#i’m standing by this and i absolutely hate using nazi germany and the holocaust to make a point

[cowboyshit]

twenty questions

tagged by: @dustofinsanity (thank you so much my dear!!!!!!)

what do you prefer to be called name-wise? honestly I’ll probably answer to most things as long as they aren’t mean. but ash, ashley, doe, those seem to be the solid three I’m known by around here when is your birthday? november 30th!  where do you live? in a tiny, backwoods cow-town smack dab in the middle of california three things you are doing right now? filling this questionnaire out, eating dinner I just finished cooking, and petting sadie with my foot since she’s curled up at my feet after she finished her dinner four fandoms that have peaked your interest. I guess I can go with four I’ve been heavily involved with, even though there’s plenty more than that since I’m a little fangirl at heart, but wrestling (obviously), black sails, the night shift, and pirates of the caribbean how has the pandemic been treating you? uh, I mean, it hasn’t been great and I’ve had to deal with some pretty bad shit as all of us have, and probably some of my worst mental health battles I’ve had to face in about a year or so, but honestly? I just kind of count my blessings these days. lucky to still be employed, even if my pay got a little cut it was nothing that keeps me from paying my bills. all I had to do was take away a few luxury things to make ends meet, and that’s a lot, LOT less than other people have had to do. so yeah, it’s been pretty shitty, this year has been bad news after bad news both personally and globally, but whatever. it could be worse. a song you can’t stop listening to right now? it is no-joke like a four-way tie. a bunch of good songs were in my discover weekly and I’ve been playing four of them on non-stop repeat one after the other. oh! and one my best friend showed to me. this baby don’t cry by k. flay, rock bottom by grandson, ok ok by hoko, and insurgents by the poolside by denny recommend a movie. i’ve jumped into holiday mood early af because tbh I need the holiday cheer, so keeping in that theme, I suggest the holiday with jude law because DUH how old are you? thirty! school, university, occupation, other? had some college, been working in my current career for the past ten years. hoping to pursue a promotion finally since my supervisors have been telling me for the past eight years that I need to promote do you prefer heat or cold? cold pleeeaaaase! I’m a radiator and put off heat like nobody’s business. I’m always warm. name one fact others may not know about you. this is hard because I just constantly blab everything about me, and I have two people who literally know EVERYTHING about me lmfao uhhh I guess... something people may not know... uhhh... on my dad’s side of the family one half was ashkenazi jewish who had to flee germany to avoid the holocaust, where they went to live in italy, while the other half were nazi’s committing some pretty bad stuff that my family won’t talk about, even to this day. funny how two descendants eventually met in america and fell in love, huh? and when they DID fall in love one of them was half italian and in the mafia! so I always joke that my bubbly cheerful self is a descendent of some pretty evil shit, and it feels like a nice little stab at those shitty ancestors of mine. are you shy? uhhh yeah and no??? like. I think I’m shy, since all interaction terrifies me and exhausts me, but everyone tells me I’m a social butterfly? and I’ve noticed in places I’m comfortable and confident, I do tend to be less shy and more involved and interactive? but I think I can be shy. a lot of waiting for other people to initiate because I’m too afraid to, struggling to talk or carry a conversation at times... I don’t know I think I’m overcomplicating this answer LOL preferred pronouns? she/her!  biggest pet peeves? gatekeeping, to be perfectly honest. I stopped following wrestling back in 2014 because when I first tried to get into the fandom, someone was trying to gatekeep a wrestler I also liked and had started making content for and they made me feel like shit for liking them, and I absolutely hated it. that’s why it took me an entire two years of quietly lurking in the wrestling fandom before I finally got brave enough to come out of the woodwork, and I’m grateful I’ve been so well received this time around. but now I’m hyper-sensitive to gatekeeping and I fucking hate it. no joke. and since it’s a pet peeve and I’m irked just remembering all that bs I went through, ima say I’m only a part of fandom to share my love of whatever that thing is with other people who love it too. I can’t stand anyone who thinks they have some sort of “claim” over a celebrity or a show or anything. get a different identity that isn’t wrapped up in that thing and stop seeing it as a threat when other people like it. be happy someone else is as passionate about that thing as you are and make a friend. damn. what is your favorite “dere” type? I’m pretty sure this is something with anime or that originated from anime, right? unfortunately I don’t know what they are so I can’t say LOL I don’t even know if I’m right about it coming from anime tbh rate your life from 1-10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be. 4, 5, but I’m putting in the foundation now and working to make it a 6, 7, or possibly 8 by a year or two from now. what’s your main blog? funnily enough? this one. my OTHER blog that was my main blog since I joined tumblr in 2009 got shoved to the side for this one last year LOL I assumed I’d log onto this blog once in awhile, but now it took over my whole damn life so here I am I guess list your side blogs and what they’re used for. I’m going to be fair and ONLY list my active ones because I have a few side blogs from when I role-played on tumblr that I haven’t touched in over a year. @doedreamss is my non-wrestling blog that WAS my main blog before this one, @cowboysht is my archive where I am ONLY putting my original gifsets/analysis/fanfiction so that one day I can offer people a blog of just my original work and no other posts (the queue is very slowly catching up I think I’ve queued posts up until june this year), @illfatedandstarcrossed is just a non-frequently used outlet for me to mope and dump emotions when I get sad about my relationship things (like a diary! but... public? and not my original thoughts? LOL), and then I have one more blog but it’s locked and private and it’s LITERALLY my diary where I can just vent when I got shit I wanna get off my chest but don’t necessarily want people to see it. Is there something people need to know about you before becoming friends? I probably won’t talk to you daily, tbh. I may not even talk to you weekly. socializing takes a lot out of me, on top of an already energy draining day-to-day in my personal life. I have a handful of people I connect with who I talk with frequently, but unfortunately as much as I’d love for it to be endless, I have to keep that list short for my own sanity. my infrequent conversations mean absolutely nothing about my lack of interest in you or how much I care about you. my granny once said I would be the perfect friend for someone you only want to talk to twice a month and she thought she was insulting me, but deadass I just said “YEAH! EXACTLY!!”

tagging: I really like this one so I WANT to tag people, but I feel braindead and also just want to post it cause I feel like I am definitely gonna forget to tag someone tbh aaaaahh okay okay I’m just gonna throw some names out there but please don’t feel pressured to do this (it is TWENTY questions) @kennyhoemega, @champbucks, @superkickparty, @adampage, @hintsofsunshine, @audreyhrnes, @sheslikealostflower, @lancearchers, @champnick, @janelanutella, @edgecution, @superrezzy00, @wardl0w, @writinglionqueen, @orangechuckiet, @hungmanhorsecarriage, @icouldbesus, @thatnerdwriter, @rampagewriting, @snarkandsarcasmftw, @tetsuyainthesky AND I DUNNO JUST ANYONE WHO WANTS TO OK I LOVE YOU ALL BYE

[coldalbion]

This is a tricky religious question, but I'll try to encapsulate it in an ask. I feel a strong connection to Odin, but I also want to make that spiritual connection more firm in the landscape I /already/ inhabit, if that makes sense? Unfortunately, as a white person in a land that was never my own, I feel it would be disrespectful. My "ancestors" are from across the sea and I cannot claim to know them, either. Whiteness has colonised and homogenized culture. So I'm unsure how to proceed.

Imma be upfront here: What you want and feel doesn’t automatically have primacy when dealing with other beings. We don’t own the land, the land owns us.To think otherwise is a manifestation of that same colonial, homogenising, reflex which has married itself to rapacious capitalism and set about obliterating nuance and intimacy and depth.So, listen, I’m assuming you’re White here, but - Hwaet!: The land has its own needs, its own desires. The beings that populate it have theirs, and you don’t get to decide what’s respectful, and what’s not. To do that, you have to go and find out. You have to put yourself out there and say: “Hello. Here I am. Are you up for maybe building a relationship? A relationship that’s between us, even with all the shit people with my shade of skin have pulled?”They may very well say no. And, in the spirit of being up front? That. May. Be. Easier. If they say no, then you’re done.But if they say yes? That’s when the hard bloody work begins. Because you have to cobble together something from the ground up. And you have to do that, situated within the horror of Whiteness, because Whiteness actually homogenised and destroyed many of the vast number of differing and rich variations that North West Europeans and their descendants had for interacting with the world. It was deliberately constructed by those in power to level internal resistance and then turn that animus on POC and indigenous peoples. It created an ‘US’ to pit against ‘THEM’.As White folks, we and our ancestors have perpetuated, and continue to implicitly take part in a set of systems which have perpetuated atrocities across the planet, and continue to do so.And it is the absolute right of those beings, human and non, to hate us on sight. It hurts, and is upsetting, and if we’re decent people, we want to make it right. But we don’t get to decide how and whether that’s possible.Having said all this - the crimes perpetuated by folks with our shade of skin do not automatically disqualify us from anything - unless we’re told otherwise. But neither do they qualify us in advance.

 This is the lie (some) of our ancestors bought, the one bearing the rubric of Whiteness. Whiteness, the lie goes, is a thing to aspire to - because Whiteness is better, being White makes you better automagically.(And yes, I more-than-half-believe that Whiteness is an imperialist magic spell. Seriously.) Because there was a time when ‘white’ was merely a simple descriptor of skin colour. And then it was made into something else.; I’d equate it with the ancient and very real magic of Roman citizenship, except for the fact that the Roman Empire was, at least at beginning, a polytheist culture.I’ve said above that Whiteness doesn’t automatically disqualify us unless we’re told, but I want to emphasise that ignorance is not an excuse either. Seek out those qualified. Do your research.Whiteness may have once only been a skin descriptor - but now it’s so, so, much more complex. We do not get to complain building healthy and fruitful relationships is hard, that Whiteness makes things difficult, and so we can’t do anything.That’s the lie speaking, trying to persuade us to leave Whiteness-as-is, as a monolith that can never be pulled down and replaced with a memorial to all those whose lives and lands it oppressed - just as say, Germany pulled down the statues of the Reich, and erected holocaust memorials.Germany has not absolved itself - it is flawed, and imperfect as an example. Yet, it has acknowledged what was done and moved forward, but not on.  Those memorials are meant to stand as moral checkpoints. Thing that exist as reminders, as-never-again.Leaving Whiteness-as-monolith is simply ignoring the shadow it casts. Instead, we should blow it up, reconfigure, deconstruct it - whilst at the same time never forgetting where it comes from.Whether we acknowledge them or not, we are our ancestors, emanating their genes, the products of their actions, here and now. Even if we seek to deliberately excise them, that very excision is relation to them. If we cut out a family member due to their behaviour, they influence us in terms of what-not-to-do.Negative space, emptiness, is still a phenomenon, and everything is connected.

So when I say deconstruct, I mean not simply demolish, not simply raze-as-if-it-never-was. I say use it as fuel, transmute it; look for the cracks in its homogeneity - the things buried beneath - the green vitality that survives despite paving, steal and glass. The way birds fly, flock, wheel, and dive - and most importantly the spaces between.Focus - narrow, and so, so deep. Beneath Whiteness, there is Blood - and though these things are so beloved by white supremacist arseholes? Look at Blood Again. Do not see it as one thing, but note how many cells rush by - notice how many substances, hormones, surge through your veins, how very many things it is.Blood is never pure.And beneath that? Glistening, shining Bone - not white at all, shaded and stained ivory, all honeycombed and filled with marrow. Each heartbeat a rhythmic pulse.For your ancestors are Many, and you see them everytime you look in the mirror, Perhaps you have your Father’s mouth, your Mother’s jaw, your Grandfather’s eyes?But where did they get them?You know them, but you don’t know you know them. Known knowns and unknown knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns.The spell of Whiteness says it is homegenous, because it homogenizes. But it’s a lie, and dig underneath it and you will find white-skinned variety - mixedness, shadowed memory - old ways, localised cultus based on village, town, terroir, field and forest. Mixed races and traditions.

Which of these is supreme? None. They are contextual. They are local. The landscape is not levelled, not concretized. Monoculture has its propaganda. Its siren-song that it it is the only option.But: Things are not gone - their roots remain, buried deep, ready to emerge in new forms.The knowledge of them may be held already, kept sacred by indigenous or closed groups, and if so, so be it. Or, it may lie waiting to be discovered again

And these new-old forms can only come forth if we risk ourselves. If we dedicate ourselves to reconnection, to respect and research, to wholeness and to wilfully acknowledging that we Know Nothing.

And the spell, the Imperial magic of Whiteness is failing, but it’s not dead. It’s cunning, shape-shifting into notions of silos and ideological purity. It says you are either Enough, or Not Enough.Enough is better, Enough is pure.And you are not pure, not clean. None of us are. So Whiteness uses that - creates both White guilt and White Pride - enhancing the sense of helplessness, which breeds sorrow and anger, and thus increasing US vs THEM.It creates toxicity which further perpetuates itself - and the individual can do little to change it, and virtually nothing to change the world. reaching towards purity is good, because purity is a beacon, a nice clear reference point by which we can make sense of the world.

And the Old Man is about as ambiguous and impure as they come. He emanates double and triple meaning - poetry as magic, as weapon, as entertainment, as blood and fury and iron. Knowledge as poison, as drug, as psycho-active substance.In some ways, I think he may find it darkly funny the way neo-nazi scumbags constantly use his name to justify purity and fitness. This one-eyed wanderer who self-harmed and submitted himself totally to the Kosmos because he wanted to Know itAnd not on his terms. On Its.He deliberately put aside all methods of control. He neither ate nor drank. He bled for it, probably even died for it. He sacrificed himself to himself because there was nobody else. Only by being completely Himself, in that environment, and letting whatever happened, happen, was he able to go down to the depths and receive and perceive the runes.Be prepared for the necessity of that. Of setting yourself apart, not as pure or better - but different. Empty your cup, as they say in Zen.Understand that he is the strife-bringer and its soother.If you want to find him in the landscape, first you have to meet him, it - on its terms. The lore says he gave humans breath.So breathe. Realise your Whiteness is not something you can help - you cannot stop being White, and you are enmeshed in the monoculture, but that the monoculture is not what it says it is. It is not the Only One.There are many different ways, and as master interpreter - the hermes in the hermeneutics, the Wanderer has travelled most, if not all of them.His answer to the Seeress’ question is YES. Forever and always YES. And knowing more is not just intellectual knowing, but meeting, knowing someone, carrying them, or a place with you.There’s a reason we call the World Tree what we do. It has roots no man knows, And this? This is the Old Man’s Horse - a tree is his method of travel, is the Great Tree which holds all worlds. The ancestral tree, just as humans were made from wood.The runes are risted with red, stained well with the power of blood and breath; the power of a magic alphabet filled with the rhythms  of life and death.The poetry can crack a world. the root can break stone .A return to new-old ways can acknowledge and suborn your Whiteness, forcing it to undergo a detournement which will never grant some distant absolution, but just may allow the usage of that magical spiritual potency of that spell to benefit you, and others.In honouring Odin, you have the appearance of honouring the same god as some neo-Nazi scum. And yet, you are not, because of the relationship which is (may come to be) betwixt you. And it is that which contains life, death, health and wholeness. That is not theirs, but yours.In doing so, in living a connected life you illustrate, you render a way which was hidden, open. A way which may shift and change - for though the Whiteness was laid upon you at birth, its meaning may change in an unexpected way. You become a thing which is different, and Odin will be in your land, just as he came to be in mine.As to how that happens, only you can tell, but for me, it came to pass with a realization that he has always been there. He was just waiting for me to see his shape in the world - a piece of negative space, which once I discovered it, has become a roaring source of gnosis, a quiet whisper that raises the hair on the back of the neck.A thing to be lived with, and died with, and borne and lifted up and cast down.You are an enforced descendant of a vast criminal syndicate which killed millions, destroyed thousands of cultures, infected its own people with a thought-virus to keep them compliant, and keeps insisting it’s the only game in town.Its not. Be open. Live with who you are, as you are.But who you are is not who you have been told.Good luck.

[onegirlabroad]

Berlin

In Berlin, I met these two American girls (from Jersey ironically, so close to my home). We did the Sandeman’s tour (popular free walking tour group in many major European cities, I recommend) of Berlin and the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. I have to remind myself to write my tour guide Amy a good review, she said it helps her stay in business. I am still remembering her name almost two weeks ago because she was such an amazing tour guide. She was this Scottish girl who moved to Berlin and loves Berlin, she was awesome! Anyway moving on, on the free tour, we saw:  the former site of Hitler’s bunker and where he took his life, the site of the Nazi book burning and the local university, Brandenburg Gate, the Jewish Memorial, Checkpoint Charlie, the shopping district, Humboldt University, and more.

The signifgant part of Hitler’s bunker is that there are no remnants visible that he was there or that this is the place he took his life. It is now a parking garage for an apartment complex with a small sign saying what it once was because the Germans don’t want a place for Neo-Nazis to honor him. His remains have been burned and scattered. Humboldt University is an internationally ranked university with alumni like Karl Marx, W.E.B Du Bois, Angela Davis, and 40 Nobel Prize winners. I visited the Holocaust Memorial Museum on my own.

For the concentration camp, Sachsenhausen was significant in its day because just 50 minutes by train from Berlin, it is closest to the capital. It was mostly a camp for POWs but other prisoners stayed here as well. After WWII, it was used a Soviet Prison where thousands more were killed here. The tour to the concentration camp was intense. I was thinking how strange it was to be in such a place where such evil acts occurred, it was built for horrible things. I won’t get into the details as much as I could. It was a 6 hour tour. So by the end, this being the day after the 3 hour walking tour, my legs were absolutely exhausted. It was cold (the weather was very cold my whole time in Berlin, though). It was -4 degrees Celsius, 24 degrees Fahrenheit. It was also raining during part of the tour. I think this part made me really think about the cruelty of this place all the more because we were bundled up in our warmest gear and shivering and these prisoners were forced to work backbreaking work outside for hours on end and live in wooden barracks when the SS soldiers had nice, warm houses to live in that THEY BUILT for them wearing only pajamas. When I say my warmest gear, that means two pairs of paints, boots lined with fur, a long sleeved shirt, a jacket lined with fur, ear muffs, a hood, fur lined gloves. Many of the wooden barracks have deteriorated over time. 

This camp was to be used as a labor camp but people were also murdered here. We viewed where they lived and worked. Many of the stone structures are still intact. 

The guide thanked us for being a part of a group of so many people who take time out of their vacations to come to this place and remember the people that were here. When I told someone I went to the camp, they said, “I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t want to be sad on vacation.” Which is true. And that struck me, why do we go? Why do any of us go to these memorials? I thought about that a little bit. I feel that if it were me, I’d want someone to remember me. I feel on another level, it’s as they say, it’s so we never repeat it. But am I the type of person that would repeat this, personally orchestrating it or be complacent in such a thing? No. But could I like so many others be tempted to be complacent in the face of challenges? I suppose the answer is yes and experiences like this deepen our strength to fight that and not just refusing to be complacent when it comes to full scale genocide but hate speech, people that engage in hate speech *thinking of a certain political figure now.*

 The sad thing is that genocide has continued in Rwanda, Darfur, and the refugee crisis in Syria. I don’t know if the terminology of genocide is fitting for Syria politically because I don’t believe the people are being killed systematically but becoming pawns in war with their human rights being ignored. But there is a commonality in both cases: Jewish refugees tried to leave and were denied just like the Syrian refugees are being denied. Here, I learned about the Evian Conference, with leaders present from countries like the U.S, Great Britain, France, and Australia in attendance. Hitler offered to let the Jews leave and these countries in large part refused. Their countries were suffering hard economic times, it was too many people, it would cause too much racial divide, etc. 

Hitler said, "I can only hope and expect that the other world, which has such deep sympathy for these criminals Jews, will at least be generous enough to convert this sympathy into practical aid. We, on our part, are ready to put all these criminals at the disposal of these countries, for all I care, even on luxury ships.”

That’s not a political sway or me sweeping problems that can arise with mass immigration under the rug but me stating the obvious, when good people stand by and do nothing, people die. It’s cold and hard and it’s difficult to say but nevertheless true. An estimated 6 million Jews and estimated 13.9 million people died because Western countries didn’t have enough room. In the past four years, an estimated 400,000 people have died since 2011 in Syria.

But on a brighter side, which we should get to, Berlin and the country of Germany are more than the atrocities that occurred here. Roughly 70% of Berlin was completely destroyed from the war so that means it had to be rebuilt. That means many parts of the cities are quite new. It’s always nice when things are built new but another benefit is that only recently has Berlin been a popular city to live in where other cities like London and Paris have had desirable real estate for quite some time. As a result, it is more affordable than other cities so many artists from all across Europe come to Berlin because they can live here, have a part time job, and devote the rest of the time to art where in other cities, a part time job is not enough to sustain one self. The city has amazing art which I saw on the Alternative Tour of Berlin. 

Germany still has some of the best universities in the world like Homboldt. They also have free college education. (*Winks at the U.S government*) Another cool thing about Berlin is that it’s one of the best party cities in Europe. This is what I read, I was just coming off partying with great friends and had moved on to a city that was much colder, by myself, and I was beginning to get to the point where I was tired of all that. You must remember at this point, I’ve been traveling alone almost a month, partying, walking hours a day, sleeping on bunkbeds every night, and it is freezing in Berlin! I’m sure if you head to Berlin with some of friends (try to get there in the Summer because of the weather), I’m sure you’ll have a great time. 

Final point, the Berlin Wall, once a symbol of oppression - parts of it still remained and there’s street art and commissioned murals on the wall (the East Gallery) and it’s really amazing to look at. I think it’s a testimony to what Berlin is. This is a place where for decades, people were trying to flee. It has risen beyond that and reinvented itself in such a way that people are running to come back. The latest tourism data from 2013 reported that Berlin saw 11.6 million tourists. And I’m happy that I was one even if not during the most perfect circumstances.