#i died and i am yearning to be reborn

[divine-misfortune]

Void I am asking you about Special Ghoul

Shout out to @floating--goblin for suffering Special brainrot with me :))

Special is, well…A special case.

He was the first multi. Not the first attempt, but the first to survive the process. Dozens before him, none of them made the cut. Succumbing to the elements, expiring during the process, too many failures to count. It’s a nasty, violent affair of conflicting elements never meant to mix together but they’re forced to. Mingling in his vessel with all the stability of a nuclear reactor rapidly approaching a meltdown. Barely kept from complete failure by the grace of some watchful force that seemed to enjoy his prolonged suffering. Special was never given a choice, he was always meant to become this thing.

While he was the first to make it out, he was hardly what the clergy would consider a success. Body mangled and abused, he’s forced to draw on the very things tearing him apart to prove himself at the well polished heels of a woman hardly interested in the display in front of her. Special tries. He reaches into himself and claws desperately at the flickering presence caught within the depths of his being. Pulling and ripping at his very atoms to prove his worth with all he could muster.

Not all of it stuck. Some elements were lost in the process. The only things he could find within himself were water and a horrific untamable flicker of quintessence. Special came up short. He didn’t meet the mark and the woman stared at him with such cold indifference he might as well have died in the process. A stain on the pentagram before her. She turned and Special felt his chilled heart leap up behind his teeth. He crawled after her like a dog for the chance to grovel for approval - approval he never knew he needed until she turned her back on him.

And a dog he was. Sister’s dog. Constantly seeking favor he will never find.

Bending beyond backwards for her, Special keeps his hands dirty and hers immaculate. There’s blood beneath his nails and viscera in his teeth all at her command. Devotion turned violent. Lethal. Special lurks the halls. He is what goes bump in the night. The shadow fueling ghost stories passed from sibling to sibling, what keeps toes behind the line. He is the unspoken consequence you never hope to face.

Years pass. Faces come and go. Power is passed along. She grows older and he stays the same. He never strays though. Disobedience was torn from his body the day she ordered him to be remade. To be reborn in the image she desired, and while he didn’t fit the picture, he still forced himself into the mold. Crammed himself to fit what she had hoped him to be but her glances continued to brush over him. It only makes him yearn for her attention all the more.

He never hesitates when she speaks in his direction. Even when she puts the syringe in his hand. Special is loyal. A good soldier that follows orders.

[diamondperfumes]

I like and see the appeal of "Dany, Jon, and Young Griff" as the three heads of the dragon/"new Targaryen trio." I can't help but think, however, that people who are reluctant to acknowledge that the real three heads are likely Dany, Jon, and Tyrion, are simply being ableist.

It makes sense that the three heads are Dany, Jon, and Tyrion, centered around Dany (she is Aegon the Conqueror Reborn; this prophecy centers around her, whether you like it or not).

All three have dealt with an undying threat using fire (the Undying, aptly named; a wight; a stone man).

All three have connections to dragons (Dany the strongest connection, one I don't need to elaborate on, hence being the center of the trio; Jon, who wishes for a dragon "or three," who speaks of a dragon warming things up at the Wall; Tyrion, who adores dragons, who yearned for one as a child and even dreamed of them, who is an expert on dragonology).

All three have had concrete, extensive ruling arcs (and not just "for thematic exploration," as some would have it, but as tangible demonstrations of what Westeros needs, and how Westeros could benefit if they were in charge), as Queen of Meereen, Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, and (acting) Hand of King Joffrey I Baratheon.

Both Jon and Tyrion show up in Dany's House of the Undying visions; Jon as Dany's third ?* in her bride of fire prophecy, Tyrion as a white lion running through grass. Tyrion similarly hears a prophecy of dragons from Moqorro, a prophecy that likely refers to both Jon and Dany, among other Targaryens, and is said to be a snarling shadow amidst them all. If that doesn't scream Tyrion's importance, especially his future connection to Dany and Jon both, I don't know what does.

All three are the third child of their parents, whose mothers died in childbirth, and all three have some kind of rivalry with an elder sibling (though Jon's relationship with Robb is the healthiest and most loving). All three also look up to their eldest brothers. All three had a negative relationship with an authority figure while growing up: Viserys, Catelyn, and Tywin (and for Cat haters, no I am not comparing Cat to Vis and Tywin, except to demonstrate the similarities in thinking and emotional state between the three).

All three suffer a formative betrayal that leads to a physical or metaphysical rebirth, taking place over ASOS to ADWD.

All three know what it's like to starve, be hunted, and live in deprivation. These aren't just random experiences; it's obvious that George is setting them up to brave the harsh conditions of the Long Night, possibly to find the heart of winter together. Being able to endure and survive starvation and the extremities of physical environments like The Wall, the Red Waste, and Slaver's Bay, are building blocks to this.

All three have connections to nomadic cultures that are seen as savage and barbaric––the Dothraki, the Free Folk, and the Mountain Clans of the Vale.

All three are positioned to rectify the wrongs of their houses, though thus far Dany has done the most concrete work in this regard (this is not a slight against Jon and Tyrion). More on this later.

All three are "outcast" POV's, even explicitly referred to as such by GRRM. Jon because he was raised as a bastard, Dany as an exile, bridal slave, and teenage girl, Tyrion as a dwarf who has been abused and maligned his whole life.

All three have had arcs that take place away from Westeros proper; again, this geographic and geopolitical distancing from Westeros only serves to enhance their ideological values as rulers and leaders.

Under the complicated rules of succession, all three are positioned to inherit a title that is not immediately accessible to them: Jon as King in the North (Winterfell), Tyrion as Lord of Casterly Rock, Dany as Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Why they can't access it is because of the very things that make them outcasts.

All three are foreshadowed to have three formative romances. Jon with Ygritte, Val, and ?*, Dany's marriages to Drogo, Hizdahr, and ?*, Tyrion with Tysha, Sansa, and ?**. Dany and Tyrion specifically share the parallel of having three marriages, with the first two "failing" in some way.

Their ruling arcs each deal with similar themes: the makings of war and peace, the line between compromise and justice, stirrings of revolution, poverty, hunger, disenfranchisement, exploitation, religion, ableism, classism, ethnic nationalism, etc.

Dany and Tyrion share in common being enslaved. This is a very important parallel that Jon does not have in common with them.

All three are related to, and have thus observed, kings: Jon is Robb's brother (biologically, his cousin) and observed Robert Baratheon; Tyrion is Joffrey and Tommen's uncle, and has extensively observed Robert and Joffrey; Dany is Viserys III's sister, and her POV is a bait-and-switch revealing that the protagonist of the Targaryen storyline is her rather than Viserys.

They have clearly outlined parallels with specific Targaryens from history: Dany with Aegon I, Rhaegar, Aegon V, Aegon III, and the first two Daenerys', most prominently, though the entire history of House Targaryen is centered around her so really every Targaryen could be counted here; Jon notably with the Targaryen bastards/dragonseeds, including Orys Baratheon, Jacaerys Velaryon, and Brynden Rivers; he is also paralleled with Aemon the Pale Prince; and Tyrion with Viserys II.

All three are romantic idealists; Jon and Tyrion are more outwardly cynical and ruthlessly pragmatic, however, a parallel they share with each other rather than with Dany, even if Dany will ~go darker~ in TWOW.

All three identify with beast/monster imagery, and not just because of their house emblems. All three have also been subject to malicious slander, in part because of their association with beastliness/monstrousness. All three are also seen as religious sinners/heretics.

All three have compassion for the marginalized (this is a fact; most ASOIAF fans tend to see Jon as a hero and Dany and Tyrion as villains, for obvious reasons, but as far as the text goes, all three are presented as empathetic toward the downtrodden and oppressed).

All three have both military and diplomatic experience; Jon is the only formally militarily trained one, with a traditional weapon (a sword), while Dany and Tyrion have to use more creative ways to wage war and fight in battle.

All three long for home, and feel guilty for doing so. Dany and Tyrion share a specific parallel of longing for an abstract ideal of home that may no longer be accessible (the house with the red door, the cottage by the sea).

Dany and Tyrion specifically share in common that they were suicidal. Dany was suicidal in AGOT, and Tyrion was suicidal in ADWD. Conveniently, the ASOIAF fandom wants both to die (as heroes or villains), and sees nothing wrong with such endings for them. One can argue that suicidal characters dying in the end is good, righteous, and beautiful, in the ASOIAF fandom (at least when it comes to these two).

Dany and Tyrion share in common that they failed to protect an innocent––Eroeh and Tysha––and this informs their political and spiritual development as rulers.

(*? = fill in the blank as you see fit; it is contentious in this fandom to admit who Jon and Dany's final romances are, and I am not in the mood to argue over this).

(**? = I genuinely am not sure whom Tyrion's third marriage will be with).

I could sit here all day and list parallels. These are just the ones off the top of my head. As you can see, Dany and Tyrion in particular share a lot of parallels unique between them. The experience of having a terrible father, and being alienated your whole life from your own family, while also taking pride in your family name, is something they will be able to help each other understand. The books are clearly setting that up.

Why then do people replace Tyrion with Arya or Faegon or Sansa or whoever else in the three heads of the dragon theory? Don't just chalk it up to different interpretations. The plain truth is that it's ableism. Tyrion isn't an able-bodied or conventionally attractive man and thus doesn't fit the aesthetic component of the three heads.

Yet for all the talk of wanting Dany to be the "antithesis" to house Targaryen, or wanting Dany, Jon, and Faegon to be Targaryens who "end the Targaryen dynasty" (is the dynasty not already ended?), why does no one speak of how Tyrion is the only Lannister in text to actually go against House Lannister, in concrete, material ways, and has suffered the consequences for it? The one Lannister who was barred from accessing his own identity? The one Lannister uniquely positioned to bring down his house?

Perhaps it's because what Tyrion represents is something people are afraid to admit about House Stark (upheld as unequivocally heroic) and House Targaryen (upheld as unequivocally villainous). Tyrion does not just foreshadow the ending of House Lannister as we know it; he foreshadows a RECREATION of it, a REFORGING in a new name and light. Tyrion has experience running the household at Casterly Rock, and did an excellent job of it. He was Hand of the King. He's known enslavement and hunger and violence, which a Lannister typically will never experience. This gives him a unique insight into understanding the plight and trials of the smallfolk who work Lannister lands and the commoners who work at Casterly Rock. Tyrion has not abandoned his identity as a lion of Lannister, even if he feels more alienated from it than ever. Nor has he abandoned love for his family, in spite of his dark spiral in ADWD. Yet his pride in being a lion, him being the only one of Tywin's children to truly resemble Tywin (as per Genna), while also undoing Tywin's legacy of oppression, and his idealism and desire for companionship and empathy, all exist in tandem.

Tyrion WANTS to be Lord of Casterly Rock. He WANTS to rule. He WANTS to be acknowledged as a Lannister. He WANTS vengeance against his enemies, including his own family. He WANTS a wife and family. All of this exists ALONGSIDE Tyrion wanting a simple life, to protect dwarves, enact justice for the disabled, care for the weak and innocent, create more equitable political institutions, foster more accountable ruling for the people, and pave the way for peace. Rather than Tyrion being part of "the good heroic house" (Starks) or "being the antithesis of House Lannister and dying to eradicate the house," Tyrion is clearly a balance forging new ground: an unabashed, proud Lannister, who envisions a future where a dwarf rules Casterly Rock, gets married, has children, may even be ruthless and cunning toward his enemies, but is also empathetic, compassionate, idealistic, dutiful, and kind. The crux of Tyrion's struggle is not "should I be good or should I be a Lannister," it's being accepted as a Lannister, knowing his disability, his status, his appearance, his values, his relation to his family. Tyrion as Hand of the King went against his own family, for both selfish and selfless reasons, and yet protected his family and heritage and strove to forge new ground AS a Lannister, rather than as an anti-Lannister.

This is anathema for ASOIAF fans, specifically in how they engage with Jon, Dany, House Stark, and House Targaryen. For the typical ASOIAF fan, Jon is a classic, traditional hero, unquestioned, unproblematic, unhateable. Jon is meant to "embrace" his Stark bastard identity and "reject" his Targaryen identity. His reunion with his siblings is meant to be nothing more than heartwarming and poignant. House Stark in this scenario is the "protagonistic heart" of ASOIAF, the unequivocal heroes, not problematized by the narrative in the slightest. House Stark "winning" is a moral victory, Northern Independence is reminiscent of anti-colonial justice, and a return to Stark rule is a proxy for GRRM's anti-feudalism, anti-war message, because the Starks are the good guys.

On the other hand, for the typical ASOIAF fan, Dany has to die. Now, some articulate this in the more honest, traditional way: Dany is a villain, destined to be a mad queen, and her death signifies the end of House Targaryen. Others articulate it in a more creative and deceptive way: Dany is just such a good person (with the caveat that she's still a "white woman whose arc is built on the suffering of women of color") that she clearly isn't like the rest of her family, and will happily die for humanity to redeem herself (because she'll still commit a sin; she has those dragons after all) and by dying, House Targaryen will end protecting humanity, where once it "colonized and enslaved humanity." The death of Daenerys Targaryen is supposed to emblematize a moral victory, anti-colonial justice, and a proxy for GRRM's anti-feudalism, anti-war message, because the Targaryens are the bad guys.

What we have here is that one side will win, reunite with his family, get the girl/the title/the house/the power, perhaps reject part or some of it so that the rest of his family can retain it, while the other side will have to die, either as a hero, villain, or redeemed anti-hero, and such death will thankfully symbolize humanity winning, order being restored, feudalism being destroyed, war coming to an end, peace flourishing, etc.

Where does Tyrion stand in this discourse? Usually nowhere. Most ASOIAF fans don't even care to write about his endgame; most of them write him off as a villain. Some think he'll die, some think he'll inherit Casterly Rock, but there isn't much passion in what most people theorize about his endgame. For better or worse, there is at least passion in people arguing over Jon and Dany's endgames.

In the TEXT, however, as I argue, Tyrion is someone who embraces his house identity and pride, while also going against the oppressive values of his family, and doing so in a material, concrete way. Tyrion doesn't cry about how awful Lannisters are, or hate himself for being a Lannister, or tell himself that he should give up his noble title in order to be a good heroic guy and save the day. But he DOES reflect on Tywin's evil, Cersei's greed, Jaime's stagnancy, Joffrey's petty tyranny, the near-enslavement conditions of the smallfolk at Casterly Rock, the corruption of the monarchic system in Westeros that the Lannisters benefit from, the ableism of his own family, how he benefits from the noble name that has also alienated him, etc. He seeks to protect victims of his family, like Sansa and Penny. Under the frameworks promulgated by the ASOIAF fandom, this should not be possible; he either should belong to "one of the good houses" (which the Lannisters clearly are not, and Tyrion is not Jaime, so he does not get the 50-page long PhD essays and dissertations on redemption, gender, and honor that Jaime does, despite being the more major Lannister POV character), or he should hate himself/distance himself from his evil family and die to eradicate their name (while Tyrion is suicidal in ADWD, it's not for selfless reasons; and he doesn't hate himself for being a Lannister, he hates himself for not being accepted by his family, for being a dwarf, for being a kinslayer, for being unable to save Tysha, for being hated by society).

Tyrion doesn't have to despise himself for being a Lannister in order to change his family and even be a class traitor to his own family. He also doesn't have to eschew his selfishly motivated ambitions and desires to effectuate real change. This makes him an excellent character, yet it also makes him one hard to parse for fans, not just because he is morally gray, but also because he defies the ASOIAF fanmade dichotomy of good house=good character/bad house=die (unless you're a teenage-girl coded cishet male character, e.g. Jaime, Theon, or Sandor). Tyrion isn't a selfless, abstract ideal of morally pure heroism. He has real flaws, often discomforting ones, and some of his desires are nasty. His ambition is ruthless. Yet he is still the one positioned to end House Lannister in its current form and recreate it completely.

It's clear that this is what unites the three heads: Targaryen, Stark, and Lannister, the actual heads of each house if they were allowed to be the heads if not for what makes them an outcast within their own family, embracing their names and identities while changing and recreating what it means to be each of these names. All three houses have been enemies at one point or another, but by coming together, these three will signify a real unity. Yet it's hard for fans to apply what Tyrion represents to Jon and Dany, firstly because most fans hate or ignore Tyrion, and secondly because Jon and Dany represent the two ends of the dichotomy I outlined. For fans to accept what Tyrion represents for the other two, they'd have to admit that House Stark is not the progressive, anti-colonial, feminist, pro-smallfolk force for change that fans claim it is, and they'd have to admit that Dany dying to end House Targaryen won't singlehandedly change the world and end oppression as we know it, and that House Targaryen isn't actually the devil.

A House Stark with a bastard as its head, mixed with Targaryen blood, is anathema to the history of House Stark. Have any bastards been Kings of Winter or Lords of Winterfell, save for Bael the Bard's child who killed Bael? Have any Kings of Winter had blood other than First Men blood (knowing that Starks only marry First Men-blooded houses)? Have any Kings of Winter intermingled with the Free Folk and reintegrated them into Westeros?

A House Targaryen with a teenage girl as its head may seem anathema to the history of House Targaryen, but it's not; really, it's a vindication for the women of House Targaryen. Certainly it's anathema to the WESTEROSI history of House Targaryen. What's even more anathema is a Valyrian heading an antislavery campaign and warring with other Valyrians to abolish slavery. This is the aspect of Dany's character that garners the idea that Dany is the anti-Targaryen Targaryen. Yet would not Jon be the anti-Stark Stark, by being half Targaryen and mingling with the Free Folk, when Stark identity for thousands of years has been rigidly defined in opposition to the Free Folk, exclusive of non-First Men blood, and in conformance with the Wall and what it represents?

That's what Tyrion is: House Lannister with a dwarf as its head, a dwarf who cares about women, smallfolk, bastards, commoners, children, and the disabled, who actually wants to protect the people rather than just exploit them, and who has killed and harmed other Lannisters both in the service of that cause and in service of his own goals. The other two heads of the dragon, Jon and Dany, are supposed to represent that balance and nuance as well, between embracing and embodying identity/rejecting its worst parts, destroying the old and ushering in the new.

But it's not in vogue to include Tyrion. He's not attractive enough and he's not able-bodied. He loves dragons, power, wine, and sex too much. He takes too much pride in his own identity and doesn't hate himself enough for being a Lannister. He's too ambitious. He's too ruthless. For a fandom so insistent on the aesthetics and performance of "ending the Targaryen dynasty and ushering in Northern Independence," he fits nowhere into that tapestry, so he is excluded. It doesn't sound as sexy to say he's the third head, not just because he isn't a Targaryen, but also because he doesn't fit the "pattern" ASOIAF fans want, of a "three heads" of the dragon that serves to uphold the centrality of House Stark as heroes and the centrality of House Targaryen as villains.

Yet it's for all of these reasons that TYRION is the third head of the dragon. People will continue to debate this and vehemently disagree (as if it makes sense for a completely minor character like Faegon to be the third head). However, only Tyrion thematically, philosophically, and plot wise fits the conception of the three heads of the dragon, and only he is foreshadowed to have that kind of relationship with Jon and Dany, but especially Dany.

[enigmaticexplorer]

congrats on your fic!! how did you come up with the title?

I Yearn, and so I Fear Fic Celebration

Thank you for this question, anon!

So, originally, this fic was supposed to be titled Upon a Cliffside. In the first draft, I wrote a poem and its first line went: Upon a cliffside dwelt a lighthouse. The poem served three purposes: 1) it was supposed to be symbolic of Kazi and Daria’s relationship (it was a poem their father used to sing to them), 2) it was foreshadowing the return to Ceaia, and 3) it was supposed to represent Kazi’s internal struggle: the desire for companionship. 

Ultimately, the poem was about a lighthouse on a cliffside that grew lonely after so many years doing its duty. One night a shooting star came upon it. They became friends. But, eventually, the shooting star died. Rather than wallow in the pain of lost companionship, the lighthouse decided to focus on the happiness it had experienced—to keep living. It would look forward to each night when it could see the stars and remember the joy of their friendship. This was to symbolize that the fear of lost companionship (the fear of abandonment) shouldn’t prevent you from pursuing companionship or living your life.

I decided to remove the poem from the story because 1) I’m terrible at writing poetry and 2) I wasn’t sure anyone would understand the poem’s triple meaning. After that, I had to change the title. I wanted the title to reflect the larger theme of the story: Kazi yearns for companionship deeply, but she is so afraid of it. I messed around with some titles (I can’t remember any of them lol) but eventually settled on I Yearn, and so I Fear. It was a longer title, and on the nose, but I felt that it captured the essence of the story perfectly.

Funnily enough, the folder on my computer with all my chapters/notes/plans/deleted scenes is still titled “Cliffside.” 

Since you’re the first person to participate in my celebration, here is the poem. A few things to note: 1) There are four Parts to this story, and in each Part, I had planned to reveal a new stanza of the poem—to show Kazi’s journey in relation to the theme of companionship. 2) I am terrible at poetry, so please don’t judge me for its crudity.

Upon a cliffside dwelt a lighthouse, grand, Proud and unflappable, firm on the land. Guiding sailors safely to the shore, Providing reassurance amid tempest’s roar. A beacon of hope prevailing, evermore… Upon a cliffside dwelt a lighthouse, bitter, Wary and resentful, its trust would splinter. ’Til one night, a star drew near, Painted in silver, kindness sincere, Embracing the lighthouse, friendship revered. Upon a cliffside dwelt a lighthouse, anew, Curious and hopeful, its trust bloomed and grew. Vulnerability and friendship mutually requite, ’Til one night, the star burnt so bright. Lost to the darkness of eternal night. Upon a cliffside dwelt a lighthouse, steadfast, Stoic yet optimistic, its strength amassed. For though a companion was gone, The lighthouse remembered, every dawn, And it did not regret the trust reborn.

[lovefairymina]

"-Laurë, Makalaurë," A gentle, yet familiar voice murmured, causing Maglor's eyes to snap up, and the sight before him shock and disbelief warring over his weary features.

He shook his head, dropping his lyre upon the sand as he stood up abruptly as the waves lapped at the instrument calmly.

For before him was you, his exwife, for how could someone still be in love with a kinslayer like him?

You stood still, waiting for him to come to you, a warm smile on your lips. He could not help but reach for you, for his love for you had never died. As if he was an injured animal, Maglor let out a soft whimper as he approached cautiously. Undeterred, you reached out with your small hand, cupping his cheek as you stood before him, the sea breeze tossing your hair over your shoulder.

"Oh Makalaurë, my love, I'm sorry I'm late," You whispered, brushing your thumb over his pale cheek, tears welling in your eyes at the sight upon his gaunt face, his silver eyes dim with despair and regret.

He shook his head in denial, his salt-flecked eyelashes fluttering, "No, you cannot be here. I cannot let you follow down my path. You must be a dream, a wraith, an apparition, nothing more. Why must your memory torture me so?" Sobs wracked his thin frame as he feel to his knees before you.

Your heart broke at the sight of your husband's defeated figure, at the sound of his heart-wrenching sobs. Closing your eyes, you took a seat on a nearby rock, pulling his head to rest upon your lap as it did all those Ages ago. "Makalaurë, Kanafinwë, my Kano, can you not feel that I am truly here in front of you? Does our bond mean nothing to you anymore?"

Maglor's head shot up in horror as he shook his head furiously in denial, "No, beloved, you must believe me when I say that you mean the world to me. But you cannot be here, the dark path I have walked will only taint you as it has me. I must do everything in my power to stop you from following me."

You sighed, shaking your head as you carded your fingers through his messy locks, "Kano, I am here to bring you home."

"Home?" He warbled, "They will never allow me in Valinor."

"That is not so, my love, for your father and siblings have been reborn and now your family is waiting for you across the sea - I have been waiting for you. I petitioned the Valar everyday so that I may come to get you from across the sea. And now my request has been granted and now I am here," You murmured, leaning down to press your forehead against his, "Come home, my love. It is time to come home. Come home with me."

Looking back and forth between the ocean and you, he hung his head and sulked. “I do yearn for home; to feel the warmth of the air and grass once more without suffering…” His voice drifted off as a tears fell onto the sand. “If you truly say so…t–then, I’all come home.”

[peachshadows]

Gosh I’m so sorry this is so long! I debated on posting this since I don’t want to add on to your AUs but it’s been on my mind all day!

In your New empress au I kinda see wukong as Henry the 8th a bit barbaric comparison, but wukong just mows thru wives/empresses like crazy. None last longer than a century which is short in Celestial time. Not even Azure lion lasts long which is a shock to everyone, but since Azure was a good advisor/friend before hand, wukong just divorces/banishes him to a chunk of land for him to live on (a choice wukong will regret later 👀)

As an add on (and why I debated all day on posting this) but the reason why macaque wasn’t made an empress from the start was because he died ages ago when he and wukong were still young. Their childhood/young adult life was mostly sweet. He and wukong cared deeply for one another, they took care of each other, they fought rather well together in battles, and helped take care of the cubs on the mountain they were practically attached at the hip. Thou unfortunately they weren’t always together and during one of the many attacks mount huaguo suffered from in the beginning of its history macaque died.

So how does he become the new empress, he gets reborn (I’m not sure if that’s correct word, he kinda just dies and wakes up) but he gets reborn as the six eared macaque the fourth celestial primate and keeping with his moon theme he gets reborn in the moon he still has memories of his past thou it’s vague and since the moon is chang’e court it’s the reason why no one has heard or seen macaque since chang’e is an intensely private goddess she does eventually brings him to one of the many grand events the celestial realm has and the instant wukong and macaque lock eyes it’s game over to whoever wukong is currently married too. Wukong knows this is his macaque his magic signature is almost exactly the same and after confirming with his golden vision that this isn’t some cruel trick wukong is relentless in his pursuit for macaques hand taking his courting very seriously, brutally killing off any potential rivals he may have.

They do eventually marry not sure how long that would take, but it does cause a silent uproar amongst the nobles across the celestial realm the typical he’s a no name, with no real power or sway so why did the emperor even chose them, I am clearly better type attitude. Which leads to sabotage or at least they try too.

OOOOO ANON UR MAKING ME BRAINROT FOR THIS AU

Just imagining shadowpeach being childhood sweethearts then Macaque dies which causes Wukong to spiral into grief and find solace in another person's arms.

Eons pass by and Wukong is now the ruler of heaven and has amassed a large harem, but Macaque just got reincarnated in chang'e's court after going through the cycle of life. However, the instant Wukong and Macaque lock eyes, Wukong is taken over by a strong sense of yearning and grief and want. There's nothing in this world that will stop him from having his moonlight back in his arms.

[medacarpyl]

A Dialogue Between The Frog and God

My small frog body wakes up in a large, endless abyss. I feel like I'm floating, still, suspended in the water with the scorpion's tail digging into me, over and over and over again, clinging onto me like a prayer. But it's dark, and light, and certainly not as viscous as the water I died in. I examine my body. Exactly the same as before the scorpion stung me. No wounds. No venom. "Hello?" I nervously call out.

"Hello, little frog. We're all God." The voices come back, a harmony of cacophony. It reminds me of breeding season, with all the frogs singing out for a mate. That's the only thing I can compare it to. I haven't experienced much, as a frog from a fable.

"May I ask where I am? It's very large in here, and I'm scared."

"Don't worry, little frog. This place is infinitely big, and yet, it's also infinitely small."

"Well, it doesn't feel infinitely small," I mumble, as I am a very small frog drifting through the very large abyss, and I'm still very scared.

"Your story has reached the ears of countless humans... We've decided to reincarnate you as one, in all Our infinite kindness. Yet, in all Our infinite cruelty, we've added a catch: you will meet your scorpion again, and you will love them just as much as you did before."

"Will it hurt?" I ask. "I don't want to keep loving, if it'll only result in more pain."

"It will hurt. More than anything you've ever known, more than any scorpion you've ever loved, more than any sting you've ever felt, and more than any venom you've ever had coursing through your small, soft body."

"This feels more like a punishment than a reward." My soft ribbit sounds more like a cry.

"It'll hurt you infinitely, but it'll fill you up with infinite amounts of joy, as well... Though, little frog, have you felt much joy?"

I think of how nice it felt, feeling like I saved that scorpion. The warm, fuzzy feeling in my cold blood doesn't leave easily. Even though the bitterness of the poison is still palpable in my mouth, I can't deny I felt a glimmer of happiness, when I thought I helped someone else. Was that joy?

"I don't know," I croak out, eventually, "what is joy?"

The voices don't respond to my question.

"Well, then, once you close your eyes again, you'll wake up human. Perhaps, instead of allowing your scorpion to drag you down with them, you'll never extend your hand in the first place."

Even the thought of it is too evil. I close my eyes and shake my head, and indeed, I wake up human, with no memory of the abyss. Only a yearning for touch, for nourishment, for love. I scream out, my lungs filling with air for the first time.

One day, I'll meet my scorpion. I don't know what they'll look like, or how they'll act. But I'll reach my hand out indiscriminately, wondering if anyone will sting me. Maybe it's stupidity, or stubbornness, or maybe just a deep desire to be needed. But even so, I can't stop, and I never will stop, even when that deadly sting catches me.

Even when I’m reborn again, and again, I’ll make the same mistake. I’ll look the scorpion in the eye, and tell them I’ll help them, even as I see their tail covered in poison.

Is it a mistake, if I keep doing it again, and again, hoping this time, we’ll make it across together?

[painterontheshore]

Chrysalis: Am I really?

Then Sunrise kissed my Chrysalis— And I stood up—and lived— —Emily Dickinson.

I was three years old when I made the most important psychological discovery of my life. I discovered that a living creature, obeying its own inner laws, moves through cycles of growth, dies, and is reborn as a new creation.

One day I was smoking my corncob bubble­pipe helping my father in the garden. I always enjoyed helping him because he understood bugs, and flowers, and where the wind came from. I found a lump stuck to a branch, and Father explained that Catherine Caterpillar had made a chrysalis for herself. We would take it inside and pin it on the kitchen curtain. One day a butterfly would emerge from that lump.

Well, I had seen magic in my father's garden, but this stretched even my imagination. However, we carefully stuck the big pins through the curtain, and every morning I grabbed my doll and pipe and ran downstairs to show them the butterfly. No butterfly! My father said I had to be patient. The chrysalis only looked dead.  Remarkable changes were happening inside. A caterpillar's life was very different from a butterfly's, and they needed very different bodies. A caterpillar chewed solid leaves; a butterfly drank liquid nectar. A caterpillar was sexless, almost sightless, and landlocked; a butterfly laid eggs, could see and fly. Most of the caterpillar's organs would dissolve, and those fluids would help the tiny wings, eyes, muscles and brain of the developing butterfly to grow. But that was very hard work, so hard that the creature could accomplish nothing else so long as it was going on. It had to stay in that protective shell.

I waited for that sluggish glutton of a caterpillar to change into a delicate butterfly, but I secretly figured my father had made a mistake. Then one morning my doll and I were eating our shredded wheat when I sensed I was not alone in the kitchen. I stayed still. I felt a presence on the curtain. There it was, its wings still expanding, shimmering with translucent light—an angel who could fly. Its chrysalis was empty. That mystery on the kitchen curtain was my first encounter with death and rebirth.

Years later I discovered that the butterfly is a symbol of the human soul. I also discovered that in its first moments out of the chrysalis the butterfly voids a drop of excreta that has been accumulating during pupation. This drop is frequently red and sometimes voided during first flight. Consequently, a shower of butterflies may produce a shower of blood, a phenomenon that released terror and suspicion in earlier cultures, sometimes resulting in massacres. Symbolically, if we are to release our own butterfly, we too will sacrifice a drop of blood, let the past go and turn to the future.

It is the twilight zone between past and future that is the precarious world of transformation within the chrysalis. Part of us is looking back, yearning for the magic we have lost; part is glad to say good­bye to our chaotic past; part looks ahead with whatever courage we can muster; part is excited by the changing potential; part sits stone­still not daring to look either way. Individuals who consciously accept the chrysalis, whether in analysis or in life's experience, have accepted a life/death paradox, a paradox which returns in a different form at each new spiral of growth. In T.S. Eliot's "Journey of the Magi," one of the kings, having returned to his own

country, describes his experience in Bethlehem:

....so we continued And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory. All this was a long time ago, I remember, And I would do it again, but set down This set down This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were different; this Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death. We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.

If we accept this paradox, we are not torn to pieces by what seems to be intolerable contradiction. Birth is the death of the life we have known; death is the birth of the life we have yet to live. We need to hold the tensions and allow our circuit to give way to a larger circumference.

People splayed in a perpetual chrysalis, those who find life "weary, stale, flat and unprofitable"2

 or, to use the modern jargon, "boring," are in trouble. Stuck in a state of stasis, they clutch their childhood toys, divorce themselves from the reality of their present circumstances, and sit hoping for some magic that will release them from their pain into a world that is "just and good," a make-believe world of childhood innocence. Fearful of getting out of relationships that are stultifying their growth, fearful of confronting parents, partners or children who are maintaining infantile attitudes, they sink into chronic illness and/or psychic death. Life becomes a network of illusions and lies. Rather than take responsibility for what is happening, rather than accept the challenge of growth, they cling to the rigid framework that they have constructed or that has been assigned to them from birth. They attempt to stay "fixed." Such an attitude is against life, for change is a law of life. To remain fixed is to rot, particularly if it be in the Garden of Eden.

Why are we so afraid of change? Why, when we are so desperate for change, do we become even more desperate when transformation begins? Why do we lose our childhood faith in growing? Why do we cling to old attachments instead of submitting ourselves to new possibilities—to the undiscovered worlds in our own bodies, minds and souls? We plant our fat amaryllis bulb. We water it, give it sunlight, watch the first green shoot, the rapidly growing stock, the buds, and then marvel at the great bell flowers tolling their hallelujahs to the snow outside. Why should we have more faith in an amaryllis bulb than in ourselves? Is it because we know that the amaryllis is living by some inner law—a law that we have lost touch with in ourselves? If we can allow ourselves time to listen to the amaryllis, we can resonate with its silence. We can experience its eternal stillness. We can find ourselves at the heart of the mystery. And in that place, the place of the Goddess, we can accept birth and death. The exquisite blossom will die, but if the bulb is given rest and darkness, another bloom will come next year.

Insecurity lies at the heart of the fear of change. Individuals who recognize their own worth among those they love can leave and return without fear of separation.  They know they are valued for themselves. Our computerized society, fascinating and efficient as it is, is making deeper and deeper inroads into genuine human values.  A machine, however intricate, has no soul, nor does it move with the rhythms of instinct. A computer may be able to vomit out the facts of my existence, but it cannot fathom the subterranean corridors of my aloneness, nor can it hear my silence, nor can it respond to the shadow that passes over my eyes. It cannot compute the depth and breadth and height of the human soul. When society deliberately programs itself to a set of norms that has very little to do with instinct, love or privacy, then people who set out to become individuals, trusting in the dignity of their own soul and the creativity of their own imagination, have good reason to be afraid. They are outcasts, cut off from society and to a greater or lesser degree from their own instincts. As they work in the silence of their cocoon, they often think they are crazy.  They also think they would be crazier if they gave up their faith in their own journey. Like the chrysalis pinned to the kitchen curtain, Blake's proverb is pinned to their study wall: "If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise."

Courage to stand alone, to wear the "white plume" of freedom, has been the mark of the hero in any society. Standing alone today demands even more courage and strength than it did in former cultures. From infancy, children have been programmed to perform. Rather than living from their own needs and feelings, they learn to assess situations in order to please others. Without an inner core of certainty grounded in their own musculature, they lack the inner resources to stand alone. Pummelled by mass media and peer group pressures, their identity may be utterly absorbed by collective stereotypes. In the absence of adequate rites of passage, ad[1]men become the high priests of an initiation into the addictions of consumerism. Everywhere the ceremony of innocence is exploited.

Without recognized rites, members of a society are not sure who they are within the structure. Children who have fumbled their way through puberty find themselves in adolescence raging for independence, at the same time furious when asked to take responsibility. Boys who have never been separated from their mothers and are fearful of their fathers cannot make the step into adult manhood. Girls who have lived in the service of their driving masculine energies are not going to forsake their P.P.F.F. (Prestige, Power, Fame and Fortune) for a sense of harmony with the cosmos. Even the rites of marriage are confusing. Unwed couples who have lived together for years may eventually believe that "marriage isn't going to make any difference," and then be genuinely confused when sexual difficulties do develop after the vows are spoken. Arriving at middle age is agony for those who cannot accept the mature beauty of autumn. They see their wrinkles hardening into lines, and new liver spots appearing every day, without the compensating mellowing in their soul. Without the rites of the elders, they cannot look forward to holding a position of honor in their society, nor in most cases will they treasure their own wisdom. For some, even the dignity of death dare not be contemplated.

The undercurrent of despair in our society is epitomized in a German word that first appeared in English in 1963, and is now incorporated into the Oxford English Dictionary (Supplement, 1985). It is torschlusspanik, (pronounced tor¬shluss-panic), defined as "panic at the thought that a door between oneself and life's opportunities has shut." Words enter a language when they are needed, and torschlusspanik has arrived. The doors that were once opened through initiation rites are still crucial thresholds in the human psyche, and when those doors do not open, or when they are not recognized for what they are, life shrinks into a series of rejections fraught with torschlusspanik: the graduation formal to which the girl was not invited; the marriage that did not take place; the baby that was never born; the job that never materialized. Looking back, we recognize that it was often not our choice that determined which door opened and which door shut. We were chosen for this, rejected for that.

Torschlusspanik is now a part of our culture because there are so few rites to which individuals will submit in order to transcend their own selfish drives. Without the broader perspective, they see no meaning in the rejection. The door thuds, leaving them bitter or resigned. If, instead, they could temper themselves to a point of total concentration, a bursting point where they could either pass over or fall back as in a rite of passage, then they could test who they are. Their passion would be spent in an all­out positive effort, instead of deteriorating into disillusionment and despair. The terror behind that word torschlusspanik is what drives many people into analysis—the last door has shut, the last rejection has taken place. No door will ever open again. Nothing means anything.

Another reason for fearing the chrysalis lies in our cultural loss of containers. Our society's emphasis on linear growth and achievement alienates us from the cyclic pattern of death and rebirth, so that when we experience ourselves dying, or dream that we are, we fear annihilation. Primitive societies are close enough to the natural cycles of their lives to provide the containers through which the members of the tribe can experience death and rebirth as they pass through the difficult transitions. To quote from the classic Rites of Passage by Arnold van Gannep:

In such societies every change in a person's life involves actions and reactions between sacred and profane—actions and reactions to be regulated and guarded so that society as a whole will suffer no discomfort or injury. Transitions from group to group and from one social situation to the next are looked on as implicit in the very fact of existence, so that a man's life comes to be made up of a succession of stages with similar ends and beginnings: birth, social puberty, marriage, fatherhood, advancement to a higher class, occupational specialization, and death. For every one of these events there are ceremonies whose essential purpose is to enable the individual to pass from one defined position to another which is equally well defined.... In this respect man's life resembles nature, from which neither the individual nor the society stands independent.

Through their initiation, for example, boys are recognized as responsible adult men. They are cut off from their mothers, trained as warriors, instructed in the culture of their tribe.

For girls, the meaning of puberty rites is somewhat different. Here I quote from Bruce Lincoln's Emerging from the Chrysalis:

Rather than changing women's status, initiation changes their fundamental being, addressing ontological concerns rather than hierarchical ones.

A woman does not become more powerful or authoritative, but more creative, more alive, more ontologically real. ... The pattern of female initiation is thus one of growth or magnification, an expansion of powers, capabilities, experiences. This magnification is accomplished by gradually endowing the initiand with symbolic items that make of her woman, and beyond this a cosmic being. These items can be concrete, such as clothing or jewelry, or they can be nonmaterial in nature, such as songs chanted for the woman-to be, myths repeated in her presence, scars or paintings placed upon her body.

The scarification is meant to provide an experience of intense pain and an enduring record of that pain. The person is rendered unique. Through this magnification, the woman "steps into the cosmic arena: she is given the water of life, with which she nourishes the cosmic tree."

Such primitive rituals did not change the way people lived. They gave meaning to life. By means of ritual, relationship to the unchanging, archetypal aspects of existence was affirmed and renewed. What would otherwise have been boring drudgery or torschlusspanik was invested with a meaning that transcended animal survival.  Through ritual, human activity was connected to the divine.

In more sophisticated societies, the church and the theater became ritual containers. Within the safety and the confines of the Mass, for instance, the individual could surrender to God and experience dismemberment and death, descent into Hell and resurrection of the spirit on the third day. One could experience the magnification of one's own spirit by experiencing oneself as sacrificer and sacrificed. Like the primitive, the participant left the ritual with enhanced meaning, with a profound sense of belonging to a cosmos and to a community that respected that cosmos.

The theater also provided a ritual container, a public chrysalis. The plays dealt with archetypal realities. On the stage, men and women saw their own psychological depths enacted and were thus encouraged to reflect on their own human situation.

We have lost our containers; chaos threatens. Without rituals to make a firm demarcation between the profane and the sacred, between what is us and what is not us, we tend to identify with archetypal patterns of being—hero, Father, Mother, etc. We forget that we are individual human beings; we allow ourselves to be inflated by the power of the unconscious and usurp it for our own. And we do this not knowing what we do and that we do it. Liberated from the "superstitious" belief in gods and demons, we claim for ourselves the power once attributed to them. We do not realize we have usurped or stolen it. How then do we explain our anxiety and dissatisfaction? Power makes us fearful; lack of it makes us anxious. Few are satisfied with what they have. Despite our so­called liberation from gods and demons, few can live without them. Their absence makes nothing better. It may even make everything worse.

If, for example, a child has acted as buffer between his parents, he may fear his home will disintegrate if he ceases to act as intermediary. Without realizing it, he has assumed the power of the savior in his small world. When as an adult his boundaries are widened, he will tend to take on that archetypal role wherever he goes. He will also suffer guilt when he fails. He may even suffer guilt for being unable to make it snow when his family has planned a skiing weekend. Such hubris is seen as ludicrous once it is brought to consciousness, but, without consciousness, depression and despair fester inside. "I should have been able to do something. I failed," Instead of leaving other people's destiny to them and accepting his own, he attempts to take responsibility for Fate and feels inadequate when the door thuds. The resulting guilt can quickly switch to rage, rage that resonates back to the powerless childhood. "What do you expect of me? I can't do it. Get off my back. Carry your own load. LEAVE ME ALONE."

Many people, for example, think life is a meaningless merry-go-round if they are not being transported by love like Prince Charles and Lady Diana, or living for a  cause like Mother Theresa, or dying for a dream like Martin Luther King. They measure their standard of behavior by comparison with figures who carry immense archetypal projections—Marilyn Monroe, John F. Kennedy, Michael Jackson. A mask ceases to be a mask. Instead, with the help of dyes and surgery, the mask becomes the face. Cosmetics are identity or character or Fate. By identifying with an archetype instead of remaining detached from it, they turn life into theater and themselves into actors on a stage, thus falling prey to demonic as well as angelic inflation. Without the container, they confuse the sacred and profane worlds.

We are the descendants of Freud and Jung, and while poets and madmen had free access to their unconscious before those two giants, the world of the archetype is now an open market for the general populace without any ritual containment. If we are blindly living out an archetype, we are not containing our own life. We are possessed, and possession acts as a magnet on unconscious people in our environment. Everyday life becomes a dangerous world where illusion and reality can be fatally confused.

A life that is being truly lived is constantly burning away the veils of illusion, gradually revealing the essence of the individual. Psychoanalysis can speed up that process.  Sometimes people experience themselves as caterpillars crawling along. Externally, everything seems fine. Some deep intuitive voice, however, may be whispering, "It's not worth it. There's nobody here. I need a cocoon. I need to go back and find myself." Now, they may not quite realize that when caterpillars go into cocoons,  they do not emerge as high-class caterpillars, and they may not be prepared for the agony of the transformation that goes on inside the chrysalis. Nor are they quite prepared for the winged beauty that slowly and painfully emerges, that lives by a very different set of laws than a caterpillar. Even more confounding is the fact that friends and relations who may be quite happy caterpillars have no patience with a silent, hard-edged chrysalis that is all turned in on itself—"selfish, lazy, self indulgent." And they have even less patience with a confused butterfly who hasn't adjusted to the laws of aerodynamics.

Still, it is amazing how often other caterpillars, inspired by butterflies, sacrifice their landlubber condition, make their own chrysalis and find their own wings. Jung writes that coming to consciousness is "the sacrifice of the merely natural man, of the unconscious, ingenuous being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in Paradise.

The chrysalis is essential if we are to find ourselves. Yet very little in our extroverted society supports introverted withdrawal. We are supposed to be doers, taking care of others, supporting good causes, unselfish, energetic, doing our social duty. If we choose to simply be, our loved ones may automatically assume we are doing nothing, and at first we may feel that way ourselves. We begin to look at our primeval muck as it surfaces in dreams. All hell starts to break loose inside, and we wonder what's the point of dredging up all this stuff. We argue with ourselves: "I should be out there doing something useful. But the truth is I can't do anything useful if there's no I to do it. I can't love anyone else, if there's no I to do the loving. If I don't know myself, I cannot love myself, and if I do not love myself, my love of others is probably my projected need of their acceptance. I am putting  on a performance in order to be loved. I fear rejection. If nobody loves me, I won't exist. But who are they loving? Who am I?"

That is what going into the chrysalis is all about—undergoing a metamorphosis in order one day to be able to stand up and say I am. The gnawing hunger, the incessant yearning at the core of many lives, began at birth, or perhaps even in utero. In order to survive in a demanding environment where one or both parents projected their unlived dreams (or nightmares) onto their children, the infants gave up trying to live their own lives. As little human beings with needs and feelings of their own, they were rejected. Their mystery was never considered, and so they grew up automatically thinking in terms of other people's response. In other words, they developed a charming persona, a mask they created with infinite care—a mask that, as adults, may be at once their greatest blessing and greatest curse. Outwardly they may be brilliantly successful, but inwardly empty. They cannot understand why their intimate relationships repeatedly end in disaster, a pattern they recognize but can do nothing to stop. They dream they are actors, the spotlight is on them, but they cannot remember what play they are in, let alone what their lines are. If their ego is barely formed, they may not even appear in their own dreams, or may recognize themselves as objects or little animals.

It is important to point out, however, that we all need several personas, that is, the right mask for the right occasion. Jung was once lecturing on the topic when a student accused him of being hypocritical if he used a persona. Jung said that he had just had a fight with his wife, and he was still angry, but that anger had nothing to do with the students, nor with their reason for getting themselves to the Institute that morning. It was neither fair to himself nor to them to show that anger there. However, he said, he intended to finish the fight when he went home. The point is that we must be conscious enough to know when we are using a persona and for what reason. Otherwise we easily identify with a particular persona, which obliges us to repress our genuine feelings and prevents us from acting on them at the right time and place. The persona is necessary because people at different levels of consciousness respond to a situation with very different antennae. Naively or deliberately, making oneself vulnerable to psychic wounding without good reason is foolish. To be wary of casting pearls before swine is not conceit but plain common sense.

As the transformation process goes on, pregnancies and new­born babies frequently appear in dreams. When the conscious ego is able to release repressed psychic energy, or reconnects with unconscious body energy, or makes a decision on its own behalf, that new energy is symbolized as new life. When the psyche is preparing to move onto a new level of awareness, or one's conscious attitude has made a new connection with the unconscious, then dreams may appear where the dream ego, the shadow or the anima is pregnant. Nine months later, so long as the process has not been aborted, there are often dreams of crossing borders, passing over into a new country, moving through subterranean tunnels or actually giving birth (see below, page 158). If the ego maintains the connection, the new­born child is nurtured with soul food. If the ego falters and fails to act on the new energy, the baby may appear mutilated, starving or dead. Or it may simply disappear.

I have found that individuals tend to repeat the pattern of their own actual birth every time life requires them to move onto a new level of awareness. As they entered the world, so they continue to re­enter at each new spiral of growth. If, for example, their birth was straightforward, they tend to handle passovers with courage and natural trust. If their birth was difficult, they become extremely fearful, manifest symptoms of suffocating, become claustrophobic (psychically and physically). If they were premature, they tend to be always a little ahead of themselves. If they were held back, the rebirth process may be very slow. If they were breech­birth, they tend to go through life "ass­backwards." If they were born by Caesarian section, they may avoid confrontations. If their mother was heavily drugged, they may come up to the point of passover with lots of energy, then suddenly, for no apparent reason, stop, or move into a regression, and wait for someone else to do something. Often this is the point where addictions reappear—binging, starving, drinking, sleeping, overworking—anything to avoid facing the reality of moving out into a challenging world.

Many delightful babies appear in dreams, and just as many little tyrants who need firm and loving discipline. One child, however, is noticeably different from the others. This is the abandoned one, who may appear in bullrushes, in straw in a barn, in a tree, almost always in some forgotten or out-of-the-way place. This child will be radiant with light, robust, intelligent, sensitive. Often it is able to talk minutes after it is born. It has Presence. It is the Divine Child, bringing with it the "hard and bitter  agony" of the new dispensation—the agony of Eliot's Magi. With its birth, the old gods have to go.

Since the natural gradient of the psyche is toward wholeness, the Self will attempt to push the neglected part forward for recognition. It contains energy of the highest value, the gold in the dung. In the Bible it is the stone that was rejected that becomes the cornerstone. It manifests either in a sudden or subtle change in personality, or, conversely, in a fanaticism which the existing ego adopts in order to try to keep the new and threatening energy out. If the ego fails to go through the psychic birth canal, neurotic symptoms manifest physically and psychically. The suffering may be intense, but it is based on worshipping false gods. It is not the genuine suffering that accompanies efforts to incorporate the new life. The neurotic is always one phase behind where his reality is. When he should be outgrowing childish behavior, he hangs onto it.  When he should be moving into maturity, he hangs onto youthful folly. Never congruent with himself or others, he is never where he seems to be. What he cannot do is live in the now.

Many people are being dragged toward wholeness in their daily lives, but because they do not understand initiation rites, they cannot make sense of what is happening to them. They put on a happy face all day, and return to their apartment and cry all night. Perhaps their beloved has gone off with someone else; perhaps their business has failed; perhaps they have lost interest in their work; perhaps they are coping with a fatal illness; perhaps a loved one has died. Perhaps, and this is worst of all, everything has begun to go wrong for no apparent reason. If they have no concept of rites of passage, they experience themselves as victims, powerless to resist an overwhelming Fate. Their meaningless suffering drives them to escape through food, alcohol, drugs, sex. Or they take up arms against the gods and cry out, "Why me?"

They are being presented with the possibility of rebirth into a different life. Through failures, symptoms, inferiority feelings and overwhelming problems, they are being prodded to renounce life attachments that have become redundant. The possibility of rebirth constellates with the breakdown of what has gone before. That is why Jung emphasized the positive purpose of neurosis. But because they do not understand, people cling to the familiar, refuse to make the necessary sacrifices, resist their own growth. Unable to give up their habitual lives, they are unable to receive new life.

Unless cultural rituals support the leap from one level of consciousness to another, there are no containing walls within which the process can happen. Without an understanding of myth or religion, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction and creation, death and rebirth, the individual suffers the mysteries of life as meaningless mayhem—alone. To ease the meaningless suffering, addictions may develop that are an attempt to repress the confusing demands of the growth process which cultural structures no longer clarify or contain.

The burning question when one enters analysis is "Who am I?" The immediate problem, however, as soon as powerful emotions begin to surface, is often a psyche/soma split. While women tend to talk about their bodies more than men, both sexes in our culture are grievously unrelated to their own body experience.  Women say, "I don't like this body"; men say, "It hurts." Their use of the third-person neuter pronoun in referring to their body makes quite clear their sense of alienation. They may talk about "my heart,'' "my kidneys," "my feet," but their body as a whole is depersonalized. Repeatedly they say, "I don't feel anything below the neck. I experience feelings in my head, but nothing in my heart." Their lack of emotional response to a powerful dream image reflects the split. And yet, when they engage in active imagination with that dream image located in their body, their muscles release undulations of repressed grief. The body has become the whipping post. If the person is anxious, the body is starved, gorged, drugged, intoxicated, forced to vomit, driven into exhaustion or driven to frenzied reaction against self-destruction. When this magnificent animal attempts to send up warning signals, it is silenced with pills.

Many people can listen to their cat more intelligently than they can listen to their own despised body. Because they attend to their pet in a cherishing way, it returns their love. Their body, however, may have to let out an earth-shattering scream in order to be heard at all. Before symptoms manifest, quieter screams appear in dreams: a forsaken baby elephant, a starving kitten, a dog with a leg ripped out. Almost always the wounded animal is either gently or fiercely attempting to attract the attention of the dreamer, who may or may not respond. In fairytales it is the friendly animal who often carries the hero or heroine to the goal because the animal is the instinct that knows how to obey the Goddess when reason fails.

It is possible that the scream that comes from the forsaken body, the scream that manifests in a symptom, is the cry of the soul that can find no other way to be heard. If we have lived behind a mask all our lives, sooner or later—if we are lucky—that mask will be smashed. Then we will have to look in our own mirror at our own reality. Perhaps we will be appalled. Perhaps we will look into the terrified eyes of our own tiny child, that child who has never known love and who now beseeches us to respond. This child is alone, forsaken before we left the womb, or at birth, or when we began to please our parents and learned to put on our best performance in order to be accepted. As life progresses, we may continue to abandon our child by pleasing others—teachers, professors, bosses, friends and partners, even analysts. That child who is our very soul cries out from underneath the rubble of our lives, often from the core of our worst complex, begging us to say, "You are not alone. I love you."

We dare not drop the tensions. In order to widen consciousness, we have to hold both arms on the cross. If we reject one part of ourselves, we give up our past; if we reject the other part, we give up our future. We must hold onto our roots and build from there. Those roots often appear as a psychic home sometimes a summer cottage that the dreamer loves, or the country of his origin, or his ancestors' origin. The longing to go Home must certainly be looked at symbolically, for it is often more than a regressive longing for the security of the womb. It can be the one solid root that goes right through one's life, becoming the point of genuine nurturance for spiritual growth.

Whether we like it or not, one of our tasks on this earth is to work with the opposites through different levels of consciousness until body, soul and spirit resonate together. Initiation rites, experienced at the appropriate times in our lives, burn off what is no longer relevant, opening our eyes to new possibilities of our own uniqueness. They tear off the protective veils of illusion until at last we are strong enough to stand in our own naked truth.

The process is mirrored in dreams, often in images of cooking, cars, cupboards and clothes. The Cinderella work is accomplished in the kitchen. Having brought the wild things of nature in, taken off their feathers, cleaned out their entrails, cooked them and made them accessible to consciousness, the ego stands firm. Mother and Father no longer drive the car. The incessant sorting through actual cupboards and drawers has ceased, and the sorting in dreams has reached a finely differentiated level of detail. What clothes to wear is no longer a constant frustration, and the incongruous shoe combinations have at last settled into pairs that are the same color with the same size heel. Or maybe no shoes at all—just good solid feet on good solid ground. Usually the Self allows the ego time to enjoy this period of experiencing its new strength—perhaps months, perhaps years. Each process in unique, moving at its own appointed pace.

The existence and continuity of the ego is essential to our lives. It is necessary that we experience the person who wakes up in the morning as the same person who fell asleep last night, despite the fact that what took place during the hours of sleep may appear so unrelated to the waking state that it never enters consciousness. One way in which the ego maintains its integrity is to remove from itself everything that does not directly offer it support. It simply excludes or suppresses everything which does not coincide with its conscious understanding of itself.

The danger in such a limited view is that the ego may harden and dry up, just as the earth will harden and dry up if it is not continually replenished with water. The ego needs the nourishment of underground springs. It requires the compensatory life of dreams if its continuity is to move beyond mere survival and perpetuation. In addition to these, it requires direction and purpose. As soon as it gives itself up to a higher goal, however, it is threatened, not only by the fear that it may not be able to achieve it, but by a dawning sense that that higher goal, because of the demands it makes, is the enemy of the ego. In some sense, the ego feels that it may be working against itself. Ultimately, of course, it is, but for a better good.

The goal of human striving in the individuation process is the recognition of the Self, the regulating center of the psyche. That recognition relativizes the ego's position in the psychic structure, and initiates a dialogue between conscious and unconscious. "The only way the Self can manifest is through conflict," writes Marie­Louise von Franz. "To meet one's insoluble and eternal conflict is to meet God, which would be the end of the ego with all its blather."

If the ego rejects that conflict, then the goal is contaminated by the ego's desire for more and more power, or wealth, or happiness. The result is ego inflation.  According to Jung:

An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence. It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future. It is hypnotized by itself and therefore cannot be argued with. It inevitably dooms itself to calamities that must strike it dead.

Paradoxically enough, inflation is a regression of consciousness into unconsciousness. This always happens when consciousness takes too many unconscious contents upon itself and loses the faculty of discrimination, the sine qua non of all consciousness.

The inflated ego tends to idolatry. It focuses on a single image, fashions it and worships it. Determined to create that image, it is trapped in profane ritual.

Religiously speaking, all such profane rituals are contained in the worship of the Golden Calf. A fat woman's body image, for example, may be her Golden Calf. No matter how much she thinks she hates it, her rituals are taking place around it. It is this thralldom before her own body image that she may be called upon to sacrifice. The profane worship must be sacrificed to make way for the sacred. The withdrawal from the one operates simultaneously with the entrance into the other. We withdraw as we enter. Withdrawing is entering. Whether we stress the withdrawing or the entering, we are stressing the same thing.

When this process begins, it may be reflected in the dreams by a bell tolling, an alarm sounding or lightning striking. It can also be heralded by physical symptoms. It can be brought on by loss of faith, loss of relationship or the imminence of death. Something almost imperceptible begins to happen. For people watching their dreams, the bell usually tolls some weeks before the actual events occur. In real life we seem to be carrying on as usual, but a very clear inner voice may begin to comment,  hinting that things are not as they seem to be. We may find ourselves singing songs that put a very ironic twist on our conscious actions. Our inner clown may be singing, "Put your sweet lips a little closer," to the tune of "Please release me and let me go." If the ego has not sufficient strength and flexibility, it will panic and either regress to its former terrors of annihilation, or regress to its former rigid framework—in either case, refusing to go through the birth canal.

The ego now has to be strong enough to remain concentrated in stillness, so that it can mediate what is happening both positively and negatively. It must hold a detached position, relying now on its differentiated femininity in order to submit, now on its discriminating masculinity in order to question and cut away. Something immense begins to happen in the very foundation of the personality, while consciousness experiences the conflict as crucifixion. Ego desires are no longer relevant. The old questions no longer have any meaning, and there are no answers. There may be a few stricken "why's," but they belong to the order of logic and discipline, and what is taking place is irrational, beyond ego control. The ego on some level knows. It knows that what is happening has to happen. It knows that its personal desires have to be sacrificed to the transpersonal. It knows it is confronting death.

It is a period of throbbing pain. It is King Lear howling on the heath, brought to submission and reunited with the daughter whose truth was her dowry. At last, he says,

Upon such sacrifices, my Cordelia,

The Gods themselves throw incense.

It is Job covered with boils, moving from "Do not condemn me; shew me wherefore thou contendest with me" to "I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee."

It is Jesus in Gethsemane, sweating blood, moving from "Let this cup pass from me" to "Thy will be done."

A woman during such a period of withdrawal and entry had the following vision:

I was walking by the St. Lawrence one sunny, summer day. I thought I was going Home. Instantly the sky darkened; the earth grew cold. I could not see with my eyes, nor hear with my ears. I was seeing inside, hearing inside. Then I realized I was on ice, floating, suddenly not floating, but being thrust by the power of the current. The ice began to crack. I leaped from one floe to another, the ice cracking in front, behind, beside. I thought I might die in the ice-cold water, or be ground by the grating blocks. And all the time I knew I was being propelled toward the ocean. I just kept jumping and screaming, "Please, God, don't kill me. Not yet. Not this time."

At times like this, Rilke's words can be very reassuring:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and... try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

These situations, whether in analysis or in life, or both, can raise profound religious questions. Is this God confronting me? Was I on the wrong track? Am I being forcibly turned around? Is there some almighty plan that is different from mine? Am I being forced to submit? Should I accept Fate? Do I, in fact, have any free will? Is this God burning away the veils of illusion, or am I facing the devil? Is he making one last stand to cheat me out of my own life?

Psychologically, the questions are equally blistering. Is this the Self demanding a sacrifice? Or is this the real face of the complex that has crippled me all my life? Just when I thought I could be free, there it is to destroy me. Everything I have fought so hard to bring to consciousness is now in question. Why do I suddenly wake up every night at the same time? Why do I feel this searing pain? Why are my hands so weak? Am I really alone? I'm worse off now than I ever was. I'm back in the old pattern. I'm back in the matrix—back in the Garden recognizing the place for the first time. Is this who I really am? Is this who I have been running away from all my life?

Psychologically, the ego, like Lear, Job and Jesus, is penetrating and being penetrated by the archetypal Ground of Being in an effort to bring to consciousness whatever it can of that vast unknown. It experiences another law operating from within, a dawning realization that it has a destiny of its own which must be obeyed. It knows that something new is being born; it has to breathe into the pain and let it be.

Many people in our culture are attempting to suffer these transformations alone, without any ritual container and without any group to support the influx of transcendent power. Like Eliot's Magi, they experience the birth as "hard and bitter agony . . . like Death, our death." They are "no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,/With  an alien people clutching their gods."

Without the container and without the group, the aloneness is almost intolerable. The individual ego has to be strong enough to build its own chrysalis in order to create a loving communication with its own inner symbols. Their numinosity brings the confidence and integrity, humor and illumination without which the ego could not survive, let alone expand. A childish ego, primitive and unconscious, cannot maintain a living chrysalis; it wants to project everything, and, tuned to a natural order, it explains what happens by magic. The chrysalis becomes too precious in itself, shellacked with sentimentality. A childlike ego can hold the tension, pull in the projections and ponder the inner mystery. At the transpersonal level, the symbols are simultaneously individual and universal. At that level, none of us is alone. New relationships, bypassing the world of transitory disguise, begin at that depth, and from there relate back to the world in a totally new way.

Hours before he died, Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain, gave a lecture which concluded with a plea for openness to the "painfulness of inner change":

What is essential... is not embedded in buildings, is not embedded in clothing, is not necessarily embedded even in a rule. It is somewhere along the line of something deeper than a rule. It is concerned with this business of total inner transformation.

According to his own account, Merton completed his inner transformation on his Asian journey standing barefoot in the presence of the giant Buddhas of Polonnaruwa in Ceylon. "I know and have seen what I was obscurely looking for," he wrote. "I don't know what else remains but I have now seen and have pierced through the surface and have got beyond the shadow and the disguise."

When Merton asked a Buddhist abbot, "What is the 'knowledge of freedom'?" the abbot replied, "One must ascend all the steps, but then when there are no more steps one must make the leap. Knowledge of freedom is the knowledge, the experience, of this leap."

Voices from the Chrysalis

It's hard for me to trust life. I like to take hold of it, grab it by the neck and put my teeth into it, just to be sure it doesn't get away on me.

I try to see how far I've come, rather than how far I have to go.

Now that I'm contacting my own inner clock, I am so slow. My life is on top of me. The collision of values overwhelms me. Am I wasting my time? I don't know.... I don't know.... this terrible aloneness.

I've always identified with what I'm not. But who am I? My guilt and shame and fear are making me human.

I was always waiting until all the responsibilities were completed, then there would be time for me. How? I never thought about that. I've been so busy doing, I've missed something very important to me. I don't think I was ever a child. I have no recollection at all of being a very young child with any sense of being ME.

I wonder if it takes a holocaust, outer or inner, to help us to realize what is really essential in life.

I lived a smile­and­grin, smile­and­grin existence. I was dying.

I rage for life. I want so much to be free.

I'm trying to have faith—faith that I will be born.

I'm so off balance. I pray for daily guidance to avoid tripping over things. I can go to sleep when I orient myself  to the stars.

The spirit is in the volcano inside. My relationships aren't very good right now, so I go back to work. I'm safe there. But even that isn't perfect.

I'll explode if I have to react to one more thing. I'm pulling back. I'm overwhelmed by the pressures of the outside world and the mounting pressures of the interior world are making me feel actually sick.

Used to feel capable, used to speak and write well. Now I never feel secure because I can't find words.

Am I fighting my destiny or does my destiny require I take a stand?

When I touch into that essence and recognize myself as what I've been running away from, I am humbled.

I'm Miss Compassion, Miss Humanity. I'm a missing piece. I'm also a child of God.

To get rid of one's past one has to forgive—confront and forgive—and move into the present. Forgive oneself too, and God.

I hated my father. I imitated hated myself.

--Marion Woodman en "The pregnant virgin"

[wall-legion]

Reborn from Rot

It was said that the Dream had shuddered in dread and mourning on the day that the Firstborn Trahearne was slain in the jungles of Maguuma, in order to make sure that the Elder Dragon Mordremoth was dead and gone.

Many across Tyria mourned as well for the loss of the the Pact Marshall, and for months after there were many impromptu monuments around the continent to his bravery. The Grove put up a statue of the necromancer, and there were many flowers, mementos, and anything that apparently invoked thoughts of him in those who left the items behind. His body was too bound with the body of Mordremoth to be recovered, so the statue was truly all that would ever be his tombstone since there would never be anywhere to lay his body closer to the Grove. The world moved on. Other Elder Dragons fell. The magic of the world was no longer being consumed by the dragons and now, perhaps, was a little out of balance. But the average Tyrian would not notice this, unless they were attuned to the ley lines of the world. === Deep in the jungle, something shifted for the first time in years. He was no longer in the form that he had fallen in, but he was not able to perceive this yet. Mother- he gasped out, trying to find the Dream and failing. What had happened? He tried to search his own memories to recall what had happened before he had fallen asleep, or unconscious, or... whatever it was had happened. There were flashes, brief images of violence. A tall, red haired woman dying. People screaming. A man and a small female creature- Zojja, his mind filled in- being rescued by a group of heroes. Those same heroes standing before him, as a voice- my voice- told them to kill him, to make sure the jungle dragon was slain. I am the firstborn Trahearne. I died to make sure the Elder Dragon Mordremoth was truly dead. Now he tried to stand, and truly realized that he had changed. He reached out, and suddenly felt something... new. It was not the Dream but something that felt something akin to it, like taking hold of a weapon made by a familiar craftsman. He reached out to it, and was suddenly flooded with voices, clamoring for his attention. It felt like being the Pact Marshall again. “My lord Mordremoth-” One voice stuck out among the others, and he suddenly felt compelled to respond. No, he replied. I am not the Elder Dragon. “But you are powerful enough to speak to us as he did,” another answered. I am still not him. “Are you the great tree that has grown where Mordremoth fell, then?” He paused, stunned. He was a tree now? He disengaged his mind from the conversation and focused on himself, to figure out how he felt. Almost immediately he could tell he felt different from what he was anticipating: that was a feeling of... intake from where he was expecting both his hands and feet to be. There was also a definite thrum of magic through his body, and it was honestly a little thrilling. He heard the voices calling to him again, sounding earnest and yearning. He wondered if they were all the turned sylvari, who had been looking for something like the Dream since Mordremoth’s fall. He reached back out. I... I am. “Then what are we to call you?” He paused for a moment. I suppose... you may call me Brother Tree for now. Another voice, smaller and timid, spoke. “Will you keep us safe, Brother Tree?” Oh, that made him want to straighten his spine. I will. I swear this to you. If you are close, rest under my branches. If you need strength, reach out to hear my voice. I will always be near you. As our Mother birthed us all, so I shall carry on her work. There were many calls of “thank you Brother” after that. He smiled to himself at that. Perhaps one’s Wyld Hunt to heal a land because of a dragon could extend after his death, he mused, as he settled in to appreciate the feeling of sunlight upon his leaves. === Aurene opened her eyes after feeling a new pulse through the leylines. There had been no activity on the leylines coming from Maguuma since Mordremoth fell in the last ten years, then five years ago there was something akin to... a stirring. Now, it was the first time since she had felt a new pulse of magical energy, and this one felt... potent. Like it had increased tenfold. “Champion.” She watched as her hero, her parent, her Commander turned to look at her. “Yes?” “I believe there is something to be investigated in the depths of Maguuma.” She let her mouth twitch into a smile, so her champion would not assume the worst. “It feels as though it comes from where the Elder Dragon fell. I think it should be looked into immediately.” “Are you sure? We still need to figure out what to do about the Pale Tree failing. The sylvari are sustaining each other for now, but I do not think the cure is going to take.” Aurene nodded. “I am certain.” “Then I will go. If anyone has need of me, tell them to send for me immediately.” She closed her eyes and listened to the departing footfalls, still smiling. I shall, but I think that the solution to the problem you dwell on is about to be right in front of you, she mused to herself.

[89rooms]

Music is at once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts — it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure — and the most sensual. I listen with my body and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos embodied in this music. It is the physical ‘I’ that feels an unbearable pain — and then a dull fretfulness — when the whole world of melody suddenly glistens and comes cascading down in the second part of the first movement — it is flesh and bone that dies a little each time I am sucked into the yearning of the second movement — I am almost on the verge of madness.

Susan Sontag - 'Reborn:' “Undated”

[dk-thrive]

I listen with my body and it is my body that aches in response

12/25/48 

I’m completely engrossed, at this moment, in one of the most beautiful musical works I’ve ever heard—the Vivaldi B Minor p[iano]f[orte] concerto on Cetra-Soria with Mario Salerno— 

Music is at once the most wonderful, the most alive of all the arts—it is the most abstract, the most perfect, the most pure—and the most sensual. I listen with my body and it is my body that aches in response to the passion and pathos embodied in this music. It is the physical “I” that feels an unbearable pain—and then a dull fretfulness—when the whole world of melody suddenly glistens and comes cascading down in the second part of the first movement—it is flesh and bone that dies a little each time I am sucked into the yearning of the second movement—

— Susan Sontag, Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963. (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 27, 2009) 

[chaotic-pulsar]

Community-building Tag Game

Tagged by: @quigonsjeans

Name: Real names? In this economy??? Call me Trident

Pronouns: he/him

Where do you call home? Currently holed up in Fullerton, southern California, although I am very eagerly planning to move to Concord, NH in the next 12-15 months (depending on finances)

Favorite animal: I'm going to be boring here and say cats... even though both cats I've owned have died... Primarily because they don't lick you and slobber all over you

Cereal of choice: Trix, but like, the old, classic Trix. From like, 2015. The good Trix

Are you a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner? 80% visual, 20% kinesthetic. Audio means nothing to me. Fun fact: I can't/won't actually commit to learning somebody's name until I've either seen it written down, or I asked them to spell it out so I can visualize their written name in my mind (like actual letters on a whiteboard)

First pet: I had a fish. It died. It was a very long time ago. I'm not sure if I ever even named it. Then I didn't have pets for a very long time. Then I had a cat... adopted a kitten whose yearning for the Great Outdoors could not be restrained by any amount of human-enforced enclosures

Favorite scent: Lemon. Lemon handsoap. Lemon merengue pie. Lemon pound cake. You get the gist

Do you believe in astrology? Naw, but when I was 8, I got really into astronomy... of course, back then, we lived in the Hungarian countryside, where it was a lot easier to see stars than in SoCal. I make yearly trips to the middle of nowhere to look at the Milky Way, and deeply regret that I still to this day do not own a proper telescope

How many playlists do you have on Spotify/Apple Music? 46 Spotify playlists that I have made... a few more if you count playlists I'm subscribed to. My music friends either strongly dislike or are extremely puzzled by my music taste

Sharpies or highlighters? Can I pick neither? I'm going to pick neither and go with fountain pens instead. Recently got into fountain pens, and they're AWESOME

A song that makes you cry: Hmmm... I haven't had a good cry in at least 7 years, but... there are a few that can touch my heartstrings just right and bring me to the verge of tears. How Long Will I Love You, from the movie, About Time, tugs on the strings of my hopeless romantic heart in just the right ways

A song that makes you happy: I was not expecting to have to think so hard about this one... I think it's going to be a toss-up between I Knew You Were Trouble by Taylor Swift (with the goat-like screams whenever appropriate) and Believe by Cher, because both of those are songs I can't help but sing along to, and even though I've never been a good singer, I love them

And finally, do you write/draw/create? if so, use this as an opportunity to shamelessly (😉) promote yourself!

Can't draw for the life of me. I write poetry on my other Tumblr account, @trident-writes-poetry

I am also a D&D Dungeon Master and love brainstorming plots and ideas and NPCs, but I don't necessarily write anything. I think I'm an ENTJ, so the idea of sitting still and being alone with my own thoughts is terrifying, so I'd rather just spend my time with people

Nominations (either because we're mutuals or I find you interesting): @logo-comics, @litostaves, @psychopomp-reborn, @technolilly, @teaboot, @clawedandcute, @o-lei-o-lai-o-lord, @thebirdandhersong , @messianicbabycatcher

[xylak]

Its like I've died

Its like I've died and been reborn again.

Its like being reborn I have lost everything again.

Its like there's a fresh clean slate for me to being with.

And yet my pen of white feathers is dipped in the black ink of my poisoned heart.

Its like I've gotten a new chance to start my life all over again.

Retaining the pain of the previous one but just as a distant throb.

I've always wished for this new life, have begged for it on my knees.

And now that I am here, my knees scabbed, I am reborn again.

Reborn into a shell, colorless and blank.

Reborn without sentiment, mind of emptiness.

Reborn into a soul which feels counterfeit.

Reborn without my rage and hatred and agony which made me.

Its like I've died. And have not at all been reborn.

Its like I have finally earned the peace I yearned for.

Its like the torment has finally disappeared and given me solace, leaving a hollow in it wake.

Its like death, because only in death will I cry of joy for not feeling again.

It's like I have hope again. Hollow hope.

Its like I have dreams again. Bound by impossible fate.

Its like I don't need to suffer anymore. The only thing I knew.

Because I have died. And am living my life now.

[beefcakenpinkyring]

I think I'm supposed to be keeping track of my life on here, but I fail to remember to come back.

It's okay. I've been trying to rest anyway.

Nothing is clear enough for me to write things down and feel better.

Honestly, a lot has been going on. And none of it even gets close to making sense.

I think a lot is changing in my life, although in appearance, nothing has changed.

Last year around the same time, I am sure I was excatly in the same position as now. But between last year and now, I must've died and reborn a million times.

I must've lived a thousand lives since last March. A couple million since March 2022. An entire different universe separates me from March 2021, and a whole human History from COVID March.

It really is hilarious how long ago everything seems.

I've been constantly, continuously changing. I am struggling to keep up, not gonna lie.

Only a few recognizable faces remain, no sense of security left. My house is familiar, comfortable, but nothing is ever safe.

I've been to a psychiatrist. I have been fainting, grappling with very strange contractions before sleep. My left arm feels strange, entrapped in an ever-twitching ribcage. I don't know when nor how I've managed to neglect my body this bad, inflicting hurt that'll take years to heal.

I have been expecting death, on many an occasion, almost immediately passing out after.

My fear has taken a toll on me.

But what remains is an insane lust.

I don't know who to say this to so I might as well broadcast it.

I don't know what my body's trying to accomplish by pushing me towards all sorts of potential partners. I have been a prolific flirt for a few years now, but I've always firmly believed it was mental stimulation, a hobby of sorts. I know it keeps my brain alive and scratches an itch not strong enough to justify any real investment.

Yet lately, I've been collecting names and faces. I've been making moves ; maybe even taking time out of my day to guarantee a conversation.

What faintly worries me is that the people involved are never important.

I am alone, in ways I never expected to experience.

Everyone has got people to go back to, and I got flirtatious acquaintances, designed to be left.

I got interested for a week maybe, craving male comfort after a scary episode, like the touch-deprived child I used to be. I texted him, trying to see if anything could lie behind the playful respect we so formally express to each other. The conversation was short, and I got my answer.

I also understood that I've grown old, and that yearning does not interest me anymore, not in the slightest.

A couple weeks later, piercing memories of eyes that peeled through my layers kept me awake already. Nothing is as disarming as the gaze of a lady who'd open her doors for you.

[dead-end-street]

Hello Kat! Just a secret santa stopping by (from userdramas event) specifically! Very excited to get you as my giftee because I feel like we’re on the same page on a lot of these dramas! I am also an angst lover, myself. If I’m being honest, I could even say I love pain and sadness in my dramas. What are the dramas or moments from dramas that first come to mind when you think about angst?

Hiiiiiiiiiii!!! Ooo another angst lover! It's just so delicious, i love the pain >D and then any sweet moments you get after feel even more rewarding and earned!

hmmm some angsty moments that first come to mind -

not sure if you're watching Soundtrack #2 but omgggg the angst in that is sooo delicious! So much yearning with exes meeting again after so many years and a messy break up but you can feel their yearning and that unfinished business between them. the love didn't go away between them, it just was put on pause and buried under anger and resentment. I'm obsessed with that show rn

in the similar vein (i love exes to lovers >D their pain is so great!) i love Our Beloved Summer for seeing their backstories of why they broke up and unravelling the reasons for everything and them slowly coming back together but being a little hesitant. I love the scene when she finds him in the restaurant and finally have a heart-to-heart.She tells him she doesn't think she can be friends and he says he's missed her and asks her to keep loving him T___T it's such a beautiful scene and they're both great criers xDDD

in CLOY when she gets kidnapped and calls him to say goodbye and tells him to have a good life and be happy. he's like running to find her while he's on the phone and then it ends with her saying she loves him and then you just hear the gunshot and he stops running

in LBFAD when XHL dies and is reborn as the goddess and doesn't remember him but he still tries to help her remember. The scene on the bridge when he breaks down because he never got to explain to her why he was so cruel and tried to get her to stop loving him to break the bone orchid curse T______T and the audience can see her reaction and tears, but he doesn't see it cus he's crying behind her. i loooove pain XDDD

i feel like i have a hundred more but I'm sort of blanking now jksdjlf

What are your favourite angsty shows/moments?? hope you have a great weekend, secret santa! ❤️

[moorliit]

her heart skipped at the sound of sami's voice. cady wanted so badly to peer over his shoulder with the hopes of catching just a glimpse of the little girl. who did she take after more? did she have her mother's eyes with her father's hair? it took just about every ounce of her willpower to remain firmly planted where she was on the porch. one thing at a time, she said over and over in hear mind, the mantra being the driving force. "i was just saying, any time she needs to sell something, i'll be her number one customer," cadance said, a smile crossing her face.

the smile only lasted for a few moments, however, as she watched the wheels start to turn and bennett's demeanor started to shift. she had it all planned out: befriend him and slowly leave little clues to make her revelation an easier pill to swallow. but her heart yearned for him and had said fuck it. "i-" cady took a deep breath, watching as he closed the door behind him, shielding sami from harm no doubt. "i'm sorry. i swear i wasn't planning to just spring this on you," she muttered, her eyes moving from the closed door to meet his gaze. "something happened - awakened in me - after i..." she couldn't bring herself to say it out loud. cady didn't even want to acknowledge that she had died in his arms, the cries of their newborn being the last thing she heard. "two years after sami was born i just...woke up. i didn't really understand it - i still don't - but what happened to me....what i am..." the word was on the tip of her tongue and once she said it, either he would think her crazy and turn his back on her or he'd believe everything she said and they'd find a way to figure everything else out together. "i'm a phoenix, bennett. and ever since i was reborn and my memories started to come back, i've been trying to find my way back to you. and sami."

bennett felt like he was going to catch fire, which was... awful, and familiar, but familiar in a way that seemed as if it had happened to another person entirely. he'd lost cady years ago, and when that happened, he lost himself, too. he became what sami needed him to be - a father, and a good one at that, but he was incapable of being anything else. this flickering heat in his empty veins that were screaming at him to pull this woman against his body was awakening that version of himself that he had buried next to his wife, and it was as addictive as it was terrifying. 'daddy, who's there', sami called out from inside, snapping bennett out of his stupor just long enough to reply. "It's a new neighbor, bubs, just keep coloring." 'can I meet them?' she asked, and bennett shot the woman an apologetic glance. "no talking to strangers, remember?" he heard a frustrated huff and playfully rolled his eyes at the woman in front of him. "i'm sorry," he said. "you were saying?"

it was... indescribable, the feeling that nearly knocked him clean to the ground as she answered her name. he was torn between falling to his knees and slamming the door in her face. "i-," he gasped, less an actual attempt at speaking and more an exhale of breath. he stepped onto the porch, clicking the door shut behind him and taking a moment to gather his thoughts before replying. it's hopeless, any semblance of a thought is bouncing wildly around his skull. "it..." cady is on repeat in his mind. meeting another woman who makes his fucking soul ache is one thing, that same woman being named cadance is another, but to know the exact name he always used... the word that had last passed his lips when he was screaming it, cradling her body to his chest... the ground was shaking beneath him. "I don't know what - I don't know if this is a joke, or some kind of - you... what are... what is this? please, cady, tell me what this is." and it didn't matter if he sounded like a fucking lunatic, he felt like one, too. he just needed to know.

[russianshavefun]

WHY "PUSHKIN IS OUR EVERYTHING"?

Just as the ancient Greeks recognised themselves in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the Germans in the works of Johann Wolfgang Goethe, the French in Victor Hugo, so the Russian man finds himself in Pushkin's heroes.

As Nikolai Gogol remarked, Pushkin is "a Russian man in his development, Russian nature, Russian soul, Russian language, Russian character are reflected in him with the same purity, in the same purified beauty as the landscape is reflected on the convex surface of the optical glass".

Everyone in Russia has his own Pushkin: some are interested in his tales, some enjoy his lyrics or clarity of thought expressed in prose. But at the same time he is one for all. Why?

"I am far from admiring everything I see around me; as a writer I am saddened..., many things disgust me, but I swear to you on my honor-no way in the world would I want to change my homeland, or have a different history than that of our ancestors, as God gave it to us".

Pushkin's letter to P. Y. Chaadayev 1836.

Perhaps because Pushkin's work and his life came at the time of the formation of the national culture of the New Age, when its language and its future were defined. It was Pushkin who was to complete the formation of the literary language, begun by his predecessors in the 18th century.

It was during Autumn, his favorite season, that Pushkin completed the main work on his novel in verse, Eugene Onegin. It turned out to be not only one of the most famous works of Russian literature – the novel has been translated into almost twenty languages — but also a real "encyclopaedia'' of Russian life.

I loved you once, and still, perhaps, love's yearning

Within my soul has not quite burned away.

But may it nevermore you be concerning;

I would not wish you sad in any way.

My love for you was wordless, hopeless cruelly,

Drowned now in shyness, now in jealousy,

And I loved you so tenderly, so truly,

As God grant by another you may be.

Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin,

translation by Julian Henry Lowenfeld

In February 1831 Alexander Pushkin finally married Natalia Goncharova.

"I am married - and happy; my only wish is that nothing in my life has changed - I will not wait for a better one. This state is so new to me that it seems I have been reborn".

- The poet wrote to his friend, literary critic Peter Pletnev, shortly after the wedding.

In autumn 1836 Pushkin was in a depressed state: after the death of his mother, the poet conducted endless negotiations with his son-in-law on the division of the estate, tried to keep afloat publishing house, wallowing in debt.

The situation was exacerbated by a deliberately explicit and persistent courting cavalry guard Georges Dantes for Natalia Goncharova, which caused an incredible amount of the dirtiest gossip in society. "Having lost all patience," Pushkin sent Dantes' foster father "a letter in the highest degree of insult," which became the formal occasion for the duel, which took place on January 27, 1837 on the Black River.

The bullet broke the neck of Pushkin's thigh and penetrated into the stomach. For that time such a wound was fatal, as the poet himself knew. A few days later, on February 10, Alexander Pushkin died of peritonitis.

For some decades after Alexander Pushkin's death in 1837 it seemed to many that the historical role of the poet is over and he should be referred to the category of the completed - classical - phenomena of literature.

There is no other poet in our history, with whom the public consciousness could so easily continue the long-overdue "heart-to-heart" conversation, so vividly "aroused" was not and is not.

The reason is not only in Pushkin's genius of an artist and thinker, but in the harmonic integrity of his world outlook, which absorbed the best of the Russian culture of the past and through his poems literally created the culture of the new time.