#i just really want to know what came first the writer chicken or the poet egg

[lubdubsworld]

City Lights . ( Namjoon x OC)

Pairing : OC x Kim Namjoon.

Genre : Angst. Romance.

Rating 18 + 

Word Count : 2900

Warnings :  Mature Themes , Explicit Sexual Content . Slow burn. Like slower than a snail.

Summary :

Widowed and destitute, Son Yang Mi leaves the comfort of her small , secluded  fishing village and travels to the intimidating city of Seoul with her young son. She has a plan, one that involves finding a job, getting her son into a good school and building a life for herself.

Now, three years later she has a job , working as a live in house keeper for the Kim family, specifically for the son,  Kim Namjoon, a famous rapper and producer. 

Its a job that puts a roof over her head and she’ll do anything to keep it. 

But fate has other plans.

Chapter 1 ~

Akogare (ah-koh-ga-reh)Often translated directly as a sort of frustrated “yearning”, “desire”, or “longing” .

Seoul in summer was a sight to behold. I blinked back against the bright sunlight, staring out into the stunning skyline of the city as the sun rose over it , and although it was just a little past seven in the morning, the air was warm and invigorating. The mid July sun shone down with no mercy, and there was no trace of the rain that had lashed city just the previous night.

It had been three whole years but the relief that came from breathing fresh air, untainted by the damp musk of fishing trowels and sweaty men, was still unrivalled.

I shook off the feather duster in my hand, moving to carefully clean the wicker woven chairs on the artificial lawn in the balcony. Dusting the entire condo down was a mind numbing exercise in patience, so i tried to get it out of the way, early in the morning when my son was still asleep.

At six years old, Junsu was a bright , happy child. Summer vacation meant days sleeping in and evenings spent frolicking with the other kids in the building and he was content with being alone in our small shared room, reading or playing with his toys while I went about the day’s work.

I glanced at the clock, grimacing.

It was almost eight . And although Mr. Kim wasn’t due back home for another twelve hours, I felt a little jittery and nervous.

Kim Namjoon , renowned rapper, producer, writer , poet and what not. The apartment was his but he was usually on tour, traveling all over the world to promote his book and to perform in sold out stadiums. For an A list celebrity, he was surprisingly humble.

For the past three years, him and his model fiancée  Lee Mina had spent a total of maybe seven months in the condo. They were a sweet couple, or so I’d always thought , a bit formal with each other but clearly in love . Mr. Kim was a kind, soft spoken young man and I’d never heard him raise his voice unless he was in the company of his very dear friends.

Just a little over a week ago , both of them  had left Korea for the States , the tabloids screaming about a luxurious destination wedding in the Caribbean and I had been asked to take a few weeks off . The newly weds wouldn’t be back for quite a while and they would let me know when I had to come back to the condo.

I’d been toying with the idea of visiting my in laws in Gwangyog, maybe even dropping by to see some old friends there but yesterday , Mr. Kim’s mother had given me a call letting me know her son was coming home. 

[ 

The conversation went something like this :

Yang Mi, I hope you haven’t left yet?

No, Ma'am, I haven’t.

Joon-ah is going to be back tomorrow.

Oh, is Ms Lee arriving as well?

No, Just him He’s going to be alone.

Yes, Ma'am.

Please don’t mention anything about Mina or the wedding.

No ma'am of course not.

I’ll drop by later . Cook him something warm and filling. And make sure the house is cleaned well.

Yes, Ma’ am.

]

And that was that.

~~~~~~

It took the better part of the day to finish cleaning and setting up the house . I washed the window slats, changed the sheets, arranged the books that had been left scattered all over his bedroom. The walk-in closet was littered with a bunch of his clothes and I made sure his gym bag was stocked with fresh towels, spare clothes and his favorite head and wrist bands. 

For someone so careful and calculated, he was really quite a messy man. 

i did his laundry, making sure he had ample clothes at least for another two weeks, creasing the handkerchiefs and carefully removing lint from his jackets. 

I also carefully sorted out the feminine clothing from the laundry and from the cupboard, folding them neatly and placing them in the lowest shelf of the closet, where he wouldn’t find them. It wasn’t hard, hiding traces of his fiancee from the condo, because it had never really been her home. other than a few spare pieces of underwear and a couple of t shirts and skirts, there weren’t many articles of clothing belonging to Ms. Lee. 

But I still got rid of the bobby pins and hair ties, the spare lip gloss and mascara.

Junsu spent the entire day in our room, reading and drawing, only venturing out every few hours to grab a snack. I left him with his drawing tab ( a gift from Mr. Kim for his 5th birthday )  and his favorite book, asking the security guard at the end of the hallway to keep an eye on the door, while i went out to buy groceries.

Lots of meat, no sea food, healthy snacks and high protein fiber bars. I stocked up on sauces and bought a fresh batch of eggs, oranges and grapes . Mrs. Kim had sent a large amount of kimchi a few weeks ago and that was still in the pantry.

i stopped for a second, staring around at the almost deserted store. Most of the other housekeepers shopped at the bigger, more exclusive store on the other side of the residential complex. But Mr. Kim had a very selective palette, which meant that I had to be very particular about the brands i bought.

When i came back home at around six, Junsu was on the floor in the living space and i felt my heart jump in panic.

“Baby!! I’ve told you not to come out here when I’m not home!” I protested bleakly and he pouted.

“I need to show you my gift for Mr. Kim!!” He said softly. I smiled moving to put away the groceries and glancing at the clock. It was a little past six. I had to call Yungyu.

“Did you draw him something ? “ I asked curiously, checking to see if the beer shelf was stocked. probably should have done that before going out for the groceries, I thought regretfully.

“Yeah! Look!!” Junsu held his tab out and my heart dropped.

For a six year old, Junsu drew very well. And there was really no mistaking the very obvious wedding scene on the screen.

Oh, Good God.

“ That looks amazing honey.” I said gently. “ But, I heard that Ms Lee isn’t coming over this time..”

Junsu frowned.

“Why?”

“Well, I’m not sure. But remember how we spoke about saying the right things? When something upsets someone, we do not bring it up.” I reminded him gently. My son hesitated but nodded.

“Okay. I’m sorry. “ He said softly.

“No baby, its not your fault. It’s just that we want Mr. Kim to be happy right? We don’t wanna upset him...”

He smiled at that.

“When he’s happy, his dimples come out.” He said with a giggle. I laughed.

“yes they do... So let’s try and get those dimples out as often as we can alright? Why don’t you show him that picture you drew of yeontan the other day? He’ll really like that....”

“Okay...but i need to go color it!” Junsu yelled, already running back into our room. I watched him go before reaching for the phone and dialing, Yungyu, the chauffeur.

“Are you on the way here? ” i said briskly.

“Just starting from home...” Yungyu muttered, “ I’m supposed to be on vacation now! Why is he coming back so soon?” 

“Just hurry up !! We can’t keep him waiting!!” I said sharply, before hanging up. 

I made a quick check of all the rooms, filling up water bottles for his gym routine in the morning and stashing them in the fridge before moving to get dinner started. 

i set the water on boil for the stew, before moving to peel cucumbers for the salad. I chopped the cucumber , along with some fresh cherry tomatoes . I watched the water boil, thinly slicing an onion and adding it to the bowl as well. The dressing was pretty simple,  soy sauce, rice vinegar, honey and sesame oil . I sprinkled some sesame seeds on the bowl, used the salad tongs to give the whole thing a nice toss and set it aside. 

I braised the chicken first , peeling and chopping potatoes and carrots to add to the stew . In a few minutes, the rich smell of lightly spiced chicken and garlic and perilla  leaves began filling the kitchen and I turned on the rice cooker as well. 

The door bell rang at six forty and i opened the door to reveal Yungyu. 

I grabbed the keys to the Palisade, handing them over to him.

“Did you hear?” He whispered urgently.

I frowned.

“What?”

“They say Mr. Kim called off the wedding!” He whispered, wide eyed. 

I glared at him.

“Who told you that?” i demanded...

“Seojoon from the gate said-”

“Why don’t you ask Seojoon from the gate to mind his own damn business?” I snapped. 

Yungyu looked suitably chastised. i felt a little bad. Yungyu was still young and curiosity was hardly a sin. 

“His flight lands at eight exactly. Hurry okay?” I said with a smile, ruffling his hair.

He brightened, peering over my shoulder into the house.

“Where’s the little one?” He asked curiously.

“ Painting something for Mr. Kim... Go ahead, hurry up.” I shooed him away, locking the door behind him. I fixed a plate of food for Junsu and sent him to eat, before moving to check on the stew. +

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` 

By the time eight thirty rolled around I had the table set and ready. I washed my face quickly in the small bath attached to our room , making sure I was dressed well. Junsu wasn’t allowed in the main house unless Mr. Kim specifically asked for him and my son usually stayed in. 

Junsu and I stayed in a bedroom , not large by any means but big enough for a queen sized bed, a table and chair for Junsu and small dresser where I kept a comb and a tube of night cream. I stared at my face, licking my lips as I smoothed my hair out. 

I glanced at the bed. 

Junsu was asleep , having dozed off while coloring his picture and I carefully extracted the tab from under his fingers, moving him around to lay on the soft pillows. I tucked him in gently, brushing the hair off his face. 

“In peace , I will lie down to sleep, for You alone will let me rest in safety.” I whispered gently against his forehead, kissing the soft skin. I felt my lips wobble , a debilitating wave of affection flooding me as the sweet scent of my baby, filled my senses.

 I would die for you, I thought fiercely, kissing him again. 

The sound of the front door opening made me jump. 

Swearing, i smoothed the fabric of my skirt, running to the kitchen. 

“Thank you for picking me up Yungyu, I’m sorry you had to cut short on your vacation.” Mr. Kim’s deep voice filled the hallway and I quickly grabbed a glass, filling it with water and placing it on the dinner tray.

“Not a problem, Sir. “ Yungyu’s cheerful voice responded.

“How are you going home?” Mr. Kim asked. 

“I’ll take the bus.”

A pause and then, 

“Here’s some cash. Get a cab.” 

I could hear the relief in Yungyu’s voice as he let out a , “ Thank you sir.” 

I fixed his plate carefully, the bowl of rice, the bowl of chicken stew, and the salad neatly arranged next to the napkin and the chopsticks. I heard him move across the condo, the sound of his suitcases as he wrestled them towards his bedroom and I frowned. Yungyu should’ve have brought those in for him. 

I finished reheating all of the food and carefully carried the dinner tray to the bedroom. 

Mr. Kim’s bedroom was right at the end of the hallway and the door was open. The full length mirror on the opposite wall showed him sitting on the small couch in his room, legs spread and elbows resting on his knees as he ran his fingers through his hair. 

I raised my hand, ready to knock on the wood. 

“Fuck!” He shouted, kicking out at the coffee table with enough force to send the furniture skidding half way across the room. 

I froze in the hallways stunned. 

“You’re such a fucking fool , Namjoon !!” He muttered angrily and I swallowed, turning on my heel and quickly walking back to the kitchen. 

Maybe I ought to wait till he asked for dinner.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

He didn’t ask for dinner. 

I stayed sitting on the floor of the kitchen, waiting and lightly dozing as I heard him talk to his parents on the phone. I heard him open the liquor cabinet in his room, the sound of ice sloshing against glass, the sound of whiskey being poured carefully and i sighed. 

I had to get to bed. It was already a little past eleven. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sometime in the night, I woke up sweating.... 

Wondering what woke me up, I blinked groggily, glancing at Junsu. He was still sound asleep. 

Sighing, I climbed out of the bed, carefully making my way to Mr. Kim’s room, peering in carefully. 

He was asleep on the sofa.

I stared at the way his long legs stretched over the armrest, his lean hips twisted to accommodate his broad shoulders on the couch and I winced. He was definitely going to regret that in the morning. 

I stared at the half empty bottle of whiskey on the table and sighed, moving to take off his shoes carefully. He didn’t stir. 

I grabbed a pillow from the bed, carefully lifting his head and slipping it under. I placed a comforter over his shoulders, pulling it down to cover his legs. 

Force of habit almost made me brush his hair off his forehead but I stopped myself. 

The clock on the wall read three fifty am. God, I was going to feel terrible tomorrow. I carefully tip toed out, shutting the door behind me

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I picked the comforter from the floor, carefully folding it and placing it on the bed, before grabbing the empty bottle of whiskey and glass . i could hear the shower running. The curtains were still drawn in and I tugged on the strings to get them to open. Sunlight spilled in through the floor length windows. The bed wasn’t slept in, so I opened the closet to grab a couple of towels, laying them on the bed for him. 

The bathroom door opened and i quickly straightened, wanting to race out of the room but it was too late. Thankfully he was dressed,  a pair of loose sweats and a loose t shirt . He was running a towel through his hair and his face brightened at the sight of me. 

“Yang Mi! You’re here....” He said cheerfully. 

“Good morning sir.” I said softly, offering him a small smile. 

He smiled brightly, hair damp and dimples deep. The white t shirt he had on was almost fully soaked through and he shook his head, sending stray water droplets all over the place, a few landing on my cheeks. 

“I didn’t see you last night...” He said casually, moving to drop the wet towel in the hamper, grabbing one of the fresh ones I’d laid on the bed. 

“I thought you would like your privacy sir, you looked exhausted.” 

He smiled.

“ Thank you for the blanket and the pillow by the way. And the shoes.” 

I bowed quickly.

“I’ll get your breakfast done, sir.” I bowed again before quickly getting out. 

I moved to the kitchen grabbing the oranges I’d got the previous day . Mr. Kim wasn’t fond of traditional korean dishes in the morning. He preferred freshly squeezed juice and toast, sometimes with an omelet perhaps. 

I fixed his breakfast quickly, setting it all in the tray . He was still moving around in the bedroom and I heard him drag his worktable to the windows, which meant he was going to stay in the bedroom. 

Pouring his coffee into a cup, I carefully picked up the breakfast tray , moving to his room slowly. 

I used my foot to knock on the door.

After a pause of a few seconds, 

“Come in Yang Mi!”

I carefully moved to the small table in front of the couch, placing the tray right in front of him. The scent of his body wash, green apple and strawberries, hit me hard. 

“Where’s Junsu?” He asked casually.

“Still asleep sir. It’s Summer so school’s out.” I smiled, grabbing his phone from the table to make space for his tray. 

The phone buzzed just as I was about to place it back down and I blinked.

 Mina calling.......

 I swallowed, not sure what to do, placing the phone down quickly.

“Uh..you have ...” I waved vaguely at the device before bowing again and moving back. 

“close the door on your way out, Yang Mi...” He said gently and I quickly obeyed. 

I moved to the kitchen to grab a cup of coffee for myself. I stayed leaning over the counter and even through the locked door, I could hear him . 

“Just don’t call me Mina...i don’t want to talk about this!!!” 

I swallowed, glancing out of the window again. It was a bright, clear morning. 

A second later, the door to his bedroom slammed open and he stormed out. I watched him from my spot in the kitchen, his fists clenched as he rushed out to the front door.

The door shut behind him and I exhaled. 

Once I as done with my coffee, I moved to his room to clear the breakfast tray. His phone was still on the table.

It began ringing again just as I left the room. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Mrs. Kim.” i said respectfully, bowing . She gave me a short smile.

“Where’s Namjoon? I’ve been calling him for the past hour.” She pushed past me into the house and I bit my lips.

“He went out about an hour ago. He left his phone behind.” I explained.

She stopped, sighing. 

“Fine, I’ll wait for him. “ She moved to sit on the couch, glancing around the room. 

“Should I get you something ma'am?” I asked softly and she smiled.

“Get me a glass of lemonade, Yangmi.” She said brusquely and i nodded, running to the kitchen. 

“Did Mina come over?” She called out as I got the lemons out of the cooler.

“No ma'am.” i replied.

“Did she call?” 

  I remembered the phone ringing, how upset it had made Namjoon, how he had stormed out.

“I don’t know ma'am!” I said softly. 

She nodded.

“Okay. You can leave.” She said quietly. i bowed and went back into the kitchen. 

I peered out of the window as I fixed her a glass , and my eyes fell on a familiar figure, coming back in through the front gate. Even from this distance there was no mistaking the long legs and messy blonde hair. 

I bit my lips, mind racing.

 Mrs Kim and her son had a volatile relationship, to say the least. 

And something told me that Mr. Kim was probably not in the right frame of mind to argue with his mother, now. The man was upset but apparently, neither his mother nor his ex fiancée understood that. instead of giving him space they were hounding him. 

I hesitated for a second  before making a quick decision. 

I grabbed the tray with her lemonade and moved to her quickly.

“Thank you.” She said sharply. “ Turn on the Air Conditioner for me, will you?” 

I fumbled with the remote, grabbing his phone from the table , turning it on before moving to the front door and rushing out. 

I almost ran into him as he came out of the elevator , and i jerked back stumbling a bit to stop myself from crashing into his chest. He let out a , ‘ Whoa, “  his hands reaching out to grip my elbows. 

“Careful. What’s wrong?” He asked gently and I swallowed.

“Your mother’s here.” I said quickly, “ Sir.” 

“Oh, fuck.” He groaned. I swallowed.

“You can leave.” I blurted out. “It’s Tuesday. She has her charity work meeting at ten. Its almost nine. She won’t stay long....” 

His eyes met mine, lips parting in surprise. 

“I really can’t meet her now.” He said apologetically.

I nodded.

“Of course, I understand , sir. Just be back in an hour , she’ll be go-”

The elevator buzzed , the doors nearly closing over my shoulders and I flinched. He swore and stuck his arm out to keep it open. 

I stared at him before holding his phone out.

“Here you go sir. “ 

He chuckled taking it from me and shaking his head.

“i feel like a kid, sneaking away from my mom.” His eyes reached mine, twinkling, “ Who would’ve thought the quiet, timid Yang Mi would be my partner in crime. “ 

I didn’t reply, just smiled. 

And then he hesitated. “ Is Junsu awake?”

I blinked.

“Uh...yes sir,...he’s playing in the park downstairs with the other kids.”

“Great... Would you mind if i take him out for ice cream?”

I stared at him. 

“Oh..uh...of course not. Sure.. I mean.. he’ll love that... Sir. Thank you.. You don’t have to -”

“Consider it thank you for helping me with my mother.” He smiled again and i found myself staring at his dimples again. i swallowed. 

“in that case, he loves butter scotch.” I smiled. 

The dimples appeared and i bit my lips. 

“Thank you Yang Mi.” He said slowly. 

“Yes, Sir.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author’s Note : Finally a hyungline fic !!! ugh... I’ve been wanting to write a Namjoon fic for ages and I really hope you guys will like this one :’( Feedback is much appreciated. 

[ramp-it-up]

Everyday

Pairing: Rafael Casal x Reader, Rafael Casal (as Miles Turner) x Reader

Warnings: MINORS DNI, 18 + , RPF. CURATE YOUR OWN EXPERIENCE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE IF YOU READ BELOW THE CUT. Cursing, drinking, allusion to smoking weed, fantasy, truth or dare, role play, SMUT, Graphic Depictions of Sex, oral sex (M/F receiving), a lil bit of bondage, established relationship, fantasy play.

A/N:  I have no idea what is for trade in prison; sex packets are a made up joke. And I’m really into 90’s rap this week. Anywho, this fic is in response to the following request:

Anonymous asked:

Rafa!!!!! Maybe a fluffy smut where he’s role playing Miles for you? 👀

-------

“Ok, Dare.”

You steeled yourself from the query from Daveed.

“Which fictional character, real or animated, would you like to bone?”

Everyone burst out laughing.

“Real or ANIMATED????”  

You were cracking up laughing and buzzed, feeling good surrounded by your crew of friends who were family.

“Ok, I will answer both.” 

Rafa cleared his throat and settled back on the couch beside you. 

You sat up straight and he watched the curve of your breasts underneath the Oaklandish tee you stole from him that morning.

“Rafael is getting swole! Don’t worry Rafa. She will still come home to your everyday ass.”

“Shut up, Ant. You always got something to say.” You rolled your eyes.  “Everyday with Rafa is amazing.”

You leaned over and kissed Rafa’s lips, which were in a slight frown.  He didn’t like that word, ‘everyday.’

“You good?” You whispered so only you two could hear.

He smiled at you, “No doubt. Answer the man’s question!” Rafa said a little louder, bravado on fleek.

“ANYWAYYY.”  You shook your head at him as you straightened up.  “Max could get it.”

“Max who?” Jasmine was confused.  Then she realized, then leaned over Ant and Rafa to give you a high five.

“Max Who???” Daveed was curious.

“Goofy’s son. Max.”  

Everyone erupted in laughter again. Daveed got up and took the bottle out of your hand. 

“Enough of this.” 

You battled him, jumping up and swatting around D’s head. You won your drink back and sat down.

“As far as ‘real’ fictional characters…” You took a drink. And smiled. All eyes were on you.

“Miles Turner could rearrange my guts.” 

Anthony groaned. Rafa sat up straight. You took another drink . 

“For Real. Ruffnecks kinda do it for me.”

“Gotta who? Gotta have a what?”  Jazzy started rapping. You replied.

“Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck.” 

You two started dancing, rapping and singing with your drinks in your hands.

Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck

Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck

Gotta what? Yo, gotta get a ruffneck

I need it and I want it so I gotta get a ruffneck!

Rafael pulled you down to sit on his lap and Jasmine kept dancing, right in front of Anthony.

Anthony sucked his teeth, but was smiling at Jazzy’s ass. 

“That’s cheating. I mean. That’s just Rafa. I mean, he bones you on the regular.” 

Ant smacked Jasmine on the bottom and took a drink before she plopped down next to him and he put his arm around her.

“You know it!” Rafa and Anthony toasted. 

“But I ain’t Miles.”  

Rafa took another sip of his Abasolo on the rocks.

“And it’s just a fantasy. Right baby.”  

Rafael rubbed your back giving you a look that made you tremble. Rafa felt your warmth on his lap. He grinned into his drink.

“Trueeee!”  

You smiled, trying to keep it light and calm the fuck down. Everyone always made fun of you two smashing in people’s bathrooms.

“You aren’t Miles. I didn’t know you when you were younger....” 

You locked eyes with Rafael, and the green fire there did something to you.  

“I think Rafa is Miles’s wasted potential.”

“Wow. That’s deep,” said Ant from a cloud of smoke.

You and Rafa were locked in an eye embrace as well as a physical one.  When he arched his eyebrow, you had to look away, because you couldn’t take it.  

“Y’all need to use my bathroom?”  More laughter.

You and Rafa both flipped Daveed off. 

“Nah, Diggs.” Rafa stood up with you in his arms.  “We’ll use our own. We out.”  

Your man carried you willingly out of the door.

-----

About two weeks later, you came home with some groceries, you were looking forward to a night in with Rafa.

You’d both been busy and tired lately, only available for maintenance sex. 

Rafa was running around creating all of his creative shit, and you worked in the writers room of a popular series.  Life was hectic.

He was sitting at the kitchen table, hands together on top. 

He was wearing blue scrubs over a white Henley and had his face turned to the side, staring out the window. You noticed that his hair was different.

“Hey, babe. Did you get a haircut? What’s wrong?”

He turned his face toward you and that’s when you noticed two more things. Rafael’s eye was black, and there was a tattoo on his neck.

THAT California tattoo. 

You were very concerned and a little confused. Concern came first in your mind.

“What happened to your eye?”  He gave you a strange look, then he spoke.

“A mutha fucka sneaked me in the yard, that’s what happened!”  

You stood still and had to register what was happening.

Rafa was wearing a grill, and his voice was different, in a lower register  and with a long drawn out, almost southern drawl. 

But it wasn’t southern. It was all Bay.

He stood up and walked toward you, and you noticed that his scrubs had “Prisoner” written in yellow letters down the right leg. 

You suddenly realized what was going on. 

Oh, Shit.

“Baby. You’re a sight for sore eyes.  It’s been a minute.”  

You’d left Rafael in bed this morning.  But it seemed that you came home to Miles.

“Hey,” was all you could say. 

Rafael/Miles gestured for you to come over to the table.  It was then you saw that he was handcuffed. 

A strange feeling came over to you.  He stood up, and you saw that his legs were shackled.  You went close to him and looked at his eye closely.

“Rafa?”

His face was fine, up close, you could tell it was makeup.

“You been to see Galaxy today?”  

You were peering at his neck and the Bay/California tattoo there.

He screwed up his face.

“Who tha fuck is Rafa? And what the hell you talking ‘bout space for?” 

He peered into your eyes, then looked around furtively.

“Babe. Are you high?”

The drawl was a whisper now.

“These muthafuckas’ll kick you out if they think you got drugs on you.”

You smiled at him, pecked him on the lips and replied. 

“No worries. I’m not high.” You sat down at the kitchen table and ‘Miles’ sat across from you. 

“As for Rafa? He’s this guy I know.  Had a nice… conversation with him the other night.”  

You looked into his eyes to see if he would crack.  But your man was a pro.  

He huffed.  “Psshhht.  You MUST be high talking to another dude. What kinda name is Rafa anyway. Sounds like some hipster trash.”  

He peered at you again, anger radiating off of him.

Damn, he was good.

“Tell me what the fuck you mentioning some other muthafucka to my face while I’m locked up in here! Every day.” 

He pounded his bound fists on the table in front of you and made you jump.  It also made you wet as fuck.

He gestured with both hands (because they were handcuffed) to the nice kitchen that you loved to cook in, but that you were now seeing through his performance as a prison visitation room. 

But you were still shook.

“R, R, Rafael is a beautiful artist. He’s a poet. He’s gentle, and kind. And a wonderful lover.” 

Miles glared at you. You stuttered again.

“I-I imagine.”

He gave you a menacing smile and leaned back in the chair, pushing his crotch up in your direction.  Your eyes were drawn there.

“So you imagining fucking another muthafucka and decide to come visit me and tell me about it?”

You got into it.

“Well….I miss you Miles. But it gets hard. Not being able to be with you.”

He leaned forward, bearing his teeth.

“Don’t fucking tell me about it.  Here I am jacking off with leftover chicken grease from the kitchen at night.  Got my dick smelling like a Popeye’s chicken sandwich in this bitch.”

“Ew,” you said, disgusted, then you started giggling at the joke.

Miles pouted and sat back.

“ ‘S not fucking funny!”  He looked out the window again. 

“I shouldn’t even tell you about the surprise.”

You straightened up.  “What is it babe?”

You put your hand on his and he caressed yours with his thumb.  He looked at you, excited and mischievous now.

“I got us a conjugal visit.”

Your mouth dropped open, fully into it now.

“But I thought that was just for married couples, Miles…”

“I know, I know.” He leaned forward and looked around again.  “But I got me a side hustle.”

He shifted his eyes as he scanned the empty room.

“I make sex packets outta the leftover chicken grease from my job in the kitchen. Make a KILLING in oatmeal cream pies, ramen noodles, cigarettes and other tradeable currency.  I made enough to buy us a conjugal visit, girl.”

He leaned back, very satisfied with himself, his hands now on his lap, rubbing his crotch.  

Your eyes were drawn there again and you found yourself irrationally wondering how big his dick was. He had you caught up in this fantasy.

“Let’s go to the trailer and I’ll make you forget all about this Raja guy.” Miles winked at you.

“It’s…”  You saw the look on his face.  “Nevermind. Let’s go.” 

He stood up again, and shuffled his way to the bathroom, you at a safe distance behind him. 

He entered the bedroom and shuffled to the bed, sitting down on the edge. He gestured you to him and you went and stood before him.

He put his nose in your crotch.

“MMMmmmmm. I missed your smell Baby. It’s been too long. He lifted his hands and put them on the insides of your thighs. He pulled back and looked at you, green eyes staring into brown.

“The guards left the key over there. That is, if you wanna get me out of these.” He nodded toward the 

He trailed his hands up to your pelvis, managing to hook one set of fingers into your waistband and still have another at your apex.

He ran his fingers over your jeans right where it counts. This kind of petting felt good and made you want more. 

You let him play for a little while, but then pushed him back to sit and watch you. 

You peeled down your jeans to reveal a white satin thong. Rafael loved white against your coffee brown skin, but tonight, Miles would benefit. You stood there in your button-down shirt, that was really Rafael’s. 

Miles’s hands went to his crotch again as he eagerly watched.

“You seem to be doing pretty well all hemmed up, but let me see.”

You went to the dresser to retrieve the key, and you did, then turned around and put it in your mouth while you slowly unbuttoned the shirt.

Miles leaned back on the bed and opened his legs as far as the shackles would let them go, licking his lips as you disrobed.

You were wearing a white lace bra, your dark nipples and areola straining through the delicate material.  You were very excited at the entire scenario. 

The fact that Rafa was doing this for you because he remembered what you said on a drunken night weeks ago was the shit.

You dropped to the ground and crawled over to Miles’s feet jutting your ass up in the air as you unlocked the shackles.

You massaged his ankles and trailed your hands up his legs to his crotch, where you rubbed the hardness there.

“It’s been so long that you’ve been locked up, Miles.”

You raised up on your knees, loving the feeling of his eyes sweeping over you.

“I’m gonna give you the world’s best blowjob.”

Miles smiled at you.

“Aw, baby. That’s so cute.”

“I’ll show you cute.”

You were about to give your own performance.

------

Five minutes later, you were gargling his cock, relaxing your throat and taking him as deep as you could, nose nestled at his base, and gently pulling and kneading his balls.

Someone moaned, and you didn’t know if it was Rafa or Miles.  He bucked his hips up into your mouth while resting his cuffed hands in your hair.

“As much as I would love to … fuck baby… cum down your throat.. I need that… damn where’d you learn to do that?!... I need that pussy.  Unlock the cuffs, baby.”

His cuffed hands were in your hair, alternating between massaging your scalp and pulling your hair the way you loved it. 

The way Rafael invented. 

You smiled around his cock with the knowledge that what you were doing was making him slip out of character.

You pulled your head upward, mouth open, allowing the saliva to trickle out with his dick. 

He looked at you like he couldn’t believe how nasty you were being. He was mesmerized. You looked a mess, eye makeup running, lipstick smudged, spit all over your face. 

Your dream man loved it.

“Am I ‘cute’ now?”

“Fuck no. You’re so goddamn beautiful.”

You smiled and quickly reached behind you and unclasped your bra, taking your breasts in your hands and pushed them up around his dick.

“See, if you unlock these cuffs, I’ll handle things the way they need to be handled.”

You just smiled up at him while you manipulated your breasts around him, knowing that he could not control his hips fucking into your cleavage.

“I got it under control.” You stuck your tongue out to tease his tip as it neared your face, lubricating it with your saliva.

“Fuck, baby.  I wanna fuck you so bad. It’s been so long…”

This entire scene was just about the hottest thing ever. You were breathless, dripping, and quivering with anticipation. But you didn’t want it to end so soon.

“How long ‘xactly?”

“Shit, 5 months of being here and jacking off to memories of you everyday.  I need to see that ass and fuck that pussy, babyyyy. Please.”

Those eyes.

Those words. 

The acting. 

Miles. 

You had to relent.

You reached for the key where you dropped it on the floor and unlocked the cuffs.

“Fucking finally!”  Miles rubbed his wrists as he stood up, stripped his shirts off and his pants the rest of the way.

“On the bed, let me see that ass up.” 

He smacked it about three times each and then rubbed it as you did as you were told. 

Miles trailed his hand from your ass up your spine to your shoulder and then pushed your head down further into the bed.

“That’s a girl.” Your back had that perfect arch.

He got behind you and swiped his hardness up and down your slit, teasing you with the head of his dick.

He grabbed your hand and brought behind your back, and very swiftly the other, and before you knew it, your hands were cuffed behind you, head in the bed and Miles was entering you swiftly.

“Fuuuuck! How does it feel?”

You couldn’t speak. The thrill of Miles’ dick inside you and being cuffed had you ready to cum already.

His stroke game was on point, as if he was fucking you to a brand new rhythm- Allegro. 

Strangely, it was different than Rafa had ever been.

That was blowing your mind.

Miles tugged on the metal restraints and the slight pain in your shoulders and wrists, combined with the thrill of this roleplay, made you release, all over him and the bed.

“Shit girl, you really are glad to see me.” That drawl got you ready to peak again.

“Oh fuck yeah, Miles, oh shit, oh shit.” Your pussy was clamping down on him at the thought of Miles Turner having his way with you.

“Shit, I’m cumming with you, hold up.”  

Rafa tried to slow down, but you did that thing with your pussy and he couldn’t help it.  His hips drove his dick inside you until it pulsed and started to flow, and then he pulled out.

“Turn over baby.”

You leisurely moved to turn over, and he motioned you down to the end of the bed, moving the pillow where he wanted your head.

“I need in between those legs, baby.  I need to see you, I need to surround me with you.”

You positioned yourself at the end of the bed, your braids hanging over the edge.

Miles gave you a forehead kiss as he got between your thighs, and pumped himself a couple of times as he aligned with you.  

He leaned down and pulled at your nipple with his mouth, moaning when you moaned, moving his eyes appreciatively down your body and keeping his eyes where you were about to join.

The look on his face when he entered you was very hot, and you found your pussy squeezing his cock in appreciation. It seemed magically somehow bigger, and all of your senses were alive as he started moving.

“That’s my beautiful baby. You’re so fucking tight. Don’t push me out, let me have the glorious pussy. Damn girl, this pussy, those thighs, your curves, these tits. What did a man like me do to deserve you. You’re such a fucking sweet princess for me…”

You were astounded. Missionary was far from your favorite position because you seldom came that way, but the way Miles was whispering praise in your ear and the total fantasy was getting you there. 

Quickly.

He watched your face and adjusted his pace in response to your cries, and that knowledge made you start to come. When your eyes rolled back in your head, that’s when he knew.

He pulled your hair back and sucked the shit out of your neck as you came, and he released inside you.  You wrapped your legs around him and held him as he shivered with the aftershocks of his orgasm.

Your lover rolled off of you and you snuggled into his arm. He lay there and held you as you tried to process.

“That was… wow.” You weren’t sure who to address, Rafa or Miles. Irrationally you felt you were in love with both.

He just chuckled at you, and gave you another forehead kiss.

“I’m going to enjoy a shower.  Goodbye for a while, baby.”

You grinned. “Bye Miles.”

He pecked you on the lips and you watched him go into the bathroom.

You rolled over on your back and tried to organize your thoughts. How would you write this?

Thoughts of writing this scene chased you into sleep.

---

You woke up to Rafael, grill and tattoos gone, freshly out of the shower and in a towel, gently trying to pull you from sleep.

“C’mon.”  

You let him get you up and into the bathroom to a hot bath.  You let him tenderly clean you up and then get you out of the tub and dry you off. You were more tired than you thought.

“You hungry?” You walked into the kitchen in a towel behind him.

Rafa had put the groceries up and was holding up takeout menus. He was truly magical. You smiled, nodded and told him what you wanted.

45 minutes later, you were in his softest Oaklandish tee and you were curled up on the couch in the living room together, food containers spead out on the coffee table.

You felt totally in sync with this amazing man.

“I loved tonight.”

He smiled softly back at you.

“Had to give you your fantasy since you help me live mine. Every day.” 

He leaned over and kissed you.  He looked you intensely in the eyes. Those green pools had you trapped.

“I love you.”

“I love you too, Rafael.”

Your fantasy had been Miles, but your reality was Rafael. 

And that was fantastic. 

Everyday.

-------

Tags:

@braidedchallah @theatrenerd86 @sebastianabucknettastan @imatyoursurrvicesurr @riiyy @ivycomet @lonelydance @jbrizzywrites @delaber @honeysucklechocolatedrippin @janthonystan-blog @anh1020 @sillyteecup @ohsoverykeri  @theselilwonders @biafbunny @summerofsnowflakes  @wreakhavoconmacroissantdiggs @janthonybitch @einfachniemand @einfachniemand

[fromthedeskofthecaptain]

For anyone who would like to know the contents of the Ghosts Empire Spoiler Special, I’ve summarized the discussion below.

There are two episodes, both centered on series 2, excluding the Christmas special. The first is Martha, Ben and Larry and the second is with Matt and Jim (and is better in terms of how deep they go into characterization and the writing process). I’ll skip the bits that are just chatter.

I’m not going to transcribe it all, but I’ll spend a few posts talking about the key points. I’ll do the second one first, because it’s the richest.

Writing process-

Storylining is done half a series at a time as a big group and then who writes each episode depends on availability and not being engaged on other projects. People will often write an episode because the plot was their idea, but it can work out that they write up an episode based on someone else’s outline.

They knew they wanted to show characters going against type - angry Pat and vulnerable Captain - and that they wanted to explore love between the Ghosts. They wanted to show humanity, add complexity and depth to characters and allow a range of movement into the present and the past. It was harder to write than Yonderland because there isn’t a new character with an “adventure of the week”.

Episode 1 -

The original idea for Pat’s DJ spot was that he would give an intro to Dexy’s Midnight Runners “Come on Eileen” and hum the first few bars, but it turned out to be £1000s to obtain the rights. Jim was so thrilled that it got such a laugh in rehearsal he considered paying himself. They tried a few others (2,4, 6, 8 Motorway) and then Jim improvised “Chicken and Chips” thinking he’d have a lot more tries, but Tom Kingsley moved them on before he could.

(Btw, they had no problems getting Kylie to agree to use of “I Should be so Lucky” because she loves the show! Music Club presented the same problem of having to ask for clearance and pay. Apparently there’s no standardized system so they had to think of something and ask, rather than picking from options with a price list.)

Episode 2 -

They came up with Dante’s plot to give Alison some way of moving through the house and interacting with everyone. They went with the Ghosts natural reactions to partying. Pat was conflicted between fun and the right thing. The plague ghosts and Mick giving everyone the plague was based on a play Matt was in years ago about a village where this happened.

They structured the episode by using the principle “what’s the worst thing that could happen next?” a la Curb Your Enthusiasm and thought the answer was the plague ghosts coming upstairs and there had to be a cause of that. The archaeologist was a good person to deal with the question of how is it they’ve just found out what Mick did.

Mary x Robin came from them thinking someone would end up having some intimacy with someone in hundreds of years without much stimulation or any other people, or even things, to touch. They joked about everyone having had ghost sex(!!) with everyone else at one point. (Editor’s note: I can’t really see this. Kitty doesn’t know what it is, Cap and Fanny are too uncomfortable with it so that leaves Julian, Thomas, Humphrey and Pat, who I suspect is too loyal to his wife).

Episode 4 - The Thomas Thorne Affair

There was an awareness that Thomas’s character could become a “one note joke” with no capacity for development. Jim described him as potentially like Pepe Le Pew. Matt asked Charlotte how she felt about the sameness of some of their interactions. They thought about having Alison just lay down the law as it were, but that would change who he was too much. They needed to “play the same tune with a different dynamic” in Thomas’s arc. They considered making his character a peeping Tom, but thought that would bore everyone quickly.

Episode 4’s plot structure came about because they wanted to promote the unreliable narrator idea. They knew some ghosts would have witnessed Thomas’s death and that, plus familiarity with characters, let them play with the format. Matt didn’t want to have the flashbacks to deaths to be done the same way each time. Pat’s in series 1 was obvious because he “wears his death” (Jim). Jim did an improv of Pat’s death in the writer’s room when they first had the idea of how he died. It worked because although it’s quite horrific, the audience knows he’s ok, in a sense, afterwards, so it can be comedic too.

Matt felt a bit guilty about being front and centre of the story he wrote. The unifying thread was Mike and Alison’s issues with truth / perspective. His death also establishes that some ghosts are present at others deaths.

They developed Thomas by writing about why he is as he is. Matt thinks that because Thomas died “heartbroken and fixated” Mary’s observation that “you stays how you dies” is psychologically true, too. They always knew he died in a duel over a woman, but elaborated it to include dying thinking he’d been abandoned. He transferred this state of unrequited obsession onto Alison. Thomas can’t cope with Robin’s point, re monogamy, about what would he do if both Isobel and Alison were alive.

They still aren’t sure if he’s a good poet - they wrote it so we know it’s bad BUT he can believe it’s good and the audience within the show are a bit confused about whether it’s just confidently delivered rubbish or not. They think he’s capable of good work but gets too caught up in his fixed ideas of what being a good poet is and tries too hard (the implication being that this blocks genuine creativity/ originality). His vulnerability is quite charming (Matt).

The idea of the cousin betrayal was thought up once they started. The first idea was just that Thomas tells a story and others interject to say it wasn’t like that and Kitty would tell her version which the audience would know to be true because she has no guile. The contrast was originally just in Thomas’s grand passion cruelly interrupted story versus the actuality of a not very good poet being deluded about a random woman who barely knew who he was. The twist of the cousin was a spark in the writers room that everyone was immediately excited about and that matches Thomas’s sense of the melodramatic.

(As an aside, they always knew there were different groups of people in the house before the Buttons and intended to use that to explore other stories and characters throughout history.)

Matt is a bit embarrassed that they didn’t really have space to give Francis a proper motivation for orchestrating his cousin’s death. They put in a bit about him appreciating Button House and added a line from Thomas - “don’t embarrass me, cousin” - to suggest perhaps Thomas bullied him a bit. They thought about giving Francis lines about having gambling debts to create an urgent need to marry into money, but that made it too obvious that Francis was a bad guy.

To be continued...

[kilmokea]

Self Funded Private Gardens of County Wexford on the Wexford Garden Trail

Out of the earth, these garden owners

are creating living miracles.

  These Gardens of Wexford have a few things in common which inspire them to keep going, be creative and open their gates to the public. They are all in County Wexford, privately owned and  managed and are self-funded. Together with Garden Centres and Government funded Gardens they are members of The Wexford Garden Trail. This trail welcomes visitors and their members are more than happy to assist with any information visitors require to enjoy their visits to the Gardens and Garden centres of County Wexford.

There really is something special and treasured about Irish Gardens. They represent a natural environment of plants and trees taking in carbon and releasing oxygen into the air while their roots stabilize the soil and filter water. As trees reduce air pollution they help us to breathe better. Spending time within a natural setting often reduces our stress & improves our sleep. Just being among trees is good for our wellbeing and they make a lovely setting for walking, an activity shown to reduce stress and illness. With roots reaching deep into the earth, trees have excellent grounding energy. Indeed the healing powers of a garden have been portrayed in art and literature since our earliest beginnings. Out of the earth these garden owners are creating living miracles.

Nature has long been known for its relaxing qualities. Visiting gardens is so good for our health having vital positive effects on mental health as they boost our mood and generally make us feel more cheery. The Holistic benefits are huge. Relaxation, stress reduction and the value of improved quality of life to name but a few.

So much inspiration can be received through visiting gardens to assist the creation of our own garden too. Meeting the gardeners and owners adds enormously to the visit.

The sharing of valuable knowledge and stories while appreciating someone else’s hard work and creation adds to our lives. So often we are creating and planting for the future generation to enjoy so sharing knowledge cements the continuity of gardening systems. Stories of pioneering gardeners over the years who created and contributed to gardens over time add a depth to our visit helping us appreciate the garden while gaining inspiration for our own gardens. Great inspiration too for poets, artists and writers alike.

The visit provides us with the benefit of expanding our knowledge of horticulture, new technologies and making connections with like-minded people. They are a great way to introduce gardening as a hobby to children teaching them to nurture living things.

Some of the deepest preoccupations of thoughtful gardeners are the weather and the seasons. It is from Spring to Autumn, that magical time of year when many of Wexford’s self- funded private gardens open their gates to the public for you to explore.

 Forward by Emma Hewlett

Coolaught Gardens was created and is owned by Harry & Caroline Deacon

   “We were both probably always really into gardening but for me it started as an interest in growing to eat vegetables and fruit from a young age, but not into the floral side, I left that to my mother. She loved keeping the garden going and I was often called to help out, not really willingly I may add. When I married Caroline she was really interested as well, so much so that when they teamed up, I needed to find somewhere to escape to when they were both after me to do something or other!

   The years that followed saw us become more interested and the garden grew in size and to be fair it was Caroline was now the driving force but we visited more gardens in our time off and I suppose the gardening bug had bitten.

   The start of Coolaught Gardens really happened as a result of us deciding for the hell of it to enter what was then the National Garden competition, we came second in the Wexford section but we never realized how much it would impact us and by the end of the following week we had about 4 garden clubs asking us would we open the garden for viewing for their clubs! It seems that up to that point no private garden had come as high up the competition and a lot of people wanted to see this unknown garden. We started playing with the idea of opening the garden for a limited time Sundays 2 to 6 for the Summer months, but we underestimated the response, and we were run off our feet on those Sundays and the tours that came on weekdays again made us realize that we were going to have to open more days to spread the load. We opened from Wednesday through to Sunday next and after that we opened the full seven days and of course by then we had added the garden centre  and the garden during this time had also more than doubled in size and now stands at more than 2.5 acres. So even though now when the garden is closed we have the sales area to take care of.  

   We have loved the time we have spent in making the garden but we have also loved meeting all the like-minded people we have met through the past 20 years because of what we started here. True gardening folk are the best people you can be around, they are generally very positive people who work their way through every adversary, none have been tested as much as by what has happened in the last year. Things and situations have changed utterly for a lot of people, life as we know it has been turned on it's head, these lockdowns have had a devastating impact on families, business, economies across the world are suffering but nothing compared to the families of the people that have died. There has on the other hand been more time for parents to spend with their children, that has to be a bonus. The realization that most people won't be able to travel away for holidays and breaks has seen the nation change by being much more conscious of their homes and their gardens. After the first lockdown we started a call and collect service which I found very difficult. It is not the same as meeting with your customers face to face and making sure what they are buying will suit them, but as the Summer wore on and the economy opened we found that a lot of people had also found the joy of having the space around their homes and now wanted to make that area more beautiful and a place to relax and unwind in i.e. make a garden out of it! Last Summer all the tours both National and International were cancelled as were all the new Brides and Grooms that come for to take their photos in the garden. We were reluctant at first to open the garden as we weren't sure of the protocols to put in place to keep people safe but as we finally became more confident, we did open it and our new customers and old seemed to get new enjoyment from the garden and that also lifted our spirits.

     We have passed the first day of Spring St. Bridget's day and even though the weather is still dismal, that too will change the days are getting longer and warmer and Summer will come again and eventually Covid will be consigned to the history  books and life will return to the new normal. We will look forward to meeting both our regular customers and those that have been bitten with the gardening bug recently back to Coolaught Gardens again.”

Clonroche, Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford

  Telephone:

053 9244137

  Mobile:

087 6446882

  Email:

coolaughtgardens@eircom.net

  Website:

www.facebook.com/coolaughtgardens

  Contact:

Caroline & Harry Deacon

  Opening Hours:

Garden is open Mid May to Mid September, or by appointment to individuals and groups Garden Centre open all year round.

 Glenavon Japanese Garden was created by and is owned by Iris Checkett.

“During the winter of 1999 I attended gardening classes run by Frances McDonald in Gorey Community School. As part of the course we were asked to design our dream gardens. I decided to create a Japanese themed garden. The garden developed over the next few years ,constructed by Drinagh Garden Centre. Originally based on the four seasons of the year over the years it has matured and changed.

Some years ago I joined The Wexford Garden Trail and opened my garden to the public for a few months in the summer. All proceeds are given to charity. The Garden Trail has helped enormously with the marketing of my garden through the Web site, Social Media and The Brochure. It is enormously beneficial too for our garden visitors as we introduce them to the trail and suggest other gardens for them to visit and Garden centres for them to purchase plants and garden related tools, compost, pots and ornaments.

Unfortunately, because of the pandemic last year there were very few visitors and this year I hope Government restrictions allow more people to avail of the wonderful spaces we have all created in the Wexford Garden Trail for visitors to enjoy safely.

Working in the garden keeps me fit and gives me the opportunity to meet like-minded people. Hopefully these visitors get as much pleasure from the beauty of the garden as I do, and the peaceful place helps them to reduce the stresses of life.

Each season brings its own particular pleasures. In Spring we have the beauty of the Cherry Blossom. Summer features Hydrangeas, Autumn, the Liquid Amber walk and in Winter all the grasses.

Of course, there are problems associated with any garden. The area is all macamore soil so it requires quite a lot of chicken manure and hard work. I have to contend with the Macamore soil and Mr Heron repeatedly comes for my fish! On the upside I buy all my replacement plants and receive help and advice from my good friends in Springmount Garden Centre. Nothing takes away from the pleasure and enjoyment of being surrounded by the beauty of a garden. I love Glenavon Japanese Garden and enjoy every moment I have in this gorgeous space.

Glen Richards, Courtown Harbour, Gorey, Co. Wexford

  Telephone:

053 9425331

  Mobile:

085 2048737

  Email:

irischeckett@eircom.net

  Website:

www.facebook.com/glenavonjapanesegarden

  Contact:

Iris Checkett

  Opening Hours:

Sunday and Friday May to August 2pm – 5pm, or by appointment to individuals and groups.

  Kilmurray Gardens was created and is owned by Paul & Orla Woods

Opening your garden to the public is a work of passion it requires complete dedication and a little bit of lunacy which we have in spathes. It is a moving feast which is never complete but which hopefully inspires people to try and achieve parts of it in their own garden space. Opening your garden requires courage as you are opening yourself up to other people opinions and criticism but it also can give you huge rewards for all the hours you are on your hands and knees weeding. Our greatest concern is when people return from a walk in the garden with armfuls of flowers they have picked to see if we have it for sale in the nursery a tight lipped smile usually is the response with a gentle reminder not to pick the flowers. The responses can be quite amusing.

The development of our garden started in conjunction with the development of the nursery as we found people enjoyed seeing the plants they were interested in buying growing in a garden. It is planted in an informal style with the inclusion of pond areas over the past few years. We completed our long border in a formal setting six years ago and they give a formal entrance into the garden joined to the more informal areas. My favourite spot is sitting in the long borders surrounded by hornbeam hedging completely surrounded by foliage and flowers. It is the most perfect tranquil spot. My favourite plants are definitely the ones that continue flowering for a long time like Alstroemeria and are wonderful cut flowers for the house and also the scented ones like phlox and paeonias which are brief but in the few weeks they flower give so much joy. Our gardening opening is self- funded as we have a donation box for the RNLi in Courtown which we are past crew of and which our daughter has now joined. Our greatest pleasure is seeing people enjoying the space we have created and sitting and relaxing which in these times is so important .Our opening last year was hampered with Covid regulations but hopefully when summer arrives we will be able to reopen and allow people to enjoy our space

 Kilmurry Nursery, Gorey, Co. Wexford

  Telephone:

053 9480223

  Mobile:

086 8113171 / 086 8180623

  Email:

kilmurrynursery@eircom.net

  Website:

www.kilmurrynursery.com

  Contact:

Paul & Orla Woods

  Opening Hours:

Nursery Open Jan-March Mon-Friday 10-5 March 30th -Sept 27th open Monday-Saturday-10-5pm 30th Sept-13th December -Monday -Friday-10am-5pm

  Entrance Fee:

Donation to Courtown RNLI

 Kilmokea Gardens is owned by Mark & Emma Hewlett

“Ancient garden heritage goes back to earliest settlers. In the seventh Century the patron Saint of gardening, Saint Fiachra was adopted. He holds a special place in our hearts as the Kilmokea Monastic site dates back to this time. It is situated next to the walled garden.

When the Church of Ireland purchased the Monastic lands to build the rectory for the Rector of White Church, the fruit and vegetables for the house were grown in the walled Garden. Today it is home to a series of interchanging garden rooms with herbaceous planting, rose gardens and sheltered garden seats positioned to reflect on the beauty of the place. My favourite place is our Italian Loggia and pool which I have adopted as my summer office. As the business has grown, I become more office bound so I may as well be close to the garden on my laptop! Without doubt Roses are my favourite summer flowers and Hellebores in the spring. Many of the healing properties of the flowers and plants in the garden are now bottled as last lockdown I completed a flower essence course and these will be available to purchase in the Conservatory. To further assist the health and wellbeing of our guests we are introducing the concept of ‘Forest Bathing’ in the woodland garden. This Japanese practise known as ‘Shinrin Yoku is a simple method of being calm and quite amongst trees, observing nature around you while breathing deeply. A wonderful way to de-stress and boost the immune system at the same time.

We have been maintaining the seven acres of gardens for 24 years now and have weathered many storms! One of the first things we did was to build a large wooden Conservatory which is our Café where we offer guests lunch and afternoon tea. We then created a new food garden where fruit and vegetables are grown using organic methods for the kitchen which feeds guests staying in the house, self catering cottages and are essential ingredients for our lunch menu the conservatory café. This is really important to us as our philosophy of “ground to fork” is ingrained in our objectives.

Since the food travels only a few feet to reach the plate in the Conservatory Café, it is more sustainable. We strive to offer local & sustainable food and food grown with Organic methods to our guests and our family.

Our parents were all keen gardeners and fostered an interest in Gardens and nature and the outdoors. When we first started caring for the gardens my father would drive down from Dublin arriving at 8am, peel himself out of his low Honda and put on his overalls to mow the lawns and tend to the Roses. He was great inspiration and got involved in many of our early projects, giving advise, even when it wasn’t needed! Over the years we have created a large new food garden, which is very close to our hearts. We have built board walks and wooden structures in the woodland garden, designed fairy houses & viking boats and planted many hundreds of plants not to mention spending many hundreds of hours weeding! We now employ a full time gardener who gardens five days a week. We are very involved with decision making, planning new plantings, building structures, graveling pathways and discussing all the planting of seeds for the Vegetables and Flowers.  We are totally indebted to Marty Reville our gardener who tends to the gardens with the love and passion which we hold for the gardens. With him we have created no-dig vegetable beds and he is extending biodiversity throughout the gardens. Large bug hotels are the latest structures! We really hope Government restrictions allow us to open Kilmokea Gardens to visitors this season, and we look forward to welcoming you”.

Great Island, Campile, Co Wexford

  Telephone:

051 388109

  Mobile:

086 6641946

  Email:

stay@kilmokea.com

  Website:

www.kilmokea.com

  Contact:

Mark & Emma Hewlett

  Opening Hours:

Opening hours. 10am to 5pm

March 17th to end of May. September & October. Wednesday to Sunday

June, July, August. Every Day.

  Entrance Fee:

Adults €7; OAP €6; Children under 16 €4; Children under 2 Free; Groups welcome. Up to 12.5% discount for groups of over 20

 Marlfield House Gardens

 Marlfield House is owned by The Bowe Family and managed by Margaret and Laura Bowe 

 When our parents Mary and Ray Bowe bought Marlfield House just outside Gorey in 1977 it was with the intention of opening the house and gardens to guests as a country house hotel. The Dower house of the Courtown Estate, the Earls of Courtown had entertained lavishly in both Marlfield and the nearby Courtown House. With Marlfield’s opening as a hotel in 1978 it began again to welcome guests from all over the world. 

 The garden was smaller then and has been developed and extended  extensively by Mary and Ray in the early days.  On 36 acres in total there are 12 acres in woodland walks and garden today. While the gardens have always been enjoyed by hotel guests, since opening ‘The Duck Restaurant’ in 2015 the number of people  coming to enjoy a coffee, lunch or dinner and a wander in the gardens has multiplied tenfold. The restaurant is located in a long stone building with French doors opening onto a sandstone terrace overlooking the kitchen garden filled with vegetables, soft fruits, a plethora of herbs and beds of blooming roses! Our guests enjoy seeing  chefs picking herbs, vegetables and salad as they dine  al fresco on the south facing Terrace.  The ‘garden to plate’ ethos could not be more evident!

It brings us great pleasure to see our garden enjoyed by so many. 

 Woodlands form the back drop of the garden, with meandering paths through a kitchen garden of herbs, vegetables and fruits. Long borders of shrubs and herbaceous perennials flank a yew hedge and lead to the lawns and formal gardens. 

 The duck pond  forms a completely separate garden to the front of the hotel and the island, reached by a wooden bridge, has beautiful specimen shrubs and trees. It has only recently become the location of five private stand alone pond suites where guests can sleep, each in its own grounds amid oak and chestnut trees, surrounded by nature.  The many paddling ducks, waterhen, squirrels, rabbits and George our peacock are happy to share this piece of the garden with those sleeping in the pond suites!

 Spring is our favourite season and our gardener Sean Kehoe plants thousands of daffodils and tulips annually. Unfortunately in 2020 the pleasure of seeing the carpets of daffodils and rainbows of tulips and Camellias was  confined to those on social media , and it seems that history might repeat itself this Spring!  But our herb and rose gardens will be filled with a plethora of colour of blooms and fragrances and enjoyed  by many this Summer when we are very hopeful that Covid restrictions will lift.  

 We are Looking forward to welcoming lots of people back to Marlfield and our gardens this year. Now more than ever we all need to Enjoy nature and spending time with each other, enjoy the outdoors, the beauty of our county and its gardens and produce  and be grateful for the beautiful gardens in the Wexford Garden Trail. 

  Courtown Road R742, Gorey, Co Wexford

  Telephone:

053 9421124

  Email:

info@marlfieldhouse.ie

  Website:

www.marlfieldhouse.com

  Contact:

Margaret & Laura Bowe

  Opening Hours:

Garden visit and Lunch/Afternoon Tea by appointment (March to December)

  Entrance Fee:

€12.00 which includes morning coffee or afternoon tea with dressed scones in Marlfield House Hotel

    Wexford Lavender Farm

My name is Moira Hart, I am the Owner and Manager of Wexford Lavender Farm, a privately run garden and tourism business located 10 km north of Gorey in North Co. Wexford.

We opened to the public in April 2014 with 2 acres of lavender plants in a field located close to old disused stables, which we had converted into our Café/Giftshop prior to opening.

We are currently Irelands’ only dedicated commercial lavender farm and added a second 2 acre field in 2018 with 5,000 more lavender plants.  We planted rows of English Lavender Hidcote, English Lavender Rosea, Dutch lavender Grosso and some English Lavender Munstead.    My late mum (Betty) was a keen organic gardener, animal lover and bee keeper, my love of gardening, lavender and animals comes from her and after visiting many lavender farms in England (I grew up in rural Dorset) decided to set up my own business here in Ireland.  We’re (mostly) fortunate with the weather here in Co. Wexford and grow the English Lavender varieties which are hardy.

Farming anything involves lots of hard work, a passion for what you love and lots of energy, especially in the busy Summer months when the lavender is in bloom and visitor numbers are high.  We keep ducks, chickens, goats, ponies and horses too, which all need looking after 365 days a year, whatever the weather.  Being self-employed it’s important to be self-motivated and drive yourself forward.

When we first opened the business our daughters (Clara & Martha) were 6 and 9, I didn’t have any experience running a business, managing staff or working in a café so to say it was a steep learning curve would be a big understatement!  Seven years later our daughters are now involved working in the business in the summer months when school is closed.  We have a fantastic, hardworking team working alongside us, being a seasonal business can be difficult with staffing as its ‘all hands-on-deck’ during the summer then nothing during the winter.

We were at the beginning of planning and building a wooden Maze as an extension to the Lavender Farm in January 2020 when COVID-19 arrived unwelcomed into our lives, with this unknown threat and all the uncertainty it brought, I decided reluctantly to halt plans for 2020.   We eventually re-opened on 30th June 2020 and had a strong but short domestic season in between Lockdown one and two, with so many people not being able to travel abroad.  The Maze plans are back on track and will be built before June 2021. This will be a welcome addition to the business, as well as being the only wooden Maze in Ireland, it will not be dependent on the lavender flowering season (mid June through early September).

The first Covid lockdown was a welcome break, with fantastic weather and time-off that I hadn’t had through the spring/early summer since opening but this latest Lockdown has been tough on everyone and the very wet winter has made getting outdoor maintenance jobs impossible for the time-being.  

We are SO looking forward to Summer, lavender, visitors, long days and being outside with nature and the things we love!

   Coolnagloose, Inch, Gorey, Wexford, Y25 NW42

  Telephone:

087 068 6774

  Email:

info@wexfordlavenderfarm.com

  Website:

www.wexfordlavenderfarm.com

  Contact:

Moira Hart

  Opening Hours:

Closed January, February & March.

Opening 1st May (if restrictions allow) to Mid September: Tuesday - Sunday: 10.30am - 5pm (plus Bank Holiday's)

Mid September to December: Saturday & Sunday: 10.30am - 5pm

  Entrance Fee:

€5 per car in June, July & August

      Woodville Gardens

 Gerald Roche is a farmer and gardener at Woodville, New Ross where his family have lived since 1876.

 As a farmer I know that I am simply a custodian of the farm for subsequent generations.  A garden is just the same. A garden is shaped by the tastes and fashions of each generation that works in it but it goes on from one generation to the next.  So it is with the gardens at Woodville, the apple and pear trees were planted by my grandmother, I think in the 1930s, so they are well past their prime though still productive and a strong structural element in the garden as many of them are espaliered. My interest in gardening came later in life with the realisation that gardening is an all absorbing occupation, once bitten by the gardening bug, there is no escape.  The garden is not a chore, as a gardener, one wants to be in the garden planning, planting, shaping, altering, propagating.  

 At Woodville the walled garden was laid out when the house was built in the early 1800s. It was extended and remodelled in the 1830s and further developed in the 1880s when it was acquired by PJ Roche. He extended the house and built a conservatory.  He also extended the existing glasshouse by building a vinery.  These houses came from the Messenger Company in England and having restored the conservatory a few years ago and more recently, the peach house, the Messenger greenhouse, home to the vines, is my next project.  I have sourced the timber and the help, we will probably lose this year’s crop of grapes unless we have a very warm summer.

 In the last decade of the 19th century, plentiful labour and cheap coal meant these glasshouses were both productive and ornamental, these days they are a labour of love.  The boilers are gone and they rely on solar gain to heat them, an uneven source of energy even with climate change.  I try to garden in as sustainable and environmentally friendly way as I can, using manure and compost produced on site and to choose plants that will flourish in this microclimate.

 These days, I look after the garden with the help of the family, a Teagasc student if one is available and the (very) occasional contractor. Help comes in the form of S.482 tax relief in return for which the gardens are opened to the public for two months each year.  Covid 19 put a big dent in the visitor numbers in 2020 and I expect the same for 2021 as we rely on garden tours from abroad for much of our income.

 Wet weather such as we have endured in January/February 2021 causes anxiety and impatience, even in a garden with free draining soil such as ours and spring sunshine and March breezes are eagerly anticipated. Small highs come from spotting the first bud or flower or fruit, comparing notes from other years.  Pleasure comes from the harvest of fruit and vegetables, sweet new carrots, pencil thin, big bowls of autumn raspberries, sculptural romanasco, artichokes, validating puddles of melted butter on the plate.  Satisfaction is a freezer filled with vegetables after summer evenings podding and chopping, blanching and bagging. Sweetcorn, broccoli and beans both broad and French, raspberries and blackcurrants all are saved and whatever else is surplus to the day’s requirements. Not for the gardener long days on the beach, those sunny days are spent mowing and edging lawns, harvesting and weeding and at the end of the day, a dash to the sea to cool down and wash off the dust.  Just as paper never refuses ink, gardens soak up labour.  There is never enough time, power tools have speeded up tasks but there is always more to be done.  

 In another era, an army of gardeners assisted by carpenters and painters maintained these gardens.  Today we do what we can as best we can and relish producing food for the table – nil food miles, kind to the environment.  It is an ongoing challenge but one we cherish.

    New Ross, Co Wexford

  Telephone:

051 422957

  Mobile:

087 9709828

  Email:

woodville05@eircom.net

  Website:

www.woodvillegardens.ie

  Contact:

Gerald Roche

  Opening Hours:

May – June: 10am – 2pm, or by appointment

  Entrance Fee:

€5.00

[edenamador]

100 Things about My Father

I forgot I was a poet. Skip down for the poem that came to me as clear as a crystal last night. Trigger warning - Suicide. 

I mean I have an inclination toward having dreams at night, 

thinking they have deeper meaning, and waking up with music in my head at 1:15am in the morning. 

There is something about 1:15 in the morning which has a razor sharp precision to it. Even though I’m more of a disconnected abstraction. Some constellation of stars nobody has given meaning to. Dreaming about that straight crush in college twice in one night. All this after in real life, oh and he was a poet too, now in grad school, who knows if he is the happy academic he craved to be. Who knows if he is still writing poetry or writing technical sentences with so much jargon nobody can understand. . . 

Its all rambly. I know it is annoying but that is how it comes to me. He asked me if I had followed the spirit and I told him I wrote the poem I was suppose to write. He was proud of me, like a dead ghost now, I loved him then but he is a stranger in a distant land now.

Yes, I was at Target, a place I worked so long ago and a previous co-worker said to me, “You look poetic, like you could be a poet.”

I didn’t know what to say but now I am dreaming of my poetic college muse and he is telling me to follow the spirit just as Beauvoir so now I’m on tumblr again because of that Target co-worker who said I should have a blog and get a following. An idea I laugh at because my poetry is well, I am poetic, I am not exactly a poet if I’m not writing poetry. So I guess I will share what came to me last night. At least a draft. 

My mother always says, “You have choices to make.”

So when my boyfriend says, “You never talk about your father,” and then asks, “Why is that?” 

I pause and my mother’s voice repeats, “You have choices to make.”

I could say a hundred things about the same thing. Like a simple fact about the color of a chair, “My father is dead.”

It sounds like, “The chair is red.”

1. My father died. 

My boyfriend might ask how he passed away which means I have to say more. This leaves me with more choices but I haven’t even jumped the first hurdle. I don’t even run track but the baton has been given to me, “How did he die?” I could have anticipated the next question and already answered it more bluntly. 

2. My father blew his brains out.

If I want to keep my boyfriend I should frame things particular to his way of life. That would be too precise and come off as indifferent like my father never mattered to me. He didn’t.

3. He died when I was four. 

Again, if I put it this way he might ask, “How?” and I would get to say

4. He loaded a pistol. I think it was a .45 pistol or a glock, and took the weapon to rat lake where he blew his brains out. 

If I present it with “when I was four” the cold way in which I say, “He blew his responsibilities away,” pops like a childhood bubble.

5. He’s pushing up daisies. 

6. He’s seven feet under. 

7. He croaked. 

Before the gun fire went off out in the country where only the frogs and flora of the boreal northern forests would hear it the American toads reed. When the gunfire went off silence consumed the forest for a few minutes before returning to normal a few minutes later. A few hours later, with the loons calling, a friend of my father’s came across his body and reported it to the authorities. 

8. My father was a mail carrier.

I could have said this as it would have delayed revealing the information about the death of my father, and how he died, the conversation about the long term effect it had on my psychology and the psychological impact on the rest of my family. Though, according to my mother everything turned out fine. Which is why as I approach 30 years old I am waking up in the middle of the night because I’m having dreams about people in graduate school programs saying, “He doesn’t even talk about his father! He talks about Black Lives Matter, Marxism, Gender Theory and all this crap, but he hasn’t even mentioned his father.”

9. My father is out of the picture. 

10. I would rather not talk about my father. 

11. I didn’t know much about my father. 

12. I don’t remember much about my father. 

13. My father left me with dry skin and a proclivity toward depression. 

14. My mother was a single mother. 

15. I guess I don’t talk about my father. Hugh, I wonder why that is. 

I like this because I can act like I’m just as dumbfounded by it as my boyfriend is. Creative writer circles often told me I am not concrete enough. So I guess we were sitting at a park in Hutchinson Minnesota when my boyfriend at the time asked this question. A few years later when the relationship had faded and I asked to be dating again he told me, “Some gay men have issues.” While I cried about it and refused to speak to him ever again he was right. I was a gay man with issues, daddy issues to be exact. 

16. My father had a beard. 

17. My father was an alcoholic and when my mother said she had enough he couldn’t handle it and blew his brains out. 

This one is the worst of them. It sounds like my mother caused my father to commit suicide. Nobody but my father took a gun to his head and blew his brains out. 

18. My mother never remarried after my father was out of the picture. 

Again, I could say this but it remains vague enough to lead to other questions any intimate partner would have the right to know. Or perhaps nobody has the right to know about my father and that I have the right not to talk about him to anyone. “Did they get a divorce?”

19. Do we have to talk about this. I’d rather not talk about this because I am not ready to reveal that story and its long term effects on me. Look, it’s a nice day and I’m happy talking about a million other things. 

This might indicate I lack the trust necessary to share that story. He may take it personally and think that our relationship should be more open. Or he might respect that answer and remain curious. Most people would talk about both their parents openly and in positive ways.

20. All the options in my life have been formed by my father’s decision to kill himself.

21. He killed himself. 

22. He offed himself. 

23. He decided he no longer wished to live. 

24. When given the option between suicide and coffee he chose suicide. 

25. I need counseling to answer that question. 

My mother was right. The choices were really endless. I could even use the same word presented in a different way. There were a lot of strategies for answering this question. Even after the question was asked I kept gathering new academic methodologies to answer the question, “Why don’t you talk about your father?”

26. If I open up about him I’m afraid I will scare you away because if I talk about my father I am admitting that I am a flawed human being with an abnormal childhood upbringing. 

Again, more options appear even if I avoid the subject of my father all together. It seems that certain events have greater effect on the long term psychology of the individual than others. But was my childhood “abnormal” or was my mother “doing the best she could” in situations which were out of her control? But it couldn’t of been out of her control. . . “Everybody has choices to make. . .”

27. “My father died when I was four.”

28. “I was four when my father died.”

I cannot remember which of these I used but it was one of the two. So I said what I thought in the moment. I paused. I know I paused and my boyfriend said, “Only if you are comfortable talking about it.”

29. I might cry if I talk about my father. But I don’t think I will. I usually don’t but its sad. Don’t be sorry, you didn’t do anything. Why do people say sorry when I say this? What personal responsibility did they have for it? Why do I have to answer this question? Why will this question always come up when in relationships? 

30. His death effect me because I was too young. 

That’s a lie because I know it impacted the whole trajectory of my life. There were material consequences. For example his life was attached to the union. This left my mother with a small financial cushion to fall back on when she was left to raise three children. While it may have been small it was enough for her to go to college for ten years and get a bachelor’s degree in education. 

31. I never talk about my father because then I have to talk about my mother. My mother looks like an American hero for the choices she didn’t make but talking about my mother also reveals the hidden demons I am not suppose to talk about as it might make her look bad. 

32. I never talk about my father because it usually becomes a really long essay about masculinity, the effects of neo-liberal feminism, and requires a master’s degree in sociology and a Ph.D. in philosophy to get to the bottom of it. It requires skill, tact, intelligence, emotional strength, and persistence to answer with any certainty. It’s a philosophical question at heart and I am not a philosopher, I am merely a subject exposed to systems of power which shape my experience in a world I did not create. 

“Why don’t you talk about your father?”

33. Why did he commit suicide? Why did my brother point a gun to my head? Why did my mother trust a teenager to get me to and from school going ninety miles an hour down icy unplowed country roads at seven in the morning? Why did the chicken cross the road? Why is the sky blue?

34. He’s sinking in the swamps. 

35. The worms are feeding on his body. 

36. He’s dead. 

37. He’s gone. 

38. He’s no longer with us. 

If at this point the possibilities seem pointless, redundant, or obnoxious, imagine being at work when a co-worker flippantly says, “I’m ready to blow my brains out.”

39. My father hurt his back and wouldn’t go to see the doctor. It was severe pain and he couldn’t really talk about it. He drank his physical and mental pains away. Sometimes he would come home drunk and punch walls in. I do remember waking up to the sound of shattering glass. The stove glass broke because my father kicked it in during one of his masculine temper tantrums. 

40. I didn’t know it when it was first asked but I now think my father died because of hyper-masculinity. I don’t think he was allowed to express any of the emotional or physical hardships he had. He likely had depression and was obviously having thoughts of suicide. Other’s in the family had committed suicide and had mental issues. When I go to the psychologist they show me genetic connections but as a sociology major I am thinking more about the limits on men expressing emotions. My father couldn’t express his emotions, that’s for sure, so he likely imploded, quite literally. 

41. I don’t mean to come off as cold hearted or disconnected, it’s just that the death of my father strikes me more as an abstraction than a concrete reality. When it does come up I am reminded of my differences, my class upbringing, the social values that played out in my childhood. 

42. For my brother my father was a something which became a nothing. For me my father is a nothing who, when asked about his existence, becomes a something that should have been, but wasn’t. 

43. By opening up about my father I cannot really say who he is without explaining who he was not and for me he was more of a not than a was. 

44. “Your father loved you,” my aunt says. 

45. My father bought two stuffed monkeys. The monkey was Abu from the Disney show Aladdin. He did this a few months before he killed myself. In addition to that he also bought me a small baseball glove. My uncle on my mother’s side went with my dad to the store to pick these up. My uncle says he was likely planning his suicide during this time and asked my mother that we hide these items when my uncle was around so he wouldn’t be reminded of my father’s suicide.

How could my father have loved me if he blew his brains out? It hardly seems like an act of love to abandon your child at the age of four. 

46. “God has a plan for everyone and even though it may not make sense to us down here there is a plan and there is nothing we can do about it.” Likely something my pastor said or something my grandmother said or something someone said along the way. When on a date with an attractive suitable man one doesn’t want to delve into religious theology and questions about the existence of God, determinism versus free will, the meaning of life, and deeper levels of spiritual enlightenment, or lack there of. One wants to eat ice cream, giggle about some superfluous thing, and see if one can see some concrete shape in the clouds: its a duck, a bird, a dinosaur, a giraffe. What do you see when you look at the sky? Is there something more out there? 

When asked about my father I am asked about a whole series of causal effects. When asked about my father I am asked to see myself as an object in the world formed by what the existentialists refer to as facticity. At this moment I free myself from the container which shaped me and am allowed to reconstruct the object that I am as I choose. 

I also begin to ask myself, “what if things had played out differently,” as I am prone to ask the questions I was told weren’t worth asking. I was told there were no answers to them but the questions which don’t have answers are the questions I like the most. So being asked about my father is really asking me who I am and how I became who I am. I am inclined to answer if one has the time for it. Most people don’t have the time, the intellect, the patience, the attention span, or the emotional capacity for such things. So I prefer to say, 

47. “Shh, daddy is sleeping. We must not wake him. He’s a terrible ghost. Let’s play hide and seek with death! Can you count to one hundred?”

48. “In any case, that little boy didn’t want to grow up for fear of becoming serious.” pg. 327 Jean Paul Sartre War Diaries

49. “But as soon as man grasps himself as free, and wishes to use his freedom, all his activity is a game: he’s its first principle; he escapes the world by his nature; he himself ordains the value and rules of his acts, and agrees to pay up only according the the rules he has himself ordained and defined.” 326 Jean Paul Sartre 

50. “And man is serious when he forgets himself; when he makes the subject into an object; when he takes himself for a radiation derived from the world: engineers, doctors, physicists, biologists are serious.” 326 Jean Paul Sartre The War Diaries

51. When my father died my mother was left to raise three boys. He was a step father to one of my brothers so one of my brothers still had a father. So my father is really three people: a dad who was then wasn’t, a dad who wasn’t then was, and a step dad.

I could have never explained all this that day I was asked. There in a rural town in the middle of a corn-field playing out the waves of one of my first gay relationships I simply said, “My dad is dead.” Reality is bleak like that. It restricts possibilities. Reality is only here in the field of “you have choices to make”. Reality are the options available. I am free to make choices in relation to concrete possibilities. For example I used covid stimulus money to pay for my rent so I could I have time to write this. I could have used it to buy copious amounts of liquor to subdue my existential angst. I could have used it to put it to my loans. I quit my job to give myself the time necessary to heal the wounds of the past. I refuse to conform to the pressure to buy a vehicle and get a license because I would have to buy car insurance which would mean I need a job to pay for the cars insurance. I would need gas to go back and forth to work where I would only continue to suppress my authenticity. Authenticity can never be achieved. It can only be something which is consistently reproduced. I reproduce myself as a writer only in the act of writing. Even the short pause between characters I realize other possibilities. Writing must be a consistent act I partake in everyday as a way of pursuing my own projects with the material conditions given to me.

52. My father is four people or five people because he was a co-worker to my middle school friend’s father, also a wife, a brother, an uncle. Six or seven people. He was never a grandfather though and could never be a grandfather. He could never have the possibility of being a grandfather so when my nephew says he doesn’t have a grandfather, his great uncle says he would be happy to fill the role. So my uncle, married to my mother’s blood sister, is my nephew’s grandfather. 

The more I think about choices the more I start to confirm that choices are in relation to particular material conditions given to a situation which show the constricting impact of choices. 

53. My mother, because of my father’s death, often found jimmy-rigged options for babysitters when family members were not available. When she realized my brother and I weren’t mature enough to handle being at home alone by ourselves, she looked into other options such as having me stay at the library until it closed. Later I learned that urban libraries have a phrase for this condition called, “Library latchkey kids,” which are children who’s parents are busy because of social economic conditions they end up going to the library after school for free baby-sitting. 

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16451347

I would stay in the library until it closed. My mother would slip the librarian a twenty dollar bill. I asked about it once and I learned in one way or another not to ask about such things. 

When I took the Myers Briggs test in high school I scored nearly a hundred percent INFP which to me meant I was destined to be a genius like Shakespeare, taught in English classes all around the world for centuries to come. It meant I was introverted, intuitive, feeling, and perceptive. It meant that my room was messy but that my bookshelves were ordered perfectly with the Dewey decimal system. In high school I read Waiting for Godot with no idea it belonged to existential literature. On the question of why I don’t talk about my father, I am still Waiting for Godot. 

54. My father’s suicide, in the long-term, meant I got to be alone with books. I often tired of reading and would chat with the librarian. She would ask me if I had a girlfriend and show me the things she wanted on craigslist. Sometimes she had to rapidly click her computer screen to hide some areas of the internet that should not be looked at while a minor sat reading Dr. Seuss, books about nature, or how volcanoes worked. I loved reading. I could never get enough. One of the librarians never believed I read as many books as I did and often discredited some of the books she believed were above my level. I was smart and there’s nothing worse to rural people than a smart, effeminate, boy with a love of reading.

I was always told that my mother was good and was always asked if she was still in college. For ten years I said yes she is in college. For twenty years I never told anyone my brother pointed a gun to my head because she left us unattended with the gun case unlocked. When I brought it up to her in my late twenties she said it wasn’t possible because my twenty year old cousin was there in the camper. When I asked I thought I was testing whether or not she could have subdued her ego enough to admit to the possibility that it may have not been the best choice to leave minors unattended with an unlocked gun case at home. That’s the way things were with her growing up so why would it be any different with us? All of a sudden she gets away with making the right choices because, “She pulled herself up by the bootstraps and got a degree in education.”

Anytime I try to explain my experiences of these circumstances I am caught in a social trap by which the liberal value of women choosing careers over a life of drunkenness and whoreish behavior to capture the love of a man my mother’s story overrides. My experience of having a gun pointed at my head by my own brother is over-ridden by another set of values. 

55. I had a shot gun pointed to my head by my own brother because I was singing too loudly and he was hungover because he was drinking alcohol. 

56. I didn’t know if the shot gun was loaded. 

57. I stopped singing, fell backwards, and made a snow angel.

“Well, you’re mother could have brought over a bunch of rotten men. You could have been sexually abused.”

58. My brother used to chase me around the house naked and dry hump me. These are the effects of leaving minors unattended after school out in the country. And you know it which is why you started getting babysitters for us. It was after too many nights coming house to a destroyed house that my mother decided to have some family members watch over us and make sure we did our homework.  

59. “Stop being a victim you liberal snowflake.”

60. But I’m actually criticizing the effects of applied feminism in the 21st century. 

61. “You’re mother is a good person.”

63. “It could have been worse.”

64. “Everything turned out fine.”

65. “Everyone has trauma to deal with. Everyone has baggage.”

My boyfriend told me of growing up. His father was a chemist at Kellogg’s and his mother was an instructor at a community college. He was a potter, a knitter, and a banjo player. He became an English teacher. He told me that one time his dad brought home bags of Lucky Charm marshmallows for him and his sister to eat. His father recorded their responses to the marshmallows and adjusted the ratios of sugar based on those tests. That doesn’t sound like trauma to me. That sounds like a healthy childhood which leads one to have self confidence, self esteem, and the emotional stability necessary to face the mixed messages of life. In the meantime I seek out people who tell me I’m dumb, ugly, stupid, and will never amount to anything because I think that’s a normal relationship. If I am not doing that I am hiding in my room wondering what the point of being alive is wondering if there is any hope for me to heal and get better.

66. My father’s suicide is a traumatic past which shapes my entire experience. It’s a past that I have the right to represent by writing it. It’s a past which is not, “Everything turned out fine,” and no my mother did not, “Pull herself up by her bootstraps,” she had choices to make and one of those choices was to leave minors home alone with a gun case full of weapons and to trust that nothing bad could have happened in that circumstance. I will not limit myself to the blindness feminist discourse encouraged when I told my story to an existential philosophy professor at a liberal university. Yes, she could have chosen worse, but it could have turned out much better. I will not sit here silently submitting to my brother’s words, “Don’t tell anyone or I will kill you!”

“Why don’t you talk about your father?”

67. Well kill me. I’d be better off anyway. I am willing to die for the truth in the same way an American soldier is willing to die for his country. I am willing to stand for something even if I am alone. Pull the trigger. If it makes you feel like a man to point a gun at your brother you might as well pull the trigger. 

“It wasn’t loaded. Do you think I would actually put a shot gun shell in it. I love you, I’m your brother. Do you think I’m an idiot? I wouldn’t actually do that. . .”

“Why don’t you talk about your father?”

68. It’s exhausting. It’s a threat to my existence. It reminds me that blowing my brains out is a real possibility whereas for most people its a thing you say when life sucks. The following is an example of that. 

When I was working as an English as a Second Language instructor I thought I had made it. I thought that teaching immigrants and refugees English meant I had established myself as a concrete being in the world permanently enmeshed as a career oriented man. My degree in Sociology was justified and my graduate certificate was no longer a waste of time, energy, and effort. I quickly learned that my masculinity was always under question and that the few men in that field were perfectly miserable beings. The whole notion that people became teachers because they were heart filled beings with a passion for helping others vanished when my co-worker, a professional teacher who taught abroad in Japan, made the shape of a gun with his finger, lifted it to his head, and pulled the trigger. I had simply asked him how he was doing and it was apparently not well. I was feeling rather dismal and would like to think I responded like this. 

69. It’s a great position to be in. A cock loaded full of cum in my mouth and my cock loaded full of cum in his mouth. The tension was rising. Would we ever get to the desired result of all of our efforts? Would we ever achieve orgasm? Would we ever blow? Rest assured we exploded and were perfectly satisfied. There’s just something about holes and filling them which none of us can resist. Yet, even when the hole is filled to the brim with hot cum we feel so empty that we can no longer go on and so we pause. It’s okay to have long periods of stagnation so long as we can pull out at the right time and forgive ourselves for our responses to the past. The future may not appear to hold much but there is so much time and so many holes to fill. 

70. They covered my father’s hole with makeup. They closeted the cause of his death. At the funeral they closed the bottom half of the casket which made me think that someone cut my father’s legs off with giant scissors. I screamed. I was convinced that his legs were cut off with giant scissors and that someone had caused his death. 

71. How is a four year old suppose to understand this when adults are unable to tell the truth when the child asks questions about his dead father. He isn’t going to understand these things if adults themselves still don’t understand them. Adults go to great lengths to omit the grievances and effects of such events. “Everything turned out fine,” and “You’ve got choices to make.” 

A four year old’s brain is not ready to understand such things because adults don’t understand them. His memories are barely forming and he is still fascinated by blowing bubbles. Adults have lost their imaginations. He smiles at the sound of popcorn popping while adults drench popcorn in so much salt and butter that they die of heart attacks and call it death by natural causes. A child laughs when he sees a frozen lake swarmed by a hundred seagulls as teenage boys stuff frogs down the barrels of shot guns and laugh when American toad guts go spiraling into the sky like fireworks.

The events surrounding my father’s death are my first memories. There are many of them like the pastor holding me trying to give me comfort. I press my stomach for comfort. My first memories are the feeling of anxiety, that weird pang in the stomach which goes unexplained by doctors and still causes ulcers. There’s my cousin saying my father is away for a very long time and that he is in heaven. These memories attach themselves to future interactions when all compiled leave one wishing there were no choices to make at all. It leaves one wishing that there was one defined path meant for everyone which would eliminate all angst and all decisions. In fact it often feels better if there was no free will at all and that God really did have a plan for each individual. 

There is another pastor, who many years later, told me my father was in hell. This leaves me with one of those ridiculous choices and questions, “Is my father in heaven or in hell?” There is my aunt who tells me that my pastor is wrong and the Bible never mentions. There is my uncle who says people who don’t believe in God are not allowed in his home. There is the ice cream I ate after I was taken out of the funeral home to ease the emotional burden a screaming four year old must have placed on my father’s friends and family members. The ice cream was a temporary cure which taught me that negative emotions could be easily drowned with chocolate sauce and colorful sprinkles.

72. My father is in heaven. 

73. My father is in hell. 

74. My father is in purgatory. 

75. I don’t know where the fuck my father is. 

76. Do souls exist?

78. What is the difference between agnostic theism and agnostic atheism?

79. It’s ok to think about dying now and again. I think everyone has thought about it now and again but I’m not sure. I’m only one person with so many heartbeats. 

80. I don’t think I will commit suicide because it doesn’t solve anything. Living doesn’t solve much either but at least I can say I tried to count to one hundred. 

81. I might cry if I talk about my father. 

82. It’s ok to cry. 

83. It’s ok to cry. 

84. It’s ok to cry.

85. It’s ok to cry. 

86. It’s ok to cry. 

87. If you cannot sleep count the sheep or cry. 

88. It’s ok to cry. 

89. Real men cry. 

90. Real men cry. 

91. Real men cry. 

92. Real men cry like big men. 

93. Real men cry like grown men. 

94. Real men cry like real men. 

95. It’s ok to cry. 

96. It’s ok to cry. 

97. Facts may not care about feelings but feelings are always seeking out facts to justify themselves. One must be careful about the facts used to represent their feelings. 

98. Over intellectualization isn’t crying. It’s a defense mechanism. 

99. It’s okay to cry. 

100. Everything turned out fine. 

[checkoutafrica]

Manu Grace; the multi- insturmentalist

South African songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Manu Grace is one of the most striking acts to emerge from the South African alternative music scene. Her sound can be described as ‘Sensitive Pop’ — unguarded and groovy; appealing to both heart and feet alike. Raised in a creative family, Manu grew up with plenty of room for her imagination to thrive. For as long as she can remember, music has been her primary interest have always had a piano in the house, Manu begged and begged for lessons until her hands were finally deemed big enough. She later picked up guitar and bass, using her precious screen-time to print guitar tabs off the Internet. At 15, she wrote her first full composition the day her baby brother came home from the hospital. “It was a sweet tribute to the new little pipsqueak”. From there, songwriting became second nature and although she was shy in regular life, she had an innate drive to get on stage at any possible opportunity. “It’s weird how you can be so drawn to something with such a deep sense of knowing”.

No Room for Error. This EP reflects Manu’s inner and outer world over the course of an eventful couple of months of love, loss and visa runs. It trails her travels chronologically and the project reads like a story. No Room for Error is a bold unlocking of freedom and femininity — unabashed about desire; vulnerable and fierce. “I approached the process with a sense of freedom and fearlessness — no idea was ever too wild, and I really love working like that.”

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#fetchtheboltcutters (life is so wacky)

Sending love. Another offering later this week

A fun one ; can’t wait!

A post shared by MANU GRACE (@_manugrace) on Sep 1, 2020 at 4:19am PDT

For those that have never heard your music, how would you describe your sound?

That one is hard, hmm I don’t know? For a long time, I was allergic to the word pop but I think alternative pop is a good way to put it – there’s a lot of storytelling and maybe it’s too honest. I don’t know, I like to call it sensitive pop if that is even a thing ahaha.

You say you grew up in a creative family, so since you’re a musician, what do the rest of your family do?

My fathers an architect by profession but he’s an incredible poet and writer, my moms a novelist and screen writer, my brother is a film maker so we each kind of picked our niche! However, I do think that sometimes we can get a little over-involved in each others projects, like at the start of lockdown my older brother, myself and our two little brothers – we were all in our moms house, stuck at home and he’s a cinematographer so we shot a music video in the house with the children, the chickens and the dogs, so that’ll come out soon if we don’t change our minds ahaha.

What did you learn from being in a band – the Aztec sapphires”

It was a very short- lived experience but very fun. This was my first time playing with anyone, I did classical piano and my version of music was always me writing my own songs then playing base guitar by myself so they deffo taught me lot, especially in terms of performing.

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TikTok circa 2006 Try telling this kid that in fourteen years' time she'll have a single racking up tens of thousands of plays in just one week.

A post shared by MANU GRACE (@_manugrace) on Aug 11, 2020 at 2:41am PDT

No room for error what is it about?

I started on it last year may, I work with two collaborators – Russ and Robin and they were in cape town in may – whenever we’re in the same city we just cram. Then rob moved to berlin and Russ moved to London and we started working on a few tracks, I went to Italy to au pair in order to afford to be able to go to Berlin and record with them, with the intention of bringing the songs that we had already been working on. So we worked on it in Berlin, I spent every waking moment in the studio for like 10 whole days and it was really really fun, then i had to come back to cape town because of visa stuff, then I went back to London to finish all the vocal recordings. The intention was to move to London, i initially only came back thinking id be here for two, three weeks but thanks to lockdown I’ve been here ever since ahahaha

How does it compare to your debut ep June?

It feels a lot bolder, if i can say that. I just feel that over the course of making it I was growing a lot as a human and i think it shows. it’s also a lot less careful if that makes sense, I really love it, I don’t know if i can say that but I am really proud of it. It just feels really authentic. It feels more confident because I sound more confident

Do you have any expectations for your new ep, especially with how successful the last one was?

I just want to create music.

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World premiere of my new single 'Two Weeks' on @zanelowe 's @beats1official radio show in 30 minutes!!! Beside myself — I've been itching to have this music out in the world. Tune in on @applemusic at 18h30 SAST to be the first to hear it, and to get the scoop on my misadventures in Italy last Summer

Link in bio x

: @taofarren

A post shared by MANU GRACE (@_manugrace) on Aug 3, 2020 at 9:01am PDT

If you weren’t doing music, what would you be doing?

I think about that all the time. I have no idea because I feel like I have limited myself so much that there is no backup plan so this HAS to be my thing. But I don’t know, I mean I have done lots of things, I studied English at UCT and I have done teaching – teaching piano but I am realising now that whenever I have needed money, I have always gone for odd jobs that you can’t really turn into a career.

I saw that you used to be a shy person, over time have you gotten over this and gained more confidence?

I’ve always been quiet shy socially, but weirdly the performance thing has always come naturally and to this day I am still perplexed by it. It’s a very strange phenomenon

What valuable lessons have learned from Ross and Robin (of Beatenberg)

With them, it’s really fun because we’re really good friends and I just feel so safe with them and I don’t know, with this project especially, I was encouraged to have no inhibitions and I felt free to do what I wanted to do creatively. The whole process was really freeing and fun. I miss them!!!

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

Obviosuly the dream is for my music to go as far as it possibly can, I just want it to be heard, if i can sustain myself all my life from just doing music then that’s it. That’s literally just it.

Listen to her top tracks here;

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[berniesrevolution]

Americans believe a lot of lies about the police. In fact, most people can agree on this. They just disagree about what those lies are. Is the typical cop a cold-eyed executioner with a brutal disregard for human rights, or a selfless hero who risks his life to protect the community? Depending on who you are, you probably think one of those descriptions sounds utterly ridiculous. And you’re right. You recognize an obvious caricature when you see it. Just as the average Trump voter is neither a cross-burning Klansman nor an amiable unemployed plumber who just wants his job back, the average police officer is also a more complicated creature, a “sausage of angel and beast,” in the words of poet Nicanor Parra.

But “complicated” does not necessarily mean “good,” or “righteous,” or even “defensible.” After a certain number of rapes and murders by police, it becomes much more difficult to believe that “a few bad apples” are responsible for the flood of dead bodies and terrible headlines. The cases come from every part of the country—huge East Coast metropolises, laid-back liberal enclaves on the Pacific seaside, and even the sleepy small towns of the Midwest. Isolated incidents stop being isolated when they happen every week. Something is clearly wrong with America’s law enforcement.

Is this because cruel people become cops, or because becoming a cop makes people cruel? I used to think the answer was obvious, until I watched my friend kill a man on Facebook Live.

Jeronimo Yanez, better known as the cop who shot Philando Castile, was one of my best friends in high school. We played on the same baseball team and hung out in the same Chipotle parking lot. We went to senior prom together. On graduation day, we rolled our eyes and laughed while our parents took ten thousand pictures.

We drifted apart in the years that followed, as high school friends usually do, though once in a while he’d pop up in my newsfeed. My eyes would linger for a second over this CliffsNotes version of his life. Went on a fishing trip—cool. Got married—good for him. Graduated from the police academy—wait, he’s a cop now?

Huh. Weird. What else?

Oh, here’s a photo of Jeronimo holding his baby daughter. Here’s one of him with a classroom full of smiling third-graders. Here are a dozen generic snapshots of an ordinary human enjoying some small and unremarkable pleasure. Five minutes with Photoshop, and that could be your face blowing out birthday candles.

Then, one day, my feed became an endless stream of articles saying that Jeronimo was a murderer.

The people who shared these stories were outraged and heartbroken. Some of them said that Jeronimo was a heartless racist who killed a man and deserved to burn in hell. Many agreed that his acquittal on all charges was yet another mockery of justice in an America that has become a brutal police state where government-sanctioned killers are all but immune from legal consequences, even when they execute an old man eating chicken in his own backyard.

To these people, I would say one thing:

You’re right about the police, and you’re wrong about Jeronimo.

Before we continue, I have to make an apology of sorts. There are inherent problems in telling a story like this one, not the least of which is: why spend thousands of words talking about a cop who killed a human being and then walked free? Don’t “writers of conscience” have a moral obligation to elevate the stories of the oppressed above those of the oppressors? Isn’t Philando Castile, the man who was killed, the person whose story we really ought to be telling? Isn’t profiling his killer a waste of time, at best, and an implicit rationalization of police brutality, at worst?

These are all valid points, but they’re not the only valid points. Our first duty is to mourn the death—and celebrate the life—of Philando Castile. But we should seek to understand why Jeronimo Yanez pulled the trigger. We need to do the difficult and uncomfortable work of exploring how this particular “sausage of angel and beast” was made. Was Jeronimo rotten from the start, or did he become contaminated by a toxic environment? We can’t respond to this tragedy, or the broader tragedy of police violence in America, without a good answer to the question. Understanding what made Jeronimo shoot Philando  Castile is not an act of indulgence. It’s a tactic for preventing future violence.

Although I never met him, I have to think that’s something Philando Castile would want. Before his life was snatched away, he made a reputation as a man of incredible kindness and compassion. His family and friends have spoken about him far more eloquently than I could. His pastor, Danny Givens, said, “you felt seen by him…. you felt like you mattered, like you meant something to him at that moment.” His friend and co-worker, John Thompson, recalls that “if kids couldn’t afford lunch, he would pay for their lunch out of his own pocket. And that was against school policy. And I mean kids can’t afford lunch right now. They miss Mr. Phil at that school. They miss him. I miss my friend.” Another colleague, Joan Edman, put it simply: “this man mattered.”

I believe that Castile’s death was a violation of the fundamental agreement that underpins any society—namely, that its members agree to not slaughter each other—and therefore that it is what most people would consider “a crime.” By definition, that makes Jeronimo Yanez a criminal. Critics of the criminal justice system are fierce and convincing in their call for criminals to be treated as human beings. I draw certain conclusions from that, but I understand that others will draw their own. You’d have a point if you said, “but Yanez isn’t actually a criminal—he’s already been humanized by a system that literally let him get away with murder because he was scared.” This is true, and it is terrible. Yet even if you believe that he’s an inhuman monster, and you hate everything that he represents, it’s still generally a good idea to know your enemy, if only to fight him more effectively.

It is neither my intention nor desire to portray Jeronimo as a sympathetic figure. I just want to give a truthful description of the person I knew, because I believe that his story can help us understand why America’s police problems cannot be solved by “smarter” or “nicer” cops. This is the most dangerous lie about the police. If they could turn my friend into a killer, there is a deeper evil at work.

I met Jeronimo Yanez on the first day of our sophomore year. It was September 2004 and I had just transferred to South St. Paul, proud home of the South St. Paul Packers. The school took its name from the historic Union Stockyards just down the street. Its slaughterhouses and meatpacking plants were slowly being replaced by respectably bland business centers, but a faint odor of boiling fat still wafted up from the riverside when the wind blew just right.

South St. Paul was the kind of blue-collar town that inspires entire Bruce Springsteen albums. Many families had lived there for over a hundred years. They traced their roots from the Eastern European immigrants who came to work in the stockyards, and who had built venerable social institutions (i.e. drinking establishments) with names like “Croatian Hall” and “Polish National Association.” Polka music was enjoyed, meat raffles were held, bowling leagues were well-attended.

(Continue Reading)

[etlunainmorte]

✒ P.S. I Love You ✒

***

VII

***

"If there are any spirits here, say HHHOOOEEE!" Nico wailed as she tried once more to communicate with the Lancaster mansion ghost. She was holding up the voice recorder she invented just for V's paranormal mission in great hopes of picking up any sounds from beyond the grave.

"As if they will answer to that!" Griffon, who was perched on top of one of the Grecian statues, mocked. "Are ya even sure that will work?"

"Yes, I' am!" Nico shrieked at the Demonic bird, almost making him fall off the statue in surprise. "Any questions, little chicken?"

"SQUAWK!"

"If you are to do that, then you might as well do it on the second floor." V suggested as he leaned on his cane, observing her actions from a safe distance. "Maybe you'll be able to,... record something."

Just a few moments ago, his familiars showed him a single photograph they found stuck in the stool facing the grand piano. It looked like a stolen photograph of (Y/N) concealing her smile behind her fan as she offered her hand to a dark - haired gentleman whose face V could not see. And when he flipped it,...

"Do you think I should go up there, though?" Nico asked V, rubbing her arms up and down as she suddenly felt goosebumps on her skin. "The ghost might kill me up there!"

"Well, ye wanna hear ghosts on that thing, yeah? Then, go to the source and get yerself killed!" And Griffon was right.

"Say that again and I'LL COOK YOU IN A STEEL POT!"

"SQUAWK!"

V made his way through all the wires cluttered on the floor and handed Nico the photograph the familiars found. Nico stopped plucking Griffon's feathers, let him go, and pushed the rim of her glasses up her nose bridge. She, then, took the photograph and studied it, herself.

"This looked, like, super old." The tattooed woman muttered as she took a good long look at the photograph.

"Turn it." The poet told her. And as she did so, she finally saw the messages written at the back of it.

May 11, 1898

The Angels bow down to your grace and beauty, my Evening Star.

And I will forever be your humble servant.

~ V ~

"V?!" Nico practically shrieked in shock. "Is that - " she flipped the photograph once more and pointed at the man bowing down to the lady. "Is V that man or - ?"

To this question, the poet only gave her the journal. She took this and opened it. "But, there's nothing written in it, is there - ?"

The woman's eyes widened. For she could clearly see, as bright as daylight, the words that just manifested on the first page of the journal as soon as V received the old photograph from Shadow and Griffon.

At first, there was only her name and the date she wrote it. But, now,...

May 1, 1898

I could not believe what father said earlier this day:

He invited Victor Blake to our annual summer gathering! THE VICTOR BLAKE! My favorite writer, and also the best poet who ever existed in this world!

My heart...

I just could not stop the rapid beating of my own heart! I feel so excited! I wanted so much to meet him in person! For I thought for such a long time that I could only see him in my dreams, and hear his voice in my head. Now, I finally have the chance to actually talk to him!

My chest feels so painful right now, but with a happy kind of pain! ( Is there even a kind of happy pain? ) What should I wear for the month - long gathering? Would pastel suit me more, or dark palettes? What would I tell him when I finally get the chance to talk with him? I cannot just stutter in front of him! ( Which I do a lot when I'm nervous. ) What would he tell me? Would he quote some poetry for me?

I'm over thinking, I know! But, I'm just so, so excited! I could not contain it! I wanted to scream my excitement at the top of my lungs!

This is the happiest day of my life!

P.S.

I hope Victor Blake turn out to be the same man in my dreams. For if he does, then I could finally die with a large and silly smile on my face

Someone's coming!

"Victor Blake?! So that's the V who wrote on that photograph, I assume?" Nico mused out loud as she closed the journal and gave it back to V.

"Must be."

"Wait, wait, wait a second here!" The woman grabbed fistfuls of her hair as realization came down on her. And some more questions. "Did those words just pop out on that journal like a pimple or somethin'?! Because if it did, that's totally crazy!"

V didn't answer her question. Instead, he related to her every single thing that happened to him on the second floor last night, of the locked rooms on the right, of that ghost bride, of being locked in (Y/N)'s room, and of him actually seeing her in person.

"... and it only led me to believe that this lady," V pointed at the photograph on Nico's hands."... and (Y/N) are the same person. And that she, indeed, was able to meet Victor Blake that 11th of May."

"So, if this is (Y/N), then who is that woman in the portrait that Avery showed us?"

"They're the same person." V admitted with much bitterness in his voice. He just couldn't accept the fact that she changed drastically for an unknown reason.

"Damn!" Nico swore as she collapsed on a chair facing the monitor she set up earlier during the day. "Avery said (Y/N) died in 1899, right?"

"She did. Yes."

"Then," Nico went silent for a while, and when she finally gained the courage to speak out her mind, V could not help but agree to what theory she came up with. "... that tragic thing, whatever version that was, that led to her death happened a year later! The journal and that picture said 1898! And whatever tragic reason that was, it also led to that clear change she went through as a young adult! Either that, or the artist they commissioned just did a really bad painting of her."

"Seems like the former, as much as I want to deny that fact." V replied distastefully.

Nico's eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the poet's clear discomfort with the topic. "Hey, ya looked bothered. Wanna spill the beans fer real? Ye looked like ye're hiding somethin' other than (Y/N)'s journal."

V chuckled as he sat on the chair next to her. "There are no beans to spill and no other secret to reveal, I assure you."

"And I assure ya that I can tell ye're lyin'!" Nico answered as she booted up the PC.

"I'm not. Well,..."

"Well?"

"The first time I met her, she looked radiant, and happy. She was clearly in love." V confessed, feeling a strange lump growing in his already dry throat. "And she was,... the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire existence. To see her like that - depressed, and sick,... and hopeless, it just," The poet paused as he let out a deep sigh that seemed to rattle his very core. "... it felt wrong. It felt sad. Whatever happened to her, she doesn't deserve it. That death of hers, I must know about it."

Nico hummed as V finished talking. "The most beautiful girl, eh?"

"Yes."

"Then!" Nico slammed her palms against the table and turned towards V, her face leaning uncomfortably close to his. "The reason you stayed up so late!"

"What?" V simply asked, getting more and more confused with the woman's odd behavior.

Nico smiled mischievously as she pointed a single, perfectly - polished nail at him. "Ya fantasized 'bout her!"

"I,... come again?"

"Admit it! Ya did the thing while thinkin' of her!" Nico teased even more.

"What thing?"

"Oh, come on, man! No need to be shy 'bout bein' horny for a young and beautiful gal! Just admit it!"

"Admit what?"

V truly has no idea what Nico was talking about, so Griffon flew down next to her and joined in the teasing. "My, my, V! Don't tell us ya don't know what jackin' off means!"

"Jacking,... off,..."

"Yeah, ya know!" Griffon teased even further as he cleared his throat. Making his voice sound small and ridiculous, he recited, "Ya look so good, (Y/N)! So beautiful! Hmm, hmm, hmm!"

"Such beautiful face! Such curvaceous body! I want you,... AH,... so much!" Nico joined in as she made lewd sounds and inappropriate gestures with her arms.

"Oh, my beautiful, sexy (Y/N)!" Griffon imitated Nico's moves and started caressing his own feathery body with his wings. "YE'RE M - M - MI - AAAHHH - NNNEEE!"

"AAAHHH! OOOHHH!"

"HHHRRRMMMHHH! OOOHHH, YYYEEESSS!"

All of a sudden, they heard a really huge explosion outside the house, and a few seconds later, Roman came crashing in the house.

"¡DIOS MIO!" Roman howled.

"Roman, sweetheart, what is it?! What happened?!" Avery called as she came running immediately from another room.

"THERE'S A HHHUUUGGGEEE ONE - EYED GOLEM IN THE GARDEN!" Roman screamed as he pointed at the said thing outside. "RUN! ESCAPE! WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE! IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD!"

"One - eyed,..." Nico muttered.

"... golem?" Griffon stuttered.

And to their complete and utter horror, they realized V's hair has turned white and his left hand was raised up, his fingers in a snapping gesture.

But, the most dangerous of all was the poet's eyes that changed from soft, emerald green to bloody, murderous red. And he was staring emotionlessly down at them,...

"Hehe, s - sorry here, Shakespeare. I mean, M - m - m - master!" Griffon cowardly apologized thirty minutes later when V's rage diminished and when Nightmare finally went back to where he came from.

"Okay, okay, I get it. You're not in love with (Y/N)." Nico cautiously said as she opened some programs on her PC.

"I' am not." The poet answered, stressing out each word.

"But, surely ya must be at least smitten by her! I mean, to think of a girl you haven't actually talked to or met like that?" The woman was right. Maybe he was infatuated with her, after all? But, then again, how could he not? How could anyone not? "Lucky for ya, though. Ye won't have to deal with her super creepy husband."

"Husband?" Griffon asked as he landed back at the Grecian statue.

"Yeah. Mr. Christopher Lancaster? Duh."

That Doctor. I almost forgot about him. V thought as he slightly glanced at the hallway where the intimidating Doctor's life - size portrait was located.

"There we go!" Nico happily announced as she finally gained access to the videos of the security cameras she set up on all corners of the entrance hallway. And as V and Griffon came closer to her to have a look, they saw themselves at that exact moment.

"Hey, that's us!" Griffon exclaimed, astounded upon seeing a live feed of himself. "Wait, why are there no sounds?"

"Duh. That's just a security cam. Call it a spy cam, if ya like." Nico answered. "Now, setting the date to yesterday!"

The woman typed some words and numbers on her keyboard, and a few seconds later, they saw V on the monitor as he was about to go up the stairs.

"That was last night." V confirmed as he saw himself call back the frightened Shadow.

"Now, let's see what else happened." Nico spoke as they all watched V ascend to the second floor.

And after staring at the screen for more than fifteen or so minutes, they realized that nothing was, indeed, happening.

"I should be back around ten or a few more minutes." V said, his confusion growing ever so strongly.

"And you came back down in the morning." Nico answered. "Let's set the time to about, hmm, seven - thirty, then." The woman did the same process, and when the video fast - forwarded to the time she set, they saw V finally going back down to the first floor and met with the frizzy - haired Nico. "See? Told ya ye're gone for a long time."

"But, that's impossible!" Griffon yelled, turning back to V. "Didn't ya say ye're only gone for a few minutes?”

"And now you believe me." The poet simply answered.

"Alright! Alright! So, the ghost could not only manipulate things, it could also stop or control time, or something like that." The tattooed woman happily declared. "How very fascinating that is!" And she was, once again, getting more and more excited.

"I need to go back up there." V told her. "But, I'm not sure how long I'll be gone. A few minutes may mean a few hours up there."

"Ye're right. Hmm,..." Nico mused as she tapped on her lips. After a few seconds, she stood up, went over to one of the speakers she set up yesterday, and opened it, letting Mister Sandman on again. "How 'bout this: V, you do yer thing and investigate the second floor, and I'll be pulling an all - nighter for ya down here to monitor yer movements. I'll even make sure ya don't get lost for too long."

"How do we do that?" The poet asked.

"Simple!" Nico answered as she gave V the radio she was holding on to yesterday. She, then, pressed something on the speaker, and when it finally went quiet, she pointed at the radio on his hand. "Can ya turn it on?"

V complied by turning the dial on the radio clockwise, and a few seconds later,...

"...then tell me that my lonesome nights are over! Sandman, I'm so alone. Don't have nobody to call my own - "

"That song runs for two minutes and thirty - six seconds." Nico said as V and Griffon listened to the music on her radio. "I'll sync that song there and play it for ya for every hour ye're up there. Kinda like an alarm clock. Ya can also turn the voice recorder on to record any sound. And lastly, if anything goes wrong, like anything at all, and ya can't call yer familiars," the woman came closer to V and pointed at the red button at the lower right corner of the radio. "... think of nothin' else and press that button. Do ya understand?"

"I do. Yes. Thank you." V answered as he nodded several times, actually grateful for his decision to let Nico tag along with him.

And when the woman was finally satisfied with his answer, she cracked a toothy smile and suddenly took Griffon off V's shoulders, hugging him and twirling him around like a stuffed animal.

"PUT ME DOWN, WOMAN!"

"Aren't we the best paranormal team around?" Nico happily asked. "Like, Red Grave's Finest Paranormal Team ever?"

"WHATEVER YA SAY! JUST PUT ME DOWN! I CAN'T BREATHE!"

"Sorry." Nico apologized as she let the bird go. "So, ready for another night?"

"Ready - " V was about to stand when he collapsed all of a sudden.

"Hey, V! You okay?" Griffon flew down and helped him to his feet by clutching onto his arm with his talons.

"Ya look like ye need some rest. Ya haven't actually slept!" Nico suggested as she came and helped him as well by grabbing his other arm.

V could not agree more. "A nap will do. Thanks."

***

✒ @la-vita and @micaelagua . ✒

***

✒✒✒

***

[joeys-piano]

7, 12, 22 for the writer’s ask

My brain short-circuited a little while ago and I’m struggling to English right now, so I apologize in advance if my responses aren’t very long or in-depth.

TL;DR (nearly 1,300 words) - Joey talks about personal experiences, things he’s learned from writing, what he thinks about while writing, and you get a better sense of why he does what he does. And why he thinks the way he does

Questions to ask to a writer

7. tell us about one of your characters who’s an absolute joy to writeI’m going to be honest. No character is an absolute joy to write for unless you feel extremely motivated and passionate in the heat of the moment and are writing about them. I think way too hard about characterization and how to comfortably write them that no character is an absolute joy to write for. They’re all hard work and constantly shifting between canon wiki and reading fan interpretations to find a middle ground that I can walk on.

If anything, I love writing for pet characters or animal characters because they have no influence or little influence in the plot, so I can write them as however I want them to be. You have no idea how often I just want to write a random chicken into a scene because that chicken character is going to keep me entertained as I wrestle with voices, narratives, povs, and galore.

12. what’s your relationship with constructive criticism and feedback like? do you seek it out? how well do you take it?I think like any content creator, you just kind of seek out feedback because it gives you something to thrive on when you’re first starting out and because you’re desperate to know what you’re doing and what you’re doing wrong. For a long time, I had an unhealthy relationship with feedback. Moreso with constructive criticism because I was incredibly stubborn and emotionally-unstable. Pouring your heart and soul into a story and then knowing that someone didn’t like it had a detrimental effect on my perception of self, eventually spiraling out of control and leading to an identity crisis that made this Joey do some very stupid things when he was a younger peep.

It’s been three years since that identity crisis. I’m a lot more comfortable with myself, I’m more well-aware that my worth as a person is not tied if you like what I create or not, I have more self-assurance for myself and more self-love, and I’ve more or less accepted that I’m doing what I’m doing because I want to. When I was a younger man, I did whatever I could so that people would notice me. But now, I’ve realized something more important than trying to thrive off of internet fame or whatever Tumblr had instilled in me when I first came here back in…2014?

Looking back on it, the constructive criticism on my writing helped me quite a bit. Even though the delivery was harsh and could’ve been worded better, it made me a tougher writer and more adamant about doing research and outlining before I pursue long projects. And partially, perhaps out of spite or just in memory, I want to show those people how far I’ve come since that feedback and how much I’ve grown since then.

 22. talk about a writing experience that has pleasantly surprised you.Not sure if a lot of y’all know this or not, but I’m a worldbuilder. I like the process of worldbuilding more than actually writing a story but unfortunately, you can’t post your worldbuilding notes onto AO3 and have people interested with that so I had to make a compromise somewhere. That’s why I gravitate towards the ideas and genres that I do. They get me thinking and thinking is 95% of the battle when you’re worldbuilding. Especially when you’re building a world from scratch, or making a small portion of a neighborhood come to life in a unique and versatile way.

One worldbuilding session that stands out to me the most and it happened quite recently, about two or three weeks ago, was when I was brainstorming an [alternative universe - different first meeting] scenario between Kunikida and Fukuzawa. The concept of the idea was what Fukuzawa had called a 15 y.o. Kunikida into his office after noticing that the youth was gifted with a special ability. During their meeting, Fukuzawa and Kunikida had a very interesting conversation about “abilities that are easy to hide.”

For instance, Fukuzawa’s ability [All Men Are Equal] doesn’t have a visible manifestation or presence. Unless you truly knew him, you would think that Fukuzawa was a normal individual. Likewise, Kunikida’s ability [Doppo Poet] is similar in that regard. Unless you truly knew Kunikida or unless he willingly outs himself by activating his ability, you would also think that he was a normal individual as well. That’s what it means to have an ability that’s easy to hide. You had the opportunity to live life without the likely repercussions and prejudice that other ability-users experienced just because your ability is more easily obscured to a certain or full extent.

What struck me about that conversation were the social implications of it and allowed me to worldbuild around this concept of how outside society views ability-users. From 15 y.o. Kunikida’s point of view, he’s scared of how society and the people who are closest to him would react if they found out he was an ability-user. What frightens him are the negative connotations, opinions, and the treatment that would be received if he were slapped with the “ability-user” label. And that’s what it feels like. It feels like a large neon sign is forever the first thing someone is going to look at and know about you, and people will judge you before knowing who you really are. Living under the assumption of a normal person, Kunikida knows that he could at least avoid that. However, he’s having to hide and be ashamed of a part of himself that has and will always be a part of him. Being an ability-user is something he can never change, but young Kunikida is afraid to embrace and accept that part of himself because the world around him won’t.

During that entire interaction, it got me thinking about the real world and even Tumblr to an interesting extent. About labels, about the self vs. society, about prejudice and first-based assumptions, about hiding yourself vs. letting it all out, and several other things. I feel that a good worldbuilding session should contribute to whatever story you’re trying to tell while also connecting back to the world we live in and bring to light things that people aren’t really comfortable talking about. If you can keep that statement in mind, you could potentially help a lot of people understand, relate, or figure out something that they had trouble with before.

I’d say that the pleasantly surprising part about this worldbuilding session was that I felt like I understood the BSD universe a little more. We rarely, if ever, get any information about the outside world views ability-users and what they do, so drawing inspiration and experience from real life into this concept made things clearer to see. And somehow, it made the idea feel more grounded because there is that real world aspect and fear that people can relate to or have experienced.

And I think what made the concept work really well was that Kunikida was young in this interaction. He was a teenager and when you’re a teenager, one of the things that’s on your mind is figuring out who you are and what you want people to know you as. There’s this craving for acceptance, even a rebellion against tradition or what people expect you to be or act, while also there’s this uncertainty if you’re actually doing the right thing. I don’t write for teenagers very often, but having a teenage!Kunikida to work with during this scene was a phenomenal experience. I felt like I knew him a lot better and he feels more approachable for me to write for.

[thereoncewereflwrs]

in where my body is an anthology, and literature knows more about people then we do

Today I feel ugly, my facial features angular and put together in a way that makes me feel like someone cut pieces of faces from a magazine and placed them together to create me. My clothes feel confining, probably because I haven’t worn regular clothes since lockdown and probably because I’m fat and most of my clothes fit this way anyway. Today I crave a discipline my body and mind cannot give, and this desire makes me melancholy and agitated. I keep thinking about this boy - or man, because he’s over 25 and at this stage even if we don’t feel like adults we are still deemed thus by society - who sent me a link to a tumblr page at 4 in the morning last night. I had been asleep, going to bed as early as 6 or 7 these days with little energy spent, but had woken up to the link and a casual text forewarning of nudity. The post, titled “why chloe moretz eating spaghetti from wooden boxes? why everyone lookin in the camera?? WHY SOME DUDE SUCKIN DICK???” (linked) had several comments below the picture (which showed exactly what was titled - Chloe Moretz eating spaghetti, several people in the room looking directly at the camera, and two dudes in the back, with their pants down, glimpsing over their shoulders at the camera while one of them received oral stimulation by another man). The comments all posed questions about the absurdity of this picture, revealing pieces of it to be false or photoshopped, and finally presenting the “legitimate” picture of the two men receiving blow jobs, that culminated in a scene with a large black bear walking casually by as they did. I’m confused by this, and if I’m honest, I’m also disturbed. It’s not that I’m without a sense of humor. Most of the time I believe my humor to be flexible and sarcastic, as long as it’s not offensive or insensitive. But like most of the absurdities of men, I’m confounded as to where the humor of such a post lies. Is it the homosexual blow job itself? Is it the actress consuming a meal in public? Or the fact that someone decided to photoshop such random components together in an attempt towards the casualness of such absurdity? Clearly there is something humorous about this, otherwise it wouldn’t have received such attention (241,846 notes on tumblr), and I’m left thinking that maybe I’m more ordinary and less obscene in my character after all. But beyond that, I wonder why this man decided to send me this at the time that he did. How did he come upon the link? And why, at a time when you can presume a stranger to be asleep, did he think of me and decide to send it? 

We had met only once before, and had been talking casually for the last couple of weeks. This mostly consisted of me listening to him talk about how tired, stressed and hopeless he was about the current state of his life and the world in general. It has not been an unusual connection; most of my intimate interactions with men have been like this - men needing to be heard and I playing the role of a vessel to be poured into. It’s only lately that I’ve found the act of “making space” rudimentarily extractive and imbalanced. And a lie to myself. There have been these small ways in which I’ve consented to this “extractive” practice, you see. Listening endlessly to men talk about their unloving fathers, their insecurities around mediocre sexual performance, their lack of careers or intelligence, any culmination of experiences that they deem traumatic, etc., This willingness towards extraction on my end has come about from a configuration of ideas I’ve put together in order to convince myself that this is the ultimate level of intimacy, and thus one I’ve been craving all along (to know what is not knowable to others, to know what hurts or is tender or needs healing). 

In other ways I’ve not consented to what’s been extracted - my body, my emotional entanglements, my intelligence, my victimhood that comes along with the rage of my own vulnerability. Tumblr-man is not different or far from this pattern of giving and taking, of capturing both the spaces available and the spaces I wish to be beyond grasp. I considered a series of actions to acknowledge the text he sent me, to reduce awkwardness and thus affirm that he was not wrong in sending me adult porn unsolicited or without evidence of past history of such behavior being acceptable. I considered creating further space through question and curiosity, to let him know that while I might not have appreciated it, nothing was off limits when he deemed it actionable. But as of now I can only muster enough energy to think about my own psychological patterns. My contract with this phenomenon (the “rudimentary extractive” one) makes me want to dig deeper into the superficial agreement of our relationship, to a place where I reach farther then surface level grief or joy. I want to hear, and have heard, deeper sensory, sensational information that at once makes me feel as much as the person is feeling by telling me something they’ve never considered uttering to a stranger before. I know this is just my own lack of experience around me. I am bored and perhaps numb from the lackluster stimuli that is at my disposal, and thus I want to find it in others - in men - so that it can replace my sense of unworthiness in myself with a false, brief sense of importance to someone else.  

I’ve lived in the South almost all my life. I’m more regionally Southern then most of my current peers, and yet, the culture of ‘Southern living’ did not meet me until I moved to rural Tennessee. Here we eat boiled peanuts (a practice I learned came from the dietary patterns of civil war soldiers) and biscuits with gravy and sometimes fried chicken. Here the tea is sweetened unbearably so, and moonshine is a thing, although never anywhere authentically anymore. More then anything my fat body despairs at these dietary rituals. I feel alienated from my own practices and find it hard to enjoy things. It’s really not that uncommon, however. As a millennial, feelings of alienation and displacement are common.

Tumblr-man (which previously I’d deemed LARPeg - since he both enjoys this strange phenomenon called live action role playing, and being pegged) tells me he is jealous of my ability to enjoy reading. He, in a bizarre series of events, is a Creative Writings major at an obscure liberal arts college in Asheville, NC (the same one, he informs me, that James Franco went to). He tells me that he really “likes the idea of dropping a big plot piece...” and that “writing a big, long, cheeky complaint with lots of pith is very attractive” to him. He recommends I read ‘Consider the Lobster’ by David Foster Wallace, and I do, mostly because I’ve read everything he’s sent my way thus far, and I wasn’t going to prove my own behavioral patterns wrong that day. He sends me memes about Dungeons and Dragons and LARPing that I assume I’m suppose to understand but I do not, although by his own admission, an immigrant like me is not meant to, and is hardly to blame for not understanding “cultural references.” I don’t get it, either LARPing or D&D, but I read both essay assignments he wrote for the semester around a fictional LARPing scenario. I do this because he’s a socialist, and half Venezuelan, and because I can’t help my own internal desire to show a man that I am fully engulfed in his own preferences and passions. I am not entirely foolish, I express my own passions and desires, and hardly authentically adopt theirs, but if he does not ask I do not say, because it’s always easier to listen and be seen listening, then to explain and feel the potential signs of disinterest and boredom. I am not boring. But men can be, and I do not wish to engage with bored men. Anyways, I read ‘Consider the Lobster’, the essay in the book titled the same, and it was, surprisingly, spectacular. How thrilling that something, anything, this particular man had suggested spoke to me in such a way. I preceded to read reviews and an excerpt from a New York Times article titled “How Should a Book Sound? And What About Footnotes?” in where DFW says “Most poetry is written to ride on the breath, and getting to hear the poet read it is kind of a revelation and makes the poetry more alive. But with certain literary narrative writers like me, we want the writing to sound like a brain voice, like the sound of the voice inside of the head, and the brain voice is faster, is absent any breath, and it holds together grammatically rather than sonically." I find this beyond interesting - it jolts me deep down where I safe keep my ideas around literature and its realities. I want to send it to Tumblr-man because it reminded me so specifically of what he had said right before recommending DFW: “I only recently have come to understand that the real sort of fingerprint of a writer can be where they place periods and commas. Because “She left, yesterday.” And “She left. Yesterday.” Sound similar if read aloud but read differently.” I wonder now if he, too, read this quote and had his sense of literature jolted in an inexplicable, but concrete way. 

I’ve once again picked up ‘Normal People’ by Sally Rooney. Thus far, my favorite lines are as follows (of the first U.S edition by Hogarth publishing group):

“This “what?” Question seems to him to contain so much: not just the forensic attentiveness to his silence that allows her to ask in the first place, but a desire for real communication, a sense that anything unsaid is an unwelcome interruption between them” (pg 26);

“One night the library started closing just as he reached the passage in Emma when it seems like Mr. Knightley is going to marry Harriet, and he had to close the book and walk home in a state of strange emotional agitation. He’s amused at himself, getting wrapped up in the drama of novels like that. It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him. One of his professors calls it “the pleasure of being touched by great art.” In those words it almost sounds sexual. And in a way, the feeling provoked in Connell when Mr. Knightley kisses Emma’s hand is not completely asexual, though its relation to sexuality is indirect. It suggests to Connell that the same imagination he uses as a reader is necessary to understand real people also, and to be intimate with them” (pg 72);

“Connell paused and took another drag on his cigarette. This was probably the most horrifying thing Eric could have said to him, not because it ended his life, but because it didn’t. He knew then that the secret for which he had sacrificed his own happiness and the happiness of another person had been trivial all along, and worthless” (pg 80);

“He kisses her closed eyelids. It’s not like this with other people, she says. Yea, he says. I know. She senses there are things he isn’t saying to her. She can’t tell whether he’s holding back a desire to pull away from her, or a desire to make himself more vulnerable somehow” (pg 96).

I am struck by the way the book’s composition demonstrates a realness unfamiliar to the readings I often take on. The book reads the way people speak, and cares very little about the grammatical composition of words/sentences. Instead, characters and their thoughts and the narrators own mind speak the way one speaks in ones mind, unfiltered, scattered with anxiety and directness, with an approach to ones own truth above all else. ‘Normal People’ reads almost opposite to the narrative guidelines David Foster Wallace deems necessary, and yet, it embodies his sentiment almost as if the two had been birthed from one another. I wish I and those around me were as brave and as vulnerable as the compilation of sentences in this book. And yet, we’d all fall apart doing so. I want to recommend ‘Normal People’ to Tumblr-man, along with a series of other writings I have not yet finished but have found impactful nonetheless. I know, ultimately, that I won’t, in the same way I won’t send the NYT’s article. Maybe this is an inability to be seen on my end, or a foolish willingness to be something for somebody else without being an actual something to that somebody. Or maybe it’s too much labor and I’m satisfied with thinking through these things on my own, knowing the depth of my own thoughts without needing them to be seen or understood. In the same way my ears strain and struggle to hear noise while wearing my noise canceling headphones while no music plays, my body strains and struggles, leaping for noise and yet feeling bound by the confines the lack of it creates. 

I think about my own mortality often, and wonder whether this existence, this very moment even, I am dead or dying, with only a delusion of existence playing forth in my mind. These thoughts cause congruent sensations in me - anxiety, because of the potential of this reality that has not been proven incorrect or impossible in my mind, and strangely, a dissociation that elevates me beyond that anxiety. I think to myself, and know deep in my bones, that it is true, that it turns out I’ve been dead all along, and that my body has just been decomposing in motion this whole time, waiting for my bones to turn to ash. 

[lyfestile]

The first time I met Chuck Berry he was playing a club called Where It's At, which, in contradiction of its name, occupied the second floor of a drab business building in Kenmore Square and was operated by longtime Boston DJ Dave Maynard and his manager, Ruth Clenott. It was 1967, and I was in my senior year of college, working at the Paperback Booksmith, as I had for the last four years, both in and out of school. I was making $65 a week. The reason I know this is because Chuck Berry signed my paycheck.

'Chuck,' dedicated to Berry's wife of 68 years, features new songs written, recorded and produced by rock legend

Well, it wasn't my paycheck exactly, it was my paycheck stub, and the reason he signed it was because I didn't have anything else to present to him for an autograph. He had just given an exhilarating performance with a pick-up band of Berklee College students (unlike Bo Diddley, say, whom I had recently seen at the same club, Chuck Berry never carried his own band, and the result was inconsistent, to say the least). But tonight for whatever reason Chuck's creative impulse had been stimulated, and rather than performing tired rehashes of his familiar hits with a rhythm section that didn't have a clue, he followed what I'm sure was the unintended lead of the band, jazz players all, freely improvising on the hits, while throwing in unexpected bonuses like "Rockin' at the Philharmonic" and Lionel Hampton's "Flying Home," along with a few T-Bone Walker and Louis Jordan tunes for good measure. He was clearly in good spirits, but it still took a while for me to work up the nerve to approach him as he stood to one side of the foot-high stage, packing up his guitar and getting ready to leave.

He regarded me with a quizzical look, casting an even more quizzical look at the book I was attempting to give him – "book" might actually be a little bit of a stretch for the pamphlet-sized booklet I was finally able to hand him, with its smudged white cover and stapled-together pages. What's this? his noncommittal expression seemed to say, in a manner that betrayed neither receptiveness nor hostility. More to the point, that blank stare seemed to suggest, who the fuck are you? I have no idea what I said. I'm sure I wished that the book could simply declare itself. The stark black lettering on the cover announced "Almost Grown, and Other Stories, by Peter Guralnick," and it had originally been published three years earlier, when I was 20. I must have mumbled something about how the book had been inspired in part by his music, that the title obviously came from his song, that I hoped he would like it. (Help me, I'm trying to paint a sympathetic picture here.) He flipped through the pages and placed the book carefully in his guitar case. "Cool," he said, or the equivalent, and flashed me what I took to be an encouraging, if inescapably sardonic, smile. And then he was gone, off to the airport, off to another gig, or maybe just home to St. Louis. I still like to think that he read the stories on the plane on his way to his next destination.

It would be another 44 years before I actually met him.

But, first, perhaps I should say – well, you tell me, do I really have to say? – that there is no end to my admiration for Chuck Berry's work, even if his commitment to performance has at times proved wanting. As much as Percy Mayfield remains the Poet Laureate of the Blues, Chuck Berry will always be the Poet Laureate of – what? Of Our Time. Has there ever been a more perfect pop song than "Nadine," a catchier encapsulation of story line and wit in four verses and a chorus, in which the protagonist (like all of Chuck's characters, a not-too-distant stand-in for its author but never precisely himself) is introduced "pushing through the crowd trying to get to where she's at/I was campaign shouting like a Southern diplomat." I mean, come on – and the song only gets better from there. When he was recognized in 2012 by PEN New England (a division of the international writers' organization) for its first "Song Lyrics of Literary Excellence" award, his co-honoree, Leonard Cohen, graciously declared that "all of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry," while Bob Dylan called him "the Shakespeare of rock & roll."

Which is all very generically well. But perhaps the most persuasive tribute I ever encountered was delivered by the highly cerebral New Orleans singer, songwriter, arranger and pianist extraordinaire, Allen Toussaint. I was trying to get at some of the reasons for the dramatic expansion of his own songwriting aspirations (musically, poetically, politically) in the Seventies, when he graduated from brilliant pop cameos like "Ride Your Pony" and "Mother in Law" to more ambitious, post-Beatles, post-Miles, post–Civil Rights Era work. Was it the influence of Bob Dylan, say, that allowed him to contemplate a wider range of subjects, a greater length of songs? Oh, not at all, Allen replied in his cool, elegant manner; he wished he could agree with me, but his single greatest influence in terms of lyrics and storytelling from first to last was Chuck Berry. And with that he started quoting Chuck Berry lyrics, just as you or I might, just as Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis do on the fabled "Million Dollar Quartet" session. "What a wonderful little story that is," he said of "You Never Can Tell," Chuck's fairy-tale picture of young love in Creole-speaking Louisiana, "how he lived that life with that couple, you know. Oh, the man's a mountain," said Allen unhesitatingly, and then went on to quote some more.

I saw Chuck in performance many times over the years, everywhere from Carnegie Hall to a decommissioned state armory. I wrote to him at one point at the invitation of Bob Baldori, who started playing with Chuck in 1966 and has been close to him ever since. Chuck had begun work on his autobiography at that point, and Bob thought, a little fancifully perhaps, he might welcome some help. "Dear Mr. Berry," I wrote in effect, "You won't remember me, but ...," then cited Bob as a reference and suggested that while I didn't know that I had anything to offer as a writer, maybe he could use me as someone to bounce ideas off, if he were so inclined. I never heard back from him, which was just as well, because when the book came out two years later, in 1987, it was a masterpiece. "It is at once witty, elegant, and revealing," I wrote of it for Vibe, "and (or perhaps but) ultimately elusive. Every word was written by its author in a web of elegant, intricate connections that are both coded and transparent. Very much like the songs." And it was all Chuck – with a little help from his editor, Michael Pietsch, who traveled to Chuck's amusement park / residence, Berry Park, outside of St. Louis, to retrieve it.

It was not until New Orleans, in 2011, though, that I got beyond that first, monosyllabic exchange. We were both there to fulfill a date that was initially referred to without irony as "The Summit Meeting of Rock," because it was to include filmed interviews with Chuck, Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Fats Domino, both as a group and, in the case of the first three, singly as well. It was part of a Rolling Stone–sponsored oral history project for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that had only recently begun, and I was the designated interviewer. Do I have to stipulate that it was one of the most challenging things I've ever done, and also, unquestionably, one of the most fun? You try facing down Jerry Lee Lewis, Richard or Chuck, each with his own keenly intelligent, widely divergent and informed point of view, and try to get a go-ahead smile out of them on their own uncompromising terrain. I think I'd be safe in saying that, overall, unaffected warmth and affection prevailed, stimulated as much as anything by everyone's genuine love for Fats, but at the same time it was not an entirely smooth and mellow meeting. Religion, politics, personality – all of the usual sources of conflict were present in good measure. Little Richard at one point wanted to thank God for bringing them all to New Orleans, but Jerry Lee, an intensely religious man himself, demurred at what I think he took to be a too-casual appropriation of faith. "I don't know about you," he muttered, "but I came here on a plane. And I think you came by bus!" Someone suggested that Louis Jordan was one of the key figures in the development of rock & roll, and someone else objected that "Ain't Nobody Here but Us Chickens" was not in their view anything like rock & roll. It was incredible! The interview with Jerry Lee was probably the most wide-ranging; Little Richard, for all of his avid study of history and precise recollection of it, was not about to abandon his theological texts; but it was Chuck who proved the most surprising, as, robbed of the constraint of memory, he abandoned, if only for a moment or two, his lifelong habit of emotional indirection and spoke unguardedly of his family, his mother and father, the expectations they had had of him and the inspiration with which they provided him, growing up.

He was as slim and elegant as ever, wearing the jaunty captain's hat that has become almost ubiquitous since the departure of most of his beautifully coiffed hair some years ago. Communication was sometimes a challenge, because not surprisingly he had left his hearing aids at home, despite the repeated reminders of his family and his friend Joe Edwards, proprietor of Blueberry Hill, the St. Louis club where he played off and on for almost 20 years before "taking a break" from performing two years ago. He spoke of poetry and politics (just to clarify, nearly everything is "politics" to Chuck, from the endemic chicanery of the music business to the endemic racism he has encountered over the years), and he insisted for the most part, just as he always has in his art, on speaking metaphorically, if unmistakably.

He spoke, too, of the sources of inspiration that he always points to for much of the flair, if not the full scope, of his creativity. (There is, Chuck will never fail to tell you, nothing new under the sun.) He cited Charlie Christian and T-Bone Walker and Louis Jordan (not to mention Louis Jordan's great guitarist Carl Hogan: Check out "Ain't That Just Like a Woman" if you want to hear one of the fundamental sources for Chuck Berry's guitar style) – and Nat "King" Cole, too, for his diction. But as to his idea of reaching everyone, not just the "neighborhood" (the ur-definition, of course, of rock & roll), well, that was something he derived from the concept of get-ahead capitalism that he got from helping out his father in the grocery business as a young boy. "By then," he said, describing himself at ages 10 and 11, "I had a bit of politics in my head. My dad had a business of his own, selling groceries, and he worked for himself, so I came to handling money at that age. He carried vegetables in a basket and would go by someone's door and knock on it. 'Would you like ...?' You know, the material looked so good. [But] I sold a lot [of it] because of the ingenuity that I [showed] trying to sell."

That was the very idea that he applied to the music, when, after driving up to Chicago to introduce himself to Leonard Chess on Muddy Waters' recommendation, he introduced himself to the world at the age of 28 by employing that same sense of ingenuity, that same sense of "politics." Meaning, he said, "M-O-N-E-Y. What sells. What's on the market. Now I knew the market. There had to be a market in order for you to be successful in a business. The market had to need your business, or the product of it. So I tried to sing as though they would be interested, and that would become a market." And then, he said, you multiplied that market, and you added another market to it, and it was as if you were still traveling from neighborhood to neighborhood, and pretty soon you had a constituency that included nearly everybody. That was the constituency that Chuck Berry was aiming for as an artist. And that was the constituency that he ultimately reached.

We started out our interview talking about poetry, and we came back to poetry in the end. Remember, this is a man whose older brother was named for Paul Laurence Dunbar, the great African-American poet, whose "We Wear the Mask" should be required reading in all the schools. It had always tickled me the way that Chuck would end so many of his concerts with a poem. It was a poem I had never heard in any other context, though it reminded me of "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley, in which a traveler from "some antique land" stumbles upon the tomb of one of its ancient kings. "Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair," proclaim the words engraved on the faded stone at the base of the ruined monument, while "the lone and level sands stretch far away ... boundless and bare."

The poem that Chuck recited, while nowhere near as bleak (it takes a more positive, transcendental spin), was certainly in the same philosophical ballpark. It was called "Even This Shall Pass Away," and, as I discovered from asking him about it, it was not an original poem by Chuck Berry at all; it was in fact a poem that he had first heard his father recite ("That's my dad," Chuck said. "I get a little choked up when I think of him"), when he was no more than six or seven years old. The poet, I would later learn after a little research (very little – it's all over the Internet!), was Theodore Tilton, an American poet, newspaper editor, and Abolitionist, and the poem was first published in his collection The Sexton's Tale in 1867. With very little prompting, Chuck recited the poem, and as he did, he got more and more choked up. "My dad," he said, "was the cause of me being in show business. He was not only in poetry but in acting a bit. He was Mordecai in the play A Dream of Queen Esther. [This was a church production by a prolific white playwright and meteorologist, Walter Ben Hare.] He was very low in speech and music, and he came out onstage, he came out to tell the king, 'Sire, sire, someone is approaching our castle.' And I knew his voice. I'm five years old right now. I knew his voice and I hollered out in the theater, 'Daddy!' I don't remember it, but they tell me I did. His position in the choir was bass. Mother's was soprano and lead. That's all there was in our house, poetry and choir rehearsal and duets and so forth; I listened to Dad and Mother discuss things about poetry and delivery and voice and diction – I don't think anyone could know how much it really means." Who were some of his favorite poets as a kid? I ask. Edgar Allen Poe, he said after some consideration ("I can't think of them [all], my memory's really bad"), and Paul Laurence Dunbar was his mother's. On second thought, he offered, Dunbar was his favorite, too.

But getting back to that recitation – he couldn't do it as well as his father, Chuck said after completing several verses of "Even This Shall Pass Away," "my dad's voice rang. But here's something for you." And with that he launched into the fifth verse (out of seven), searching for the words, searching for the memories, concluding triumphantly, "'Pain is hard to bear,' he cried. 'But with patience day by day/Even this shall pass away.' Oh, I'm breaking up again." And with that he concluded, to the applause of everyone in the room, the film director, the sound and camera man, his son, Charles Jr., a woman who carried a card "Sherry with Berry," and assorted other bystanders – no more than 25 or 30 in all. He was in tears. He was in triumph.

The problem for Chuck Berry as he reaches his 90th birthday is the same one we all face: mortality. His work, of course, is his immortality, though as Woody Allen has often said, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying" – and Chuck might very well agree. He is, like many of us, his own best advocate and his own worst enemy, but the particular problem for Chuck is that, for all of the accolades that have come his way (listen to Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee Lewis celebrate his genius on the Million Dollar Quartet session, just for a start), to this day he has not been unambiguously embraced in the full artistic terms he deserves. There are undoubtedly a multiplicity of reasons for this (race would certainly have to be factored in), but the principal reason that Chuck has not been lifted up on a wave of critical and biographical hosannas is Chuck himself. His unwillingness to ingratiate himself. His unreadable apartness. The deep-seated sense of anger and suspicion that can unexpectedly flare up and turn into overt hostility, with or without provocation (check out the 60th birthday, star-studded performance documentary, Hail! Hail! Rock N' Roll, which is both brilliant for its uplifting artistry and maddening for its self-inflicted failures). Most of all, I would guess, it comes down to his determined, uncompromisingly defiant refusal to conform to anyone else's expectations but his own.

He is not like any other popular performer that I can think of (oh, Merle Haggard might be a distant cousin, even a second or third cousin once removed, but no closer). For all of the canny "political" (read "artistic" here) inclusiveness that established both his career and his legacy, he has from the beginning chosen to set himself apart. Or been set apart. By a juvenile conviction for armed robbery before he ever thought of entering show business (remember: this was an upwardly mobile, middle-class kid, by his own description). Later by two mid-career prison terms, one coming at the height of his success in 1960 (a contested Mann Act violation, which could certainly be seen as a form of "political" [read "racial" here] reprisal). Not to mention some of his well-documented sexual proclivities and peccadillos (and I don't mean to minimize them here), what his biographer, Bruce Pegg, writes, represent the actions of "a man whose detachment from society made him feel immune to its mores and taboos." (For details see Pegg's Brown Eyed Handsome Man: The Life and Hard Times of Chuck Berry.) Sometimes that sense of detachment has served him well (by allowing him to speak in another person's voice for example, in his songwriting), sometimes it has not – but it has always been a non-negotiable part of his personality. And it has at times alienated his own audience at the very times that, were he but able to admit it, he might have needed them most.

Which has tended to make his transition to lovable icon, to venerable (and much-venerated) elder statesman, a little daunting at times. In the past few years he has enjoyed a round of gracious honors: a larger-than-life duckwalking statue in St Louis; that PEN New England "Literary Excellence in Song Lyrics" award, held at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, where Chuck was delighted to snap pictures, and have his picture taken with images of JFK; his celebration in a week-long series of events as an American Music Master at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; the $100,000 international Polar Music Prize, which has often been referred to as "the Nobel Prize for Music." At each of the first three (he was not able to attend the Polar Prize ceremony in Sweden in 2014), he acquitted himself with more than a hint of sentiment and a large dose of his own brand of idiosyncratic charm. "I'm wondering about my future," he told Rolling Stone reporter Patrick Doyle. When pressed to be a little more explicit, "I'll give you a little piece of poetry," he said. "Give you a song?/I can't do that/My singing days have passed/My voice is gone, my throat is worn/And my lungs are going fast." Or as he put it 10 years earlier, in 2002, "In a way, I feel it might be ill-mannered to try and top myself. The music I play is a ritual. Something that matters to people in a special way. I wouldn't want to interfere with that."

[jakehallen-blog]

Spring Break: UK + Ireland

Just when I thought I could sit down and relax, I was wrong! What a week it has been! You’re probably thinking, well it’s about time that we get to read another blog post. I know, I know, it has been ages! As the saying goes, good things take time. This applies to my absence from posting within the past couple of weeks. So let’s get right to it! As my fellow peers and friends jetted off to warm places such as Italy, Greece, and Spain, I, along with my good friend Bridget, decided to be different and I’m so glad we did. Bridget and I met each other during our freshman year of college at Fisher. We were ecstatic when we both found out that we were accepted into the AIFS Study Abroad program back in September. Fast forward to now, and we have awesome memories to share with you all regarding our week-long Spring Break trip to Scotland, Northern Ireland, Ireland, and Wales. So we embarked on our 9-day journey by taking a 6-hour train ride from London to Edinburgh, Scotland. As I looked out the window when we arrived in Scotland, all I could see were hoards of sheep, and I mean a lot of sheep. Along with livestock were luscious green landscapes and seeing that reminded me of home, in other words, a nice change of scenery from the London cityscape. We arrived in Edinburgh around 7PM and stayed two nights at a church, which had been converted into a hostel. A hostel is a location, which provides inexpensive food and lodging typically for students or travelers who are trying to budget their money. To some this may not seem very appealing, it wasn’t to me at first but I eventually warmed up to it. While the sleeping arrangements typically had 4, 6, or 12 roommates, it was an awesome way to meet new people and learn about different cultures and experiences that others were able to share. At the Edinburgh hostel, Bridget and I met three high school students from Northern Scotland. They were very kind and gave us suggestions on sites to see. They shared their insight on Scottish culture, more specifically the education system. This conversation occurred mainly because they were high school students and wanted to know about our studies. So the next day we got up early and set out to explore the city. At our first stop, we visited the Elephant House Café which was where the famous Author of Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling, sat and found inspiration for the Harry Potter book series while she sipped on coffee and tea and stared out the back window, which faced the Edinburgh Castle.

Pictured at top: Me atop of Arthur’s Seat

Pictured: The Elephant House Café

Next, we visited a nearby cemetery of famous philosophers, writers, and poets who were born or resided in Edinburgh. The cemetery also inspired J.K. Rowling so much that she named some characters in the books after names on tombstones within the cemetery. As we walked down the Royal Mile, the main road of the city, we walked by a scarf shop where I decided to go in and buy a lambswool scarf to keep me warm for the rest of the trip. Every place I go I buy at least one souvenir specifically tailored to each city. One of Edinburgh’s major exports is lambswool and I’ve always wanted a nice scarf so I thought, why not. Next, we headed to climb Arthur’s Seat, the main mountain in Edinburgh, which was at one time a volcano and gets its name from King Arthur. The views of the city from the top were absolutely breathtaking and worth the exhaustion from the climb. Remember the scarf I bought prior, yeah, that beautiful accessory came off pretty quickly as I climbed the mountain nearly about to sweat to death and pass out. If anyone knows me well enough, they know that I tend to avoid lots of physical activity.

Pictured: View from Arthur’s Seat

Pictured: Bridget and me atop of Arthur’s Seat

We definitely got our steps in for that day and even trekked over to the castle to get an up-close view. An interesting fact about the castle is that a royal castle has been at that same location since the 12th century and archeologists have concluded that human occupancy of the location dates back to 2nd century AD. Needless to say, it is definitely an amazing place to visit for sure and I highly recommend it.

Pictured: Edinburgh Castle

Pictured: Scottish Bagpiper

Pictured: Edinburgh’s most expensive apartment building (my favorite in terms of architecture-I have expensive taste)

The next day we departed Edinburgh and traveled by plane to Belfast, Northern Ireland. We arrived in the evening and ventured out into the city to the main area where shops, pubs, and restaurants were located. We grabbed dinner and strolled the streets looking at the art sculptures.

Pictured: The Spirit of Belfast

We spent one night in Belfast at a hostel, which appeared to be an old college dorm building. Bridget and I came to such a conclusion due to the fact that one of Belfast’s largest University’s was directly behind the building we were staying in. Luckily, the room we stayed in only had two extra people. Our roommates for the night were two young men, one from France and the other from Switzerland. We talked with them for a while and actually learned that the French guy had recently moved to London and in fact lives only two tube stops away from us. As for the Swiss guy, we learned that he lived in a small village where most of the people who reside there only speak Swiss-German. At that point in the trip, I began to realize that staying in hostels is actually quite interesting. The next day we caught a bus to the picturesque Belfast Castle, located just North of the city. The original Belfast Castle was actually built in the center of the city but unfortunately burned down in 1708 and was later rebuilt in 1811 at its present location and was designed by a Scottish man.

Pictured: Belfast Castle

Pictured: Me in front of Belfast Castle sporting my new scarf

Later that day we journeyed down to the bay area and visited the Titanic Museum. The exhibit was incredible. I learned that at the time, Belfast was home to the largest port and ship export in the UK and most of Europe. During the Great Famine of Ireland, many people flocked to Belfast in search of work, ultimately building the Titanic quickly because of the influx of migrant workers.

Pictured: Titanic Museum (Titanic Belfast)

Pictured: Sign outside the Museum

After visiting the museum we headed to the train station where we boarded our train heading towards Dublin, Ireland. We arrived in Dublin around dinner time needed to switch trains in order to head to Galway, Ireland for a couple of days. Now remember, I usually do not like too much physical activity but somehow Bridget convinced me to walk 45 minutes from one train station to the other. Mind you, I had a 50lb duffle bag on my shoulder and it began to downpour halfway through the walk. It was then that I regretted not hopping in a cab to take me to the other side of town to catch the train. When we got to the train station I found a minute to breathe and also discovered a “Supermacs” which is the Irish version of McDonald’s. I thought to myself, ya know, I deserve to be rewarded with a crispy chicken sandwich, large fry, and a tasty coke. Even though I am abroad and have grown as a person, I haven’t changed at all! So we arrived in Galway in the later evening and headed directly for the hostel. We checked in and whipped open the door of our room and as if the night couldn’t get more stressful, we discovered that we would have to room the next two nights with an entire men’s rugby team. Oh my heavens did that room ever smell. On the bright side, we signed up for a tour the next day and had to get up early for to catch the bus. So at least we only were in the room to sleep and get ready in the morning. The next day we set out for the Cliffs of Moher. The tour lasted all day and our tour guide as amazing. A very intelligent older man who has been a tour guide for over 30 years taught us everything from the history of castles to the significance behind the concept of roof thatching on homes all across Ireland. We visited the first castle in Ireland but unfortunately weren’t able to go inside it because it was closed. Nevertheless, it was absolutely stunning.

Pictured: Dunguaire Castle

Pictured: Home with a thatched roof

We arrived at the Cliffs of Moher in the afternoon and had a couple of hours to walk around the cliffs. I, of course, needed a full-blown photo shoot and forced Bridget to take lots of photos of me on my camera. I got very close to the edge and even sat on it. I’m still here and alive so that’s a great sign.

Pictured: Cliffs of Moher

Pictured: Me atop of the Cliffs of Moher

Pictured: Galway Bay

While walking along the cliffs we talked with a guy by the name of Adam who was also on vacation and on the tour as well. We introduced ourselves and talked quite a bit throughout the remainder of the trip. We learned that he was in his mid-twenties, originally from Florida, and had recently moved to Germany to work as a mechanic for the U.S. Air Force. When we arrived back in Galway that evening we exchanged social media profiles. Later that night he messaged us and invited us to meet up with him for dinner, we thought why not. So we went and had a great time. We went to a local pub and I even tried Guinness for the first time. It was really good. I also had fish n chips for dinner. When we were finished Adam was so generous that he offered to pay and we politely tried to tell him that it wasn’t necessary but he insisted. It’s truly a great feeling to realize that there are still very kind people out there these days. The next day we departed from Galway by train back to Dublin to spend the next two nights in another hostel. While in Dublin we visited St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin Castle, Trinity College, and even had dinner at the Celt Bar where there was live music. We also visited the Kilmainham Gaol, which was a prison that held leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising and also was the location of their executions. On a lighter note, during our last night in Dublin, Adam messaged us on Facebook and told us that he had just arrived in Dublin and had extra tickets to the Country to Country Music Festival which was going on that night. He offered them to us and didn’t expect us to pay him back. Once again he insisted we join him, so we did. It was an amazing time. The major performers of the night were the Zac Brown Band. If you ever get the chance to see them, I highly recommend, they were very good live. While at the concert we introduced ourselves to the group of people who stood next do us during the concert. We learned that the couple were originally from Sydney, Australia and had moved to London for work. The other two people in the group were from Germany and were clearly major fans of not only country music but also the band performing. We danced with them, jammed out all night, and had an awesome time.  

Pictured: Dublin Castle

Pictured: Trinity College

Pictured: Me in the Irish Modern Art Museum Gardens

Pictured: Kilmainham Gaol

Pictured: St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Pictured: The three of us at the concert

Pictured: Performers at the Celt Bar

The next day we left Dublin and traveled by plane to Cardiff, Wales for our last stop on our trip. When we arrived I instantly got a feeling that I would adore the city. A small seaside city, Cardiff gained its wealth due to the major amounts of coal that were mined and exported there. The hostel we stayed at for the night was so charming that I also highly recommend staying there. Originally built as an office building the inside of the building has original staircases, dark wood molding, and eye-catching wallpaper. The entire place was decorated with antiques, so basically very similar to my taste in decorating. It clearly makes sense as to why I loved it so much. So the next day, Bridget and I decided to part ways because she wanted to visit the Doctor Who Museum and I wanted to visit Cardiff Castle and knew we wouldn’t be able to fit in both since our train left that night. I visited the castle and toured the inside of the Keep, or the tower on the hill which over looks the castle. Luckily, I was able to visit the inside of the castle, which was so incredible. The photos fail to give it justice but I absolutely loved it.

Pictured: The Keep

Pictured: Cardiff Castle

Pictured: The inside of the castle

In the afternoon, Bridget and I met up at Cardiff Bay and spend the afternoon there and grabbed some great food and took in the beauty of the parks and water. We also went inside of the Pierhead building, often referred to as the “Big Ben of Cardiff,” naturally, I adored it.

Pictured: Cardiff Bay

Pictured: Pierhead Building

Pictured: Me in front of the Pierhead Building

Reflecting on my Spring break adventure, I realize that I am beyond blessed and am so thankful to have such amazing opportunities to see this beautiful world and discover all that it has to offer. During my trip I often found myself thinking long and hard about all the things that make me happy and it is my hope that I can in return give back by making others happy in everything that I do. I enjoy sharing my adventures with everyone and truly appreciate the support and kindness that I have received throughout my life. I’ll keep on continuing to smile and I hope you do as well. Keep following along. Itchy Feet is on the move!! Much love. XX

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Deborah Harvey

Deborah Harvey’s poems have been widely published in journals and anthologies and broadcast on Radio 4’s Poetry Please, while her poem Oystercatchers recently won the 2018 Plough Prize Short Poem Competition. Her fourth collection, The Shadow Factory, will be published by Indigo Dreams during 2019. She has three previous poetry collections, Breadcrumbs (2016), Map Reading for Beginners (2014) and Communion (2011), also published by Indigo Dreams, while her historical novel, Dart, appeared under their Tamar Books imprint in 2013.

Deborah is co-director of The Leaping Word poetry consultancy.

https://theleapingword.com/

http://deborahharvey.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-shadow-factory.html

The Interview

1. What were the circumstances under which you began to write poetry?

I started writing poems and stories when I was a young child and continued throughout primary school, but as is so often the case, at secondary school the emphasis shifted onto learning for the purpose of passing exams, rather than exploring any creativity we might have; in fact, the teachers seemed to go out of their way to discourage such unruly impulses, and eventually I stopped writing altogether. Then, decades later, when I was struggling to raise four children and my marriage was falling apart, I had a very vivid, urgent dream, which seemed to me to be saying that unless I found a way of expressing myself, I’d die. So there I was, knowing I had to write poetry but not even sure what a poem was. I started to write what came, though, and to read poetry too, to make sure I was doing it right, and gradually the process became less agonising.

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

Being brought up in the Methodist tradition meant I was exposed to poetic images, language and cadences for several hours every Sunday from a very young age. I used to love the call and response of psalm reading, and hymns were great because I got to stand on the pew and sing words I didn’t understand but which were mysterious and conjured pictures in my head – fiery cloudy pillars, chariots rising into the sky, all that sort of stuff. So the poets of the Old Testament and Charles Wesley have a lot to answer for.

Then there was my grandmother, who taught me and my many cousins all our nursery rhymes and told us traditional stories with lots of repetition in them; tales like Chicken Licken and In A Dark Dark House. She wrote poems too, and always kept a scrap of paper and a pencil in her apron pocket to jot down lines and images as they occurred to her.

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

When I started writing 20 years ago, I was not only aware but completely over-awed. I’d enjoyed English literature at school and planned to study it at A-level, but was told by my teacher that I wasn’t good enough (even though I got As in language and literature at O-level).  I was completely thrown by this experience and believed what she’d said for years, so when I realised I had to write, the thought of reading poetry as well was very daunting. A few months earlier I’d seen a programme on telly about Ted Hughes’ ‘Birthday Letters’, so I took the plunge and found it completely absorbing. The second poetry book I bought was Sylvia Plath’s Collected Poems, and I went on from there.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I have three day-jobs, two of which involve caring for dependents, so I rarely get a whole day to myself, and I’m pretty much on call all the time. What makes writing poetry a practical means of self-expression is that I can do it out of the corner of my eye, as I go about my day.

5. What motivates you to write?

The greatest motivator of all: the fear of dying before I’m finished. I think this is partly because I spent three decades in a relationship that was obliterating me, and I neglected my responsibility towards myself and my development as a creative human being. Now everything I do is an attempt to make up for the years I lost, and expressing myself by writing poems is a kind of redemption.

6. What is your work ethic?

It’s very basic, really. I try to spend at least a small part of each day writing, and if that’s not possible, doing something that will feed into my writing, whether it’s reading poetry or prose, walking somewhere new or in a place that has resonance for me, doing a bit of research, going to hear another, better poet read, watching starlings in the garden. Then, even if I’m stuck in a trough of discouragement, at least I can tell myself I’m cobbling together a ladder to climb out.

7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today?

Calling someone a coming-of-age author carries quite pejorative connotations, but the three writers who had the biggest impression on me as a child and teenager – Bulgakov, Camus and Steinbeck – shaped me to such an extent that I carry them with me every day.  ‘Master and Margarita’ is still a very important novel for me, and I don’t know where I’d be without my inner witch. As for ‘The Red Pony’, which I started to read by accident when I was seven and abandoned in disgust when it turned out to be about death rather than gymkhanas and rosettes, that early encounter coloured my whole life. That experience convinced that early exposure to seminal stories and poems has a profound effect on the developing imagination – as long as you remember to read them again later too, when you can fully understand them.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

Alan Garner is just about the last of my childhood heroes who’s still alive. Reading ‘Boneland’ a few years ago, having grown old alongside the character Colin of ‘The Weirdstone of Brisingamen’ and ‘The Moon of Gomrath’, was profoundly moving, and I was bereft when the story ended. I am completely in awe of Garner’s connection with his landscape, and the way his stories inhabit mythic time.

In contrast, a writer I very much admire whom I read for the first time recently, is Rebecca Solnit. I got such a lot out of her memoir/travelogue ‘The Faraway Nearby’ that I’m lining up more of her books by my bed to read.

As for poets, there’s Alice Oswald, Kathleen Jamie and Stanley Kunitz for the way they capture nature; Charles Simic for his startling imagery; Neruda for always taking the reader with him on his huge associative leaps; Raymond Carver for his story-telling; Heaney and U A Fanthorpe for their unrelenting humanity; Carol Ann Duffy for her surety of touch; Kei Miller and Liz Berry for their true voices; Leonard Cohen for sounding like God; I could go on

9. Why do you write?

Because not writing is not an option.

10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?”

Becoming a writer – a good one – means embarking on an apprenticeship that will last the rest of your life. You have to be prepared always to improve, to welcome criticism, and above all, to read the work of others. In fact, read whatever you can lay your hands on: poetry, novels, folk stories, plays, non-fiction, atlases, art books, biographies, soak it all up. Don’t ever think there’s no room for improvement.

The other thing is to be prepared to stick your neck out in order to get an audience for your writing. This can be particularly hard for poets. The impulse that makes us write poems often co-exists with a profound reticence when it comes to publicising our work. But poetry is an inherently collaborative art form, and a poem only fully exists when it is being inhabited by the reader, so all that uncomfortable stuff has to be done. Good luck with it.

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

My fourth collection – The Shadow Factory – is due to be published by Indigo Dreams in 2019, so I’m now in that lovely space where I can turn my attention towards something new. Well, not really new; I’ve lived in Bristol all my life and have amassed stories, family anecdotes and memories, old photos, historical snippets, the voices you hear in the queue at the bus stop, the way places change and people come and go, but the city remembers how it always was and keeps re-creating itself in that image. The past in the present. I want to write all that.

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Deborah Harvey Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[musicmapglobal]

Man as Pronoun: Patois, Grime and the New London English

Grime hasn’t just changed London’s musical landscape – it’s changing the English language. John Z. Komurki explores how…

For over ten years, an exciting new bit of grammar has been in use in parts of London: ‘man’ as a pronoun. Emblematic of “Multicultural London English” (MLE), it is a sort of hybrid function, quite alien in nature to conventional English. It can stand in for any of the usual pronouns so depending on context “man wasn’t there” could mean “I wasn’t there”, “you weren’t there”, “he wasn’t there”, etc.

It seems likely that the origin of ‘man’ in this new incarnation is Jamaican Patois1. There are several reasons to think this, not least that Patois is one of the main roots of MLE. As author Jeffrey Boakye puts it in his unmissable Hold Tight: Black Masculinity, Millennials & the Meaning of Grime (2017), “A whole generation of adolescents now speak a language that ties them to a black British heritage stemming from the Windrush diaspora.”2

There are a series of other similarities and overlaps. In Patois, ‘man’ can mean ‘people in general’, and serve as an impersonal pronoun, as in: “People can’t fool me – Man kaan fuul me.”3 Then there is ‘mandem’, a word usually used as a noun, ‘the mandem’, referring to a group4, which by extension invokes or induces a sense of communal identity. It also serves as a generalised pronoun, as in “mandem knew”, “give it to mandem”, etc. Finally, there is Dreadtalk, the argot of the Rastafarians, in which the pronoun ‘I-and-I’ can stand for any of the others, although it is most common as a plural. Rasta linguistic philosophy as one of the many sources of contemporary London English.

MLE is no longer solely a London thing, however, having spread in recent years to various other parts of the UK. Nevertheless, it is probably a safe bet that most non-adolescent British people’s first contact with ‘man’ came via last year’s runaway musical sensation, the song ‘Man’s Not Hot’ by Big Shaq (aka Roadman Shaq). Shaq is an alter ego of comedian Michael Dapaah, who follows Ali G and People Just Do Nothing in using Patois-inflected London speech to parody wannabe-badmen. The song is about someone who does not feel hot under any circumstances. The man in question, however, is the speaker himself5, as the song makes clear:

The girl told me, “Take off your jacket.” I said, “Babes, man’s not hot.” 

Note that Michael Dappah is of Gambian heritage but speaks a heavily Jamaican-inflected English; even ‘roadman’ is Yardie terminology. This underlines another point of Boakye’s, that Grime music (the genre which ‘Man’s Not Hot’ both mocks and perfects) “is a point of reconciliation for otherwise disparate black identities.”6 In an analogous manner, MLE is a melting pot of diverse linguistic heritages.

Grime is an excellent place to see MLE in action. The two evolved alongside each other, and the music has played a role both in establishing and advancing MLE as a mode of speech in its own right. Mark Greif says of US hip-hop that “It communicates as language does, because essentially it is language, not just song.” Grime, like hip-hop, also plays a role in standardising that language, drawing its speakers closer together.

In that sense, grime do(ye)n Wiley’s autobiography Eskiboy (2017) is a snapshot of how MLE is spoken today. Doubly so, in that it is in fact more of an oral history, clearly a faithful transcription of the artist’s spoken words. As you might expect, it also provides us with a wealth of examples of ‘man’ in its different forms:

Meaning ‘I’ – “In 1998, 1999 garage came around… I didn’t go, man was into bashment.” – “I even did a track in Dutch for them. Man learned Dutch!”

Meaning ‘he’ – “Titch in the middle on a mad ting. Man was sweating, you get me.” – “I just want man to be free. If he hadn’t gone to jail, Crazy Titch would’ve blown up.” – “As soon as he turned up, everyone left the pool. Man was just chilling doing breaststroke on his own.”

Meaning ‘we’ – “Since ’99 man have had a great run…”

Meaning people in general – “Badman ting. When man just rush out and spray bars. Just mad.” – “It’s not even a bad-mind ting. Man run psyches on man. We’re not going to fight or nothing.” – “I work in a world where you’ve got man who just want to see you down.”

There are also multiple examples of ‘man’ functioning as something else, as in this case, where it seems to stand for ‘anybody/nobody’ – “They didn’t care about major labels, they don’t jump up for man, they weren’t gassed about anything.”

Or here, where it seems like it could equally stand for a plural noun – “I know a couple man who would have just let it go.”

One take-home from these examples is that ‘man’ goes further than slang typically does. Formally speaking, slang tends to work by substituting one word for another (‘butters’ for ‘ugly’, for example). ‘Man’ does something much more profound — it changes the underlying grammatical structure of English in order to make it express a different reality, one which ‘standard’ usage of the language perhaps fails to reflect.

‘Man’ suggests a different conception of social life, one according to which cultivating a tight-knit group of peers can be both a pleasure and a necessity. Skepta’s track ‘Man’ is the anthem7 of this existential reality. “I don’t know why man’s callin’ me family all of a sudden,” he opens, “Like hmm, my mum don’t know your mum / Stop telling man you’re my cousin.” Then the chorus:

Cause man get money with the gang Man get girls with the gang Man eat food with the gang Man talk slang so the feds Can’t work out what I just said to a man

It is impossible to know, here, what ‘man’ stands for, whether ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘he’ or ‘we’. The truth is, of course, that it stands for all of them at the same time.

‘Man’ thus verbally enacts a logic of solidarity and identification. It expresses a more communal vision of social life than conventional British culture typically admits. The English language has often corresponded to an atomised, individualistic approach to things. To make it reflect their reality, speakers of MLE, like speakers of Cockney or Polari before them, do more than adopt an accent: they hotwire the grammar itself, making the language do things it wasn’t really built to do, like celebrate and foment a non-hierarchical model of sociability.

It is not every day that we have a chance to see a linguistic shift of this nature take place in real time. Language moves fastest at the margins.8 It is more porous there, and people speak it more innovatively, more playfully, less hindered by a sense of verbal propriety.9 The ‘standardised’ approach to the language, however, would rather you think of English as perfected and immutable, something you speak either well or less well.

In the UK, marginalised forms of English have not historically been given space — indeed, their speakers often could neither read nor write, and their voices and grammars have come down to us only through scattered folk songs, or the works of poets like John Clare. Grime too constitutes the voice of people who have been systemically excluded. The difference is that today the musical and cultural mainstream is taking notice. The increasing prevalence of ‘man’ and MLE generally is just one aspect of this cautiously heartening tendency.

John Z. Komurki lives in Berlin; he is currently writing a book about cassettes. komurki.eu

1. Interestingly, German has the pronoun ‘man’ which can likewise mean “one, someone, a person, you, they, or people”. So the new London ‘man’ could correspond to a latent possibility, a vestigial feature in the language.↩

2. P. 328↩

3. This example is from the excellent ‘Grammaticalisation in social context – The emergence of a new English pronoun’ by Jenny Cheshire, as far as I can tell the only academic study on the phenomenon. @ me for the PDF.↩

4. c.f. ‘la banda’ as it is used in contemporary Mexican Spanish.↩

5. Recently, on stage, Jeremy Corbyn was asked to recite the chorus of the song; he rendered it as “The man’s not hot.”↩

6. P. 329↩

7. At the end of Episode 8 of The Pengest Munch, a hipster keeps on trying to take pictures of the Chicken Connoisseur, who just turns his back and quietly sings this song.↩

8. “By making English the language mainly of uneducated people, the Norman conquest made it easier for grammatical changes to go forward unchecked.” Baugh and Cable – A History of the English Language (1978)↩

9. “My friend, the writer Steve Hanson, once told me his Lancashire high school classroom was ‘full of little Mark E Smiths’ evolving their own bizarre slang and tall tales. This collective propensity to daydream and experiment with language has a long working-class history. It’s an implicit challenge to the pressure of speaking ‘properly’ and settling into the drudgery of your expected role.” David Wilkinson – ‘Northern white crap that talks back’: The Fall’s Mark E Smith spoke for weird Manchester’, The Conversation. My thanks to the writer Martin Jackson for this reference, and to him and linguist Kate Riestenberg for their comments on earlier drafts of this piece.↩

[char27martin]

How to Stop Yourself from Obsessing Over Duplicating Writing Success

Especially after a success or two, I see that sometimes I try too hard while writing. Elated at that recent byline—or whatever it may be—and beginning to believe I really am a writer, I seek to duplicate glory.

This guest post is by Noelle Sterne. Author, editor, writing coach, workshop leader, and spiritual counselor, Sterne has published more than 400 writing craft articles, spiritual pieces, essays, and short stories. Publications include Author Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Children’s Book Insider, Coffeehouse For Writers, Funds for Writers, InnerSelf, New Age Journal, Sasee, Story Monsters Ink, Unity Magazine, Writer’s Journal, The Writer, and Writer’s Digest. Academic editor and coach, with a Ph.D. from Columbia University, she helps doctoral students wrestling with their dissertations and publishes articles in several blogs for dissertation writers. Her book Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books) contains examples from her practice, writing, and other aspects of life to help readers release regrets, relabel their past, and reach lifelong yearnings. Her book Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping With the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2015) further aids doctoral candidates to award of their degrees.

The signs are unmistakable, whether for a new piece, a revision of an older one, or one final look before submission. I giggle at the puns. I murmur self-approval at the turns of phrase. I hear readers’ gasps of delight at my ingenuity. Worst of all, a red warning flare shoots through my brain—Oh, oh, ego ascendant.

If I don’t pay attention to that flare, I know it heralds disaster: I’m trying too hard. The work cannot help reflect this over-conscious effort. The technique, wordplay, and resplendent diction I so admire somehow overpowers whatever message I want to convey.

Overdoing

Poet, novelist, and professor Stephen Taylor Goldsberry in The Writer’s Book of Wisdom: 101 Rules for Mastering Your Craft warns us, “Try not to overdo it. … Beware of contrived lyrical embellishment and fluffy metaphors.” I would add to beware of too eloquent, balanced rhetoric; repetition for effect; overly ripe similes; too-intricate expositions; and too-pithy observations.

More cautions: In Dare to Be a Great Writer (how’s that for a challenging, uplifting title?), novelist, editor, and writing teacher Leonard Bishop observes that all of us know with undeniable certainty that we possess “a talent capable of lyrical flights, able to use prose in a style so grand that [we] can make great poets seem like senile doodlers.” Bishop (using the generalized masculine pronoun) hurries to dispel any approval of this observation: “As he becomes more professional, he works to control this vanity.”

After I devoured Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love, I read a transcript of an interview with her. Working on her next book, she said, she produced 500 pages trying to imitate her bestseller. Her style was similarly breezy, flippant, and pseudo-deep. Gilbert finally realized what she was doing; she knew she had to junk the whole new draft. Then, no longer trying to duplicate the earlier success, she wrote a completely different and honest book, Committed. And Committed was successful in its own right.

[72 of the Best Quotes About Writing]

Trying Trying

Like Gilbert in her post-E-P-L foray, when we try—even with all our might—we end up failing or at least falling short. I think of a friend’s story about his father, who came from Italy, settled in New Jersey, and founded an automotive products store.

As a twelve-year-old, my friend helped his father after school in the store. One day, his father instructed him to unpack a shipment of tires and stack them in a certain corner for maximum display. The boy answered, “I’ll try.”

In his limited but effective English, his father bellowed, “No try! You do!” My friend did. And never forgot the lesson.

Do … Or Don’t

Our writing lesson? We shouldn’t try. We do, or don’t. Maybe it means not writing at all for a while, walking away, or actually shelving the project. Or writing a lot of nonsense first, accompanied by that horrid, hollow feeling that we know it’s trash.

Or incessantly using the slash/option method. This is one of my favorites/best practices/most helpful methods/greatest techniques for skirting stuckness and continuing to slog. Or going back countless times to excise, refine, replace, restructure, or even—like Gilbert—pitch it all out and start again.

Trying means we’re writing too self-consciously, usually to impress or force. In contrast, doing, like my friend’s immigrant father knew, means total immersion. However many drafts we need, however many flailings in the creative mud we dare, our success rests not in trying—but in doing.

[Finding the Right Writing Inspiration for Your Life]

Talk to Yourself

When you suspect you’re trying too hard or you’re tempted to do so, remind yourself of a few things, like I must (more often than I like to admit). Stop trying to be clever and knowing. Stop trying to beat out your writing colleagues. Stop trying to show off your wit and dazzle everyone. Stop trying to replicate your just-success.

Tell yourself you’re not talking to them. We know who: the friends and family we so ardently want to show we’re not wasting our time; the editors who dangle acceptance, publication, and even a small check; the agents whom we envision stumbling on this piece and rushing to call or email us with an offer of representation and suggestion to make this essay into a book they will sell at auction to the most powerful mega-publisher; the endorsers who will exalt us; the critics who will worship us; the moguls who will magically make our words flesh in the great film; the fleets of tweeters and repeaters who will blast our dazzling new name through the galaxies …

Go Apart

All that trying for all those external outcomes cuts off your talent and expressive truth and especially your honesty as a writer.

Instead, go apart, mentally and physically. Take deep breaths, meditate, stretch, swim, sleep.

Talk only to yourself. As you shut out all that trying, paradoxically, when you go inside, those outside accolades will come more easily. And always paradoxically, as you shut out all of them and go deeper alone, you will reach the reader who is the mirror of you.

I’m reminded of this truth by Bill Kenower, the wonderful writer and editor of Author Magazine: “The quickest route to another person’s heart is through my own. The deeper into my own experiences I dive, the further I go beneath the surface of time and place and circumstance, the more I am able to find those currents flowing endlessly from soul to soul to soul.”

Going deeper—dare I say communing—is not at all indulgent. It is why you are here. You will reach your Self, the Self who knows what you really want to write and what gives you the greatest satisfaction. You will reach the Self who knows why you’re here, blessed/cursed with this drive and talent, and who will direct you to flow it out. Believe it. Allow it. Receive it all.

Trust yourself. Trust that mysterious and wholly reliable Voice inside that gives you every answer every time you ask, unencumbered, What do I do next?

Turn away from trying, relax your forced and fevered labor. Listen to your Creative Soul and just write.

The biggest literary agent database anywhere is the Guide to Literary Agents. Pick up the most recent updated edition online at a discount.

If you’re an agent looking to update your information or an author interested in contributing to the GLA blog or the next edition of the book, contact Writer’s Digest Books Managing Editor Cris Freese at cris.freese@fwmedia.com.

The post How to Stop Yourself from Obsessing Over Duplicating Writing Success appeared first on WritersDigest.com.

from Writing Editor Blogs – WritersDigest.com http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/guide-to-literary-agents/stop-obsessing-duplicating-writing-success

[daddyslittlejuliet]

Book Review: Will’s Red Coat by Tom Ryan

“Life has a strange way of leading you to where you need to be,” writes Tom Ryan in Will’s Red Coat. The aphorism is arguably as applicable to animals as it is to humans, as is clear in this powerful follow-up to Ryan’s 2011 bestseller Following Atticus. While that book centered on Ryan’s relationship with his canine friend Atticus, the emphasis here is primarily on Will, a deaf and mostly blind senior dog whom Ryan adopts. Will has other health challenges, and he’s not expected to live more than a few months when the author and animal activist brings him from a New Jersey kill shelter to his home in bucolic New Hampshire. He simply wants to give Will a peaceful place to die with dignity.

But then something surprising happens: Will flourishes. What follows is a beautifully written memoir of acceptance, trust, compassion, and friendship that manages to avoid the clichés that afflict other books regarding the human-animal bond. One of the things I most appreciate about Tom Ryan is that he never condescends to Will and the other dogs in his life. He treats them as his peers—not “fur babies,” but individuals who deserve the same considerations that humans do. He doesn’t shout commands at Will and Atticus, for instance, but asks nicely, as when he cautions one of them to be wary of wildlife: “Be careful, my friend.” Some readers may find it remarkable how animals respond to being accorded such courtesy.

Fans of Ryan’s first book will be happy to know that Atticus figures into this narrative, too. But this is really Will’s story. He arrives with baggage Tom and Atticus never anticipated—including some very aggressive rage issues of the bared-teeth-and-snapping-jaws variety—disturbing the tranquility of their home and challenging Ryan’s patience. Yet through it all, he treats Will with tenderness, recognizing that this elderly dog with severely limited senses had been abandoned by aging guardians who could no longer care for him and suddenly found himself navigating a strange new world. Will’s trust in others would come slowly, if ever, and would be hard-earned. I was constantly impressed by Ryan’s perseverance and wondered how tolerant I would be under similar circumstances; indeed, this book has inspired me to be more understanding of others—or at least try to be.

Ryan introduces us to some of the humans who have influenced him as well, most notably his Aunt Marijane, a former nun who ran a special education school and later did hospice work. Marijane shows her nephew a way of life that is non-judgmental and reminds him that “Dogs and coyotes and owls and bears and people are all the same inside. … We fear and love and get angry and are happy. We all have compassion and empathy.” The two share an abiding kinship with nature and an easy rapport.

The arc also follows Ryan’s evolution from an everyday “animal lover” to his discovery of how animals are treated in factory farms, zoos, circuses, and other enterprises that profit from exploitation. In considering his own treatment of animals, he eventually embraces veganism, thanks in no small part to knowing people who thrive on a plant-based diet and to having access to a wealth of vegan cookbooks. “I love animals,” he writes, “and yet I had done my best to ignore where the hamburger on my plate came from, the suffering of chickens that led to buffalo wings, or how many lives had to be sacrificed to fulfill my desire for barbecued ribs.”

A keen observer of the human condition, Ryan narrates the story with the voice of a philosopher-poet, bringing to mind many of the writers (Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, et al.) he mentions throughout. He has an extraordinary outlook on life (and death), and if he doesn’t manage to change your view of the world, however slightly, he’s at the very least certain to give you a lot of food for thought.

The writing here is even better than in Following Atticus—the prose is lyrical (without being sappy) and more assured. You by no means need to have read Following Atticus before reading Will’s Red Coat, but you will doubtless get added pleasure by having done so.

For me, the sign of a good book is not just how it makes me feel, but if I would read it again; I plan to return to this one many times over, revisiting the spirit of compassion and hope that fills its pages. Will’s Red Coat is very highly recommended indeed.

Note: You’ll be able to buy Will’s Red Coat on April 25 (though you can pre-order it now from your favorite bookstore). In the meantime, you can check out Tom Ryan’s blog here and visit his Facebook page.

My thanks to HarperCollins for sending me an advance reader’s copy.

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