it coy, like they were being careful with each other. But Joe took that half step closer to Ben, and the water around buoyed them on, until two steps and a half later, Ben was pressed against the tiled wall of the pool, and Joe was kissing him with one hand under his jaw, his thumb grazing the corner of Ben’s lips, and the other arm slung over his shoulder, around his neck, keeping his close, even as Ben slips both his arms tighter around Joe, very clearly not going to let him go. At least not anytime soon. They pulled apart for a moment, just enough to breathe, before kissing open mouthed again, savouring each other like making up for lost time. There’s a hint of apple sweetness still on their tongues, but other than that they’re just tasting and breathing in each other, so familiar and yet so new. And touching skin. There’s just so much skin. So when Ben’s roaming hands rather deliberately ran along and inside the waistband of Joe’s shorts, causing him to shudder involuntarily and pull away, he moaned a little into Ben’s neck.

“Wait--” he said, lips still on skin.

“Wait what?” Ben sounded a little confused.

“Wait until we get upstairs?” Joe offered.

“Don’t say things like that.” Ben closed his eyes, pressing their foreheads together before kissing Joe again.

“Like what?” Joe said when Ben let go of his lips to start kissing the skin along his jawline instead.

“Like that.” Ben said, catching Joe's upper lip between his lip and teeth.

“Like, let’s get upstairs, get dressed and go out so we can get the memory card for your camera and something to eat?” He was teasing him.

Ben made a sound in his throat that sounded clearly like a protest and kissed Joe again. “No, like, get upstairs so I can kiss you all day long like this.”

And Joe could honestly, really, see no point in arguing with that, so he kissed Ben one more time.

#hardzello #hardzzello #joe mazzello x ben hardy #joe x ben #one year of love #oneshot #borhap fanfic #fanfic #fic #answer #ask me

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wellesleyunderground · 5 years ago

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Wellesley Writes It: Interview with Anissa M. Bouziane ’87 (@AnissaBouziane), author of DUNE SONG

Anissa M. Bouziane ’87 was born in Tennessee, the daughter of a Moroccan father and a French mother. She grew up in Morocco, but returned to the United States to attend Wellesley College, and went on to earn an MFA in fiction writing from Columbia University and a Certificate in Film from NYU. Currently, Anissa works and teaches in Paris, as she works to finish a PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Warwick in the UK. Dune Song is her debut novel. Follow her on Twitter: @AnissaBouziane.

Wellesley Underground’s Wellesley Writes it Series Editor, E.B. Bartels ’10 (who also got her MFA in writing from Columbia, albeit in creative nonfiction), had the chance to chat with Anissa via email about Dune Song, doing research, publishing in translation, forming a writing community, and catching up on reading while in quarantine. E.B. is especially grateful to Anissa for willing to be part of the Wellesley Writes It series while we are in the middle of a global pandemic.

And if you like the interview and want to hear more from Anissa, you can attend her virtual talk at The American Library tomorrow (Tuesday, May 26, 2020) at 17h00 (Central European Time). RSVP here.

EB: First, thank you for being part of this series! I loved getting to read Dune Song, especially right now with everything going on. I loved getting to escape into Jeehan’s worlds, though sort of depressing to think of post-9/11-NYC as a “simpler time” to escape to. My first question is: Reading your biography, I know that you, much like Jeehan, have moved back and forth between the United States and Morocco––born in the U.S.A., grew up in Morocco, and then back to the U.S.A. for college. You’ve also mentioned elsewhere that this book was rooted in your own experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. How much of your own life story inspired Dune Song?

AMB: Indeed, Dune Song is rooted in my own experience of witnessing the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. As a New Yorker, who experienced the tragedy of that now infamous Tuesday in September almost 19 years ago, I would not have chosen the collapse of the World Trade Center as the inciting incident of my novel had I not lived through those events myself. So yes, much of what Jeehan, Dune Song’s protagonist, goes through in NYC is rooted in my own life experience. Nonetheless the book is not an autobiography — I would consider it more of an auto-fiction, that is a fiction with deep roots in the author’s experience. The New York passages speak of the difficulties of coming to terms with the tragedy that was 9/11 — out of principle, I would not have chosen 9/11 as the inciting incident of my novel if I did not have first hand experience of the trauma which I recount.

EB: Thanks for saying that. I feel like there is a whole genre of 9/11 novels out there now and a lot of them make me uncomfortable because it feels like they are exploiting a tragedy. Dune Song did not feel that way to me. It felt genuine, like it was written by someone who had lived through it.

AMB: As for the desert passage that take place in Morocco, though I am extremely familiar with the Moroccan desert — and have traveled extensively from the dunes of Merzouga to the oasis of Zagora — this portion of the novel is totally fictional. That being said, I am one of those writers who rides the line between fiction and reality very closely, so if you ask me if I ever let myself be buried up to my neck in a dune, the answer would be: yes.

EB: How did the rest of the story come about? When and how did you decide to contrast the stories of the aftermath of 9/11 with human trafficking in the Moroccan desert?

AMB: Less than six months after 9/11, in March of 2002 I was invited back to Morocco by the Al Akhawayn University, an international university in the Atlas Mountains near the city of Fez. There I gave a talk which would ultimately provide me with the core of Dune Song: the chapter that takes place in the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, where following a mass in commemoration of the victims of the 9/11 attacks, an Imam from a Mosque in Queens was asked to recite a few verses from the Holy Quran. The Moroccan artists and academics present that day were deeply moved by my talk (which in fact simply recounted my lived experience); they told me that I should turn my talk into a novel. I thought the idea interesting and began to write, but within a year the Iraq War was launched and suddenly a story promoting dialogue and mutual understanding between the Islamic World and the West seemed to interest few, so I moved on to other things. Nonetheless, the core of Dune Song stayed with me.

Years later, as I re-examined that early draft, I realized that if I was to turn it into a novel, it had to transcend my life experience — and that is when I turned to my knowledge of the Moroccan desert and my longstanding interest in illegal trafficking across the Sahara desert. I returned to Morocco from the USA in 2003 thanks to Wellesley’s Mary Elvira Stevens Alumnae Traveling Fellowship to research what will soon be my second novel, but truth be told I got the grant on my second try. My first try in the mid-90s had been a proposal to explore the phenomenon of South-North migration across the Sahara and the Mediterranean. I remained an active observer of issues around Trans-Saharan migration, but I went to the desert three or four times on my return to Morocco before I understood that this was where Jeehan too must travel. My decision to bring Jeehan there probably emanated out of the serenity that I experienced when in the desert, but if Dune Song was to be more than just a cathartic work, I realized it should also attempt to draw a cartography of a better tomorrow — and so Jeehan would have to go to battle for others whose fate was in jeopardy because of a continued injustice overlooked by many. It seemed clear to me that Jeehan’s path and those of the victims of human trafficking had to cross. Her quest for meaning in the wake of the 9/11’s senseless loss of life depended on it.

EB: I really loved the structure of the book––the braided narratives, moving back and forth between New York and Morocco. How did you decide on this structure? And how and why did you choose to have the Morocco chapters move forward chronologically, while the New York chapters bounce around in time? To me it felt reflective of the way that we try to make sense of a traumatic event––rethinking and obsessing over small details, trying to make sense of chaos, all the pieces slowing coming together.

AMB: Fragmented narratives have always been my thing, probably because, as someone who straddles many cultures and who feels rooted in many geographies, I felt early on that fragmented forms leant themselves to the multi-layered stories that emanated out of me. My MFA thesis was an as-yet-unpublished novel entitled: Fragments from a Transparent Page (inspired by Jean Genet’s posthumous novel). Even my early work in experimental cinema was obsessed with fragmentation — in large part because I believe that though we experience life through the linear chronology of time, we remember our lives in far-less linear fashion. I agree with you that trauma further disrupts our attempts at streamlining memory. The manner in which we remember, and how the act of remembering — or forgetting — shapes the very content of our memory is essential to my work as a novelist, for I believe it is essential to our act of making meaning of our lived experience.

In Dune Song the reader watches Jeehan travel deep into the Moroccan desert. We also watch her remember what has come before. And we witness her struggle with her memories, which is why the New York chapters bounce around in time. The thing she is frightened of most — her memories of seeing the Towers crumble, knowing countless souls are being lost before her eyes — this she cannot remember, or refuses to remember clearly. And it is not until she is in the heart of the desert and is confronted with the images of the collapse of the WTC as beamed through a small TV screen in Fatima’s kitchen, that she takes the reader with her into the recollection of that trauma. Once that remembering is done, her healing can truly begin — and the time of the novel heads in a more chronological direction.

EB: While this is a work of fiction, I imagine that a significant amount of research went into writing this book, especially concerning the horrors of human trafficking. What sorts of research did you do for Dune Song?

AMB: As I mentioned earlier, beginning in the mid-nineties, the issue of human trafficking across the Sarah became a subject of academic and moral concern to me. But the fact that I grew up in Morocco, and spent many of my summers in my paternal grandmother’s house in Tangier, sensitized me to this topic very early on. Tangier, is located at the most northern-western tip of the African continent, and therefore it is a weigh station for many who aim to cross the Straits of Gibraltar with hopes of getting to Spain, to Europe. I recall a moment when as a teenager I gazed out over the Straits from the cliff of Café Hafa, where Paul Bowles used to write, and imagined that the body of water before me as a watery Berlin Wall. One of my unpublished screenplays, entitled Tangier, focused on the tragedy of those who risked their lives to cross the Straits. So, did I do research to write Dune Song? You bet — I folded into Dune Song topics that had been in the forefront of my consciousness for years.

EB: I know that Dune Song has been published in Morocco by Les Editions Le Fennec, published in the United Kingdom by Sandstone Press, published in France by Les Editions du Mauconduit, and published in the U.S.A. by Interlink Books. What was the experience like, having your book published in different languages and in different countries? Were any changes made to the novel between editions?

AMB: Dune Song was first published in Morocco in an early French translation. Initially this was out of desperation, not choice. I wrote Dune Song in English, and I shopped the English manuscript in the UK and the US to no avail. I was told by people who mattered in literary circles that the book was too transgressive to be published in either the US or UK markets. Suggestion was made to me that I remove all the New York passages from the book if I was to stand a chance of having it hit the English speaking market. I refused to do so and instead worked with my friend and translator, Laurence Larsen to come up with a French version. That being done, I shopped it around in France only to be told that a translation couldn’t be published before the original. Dismissively, I was told to seek-out who might benefit from an author like me existing. The comment hit me like a slap across the face, and I sincerely thought of giving up on the work all together — more than that, I thought I might give up on writing — but my students (who have always been a source of support for me — more on that later) convinced me not to trow in the towel. Once I had the courage to re-examine the question posed to me by the French, I realized that there was a viable answer: the Moroccans. That’s when I contacted Layla Chaouni, celebrated French-language publisher in Casablanca, and asked her if she might want to consider Dune Song for Le Fennec.

Layla’s enthusiasm for the novel marked a huge shift in Dune Song’s fortunes: the book was published in Morocco, won the Special Jury Prize for the Prix Sofitel Tour Blanche, was selected to represent Morocco at the Paris Book fair in 2017, which then lead me (through my Wellesley connections) to gain representation by famed New York literary agent Claire Roberts. It was Claire who got me a contract with Sandstone as well as with Interlink and with Mauconduit — she has been an unconditional champion of my work, and for this I will be eternally grateful. It must be noted that when the book got to Sandstone, I believe it was ‘wounded’ — it had gone through many incarnations, but I was not thrilled with the final outcome. My editor at Sandstone, the fantastic Moria Forsyth gave me the space and guidance to “heal” the manuscript — that is, she identified what was not working and sent me off to fix things, with the promise of publication as a reward for this one last push. The result was the English version that everyone is reading today (published in the UK by Sandstone and in the US by Interlink Publishing). My translator, Laurence Larsen worked diligently to upgrade the French translation for Mauconduit.

It has been a long journey, at times dispiriting, at time exhilarating. I am terribly excited that today, my Dune Song has been published in four countries, and there is hope for more. In the darkest hours of the process, I gave myself permission to give up. “You’ve come to the end of the line,” I told myself, “it’s okay if your stop writing altogether.” In hindsight, hitting rock bottom was essential, because the answer that came back to me was NO. No, I won’t stop writing. I accepted that I might never be published, but I refused to stop writing, for to do so would be to give up on the one action that brought meaning to my life.

EB: You’ve mentioned that Dune Song was originally written in English, though I am guessing, based on your background and reading the book, that you also speak Arabic and French. How and why did you decide to write Dune Song in English? And did you translate the work yourself into the French edition?

AMB: Yes, Dune Song was originally written in English. Though I speak French and Moroccan Arabic (Darija) fluently, my imagination has always constructed itself in English. Growing up in Morocco as of the age of eight, I considered English to be my secret garden — the material of which my invented worlds were made. I had often thought that my return to the United States, at the age of 18 to attend Wellesley, was an attempt to find a home for my words. Even today, living in Paris, I continue to write in English.

I chose not to translate Dune Song into French myself, primarily because my French does not resemble my English — it exists in a different sphere belonging more to the spoken word. I wanted a translator to show me what my literary voice might sound like in French. I have done a fair amount of literary translation, but always from French into English, and not the other way around. Nonetheless, as you rightly noted, I have actively wanted to give my readers the illusion of hearing Arabic and French when reading Dune Song. I like to refer to this as creating Linguistic Polyphony: were the base language (in this case English) is made to sing in different cords. I think my French translator, Laurence Larsen was able to reverse this process and give the French text the illusion of hearing English and Arabic.

EB: In addition to your research, what other books influenced or inspired Dune Song? My fiancé, Richie, happened to be reading the Dune chronicles by Frank Herbert while I was reading your book, and then I laughed to myself when I saw you reference them on page 56.

AMB: The Dune Chronicles, of course! Picture this: a teenage me reading Frank Herbert’s Dune while waiting at the Odaïa Café on the old pirate ramparts of Rabat while my mother was shopping in the medina. I read twelve volumes of the Chronicles. Reading voraciously in English while growing up in Morocco was one of the ways for me to always ensure that my imagination was powering up in English. You’ll note that I give Jeehan this same passion for books. Many of the books that she turns to in her time of need are the books that have shaped who I am and how I see the world: Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, Allende’s House of Spirits, Okri’s The Famished Road, Calvino’s The Colven Vicount, Aristotle’s The Poetics, Edna St. Vincent Millay’s poetry…

EB: What are you currently reading, and/or what have you read recently that you’ve really enjoyed? What would you recommend we all read while laying low in quarantine?

AMB: I’m one of those people who reads many books (fiction, non-fiction, and poetry) at the same time. If I look at my night stand right now, here are the titles I see: in English — Hannah Assadi’s Sonora, Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, Du Pontes Peebles’ The Air You Breathe, and Margo Berdeshevsky’s poetry collection: Before the Drought, in French — Santiago Amigorena’s Le Ghetto intérieur, and Mahi Binebine’s La Rue du pardon.

In quarantine, Margo’s poetry has provided me with a level of stillness and insight I did not realize I longed for — and has seemed prescient in its understanding of humanity’s relationship to our planet.

EB: On your website, you mention you are also a filmmaker, an artist, and an educator in addition to being a writer. How do you think working in those other fields/mediums influences your writing? How do you think being a writer influences those other pursuits?

AMB: Writing as an act of meaning making is the mantra I constantly recite to my students. In my moment of greatest despair, they echoed it back to me. Why do I allow myself this type of discourse with my students? Because as a high school teacher of English and Literature, my speciality is the teaching of writing. While at Columbia University, though enrolled in a Masters of Fine Arts in Fiction at the School of the Arts, I had a fellowship at Columbia Teachers College, specifically with The Writing Project lead by Lucy Calkins (today known as The Reading and Writing Project). There I worked as a staff developer in the NYC Public School system and conducted research that contributed to Lucy’s seminal text, The Art of Teaching Writing. Over the years my students have helped me realize why we bother to tell stories and how elemental writing is to our very humanity. I could never divorce my writing from the act of teaching.

Regarding cinema, as I mentioned earlier, my frustration with how to translate multi-lingual texts into one language is what originally drove me to experiment with film. What I discovered as I dove deeper into the medium, was how key images are to the act of storytelling. Once I returned to writing literature, I retained this awareness of the centrality images in the transmission of lived experience. I smile when readers of Dune Song point out how cinematic my writing is — film and fiction should not stand in opposition one to the other.

EB: Writing a book takes a really long time and can be a really lonely and frustrating experience. Who did you rely on for support during the process? Other writers? Family? Friends? Fellow Wellesley grads? What does your writing/artistic community look like?

AMB: It took me over ten years to write and publish Dune Song. The tale of how it came to be is almost worthy of a novel itself. When things were at their most arduous, I went back to reading Tillie Olsen’s Silences, about how challenging it is for women to write and publish — it was a book I had been asked to read the summer before my Freshman year. Though I won’t tell the full story here — I must acknowledge that without the support of my sister, Yasmina, and my parents, as well as essential and amazing women in my life, many of them from Wellesley, Dune Song would never have seen the light of day. Sally Katz ‘78, has been my fairy-godmother, all good things come to me from her, plus other members of the astounding Wellesley Club of France, especially its current president, my dear classmate, Pamela Boulet ‘87. I must thank my earliest Wellesley friend, Piya Chatterjee ��87, who plowed through voluminous and flawed drafts. Karen E. Smith ’87, who reminded me of my creative abilities when I seemed to have forgotten, and who brought her daughter to my London book launch. Dawn Norfleet ’87 who collaborated with me on my film work when we were both at Columbia, and Rebecca Gregory ’87, with who was first in line to buy Dune Song at WH Smith Rue de Rivoli, and Kimberly Dozier ’87, who raised a glass of champagne with me in Casablanca when the book first came back from the printers. The list of those who helped me get this far and who continue to help me as I forge ahead is long - and for this I am grateful… writing is a thrilling but difficult endeavor, and without community and friendship, it becomes harder.

And since the book has been published, the Wellesley community has been there for me in ways big and small, even in this time of COVID. Out in Los Angeles, Judy Lee ’87 inspired her fellow alums to read Dune Song by raffling a copy off a year ago — and now, they have invited me to speak to their club on a Zoom get-together in June!

EB: Speaking of Wellesley, and since this is an interview for Wellesley Underground, were there any Wellesley professors or staff or courses that were particularly formative to you as a writer? Anyone you want to shout out here?

AMB: When a student at Wellesley, a number of Professors where particularly supportive of me and my work. At the time, I was a Political Science and Anthropology major; Linda Miller and Lois Wasserspring of the Poli-Sci department were influential and present even long after I graduated, and Sally Merri and Anne Marie Shimony of the Anthropology department helped shape the way I see the world.

Any mention of my early Wellesley influences must include Sylvia Heistand, at Salter International Center, and my Wellesley host-mother, Helen O’Connor — who still stands in for my mother when needed!

More recently, Selwyn Cudjoe and the entire Africana Studies Department, have become champions of my work. Thanks to their enthusiasm for Dune Song, I was able to present the novel at Harambee House last October and engage in dialogue about my work with current Wellesley students and faculty. This was a remarkable experience which gave me a beautiful sense of closure regarding the ten-year project that has been Dune Song. Merci Selwyn!

I speak of closure, but my Dune Song journey continues, just before the pandemic, thanks to the Wellesley Club of France and Laura Adamczyk ’87, I was able to meet President Johnson and give her a copy of Dune Song!

EB: Is there anything else you’d like the Wellesley community to know about Dune Song, your other projects, or you in general?

AMB: Way back at the start of the millennium, when the Wellesley awarded me the Mary Elvira Stevens Traveling Fellowship, I set out to excavate family secrets and explore the non-verbal ways in which generation upon generation of mothers transmit traumatic memories to their daughters. My research took me many more years than expected, but I am now in the process of writing that novel, along with a doctoral thesis on Trauma and Memory.

In conjunction with this second novel, I am working with Rebecca Gregory ’87, to produce a large-scale installation piece exploring the manner in which the stories of women’s lives are measured and told.

EB: Thank you for being part of Wellesley Writes It!

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polarisavi · 5 years ago

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Hi! big, HUGE fan of your band au! could you write something from it? like, anything at all or you can totally ignore this message too. no problemo

hey anon! I’m not sure when i’ll make a full on sequel, but please have this scene that will be part of any sequel and has been clear in my head since writing somehow escape. it takes place before lucas’ european tour when they’re both in france. i’m not sure what you expected, but after all the pining of the last one I wanted to write them cozy and together, so i hope you like it. and sorry this took a few days! i wanted to finish up something else before writing it.

eliott is taller than him, but not that much broader, so some of lucas’ shirts slide over his shoulders easily and sit inconspicuous on his frame. it takes a few minutes to even notice the shirt, honestly. lucas’ hair is still wet from the shower, stray water drops tickling his neck, muscles pleasantly buzzed from a morning run, and the familiar burgundy shirt is rendered largely irrelevant relative to eliott. eliott, awake but still in bed where lucas left him earlier, rolling out of bed with the small knowing thrill that, unlike other times, leaving eliott in bed is only temporary, that he will be able to roll right back into him when he returns, will not be separated by obligations that force the thread between them elastic. eliott, sleep soft and probably still warm, staring out the window and undoubtedly a thousand miles away. eliott, who, regardless of where his thoughts have taken him, has a guitar on his lap and is coaxing something beautiful out of it.

eliott demaury, lead guitarist of award winning indie pop band intricate teacups, film student, raccoon enthusiast, and lover of virginia woolf, abstract art and lucas lallemant.

it still feels like a trick, sometimes, like he’s stumbled into something fantastic and fun and finite, just waiting for someone to tap his shoulder and drag him away. sorry sir there’s been a mistake, this was never meant for you. except eliott has noticed him now, eyebrows flicked up in a question (most likely about why lucas is standing in the doorway, still and silent, instead of crawling into bed, or making them coffee) and an easy smile on his lips. the song morphs suddenly, between one chord and the next, into a familiar comfortable arrangement, one he used to listen to non stop. it’s a reminder, yes, an inside joke between them no one else is allowed to be let in on, but also a prompt for lucas to do something, to get into arms reach, to talk or move. lucas takes the invitation for what it is, and sings a few words quietly as he crosses the room.

“well, i’ll run, babe, but i’ll come running, straight to you.“

it has the desired effect, and by the time lucas crawls over the bunched up sheets eliott is giggling, eyes gilded in delight, and the guitar categorised as secondary, shoved to the side and scooping lucas in his arms instead to take its place. lucas’ knees land on either side of his thighs and eliott’s hand lands, as it always does when they’re in this position, on the tattoo on his thigh, only a couple months old. mari had done it herself, in the end, rolling her eyes but acquiescing when he’d asked. it’d been a few years since she had worked as a tattoo artist professionally, officially, but her talent hadn’t faded an ounce, smiling and serious as she took a needle to his skin. bunches of tangled flowers, vivid petals and unexpected thorns and curled up leaves, peer through the spaces between eliott’s fingers. lucas’ arms loop around his neck, and he nudges their noses together, gently leans forward to place his forehead on eliott’s, his skin humming and breathing easy.

unbidden it reminds him of that death cab song imane adores about distance and yearning. her boyfriend, sofiane, of soft eyes and endless support and spectacular dance moves, who lucas has yet to meet, has spent the previous few years out of the country frequently, obligations in morocco that imane isn’t always able to join him in due to her own job. it’s hardly the exact same situation, but lucas understands why she listens to it a lot; he is always surprised, though perhaps he shouldn’t be, that they have so much in common. the lyrics, particularly applicable when they were apart, are somehow still relevant. most of the time any great space between them feels villainous; his skin, craving eliott’s, their hands tangled, ankles crossed, shoulders pressed close, anything.

i need you so much closer.

eliott leans back so they can see each other properly. “where did you go this morning? sleeping with the aircon only works if you’re there to keep me warm,” he adds with a teasing pout, thunderstorm eyes glinting in the light streaming through the window.

lucas mirrors his pout but runs a hand across his head, fingers scratching lightly. in response eliott leans forward, head almost on lucas’ shoulder. “poor baby. i went for a run. and i was thinking we should go to the ocean today, if you want?"

eliott huffs out a laugh, a flutter of warm air on his shoulder. "i want. i thought we were having lunch with mari, though?"

"we still are. i was thinking later on, around sunset, maybe. i know a place, it’ll be chill. quiet.”

"quiet as in not crowded?"

"yeah. or, it usually isn’t.”

“perfect,” he says, the corner of his lips tilted up in the way that means he’s planning something, a secret tucked into his cheek.

speaking of, “what were you playing? i don’t think i’ve heard it before.”

“it’s new. i, uh, accidentally overhead an argument yesterday and got inspired,” he answers, sheepish but not ashamed, amusement twitching his lips.

“lovers quarrel?”

“no, i think it they were friends. i’m mostly sure the argument was officially about gardening techniques but it sounded very…personal.”

lucas considers this. “broccoli as a metaphor?

they’re so close he can feel eliott’s chest bounce as he laughs, the sound vibrating right into his own body. “exactly, broccoli as a metaphor, and maybe snowpeas too.”

they just smile at each other for a small stretch of seconds, before somthing occurs to him. “have you eaten yet? had any coffee?” eliott shakes his head, so lucas kisses his cheek. "i’ll bring you something.”

“lucas, you don’t have to.”

“i know. i want to. and i’m hungry too, so it’s not entirely selfless. be right back."

in the kitchen he makes a bee line to the fridge, already knowing exactly what he wants. sitting on the second shelf is a bowl of lychees, almost overflowing, gifted to him by arthur, who in turn had been given way more than any one person could ever need as payment for a piece of jewellery he’d given them. it had been a beautiful ring, the band composed of three braided strands textured like tree branches, and made out of recycled black metal. it was definitely worth the boxes of fruit and jars of honey and jam he had received in return, even if a lot of the produce had to be passed forward before it could rot. that night, a considerable portion of his payment was used for making various daiquiris and desserts, the close circle of friends he’d managed to maintain despite his restlessness cluttered into arthur’s kitchen, overly spoiling his dog with treats and attention, yelling over the video games and spanish music someone, probably mahdi or esra, had put on, the remnants of rum and cherry crumble and pavlova on every available surface.

it’d happened a few nights before eliott arrived. he should try and organise something like it again, before he leaves. he can picture it vividly, suddenly, wisps of how eliott would fit into their group drifting across his mind like they’ve already happened. it makes his heart go terribly soft, thinking about how easily eliott fits into his life. how gently they’d bumped into each other, and how natural it felt falling into the possibility of them. if he was someone else, lucas might think the word fate, or destiny. as it is, he thinks about entropy and serendipity, the sea of chaos that put them in the same room, the deliberate choice of everything that came after.

he returns to his room with a tray laden with a pot of coffee, two mugs, a bowl of lychees, and the portable speaker that he’d left in the living room. he places it on the bed but snatches the speaker and moves it to the desk in the corner. eliott doesn’t like any of the properly hard music lucas has in his library, so he opts for pantera, quiet enough for them to speak at normal volumes. if and when eliott gets sick of it, he will not be shy about telling lucas. until then, he sets his favourite album on repeat and focuses his attention where it should be.

eliott has already dragged the tray close and broken open a lychee, juice glistening on his fingers. his house is high up and the view outside his window beautiful, early enough that the sky is partially bruised yellow and pink, the sunrise not yet flattened out. when he settles close to eliott, their knees bumping together, he is handed a mug of coffee.

"i like being in your city, with you here to show me all of its secrets. it’s nice seeing you so settled. comfortable.” ‘as opposed to in america’ is left unsaid.

“you’ll have to do the same when i visit you in paris. tiny, overlooked secrets or bust, baby.” aka show me the places that are imbued with meaning and memories for you, too.

“i already have an itinerary,” eliott says solemnly. coming from anyone else lucas would presume it a joke, but with eliott he might be serious, a carefully crafted list of places they could enjoy together sitting innocently in his phone, or a notebook, a collection of neon post it notes.

he pivots, shoulder perpendicular to the wall, to face him properly. “we’ll need to figure out when i can visit you. the semester starts in about a month, right? and then it’ll only be a handful of weeks before i have to go back to the states for rehearsal and then directly to dublin.”

eliott smooths a hand over lucas’ shoulder, down his arm, and it does settle him some, but not all, nervousness fluttering in his gut. “i know we do,” he says, low and faintly plaintive. “is it awful that i want to be selfish and, just, not think about that yet? it’s so much nicer only focusing on this day,” a kiss on lucas’ forehead, “this hour,” a kiss on the bridge of his nose, “this minute,” a kiss on his cheek, “here with you.”

he opens his mouth to say - something, but eliott holds a lychee to his lips and he bites into that instead, cold and lush. delicious and gives him time to think of a proper response.

“i think that we should talk about it soon, before you have to leave, but…yeah, okay, we can be selfish. i’d like that.”

he is reminded, once again, of entropy and choice. nothing is ordained, or destined, and any future days between them not promised by the universe. recognising his active participation feels almost startling, his mind wide awake. eliott steals his phone to turn off the music and pick up his guitar, hand big on the neck, crafting something jaunty and stumbling, fingers occasionally tripping over decisions.

lucas breaks open another lychee.

#yes the decision to exclude basile was deliberate #boy doesn't have enough texture and fun to fit into this verse #my fic #Anonymous #Ask

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marignytotreme · 6 years ago

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SPOT ON!

Sometimes when I look around the internet, in all it’s glory, I realise just how fucking deluded people are – especially where Meghan Markle is concerned.

A number of us dislike her, a few really don’t care either way and the rest live with their heads up her arse. For those living with their heads up her backside, I’ve noticed that a lot of what you say about Meghan online is, quite frankly, total bullshit and sometimes so utterly absurd, I wonder if most of you are simply on day release.

So below, I have tackled the most common misconceptions head-on; because we all know I don’t enjoy anything more than putting Sussex fans in their place.

She’s a style icon

I don’t know anybody on this Earth who has access to so much money and the best stylists you can buy, but still appears to have gotten dressed in the dark most of the time. Yes, she has worn one or two nice pieces; but by and large, she looks like a cheap knock-off of Victoria Beckham and I don’t think that image exactly screams “royalty”.

Until I take my last breath on this earth, I will forever be baffled by how Meghan Markle has gotten it so spectacularly wrong in the style stakes. Some people do seem to like the way she dresses; they see her “style” (if you can call it that) as “fresh” and “modern” – but quite frankly, I prefer Kate’s dress coats and hats, which some have labelled “boring”. I don’t agree at all.

Yes, Kate is the future Queen and therefore has played it slightly safer with fashion; but I do really like her clothing which is usually a perfect mix of the traditional and modern. She looks like a ROYAL. And yes Meghan, those long trousers that sweep the floor as you walk may have looked nice on Vicky B, but she is the wife of a footballer – not a member of the royal family. Believe it or not, there is a difference.

She’s a humanitarian

This one always makes me laugh.

Show of hands please; how many of you know genuine “humanitarians” who visit the impoverished in a coat worth £7,000? I thought humanitarians were meant to have common sense?

Meghan, dear; walking down the road in Kensington with an “alleviate poverty” bag doesn’t make you a charitable person or a humanitarian – it just makes you a hypocrite. Instead of spending thousands of pounds on ugly clothing that you’ll only wear once anyway, why don’t you put your money where your mouth is and donate to your chosen charities? Yes, instead of getting your fans to donate to them on your behalf under the guise of a “Global Sussex baby shower”.

And just another tip for the future; humanitarians don’t preach about climate change off the back of a million-pound trip on a private jet to New York for a party. They don’t wear £99k maternity dresses in Morocco. They don’t spend millions of pounds of the taxpayers’ money to renovate one of their many homes. And they certainly don’t visit those living in poverty dressed from head to toe in Givenchy.

She was already famous and rich in her own right and didn’t need Harry’s money

Right – we’ve been through this. How rich do you really think she was before the ring went on? I mean, seriously? Suits was a lowly cable show and she is not an A-lister. And given her knack of merching at every available opportunity, I’m guessing the woman looks for every possible chance to make money. That doesn’t scream “well off” to me.

Meghan has only really ever gone after men who have a lot of money or means to open doors for her toward new opportunities and a better life, and then drops them when they can no longer do anything for her. This is not the behaviour of an independent feminist who is able to achieve things on her own – this is the behaviour of a gold digger.

So sure – Meg had money; from her divorce settlement with Trevor, from her rumoured days as a yacht girl and Soho House regular and from all the merching she did and does for Jessica Mulroney. But was it millions and millions? Clearly not or she wouldn’t have had to marry a Prince.

She’s proud to represent Britain

In two (very British) words: my arse.

In the year and a half since Harry and Meghan became engaged, I have yet to see her wear any British designers or champion much that is British at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure she goes out of her way to actively avoid wearing anything that is British.

There are even rumours that she has apparently hired an all-American medical team to deliver her brat because in Meghan’s expert opinion, our 70-year-old NHS service isn’t good enough to deliver the second coming of Markle and Wales. It was good enough for the future Queen Consort to deliver three children in an NHS Hospital, but no, not for old Meggy.

And when charity patronages for Meghan were announced back in January, it was revealed that she would be focusing on – you guessed it – everywhere but the UK. Africa, the Middle East, Antarctica… you name it – if it’s not Britain, Meghan’s happy to back it.

She is the best thing to hit the Royal Family

I think you’ll find that was Kate eight years ago.

(Happy Anniversary for tomorrow, Cambridges!)

Despite the adamant claims of her fans, so far, I have yet to see Meghan do anything groundbreaking. If you ask her little followers for proof of anything they’re all like:

Oh, and when they’re really stumped, they’ll come out with “yeah? Well Meghan’s only been married a year but Kate’s been on the scene for eight and hasn’t done anything at all.”

Right… Apart from being an ambassador for Britain on several overseas tours, starting the Heads Together charity (amongst others) and birthing a future King?

Meghan has so far, by my tally – cooked once or twice with a few Grenfell victims and gave a bunch of bananas to some prostitutes.

While I’m all for backing any disaster that happens on my doorstep (I live around the corner from where Grenfell stood), I will say this: the tower disaster has had more money thrown at it than you can shake a stick at and it was almost two years ago now – Meghan, it’s time to find something more current to support, not just backing the first “English” cause that you could get your hands on.

As for the bananas – don’t get me started. What bright spark thought it’d be a good idea to give phallic shaped fruit to a group of sex workers? And with messages like “you’re so loved ”… yeah, I’m sure 35-year-old Louise from Dagenham is feeling totally “loved” when she’s shivering at the side of the road waiting for possible clientele to drive by or blowing some guy for a fiver at the back of his Ford Mondeo. Get real, Meghan.

If I were one of those women, I’d tell Her Royal Highness exactly where she could put those bananas – and probably not for the first time either.

She doesn’t want the limelight

Yeah, like a cat doesn’t want the canary.

I have never seen a person so adept at sniffing out a camera from at least fifty miles away. The Cambridges could’ve used her in France seven years ago when Kate was papped taking her clothes off on their villa balcony – with Meghan about, no photographer goes undetected.

Bottom line: Meghan loves herself and she loves the cameras. The two combined thrill her to no end.

The best example of this would’ve been at the British Fashion Awards earlier this year – she was so unbelievably excited to have the spotlight on her where she could squeeze the life out of her bump in front of the UK press for all to see, I’m surprised she didn’t have an orgasm.

I’d put fifty quid on this whole “privacy” thing surrounding the baby’s birth being Harry’s idea and Meghan has just been forced to go along with it. Madam? Give up the spotlight when her mealticket arrives? Once again – my arse.

She could potentially be Queen one day

I know this one sounds totally mental, but please go with me on it – her fans are actually saying this sort of crap on Twitter. They actually believe, in their tiny deluded minds, that this woman could eventually wind up as Queen Consort one day.

And how exactly do you think this will happen?

Perhaps she’ll poison Kate with the contents of one of her diamonds, divorce Harry’s balding, ginger arse and William will marry her after realising the deceptive, social-climbing grifter actress was really “The One” after all? Ah, just like Romeo and Juliet.

For any Meghan fans reading this, please let me say this for the final time, as some of you do not appear to understand how the line of succession works – Meghan will never become Queen. Say it with me now…

No fewer than five people have to cark it in order for Harry to get anywhere near the throne, and no, he does NOT take over if William were to die suddenly while George is still young. In this instance, the throne would be powered by a team of advisors until George turned eighteen, and then he would be crowned officially. Harry and Meghan are unlikely to ever sniff the material the throne is made from, let alone sit on it – sorry Sussex Stans.

She’s here to stay

Incorrect again, I’m afraid.

Given the woman’s track record, it doesn’t appear she sticks around anywhere for very long and the second something better comes along, she’s off.

No, right now, I can’t imagine what could be higher than royalty – but I’m sure Meghan has a few ideas and is probably targeting her next victim as we speak.

What will it be, Meg? A billionaire without the life of restrictions and protocol? Or maybe you’ll run for President? Nah, even though you love the sound of your own voice, that seems like it would be too stressful for madam’s liking.

Whatever her next move is, I have no doubt she’ll be hitting the road in the next two to three years.

Once the novelty of having a title wears off, the royal purse strings are tightened by the Queen and the penny finally drops for Meghan that she’ll never really have her own brand and platform to project her oh-so-wonderful ideas from, she’ll be out of there – with half of Harry’s money and his kid(s) in tow.

Of course, the list of misconceptions about Meghan goes on and on; there is so much utter rubbish spewed on social media by her fans that I can only assume they’re either paid PR people, seriously deranged or Meghan herself. Honestly, you can’t write some of the stuff that comes up – or apparently you can. It’s a crazy world out there.

If you do think any of the above is incorrect, and you believe Meghan really is a stand-up (Non-UK) citizen, you can find me on Twitter to discuss it @CrownofSapphire – I’m always ready and willing to have an argument.

Have a good one, guys!

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reyhaninwonderland · 6 years ago

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I’m back!

On our third day of Disney, we traveled the world!… kind of.

We went to Epcot that day and it was epic! (except for the fact that I didn’t wear the birthday pin that day, so i didn’t get any special treatment.. I regret that decision terribly)

This day was a lot more chill than our first two days, maybe because Epcot doesn’t have as many rides and there were more adults here. I looked forward to Epcot a lot and it did not disappoint! When i was here back in 2003, I was too little to appreciate the countries. Now, as an adult (ahem! believe it or not i am adulting), I’ll be able to look at each country with a better understanding and appreciation.

But before we went country hopping.. we went on a couple rides, like Soarin’, Nemo & Friends, and Mission:Space.

We loved Soarin’. It was AWESOME.

And also:

We were cheesing so hard when we met Pluto! 😀

We met Disney Pals!

This… was the happiest 10 minutes of my life. It was a whole bunch of squealing and fangirling.

Coincidently in our time in Epcot, Epcot’s International Flower & Garden Festival was happening. It actually just started the day before we were here, so that was very convenient for us, to be able to see the very cool decorations and artwork.

It was throughout the park in all the countries! The amount of detail (again, we were so into the detail) put into every single character was incredible.

Wow.

So we started off in Mexico!

I was so happy to see so many things in Mexico related to Coco! I love that movie. We ended up having lunch in Mexico, yummy. 🙂

We didn’t spend much time in Norway next, but I thought this was very nicely done. I do like Frozen, but the Frozen related attractions had a very long wait! I bet lots of kids want to see Anna and Elsa here. (I’m excited for Frozen II! It’s coming out soon!)

Next stop: China. Where i met:

Fa Mulan. On international women’s day too, how iconic is that? She is so beautiful. Ugh i love her. Mulan is one of my favorite movies of all time. “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You” goes hard.

Our next country was Germany. We actually spent quite some time in Germany. We got caught up in this one store that was selling beautiful glassware.

Of course, when in Germany, we waited in line to meet the OG princess!

The very first one that started it all ❤ Snow White (my mom’s favorite princess actually). This girl was literally Snow White.. like as if she walked right out of the Snow White movie and just came to life. She talked just like her too! Her makeup was flawless. And she said the dwarves are going to bake us a cake at the castle so it’s gotta happen now.

Italy gave me major Lady and the Tramp vibes. They’re so cute! Love this classic as well 😀 made me want some spaghetti 😛

After Italy was America.

………….

After America, was Japan, my ultimate favorite! 😦

Oh Japan, I miss you so. This brings me back to Hakone 😦

I did talk Japanese there with a couple of people! It was good practice for me. Some of the employees there even recognized my mouse ears because i got it in Disneyland Tokyo! One girl even told me that my Japanese was pretty good and my pronunciation was good, so at least I know I’m getting somewhere! My heart.. だいすき ❤

After we left Japan, we went to our people in Morocco ;D haha

It reminded me a lot of Turkey, our cultures are so similar. I love the design in the buildings here. One of the photographers told us that the Prince of Morocco came here when the park was still being built and designed Morocco himself because he wanted it to be similar to the country. I thought that was a very interesting fact! It made me appreciate this part of the park even more.

We met Princess Jasmine too! It was a little awkward because when we approached her, we said “As-salāmu ʿalaykum”… and she had no idea what we said. But it’s ok! We talked a bit about the genie and the magic carpet!

Bonjour! We arrived in France!

I feel like I am most similar to Belle out of all the princesses because we both like to read and we stop paying attention to our surroundings when we’re immersed in a story! We’re too caught up in our characters’ lives! We met Belle by chance, she was just walking and then stood nearby where we were sitting! Lucky us 😀

In United Kingdom, we saw these tea cups and i thought that was cute! I wouldn’t mind having this on our own lawn haha.

It was so nice talking to the employees here because they all had a English accent. I could just melt.

Finally, our last location: Canada.

I’ve been to Canada before! I like how they did the mini Niagara Falls here. By the time we reached Canada, the sun was starting to set so it looked very beautiful with the sunset.

Before the night came to an end, we of course went on the ride Spaceship Earth! I actually remember that ride when I first went on it.

At 9 o’clock, the show Illuminations: Reflections of Earth started.

It was a sweet show. It wasn’t Magic Kingdom level, but it was still a good one!

That night, we ended going to Disney Springs (used to be called Downtown Disney back in the day), but we went so late, everywhere was closed!

So we went back to our hotel and called it a night xx

Bye from me and my bestie, Mickey ❤ Disney Diary 4 is coming soon xx

Disney Diary 3: All Around the World in Epcot I'm back! On our third day of Disney, we traveled the world!... kind of. We went to Epcot that day and it was epic!

#canada #china #countries #disney #disney world #epcot #france #garden #germany #goofy #italy #japan #mexico #mickey mouse #minnie mouse #morocco #norway #pluto #princess #united kingdom

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thephilosopheroftheboudoir · 6 years ago

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Grim History

Diary Of a Rich Madman: Jacques Lebaudy, Emperor Of the Sahara

In 1903s, the French millionaire Jacques Lebaudy renamed himself Jacques the First and declared himself Emperor Of the Sahara. At the age of forty, he was rich, by the standards of his day, after inheriting money from his deceased father who had made his fortune running a sugar factory in their home country. Lebaudy was a short man with a taste for expensive odd clothes and, some would say, an annoyingly high-pitched voice that resonated like nails on a chalkboard. Apparently the age of forty was the big turning point in his life when he decided to translate what he believed to be his destiny into reality. But was he insane?

At first, no one seemed to think so. Lebaudy, using his vast sums of wealth, bought a yacht for himself and two others to follow, filled with 400 men, a battery of high powered guns, and the American Civil War hero George Edouard Gouraud who would act as his Governor-General during the venture. The yachts landed at Les Minquies island off the coast of Morocco. Jacques Lebaudy had his men carry a throne to his recently built pavilion and announced his intention to claim the Sahara as part of the Empire of Patagonia for the French colonial government. The French crown, however, refused to accept him as Emperor. Lebaudy, nonetheless, continued to make plans for his conquest, no doubt believing the colonialists would soon see the error of their ways and come around to his point of view. While Lebaudy sat on his throne, some of the local Arab population hatched a plan to make money off the faux-dignitary; they kidnapped several of his men and demanded a ransom. Lebaudy refused to pay them and tried to coax his followers to ambush the kidnappers and bring the men back. By this time, his subjects had started to think he was a kook; many of them abandoned the Emperor. Some returned to France and petitioned the authorities for help. Soon a fleet of French naval vessels showed up and began bombarding the island shores with artillery. The Arab kidnappers got scared and released the prisoners.

Jacques Lebaudy, Jacques the First, Emperor Of the Sahara had become an embarrassment to the French government. They went to Les Minquies, captured him, revoked his French citizenship, and deported him. Lebaudy soon showed up in London, using his wealth to establish residency in the plush Savoy Hotel.

Jacques Lebaudy had quite an interesting time at the Savoy. When entering the dining room in the purple robes of an emperor, the hired musicians would cease whatever piece they were playing and launch into the national anthem of the Empire Of the Sahara which he had commissioned a local composer to write in his honor. Lebaudy always sat at his own private table with wife and daughter, the table being draped with a royal purple tablecloth; a crown of chrysanthemum hung from the ceiling overhead. Word got out that an emperor had arrived in London and a cadre of journalists, photographers, celebrities, and other schmoozers began to hang around. Several hundred visitors stopped by; laborers, weapons dealers, merchants, farmers and others all sought favor from Lebaudy, hoping to land a job. Some of them were hired and immediately put on salary. Jacques the First spoke of elaborate plans to cover the entire Sahara desert with his newly designed flag as soon as he conquered the vast territory spreading across the African continent. At dusk there was to be a church ceremony and the greatest fireworks display the world had ever seen. January 1, 1904 was set to be the date in which the new empire was to be officially declared. That day came and went. Nothing happened. The emperor’s throne remained empty on the island of Les Minquies, awaiting the return of Jacques Lebaudy.

His family felt humiliated by his delusions of grandeur. They quietly shipped him away to America to live in a Long Island mansion where he would pace the halls and grounds in his uniform, covered in thick rows of medals and military insignia.

Then something started to irritate the old nut. The age of automobiles had arrived and a woman who lived nearby had taken to cruising the roads at 15 or 20 miles per hour in her newly bough car. The sound of the motor drove Lebaudy crazy and what could possibly have been America’s first conflict over noise pollution resulted in him paying his workers to put bales of hay and tree trunks across the road to prevent any further traffic. The lady driver called the sheriff who showed up on horseback. Then Jacques Lebaudy emerged, himself on horseback and clad in full royal regalia, from the surrounding forest. He claimed responsibility for the mess and the sheriff commanded him to clear it up. Lebaudy refused and tore off across a meadow on his horse. The sheriff summoned more police. After seeing Lebaudy at a distance, they chased after him and a pursuit involving pistol shots began. Jacques Lebaudy’s horse eventually showed signs of exhaustion and fatigue then finally refused to run any more. Lebaudy dismounted and surrendered. The police beat him up and hauled him off to jail.

Jacques Lebaudy’s wife pleaded with the police to release him on the ground of his eccentric and erratic behavior being symptoms of mental illness. They agreed and took him to the nearby Knickerbocker sanitarium. They put him in a special wing of the psychiatric ward which was reserved for the highest political functionaries; it is rumored that the Emperor Of the Sahara had an easy time making friends with the King of China and the Queen of Africa.

But a goof emperor can not be kept down for long. The quick-witted Lebaudy one day pretended to be asleep; his guardians stopped paying attention to him and he got up and jumped out the window. He ran all the way home. Nobody pursed him and nothing else was heard from him until one day the police were called Jacques Lebaudy was found dead with several gunshot wounds. As the story goes, upon his retirn hom, Lebaudy spent several weeks trying to seduce his daughter. She continuously refused his advances until one day he physically assaulted her and tried to rape her. His wife then pulled out her gun and shot him dead.

So was Jacques Lebaudy, Emperor Of the Sahara insane? Probably but then again, the French colonial era produced a lot of adventurers who sought to conquer foreign lands, often with a head full of bizarre fantasies about what life outside Europe was like. Turn-of-the-century England also had its share of eccentrics and an emperor living the Savoy Hotel probably attracted a great deal of attention but in the end, he probably seemed like just one more weird man in a society full of weird men. And America certainly attracted its share of strange characters. Maybe Lebaudy was little more than a trust-find baby who had lived a sheltered life in an aristocratic chateau. Maybe he read too many books and never spent enough time around other people. Maybe the other family members he knew were just as eccentric as him. Maybe he had too much money and too little common sense. Maybe, at the age of 40, Jacques Lebaudy started having an unusually bizarre mid-life crisis. In any case, there were certainly enough people who were blinded enough by his money to overlook his oddness and believe in his grandiose fantasies. Maybe they were the ones who were crazy.

Strauss, Erwin S. How to Start Your Own Country. Paladin Press, 1999.

https://grimhistory.blogspot.com/

#grim history #jacques lebaudy #colonialism #european history

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rapeculturerealities · 6 years ago

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“Since Iran became an Islamic state, there have been two important things for the government: opposing Israel, and enforcing restrictions on women such as the hijab and banning them from watching sporting matches involving men,” said Afsane, a 28-year-old from Isfahan with tickets to see Iran’s clash with Spain.

In the past few years, women’s access to football has increasingly become a highly charged political issue in Iran. Hundreds of female fans demonstrated outside stadiums during Iran’s World Cup qualifying matches and recent international friendlies, demanding that the law be changed, while women across the country have risked often brutal punishment by stealthily sneaking into stadiums disguised as men. Yet the Iranian regime has shown little sign of changing its stance.

“Many of the protesters have been sent to jail, while women caught watching football in disguise can be beaten,” said Sarvenaze, a 31-year-old from Tehran who is attending Iran’s matches against Spain and Portugal in Russia. “There is a popular football program on Iranian television every Thursday. And recently some journalists on the program commented that women should be allowed the right to watch football in the stadiums. Those journalists have never been seen on television since.”

Even though the World Cup is taking places thousands of kilometers from Iran, the mere presence of Iranian female fans in stadiums across Russia is a tense subject back home.

Four years ago, photos of Iranian women at the Brazilian World Cup not wearing the hijab sparked a furor when they went viral on social media, with Islamic hardliners expressing anger that they were clad in Western clothing.

Iranian women traveling to the World Cup this year were warned by parliamentary officials to avoid actions not deemed compatible with the values of the Islamic republic, while Iranian television coverage of the games is heavily censored.

“They will be extremely careful to censor the Iranian girls in the stands, and only show those wearing the hijab,” Afsane told The Moscow Times by phone ahead of the tournament. “And officials from the Iranian government who have traveled to Russia will warn us not to appear in public without it.”

In advance of the games, however, some Iranian female fans were secretly planning T-shirts and banners emblazoned with messages protesting against the stadium ban back home. And during Iran’s opening match against Morocco, some of the activists held signs against the policy. They hope the messages will attract international television coverage during Iran’s matches, and encourage FIFA to apply further pressure to the government to change its laws. Indeed, in March, FIFA president Gianni Infantino directly appealed to Iranian president Hassan Rouhani to reverse the ban.

However, even the smallest of protests come with certain risks. The women are well aware that their presence in Russia is being closely monitored by the Iranian officials who have traveled there too.

“You have to remember that anything is possible in Iran,” Sarvenaze told The Moscow Times by phone. “Women who work for publicly owned companies back home could be punished for this by losing their jobs. The fear of the government is a very real thing. There are many girls who are too afraid even to upload photos of themselves on Instagram when they go abroad if they’re not wearing the hijab.”

But by being able to travel to Russia, Afsane and Sarvenaze say they are among the fortunate ones.

Married women in Iran are unable to travel abroad unless they receive their husband’s permission, while single women under 40 can have their passports taken away if their fathers object.

“We are lucky as we come from northern Iran where families are more liberal, but people here are not always so open-minded,” Sarvenaze said. “Many Iranians in the southern parts of the country still think, ‘Oh, sport is not for girls, why would they want to go watch football?’ During the last World Cup, the government even sent orders to cafes and restaurants in many cities to prevent them from screening the games live, to try to forbid men and women from mixing while watching football.”

While a handful of the Iranian female supporters in Russia have traveled outside the country to watch matches in the past, most are experiencing live football for the very first time.

Many are of a generation who were first introduced to the sport two decades ago through the France 1998 World Cup, Iran’s first appearance at the tournament since the 1970s, a spectacle that was celebrated throughout the nation.

But while their emotions are a mix of triumph and relief at finally being able to claim what they describe as a basic human right — holding a ticket to watch a sport that they love — there is a lingering sense of sadness that it’s taken so long to be able to watch the teams they grew up admiring.

As Afsane said, “I have many vivid memories growing up of the times teams like Germany would come to Iran for international matches. My father and brothers would always immediately get tickets, but I could never join them. It was just a dream. Instead, I would watch alone on television. Finally being here is both a sweet and bitter moment for me.”

#Iran #world cup #sports #misogyny #ban #activism #Russia

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romancatholicreflections · 6 years ago

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4th October >> Saint of the Day for Roman Catholics: Saint Francis of Assisi (Memorial).

St Francis of Assisi (Memorial)

Francis was born, one of seven children, on 26 September 1181 the son of Pietro di Bernardone, a wealthy cloth merchant, and his wife Pica Bourlemont in Assisi, in Tuscany, Italy. He was baptised John, in honour of John the Baptist, but was called Francesco (Italian for ‘French’), because at the time of his birth his father was doing very good business in France. As a young man he helped his father in running the family business but was also prominent in the social life of the pleasure-seeking well-off. During a war between Assisi and Perugia Francis was imprisoned for a year and became seriously ill. Soon afterwards, still in his military gear, he abandoned the war, running the risk of being deemed a coward.

Already at this stage his concern for the poor and outcasts, such as lepers, was noticeable. One day he heard a voice which seemed to come from a crucifix in the small rundown church of San Damiano in Assisi. It said: “Francis, Francis, go and repair my house which, as you can see, is falling into ruins.” Francis understood the words literally and immediately got to work. He sold some of his father’s cloth in order to pay for the repairs. This led to a lengthy dispute with his father which ended in Francis renouncing his inheritance and getting rid of his fancy and expensive clothes. The bishop of Assisi gave him some simple attire and Francis embarked on a totally new way of living. In the beginning, his aim was primarily devotional. He wanted to be close to Christ on the Cross. But later he would also declare his allegiance to Lady Poverty, using the contemporary language of courtly love. He began to lead a life of extreme simplicity. With money he begged from the people of Assisi he was able to rebuild the church of San Damiano. In fact, he restored several ruined churches, among them the Porziuncola, the little chapel of St Mary of the Angels, just outside Assisi, which later became his favorite abode.

He became a wandering beggar, in solidarity with those who were genuinely poor (and they would have been many). He looked after social outcasts, especially lepers (and those who were thought to have leprosy). There is the famous image of him overcoming his distaste and fear by embracing a leper. Then seven other men joined him. They lived together at the Porziuncula in Assisi, close to a leper colony.

At the end of this period (1209?) Francis heard a sermon from Matthew 9-10 which changed his life. In it Jesus tells his followers to go forth and proclaim the imminent coming of the Reign of God. On the way they are to take no money nor even a walking stick or shoes for the road. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot without staff or purse, he began to preach a message of repentance. Within a year Francis had eleven followers. Francis chose never to be ordained a priest and the community lived as “lesser brothers” (fratres minores) – the name by which the order is still known. The brothers lived a simple life in the abandoned leper house of Rivo Torto near Assisi. They spent much of their time as wandering preachers in Umbria, bringing a message of cheer and song and making a deep impression on the people. One factor which differentiated them from other groups of poor preachers was their obvious respect and obedience to Church leaders and the orthodoxy of their teaching.

In 1209 Francis led his followers to Rome to seek permission from Pope Innocent III to found a new religious order. The pope agreed to meet with Francis and his companions. He consented to an informal recognition of the group and, when they had increased in numbers, they could return for more formal recognition. The group then received the tonsure and Francis himself was ordained deacon, allowing him to read the Gospel in church. Obedience to the pope would be a central feature of Francis’ First Rule (Regula Prima) drawn up and approved in 1210.

Their missionary apostolate continued to grow and reach more people and Francis’ sermons were becoming more popular. After preaching, the friars would return to their community house for their liturgy and personal prayer. They lived the simple lives of ordinary working people, supplementing their income, when necessary, by begging. They lived in simple huts. Their churches were small. They slept on the floor without tables or chairs and only a very few books. It would be only later that some of them became well-known theologians. One of the most outstanding of these would be St Bonaventure.

Among those who heard Francis preach was Clare of Assisi and she immediately knew to what she was called. Her brother Rufino, too, joined the new order. On Palm Sunday, 28 March 1211 Francis received Clare at the Porziuncola and thus was founded the Order of Poor Dames, later called Poor Clares.

Francis longed to reach out further in his preaching and thought specially of the Muslim Saracens against whom the Crusaders were fighting. In 1212 he set off for the Middle East but his ship was shipwrecked in present-day Croatia. Two years later in 1214 he set out for Morocco through Spain but became so ill he had to turn back. In 1219 Francis left, together with a few companions, on a pilgrimage of peace to Egypt. Crossing the lines between the Saracens and the Crusaders in Damietta, he was received by Sultan Melek-el-Kamel. Francis made a deep impression on the Sultan but failed to convert him to Christianity. He refused the expensive gifts the Sultan wanted to give him and returned to the Crusaders. Altogether he spent some months as a pilgrim in Palestine. At Acre, the capital of what remained of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, he rejoined Brothers Elia and Pietro Cattini and most probably visited the holy places in 1220.

Then he was urgently called back to Italy because of developments in the Order which seemed to compromise his original ideals of simple living. The friars had increased greatly in numbers (up to 5,000), new houses were being established outside Italy. The greater numbers now called for better organisation and administration which Francis’ simple rules could not deal with. The Church authorities, too, saw the Order as an important instrument of reform, even to making some of the friars bishops. Francis felt that this might compromise the witness through poverty which was in itself a criticism of the materialist attitudes affecting the Church. Francis then resigned his position as Minister General at the General Chapter of 1220. He was very much aware that he was not the kind of administrator the Order needed in developing along these new lines.

He was succeeded by Brother Elias of Cortona. In 1221 Francis drew up another Rule. After some changes, it was finally approved as the Regula Bullata by Pope Honorius III. The Order now had the full approval of the Church authorities but it involved concessions with which Francis was not at all happy. In 1221 Francis also initiated the Third Order by which married people could live according to the Franciscan spirituality.

It is in the later years of his life that some of the best known events took place. They include the setting up of a Christmas crib at Grecchio. It is said that Francis – who was never more than a deacon – read the Gospel with such passion that people wept. The famous Canticle of the Sun was written in 1224 when he visited Clare, who was seriously ill at the time. And it was also in 1224 that, during an ecstasy, he experienced the stigmata, by which the wounds of the crucified Jesus appeared on his body. While praying on the mountain of La Verna, during a 40-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas (29 September), Francis is said to have had a vision on or about 14 September 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, as a result of which he received the stigmata. His companion, Brother Leo, later wrote: “Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ.”

It was soon after this that he became ill and also blind. He suffered greatly from well-intentioned but crude surgery. In the end he was brought back to the transito, the hut for sick friars, next to the Porziuncola. Here, in the place where it all began and feeling the end approaching, he spent the last days of his life dictating his spiritual testament. He died on the evening of 3 October 1226 singing Psalm 141. He was just 45 years of age.

His feast day is observed 4 October.

He was canonized, only two years after his death, on 16 July 1228 by Pope Gregory IX, formerly Cardinal Ugolino and a long-time friend and patron of the Order. The following day, the pope laid the foundation stone for the Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. On 25 May 1230 he was buried under the Lower Basilica. His burial place remained inaccessible until it was rediscovered in 1818. A crypt in neo-classical style was constructed under the Lower Basilica but between 1927-30 it was redesigned by removing the marble decorations. In 1978 Francis’ remains were identified by a commission of scholars, appointed by Pope Paul VI, and placed in a glass urn in the old stone tomb. Assisi is now a pilgrimage centre for people from all over the world.

Over the centuries, Francis has become one of the Catholic Church’s most loved saints, not least in our own day. Some of this devotion, however, borders on the sentimental. He has been cultivated by nature lovers and even by ‘hippies’ while ignoring the heart of his spirituality – his devotion to the suffering Jesus and his commitment to a poor and simple life. He has been a genuine source of inspiration for many, not least Charles de Foucauld who perhaps went even further than Francis in his austere style of life.

After his death, many legends arose about him and these are collected in the Little Flowers of St Francis, a book whose popularity still endures. In art too, Francis has been a favourite subject, beginning with Cimabue.

He is regarded as the patron saint of animals, birds, the environment, and Italy. It is common for Christian churches to hold ceremonies honouring animals around his feast day on October 4.

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thewidowstanton · 7 years ago

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Alexandra Royer, Russian bar flyer and aerial hoop specialist: Barcode Circus Company

Alexandra Royer, who comes from Quebec City, was inspired to take up circus after watching companies such as Cirque Eloize and Cirque du Soleil. Later, after living in Morocco, she trained at the Quebec Circus School and was approached by Cirque du Soleil to join its show Quidam on an aerial hoop contract when she was just 16. In 2008, Alex chose instead to further her studies at Montreal’s National Circus School. There she met her two American Russian bar bases, Eric Bates and Tristan Nielsen, and on graduating they began to perform worldwide with leading companies including The 7 Fingers, Cirque Eloize, Cirque du Soleil and La Soirée.

The trio were joined by Eve Bigel of Compagnie XY, and as Barcode Circus Company they have performed in Olympic ceremonies, on TV shows and at corporate events and cabarets, also in street and contemporary dance shows, as well as full-length circus creations. They have also won numerous awards, including silver and bronze medals at 2018’s Cirque de Demain Festival in Paris. Alex is now taking part in Barcode’s first full-length production, Sweat and Ink (De Sueur et d’Encre), which headlines at Hand to Hand: A FringeArts Circus Festival in Philadelphia, USA. The show runs from 31 May – 2 June 2018. She chats to Liz Arratoon.

The Widow Stanton: How old were you when you first became aware of circus? Alexandra Royer: Quite young. In Quebec City we were surrounded by Cirque du Soleil, Cirque Eloize… and I can’t remember exactly when I asked about it but I wanted to go to the circus. I wasn’t doing circus yet but I asked my parents to take me.

Do any shows stand out? I totally remember Nomade by Cirque Eloize. It was wonderful… Anton Carabinier was in it. He was, I think, 18 then and I had a big crush on him… and I wanted to do circus after seeing it. Guillaume Saladin was in it too, and he is so nice, just so nice. And also Cirque Eos, which was a circus from Quebec City. A lot of artists from Eos still do circus even though it was like, 20 years ago. Erika Lemay is like the queen of circus; she has long legs and she’s beautiful; she does handstands. She was with them.

Were you always an active kid? In school my mum registered me for theatre and dance classes but I was actually really, really shy so going onstage was never an option. But when I was seven we found a little class in a circus school. It was only half an hour a week but it was really fun.

Is anyone else in your family in showbusiness? I found out later on that I had some distant cousins – something like my grandparents were cousins of their grandparents – and they were also in Nomade. My cousin, Marie Michèle Faber, is beautiful and she sings and does aerial hoop and silks in Cirque du Soleil. Her brother is Jean-François Faber, and he does acrobatic bike, like, trial bike, manipulations and acrobatics. But they are not why I went into circus; they didn’t influence me.

Who or what did inspire you? After the year of circus I did when I was seven, my family moved to Morocco and I did horseback riding there. Once, the trapeze company Les Arts Sauts brought a huge show, Kayassine, to Marrakech. I was talking about circus then but I don’t remember why it affected me so much because I couldn’t do any acrobatics. My dad had bought a trampoline just to ease the move to another country but actually I was super happy to go. It was really nice to have a trampoline in the backyard but I was only doing simple moves… front drop, back drop… My mum is from France and she knows Danielle Le Pierrès’ sister really well. Danielle is the founder of Le P’tit Cirk, and when Les Arts Sauts came my mum’s friend was there to babysit Danielle’s young children.

My mum, of course, saw her friend, so we had a private visit to the tent. We climbed into the safety net, we saw the show, it was gorgeous – one of the best memories of a show I have. I think I was about nine. Then a lot of the cast came to our backyard for a barbecue. We had some wild boar in the freezer – a hunter had given us so much meat – so my mum was like: “Oh perfect, bring the whole cast.” Everybody was there and the trampoline was there, so some of the porters made people do backflips and I was thinking, ‘Wow, this is really fun. I want to join in with them’.

I think it was the first time I realised that I really wanted to do circus, not because of the show so much, but more because of the feeling backstage. It was really great; a great afternoon where we had fun and talked to the artists. After they left I carried on with my life in Morocco without circus but when we came back to Canada I went to the school in Quebec.

Why did you then choose aerial? Um… good question. To get into the school in Quebec I did a trapeze act. Jade Dussault, who is in FlipFabriQue, was my coach. I think she was 12 years old and I was ten. [Laughs] It’s really funny; I wasn’t ready to enter the programme so much but they were looking for people because it was a rather new programme. They said: “Oh, she’s super small and kind of strong and flexible,” so I did trapeze. I can still remember how stressed I was before doing my act. I couldn’t remember the music; I only had a CD and the guy said: “What is your music?” And I said, ‘I don’t know. My teacher is not here…’, or, ‘My teacher is 12 years old…’. but finally I did something and I was accepted. I was alone at home when they told me and I asked, ‘Is this person and this person also coming? I’ll come if they’re coming’. I had also been thinking of going to horseback riding school but I decided to do circus because I had so much fun in the audition and met lots of people.

How difficult a decision was it to turn down Cirque du Soleil’s offer? What’s interesting in Quebec you learn to do everything, and we were training quite hard. I saw The 7 Fingers’ show Traces, and we were all so pumped up when we came back, we wanted the school to open up, but it was the middle of the night; everybody was on a high. I was doing trampoline at the time… swinging trapeze, aerials, hand to hand, everything, and my aerial hoop coach was Marie-Eve Bisson from the hoop trio in Quidam. She was 27 and I was 16. I had about ten classes with her and she really showed me everything on hoop. She could spin so fast. She was the one I’d watched on the Quidam video.

But when I got the offer, I didn’t have many options. My mum just said: “No.” I did the audition at the National Circus School in Montreal and was accepted. The crew and vibe of our year was amazing. I also wanted to learn something else; I didn’t want to have just one act. I had the feeling that if I went to Quidam, I’d go to Montreal for six months, go on tour and then never be talked about again. It’s a bit like that in Cirque du Soleil; you just become a number. They take good care of you but at that age it was nice to keep learning stuff. My trampoline coach said: “Do you wanna be really good, or like, medium good?” I said, ‘I want to be really good’. So he said: “Go to the school.” They’d accepted me for aerial and acrobatics, so that was interesting. In Quebec I could change my schedule; I could ask for Cyr wheel or whatever but in Montreal, once you get your schedule it’s quite hard to change it.

What made you add Russian bar to your skills? There was a Russian bar trio in Quebec City, and they made me try it. They were so chilled, like: “You really should do it.” They put the idea into my head and it’s something not so many people do. That was the idea behind it.

How much trust is needed between you and your bases? I was a bit unaware of how important the relationship with the porters is. I didn’t consider myself a flyer at all; I was doing aerial hoop as a specialist. But when I started to work with Eric and Tristan, we were really laughing a lot. They had their own specialties as well, so it was a good match because none of us were putting all our eggs in one basket. From the beginning, and it’s still the deal we have, that whenever it stops being fun, or one of us gets hurt, or we don’t believe in it, we won’t do it any more, because it’s quite dangerous.

What advice would you give to someone thinking of taking it up? A good level in trampoline is a good thing, even though I haven’t done it for years now because it’s really hard. The partners you work with are really important, because that’s how you could get hurt. You can learn on Russian bar quite fast but the relationship of trust afterwards becomes a bit complicated. You do the trick once and that’s great, but you have to keep doing it. We stopped for a while after Cirque de Demain because we had so many things to do but I needed to take myself in hand and say, ‘OK, let’s go; we’re doing it again’. For myself, I would not do it at all, but because we have this trio energy, we have to do it. It’s easier as well because we go through it together and have fun, and then we can travel so much with the Russian bar, because it’s such a rare discipline. If I’d only done aerial hoop, I would probably have done some flying thing but the Russian bar is special enough to make you a bit privileged with the contracts you have. So, that’s quite fun.

How wide is the bar and does it hurt your feet when you land? It’s maybe 15cm, but your body knows at some point… and the guys are so precise. That’s why it’s so important to choose your bases carefully. We pad it with a little bit of camping mat. Tristan is our Russian-bar maker, so he takes care of it.

You’ve brought some innovative moves to the discipline; how did that come about? We were watching other Russian bar acts when we started to make our acts, thinking: “Oh, we don’t like it when she has the moments of preparation; it’s too much, too long, too stiff and it’s only about the trick.” Also Eric and Tristan can handle being alone onstage; they don’t need the bar. Often the Russian bar porters only do Russian bar, so when we made one of our first acts the goal was, ‘What can we do that is not Russian bar-like?’. I think the act we did at Cirque de Demain was, ‘What can do that we’d like to see on Russian bar?’.

So that was maybe the difference. And the fact that I’m not a crazy acrobat. I’m more like a mover in general; we use that. Especially when we were with The 7 Fingers, Shana Carroll was the instigator of the way I moved on the bar because before we did their show Sequence 8, we had never done a real Russian bar act; it was our minor discipline. I remember she put the music on and said: “Let yourself go.” We were working on that base of movement and then transferred it to the bar. It was really natural. It’s a strange movement that it gives you and I’m lucky to have boys who are good enough to catch me during that strange bit.

It’s almost like a rag doll; it’s lovely. I love your costumes as well. Who designed them? Camille Thibaud. We met her through The 7 Fingers. She really helped us a lot with the style. We didn’t really know what we wanted because we were creating the act at the same time. She was very open and at some point I realised that we needed movement in the costumes. I wanted something that flowed, but it was super challenging for a costume maker because there are so many technical requirements in making a Russian-bar costume that isn’t going to be dangerous. We worked with her last summer. I wanted rich fabrics, so it’s all silk, pure cotton or linen. She really understood what I was looking for, but you can’t just take linen and bend you legs so much, or take silk that will have to stretch, so she made it look like it’s good fabric but there are also stretchy parts that she made invisible. The costumes are really intelligently made. Camille Thibaud is a name to remember, I think.

What can you tell us about Sweat and Ink? Basically it has all the disciplines we do: aerial hoop, Russian bar, cigar-box juggling, hand to hand, and Eve is also a specialist in small teeterboard, when you land in columns and hand-to-hand positions. So the three of us are learning that right now. It’s quite fun for the four of us to do something acrobatically, and I catch in a three high; like, I’m a porter also [laughs]. It’s really good.

How long have you been working on the show? We started to work seriously on it last summer. We did a show together and it was really for Eve and Tristan to make sure they wanted to keep working together because their association was rather new. They didn’t want to rush anything so we did a summer contract to see, if they both liked it, then we’d do a quartet and make a show. But we were talking about it before that. Eve just arrived in Montreal in April last year and we pitched her the idea. Basically we wanted to talk about books, we wanted to talk about writing and that led to the topic of memory and oblivion. There were some readings I’d done that were addressing the questions, ‘What’s the duty of memory and what right do we have to forget things?’. It touched me a lot so I told the idea to the others and it brought up a lot of conversation, so we decided it could be a starting point of the creation.

It has been quite long and, I don’t want to say painful, but we’re not administrators; we want to be onstage, so for us it’s harder. Also we were preparing for Cirque de Demain. And in Canada if you’re not working, there’s no intermittance, you’re just spending money, so you need to work whenever you have free time. But I like that life. It’s quite hectic and crazy but that’s how it is right now… and we travel a lot so it’s really exciting.

You were very successful in Paris, did it bring you lots of opportunities? Yes, so many emails. Oh, my god! The goal in going to Paris was to have something that the four of us had done together. And because it went well for all of us at the same time, that has helped us a lot. With all the press we got we can ask for visas, that’s really helpful and so is having established something with the four of us, because we’d only done corpos or the show last summer with The 7 Fingers.

It wasn’t that stressful in the end and it was a small victory because I was always thinking, ‘If I go to a festival and do the Russian bar, I’m gonna do something wrong, for sure’. So most important was that we didn’t hurt ourselves. We were more stressed than usual so the first performance was a bit shaky. Russian bar needs to be super settled down and calm, so for me that was my medal. We did it and technically I was good. My coach, André St-Jean, was there too, and he’s somebody very important in our lives, so to see him happy was really nice. He’s the master of acrobatics in Montreal and teaches all the guys from teeterboard.

Can you pick out a few highlights from your career so far? The first time I left Montreal by myself and I went to do a circus festival, SOLyCirco in Germany, in 2011. I was doing my hoop act. There was a bunch of friends and it was all new for us. There were some well-known names taking part and I was like, ‘This is so awesome’. Finally I won the gold medal. There’s a picture of me when they said my name and I’m like… I still don’t realise it. I won because there was a storm at the same time as I was doing my act.

The act was about the Sisyphus myth. The music was by the Kronos Quartet and the composer was Peter Sculthorpe; it was super-contemporary. We’d felt the storm coming the whole day, the energy of the sky was super low and it was warm and had this windy thing. I started my act and the storm starts, but for real. The tent was shaking and the wind was everywhere, people had the shivers and I was just doing my act in the middle like a crazy horse; the movement was inspired a lot by horses. So, I was performing but honestly I had special effects doing my act. [Laughs] That was a great moment. I remember before I started I was, like, ‘Oh, my god, I’ve forgotten the act, I’ve forgotten the act’. [Laughs] It’s one of the best moments onstage I’ve had. It’s such a shame that festival doesn’t exist any more.

Afterwards I did Russian bar with Eric and Tristan at Flic Flac Circus, and that was also a great highlight because we had to do everything ourselves. It was traditional circus; nobody’s gonna check to see if I’ve rigged my hoop well, nobody’s gonna tell you: “Stand by.” There’s a clock so you should be on time. We learned a lot over there and that’s where we met the guys from XY. But whenever I work with friends it’s the best. After we did Sequence 8 with our best friends for three years – that was just a blast – we keep choosing projects on whatever they bring us artistically and who’s in the cast.

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Alex appears in Barcode’s first full-length production, Sweat and Ink (De Sueur et d’Encre), which headlines at Hand to Hand: A FringeArts Circus Festival in Philadelphia, USA. The show runs from 31 May – 2 June 2018.

Picture credits: Caroline Dostie; Meredith Mullins; Sebastien Lozé

Barcode’s website and Facebook

Twitter: @FringeArts

Follow @TheWidowStanton on Twitter

Read our interviews with Barcode’s Eric Bates, when he was guesting with Silver Lining in 2015, and another Russian bar flyer, Tain Molendijk, when she was with15ft6 the same year.

#alexandra royer #barcode circus company #eric bates #tristan neilsen #eve bigel #Russian bar artist #circus interview #hand to hand #fringearts #philadelphia #aerial hoop

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