#i'm taking indigenous literature and it's fascinating

[scribblingwhalegirl]

Memories of a Woodland Spectre

Ah, good to see you! Come on in, sit down.

I apologize for the mess; been busy, you know how it is.

Can I get you anything to drink? I've just opened this bottle of scotch. Grandpa loves it!

Listen, I wanted to tell you a story, if you'd like.

I was walking out in the forest where the trees wrap their branches around me, on my way to my thinking rock.

This time of year there's no footprints, at least not from people, and everything's covered in snow, so I'm just trying to find the way on pure intuition. So I pass by this blue spruce with kind of a funny whoville top so I know I'm going the right way, and that's when I see these two bears, and you're going to think I'm out of my tree but I swear to whatever god is around here,

I could hear them.

There was a big one and a little one, and the big one spoke, and the little one listened and nodded, and I froze in my tracks.

These big, majestic, frankly terrifying creatures were right there, and I'm not about to try to speak bear, so I sat down and listened too, because I was there to think anyway and I might as well have something to think about.

The big bear talked about some travellers that came in a big metal box full of metal boxes, all of which spoke languages older than the hills. When she talked about being observed by them, I felt a little guilty- she said they followed her wherever she went, watched what she ate, who she met, and never once even tried to understand her. They could have just asked, of course!

Then she mentioned a little girl who came and talked to her a few years ago.

The girl had explained that those were scientists, and the little bear asked what that was, and the big bear explained that scientists are people who really want to know everything. The little bear asked wouldn't that be boring, and the big one agreed, but she said it was okay because they never knew what she was like anyway. They didn't know how to fish without a metal box, they didn't know how to talk without a box, they even slept in boxes full of sorted groups of each other.

It sounded like the scientists just want to put things in boxes, the little bear said, and I laughed because he didn't know how right he was.

So back to that little girl. The way the bear told it, the little girl explained that not all people are scientists, and some people really like and trust them but some people don't. And she said her dad was a scientist who really liked nature, and she really liked nature too, but she thought the scientists didn't understand.

And the big bear didn't speak human but she listened and listened. Every day the girl would find the bear, and every day the bear would listen, and the girl would say I like you, you're a good friend, and the big bear would reply. I couldn’t understand the word she used, but it was sort of a knowing, patient growl. 

They played and talked and looked at the clouds and the girl and the bear got older, loved, tried new things, told stories, knew each other.               

The little bear had a hundred questions on his face but only asked a careful one: what happened to the girl?

The answer was that one day, the girl came and painted the big bear, and the bear was a good model, and the painting looked beautiful.

She didn't need a box to make art, she didn't even need every colour. She could make colours by mixing the dirt from the forest with the sparkle in her eyes.

After that, she thanked the bear and disappeared for a while. When she came back, she looked sick. Her body was healthy, but her eyes were dark.

I promised, the big bear said, to keep secret what she told me. So I won't disrespect her. But the last thing the girl said in this version of the story was that there will never be a box that could fit either of them.

The big bear said this was good advice, but she wasn't a scientist and she didn't need boxes anyway, so she wasn't really sure what that meant.

The little bear simply looked thoughtfully.

With that, the bears disappeared into the snowy brush.

I never made it to my thinking rock that day. I went home, because I had too much to think about.

Never did fully make sense of it all.

I didn't expect you to have any idea either, don't worry.

You're an artist now, aren't you? Much better line of work than the old neighbours, I don't know what they did but they were so damn loud...

Anyhow, it's nice to see your family back around here, we missed y’all.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, I love that tattoo on your arm. Tell me the story behind those three stars in a row?

[fandomshatepeopleofcolor]

As an Indonesian (who's country was colonized by Imperial Japanese) can I still enjoy Japanese media? The last question is unrelated but does discrimination that overseas Japanese people "worth it" since what their nation has done in the past?

So I don't really understand the second part of the question here?

but for the first part it's time for a story!!!

ok so I'm mestiza latina right? specifically mexican american. and like my mom insisted I take spanish in highschool and I really fell in love with the literature of Mexico and Spain. HOWEVER. and like we did learn about pre colombian era somewhat and I was fascinated by everything in the history of mexico, central and south america.

but I don't think it really registered until like college when I was taking anthropology courses that the spanish (and the english) basically made it so I don't know what my indigenous ancestors lives were like. like the majority was just erased. and unless you're from like the yucatan peninsula or one of the pockets of surviving indigenous tribes in mexico the best you can hope for in terms of proof of being mixed (mestizo) is your ancestry dna test. because my culture the culture I grew up with was very much a mixture of like spanish and what little survived of the indigenous cultures. but lots of people don't think of mexico as a former colony because they won their independence from spain 200 years ago. but like yeah we're survivors of genocide and often (like literally with me) we don't know anything about our indigenous ancestors unless we go and pay for a college education.

so yeah I grew up learning about spanish history the colonizers of mexico and english settlers the colonizers of USA but I don't know anything about its indigenous inhabitants until college.

and like yeah I still watch like period dramas of like europe 200 years ago (sanditon) and I love Jane Austen but theres sort of cognitive dissonance that the reason that England was so wealthy at that time was because they were reaping the spoils of conquest in the colonies.

all this to say that yes you can like whatever you want but at some point you have to acknowledge that the culture of the colonizers that did your people harm is more beloved globally than your own indigenous culture which has been erased by the colonizers.... its bullshit. but hey that's post colonialism for you.

mod ali

[pennyserenade]

this is my essay on the rapture if you were ever interested in reading <33 one of my top 4 movies of all time!!

first off mikaela, i just want to say this to you: you are delightfully big brained, and its a treasure to be able to walk through a movie this brilliant with you. you have a fantastic knack for analysis (one that i envy and i hope all of your english teachers complimented you on), with an eloquence that makes you an easy voice to follow.

secondly, i just want to say: you really captured what drew me to this movie, and described it beautifully along the way. this paragraph especially:

Where The Rapture thrives is in its dichotomous approach to religion as both maniacal desperation and delicate salve, as something that harms and something that you just can’t help but cling to. When talk of being called to Heaven began, it was in visions of rivers and pearls. At its culmination, it’s in inability to cope with grief, about wanting to see a loved one that’s been lost. By the time Sharon stands in a tent with her dirty and starving baby girl, jumping at any sound, waiting to be called to God, you start to feel she might’ve been better off taking her chances with the heroin.

i'm an english major, but on my way to getting that degree i've taken a fair share of religious classes too. it fascinates to me learn about religion as someone who was once really good friends with it, and now feels sorta at odds with it at all times. one of the classes i most enjoyed taking posited the idea that religion, along with all things, is a complex organization, neither completely good or completely bad as a whole. we had an entire unit on the benefits of organized religion -- how it offered a sense family, and a sense belonging to immigrants when they came to america; how it played into the civil rights movement; how it put women in novel positions of power (allowing them to organize events before they were allowed their own bank accounts). other classes i took, like latin american history and native american literature, showed the ways that religion allows for preservation of native cultures, even as they are being threatened. catholicism in mexico is saint-heavy and the religious holidays align with indigenous ones, because the indigenous people refused to commit to a religion that resembled nothing they understood to be true. the catholic priests had to adapt and now mexican catholicism is a blend of what was and what came to be. in america, there's so many different strands of catholicism, each a little different, because people who came from ireland and people who came from italy both needed something different, something wholly familiar.

what i'm trying to get at, and what you probably already know is: religion can be great. it can be visions of rivers and pearls - a delicate salve, as you put it - but it can also be horrid, desperate, needy. the rapture does a good job at representing this, and its probably why i like it so much. i haven't honestly sat down and collected all my thoughts on this film before today. i watched it late one night and have continued to be haunted by it, but until reading your essay i never really pinpointed why it has followed me like it has. i think the paragraph before your concluding one offers me up an explanation:

In the end, having given up her daughter out of hope in God, it’s that very loss that breaks the faith that Sharon has filled her emptiness with. Tolkin could have grounded his theme in Sharon’s theological accuracy, and told a story about a woman who was resolute in her convictions, and rewarded with being correct. Instead, he leaves the audience with something much more resonant, and cruel: what if you were right, and it didn’t matter?

what if you were right, and it didn't matter? i think this is a fear that follows both those who follow the church of god and those who subscribe to nothing at all, and maybe that's why its such a terrible gut punch. what happens when do everything you were meant to do, and you come to the other side and find it all doesn't matter? its a terrible, daunting notion that has been stuck in my throat until today, when i read this.

thank you so much for sitting down and writing this essay, and also for taking the time to send it to me. it was a delight to read and i'm so happy to find someone else who enjoys this movie as much as a i do.