#in what seems sometimes to me to be an inherently miserable condition but

[countess-of-edessa]

i kind of understand why ancients thought that women were just defective men. it kind of sucks tbh

[daistea]

(I'm still on the chair on your lawn or whatever. But I have a beer now and maybe a cigarette (I don't smoke, though)).

Y'know, it's kinda weird because this is maybe the most I've felt connected to a character, so when I see these wrong-bad takes on him, it's oddly like... This doesn't upset me. Yet, anyway. Like. I guess eventually one could? (I take a drag of the cigarette and cough terribly. I drink the beer and make it worse, momentarily, and then continue like nothing happened). There could always just be a shitty take that's like, "Man, what the fuck". But it's just mostly felt like, "Yeah, they don't know him like I do." It's weird how secure the source material makes me feel about it all, too. It treats him with such respect and clearly sees him as key to it despite the way his own feelings can be portrayed. It's just like. Yeah. Infantilization. It happens. Sometimes people call him dumb and I don't feel the love in it. And it's like, well, that's miserable, but it's very obvious when the interpretation is wrong. This isn't a person who really knows anything about the character in terms of his condition or anything. It's just got me raising my eyebrows and looking at them strangely. Feels oddly secure. Always feels secure when I like some guy, but sometimes the takes on other characters bother me because I feel like "This is coming from inside the house". I just don't feel that, here. Like. Ah, whatever, you like him. But? Does He Know? You know. (I laugh a little and lean back in my plastic lawn chair. It looks perhaps like it might fall over). Like this is strange. This is weird. I don't feel like they know. There are people who call him a dying dog. They've said he's prettier before the demon, anyway. And that's just tasteless stuff. This can't be coming from someone who actually likes the guy, right? (I sit upright again and cross my legs.) It's. Weird. Like, this is self-shipping, I guess? That I'm doing over here. Maybe I feel more open about it. His attitude canonically helps me. Feels... Secure. It's comforting by nature of being very similar. Where usually things that would annoy me just... exist. Though it is astounding when someone calls him ugly. But I see them and it's just. Easy to realize. Like, God. You don't know anything, do you? (I lean forward to put the beer on the ground and sigh, resting my elbow on my knees, my chin on my palm, seeming far off). It doesn't seem like people get it, not outside of these little insular corners. I don't really know why it doesn't bother me as much. It doesn't feel like they care. It doesn't feel like it matters. Oddly enough. I can't really figure it out.

God. (I pick up my drink and shake my head, righting myself to take a sip). I don't know. I had. Honestly, kind of a horrible day yesterday. Sometimes, it's hard not to care. And to feel secure. But here, it's like...? I don't know. I know my thoughts. I know how I feel. I know why I like him. I know what I want. And the character of Mithrun makes things just feel inherently clearer. Simpler, for me. Because of autism and ADHD and disability. They don't know what it's like, I think. And it ends up being okay if people don't know. But I don't even register it. Don't really respect it. And there are several people who do know. So does it matter if a few more are wrong?

I don't know, I guess. I don't really even feel like a whole person right now. I kind of got burnt out and I thought it'd go away if I slept. And I was so exhausted, anyway. But it just. Ugh. (I kick out my leg, aggressively fidgeting, and the flimsy chair falls. I use it as an excuse to stare up at the sky). Rough.

Of course, this is all somewhat relevant to me. My day. You know, someone called him cruel for how he treated Thistle, the way he talked to him, what he said, and I couldn't even see it until I re-read. I like to think I'm realistic, but? That registered to me as him trying to help. And I still see it. Maybe he was trying to hurt, too. Maybe he's all tied up not knowing what he wants. Feelings he can't quite feel. But I see the scrambling and the struggling. Self-sabotage. It's like. You can't help yourself. It's the art exhibition of the robot in a glass box, always cleaning and always bleeding. Like sometimes you're a knife but sometimes you're the open wound. I'm. I feel like. Sometimes I can't help myself. No matter how hard I try. I see that there. And I see the trying, the need for control, the wanting. Always because you want to. Gotta be that way. Sometimes it feels like I understand too much because of my life...

Love the guy. But it can hurt to look at him.

how long have you been on my lawn? It’s hot outside. Do you want to come inside the house?

Anyway

Yeah

I agree with everything so this gets a big Yeah

I get annoyed at the fandom because I’m a dick, but I also understand that that’s the nature of fandom. In the end I just block and mute very freely ⛓️‍💥

I hope you’re doing better today, I’m always here if you need to talk 💕

[olderthannetfic]

I wanted to ask you about radical feminism (TERF-ism & TIRF-ism). Radical feminism never seemed to be *necessarily* some of the really bad things that people on this blog say it is. For instance, everything roach-works says it is in an earlier post. There are at least some people I've read who are part of the movement of radical feminism (whether or not they would self-identify as that) and who really don't espouse any of the views in roach-works comments. (1/2) Thinking of the list of points

--

From nothorses - the people I’ve read (e.g. Iris Marion Young) *do* espouse many of these, but not so in a way that has to lead to these more extreme views that roach-works mentioned. One may not agree with them but they don’t seem so bad to me? Are they? Am I a terrible person? It disturbs me to hear something with the word 'feminism' in it denigrated so harshly, and it always seems to me like the views get mixed up with the worst half of the people who believe in them. (2/2)

(Appendix...) I feel there's a lot of truth in SOME of the views that nothorses correctly ascribes (i. m. o.) to radical feminists, in particular: "Women are all miserable with their bodies, cursed with the pressure to reproduce and have sex with men. ... miserable with their genders, forced as they are to ensure the overwhelming and constant suffering that is patriarchy." Is it just that the "all" makes the views too strong? Or is there, for critics, a more fundamental problem I'm missing?

I've seen some much nicer, saner people self-describe as radical feminists and object strenuously to how I see radfems... However, all of them still kept talking about porn in terms that only make sense if you're talking about the evils of the mainstream industry, and moreso the mainstream industry of the 1970s (which is when a lot of this rhetoric comes from). And yet this attitude gets over-applied to porn in general, regardless of medium, working conditions, or level of economic necessity involved in its creation.

The attitudes I think are pretty much universal in this ideology, and universally shitty, come out when they're confronted with fsub content by and for women.

Yeah, yeah, "mommy porn". I'm not saying Fifty Shades of Grey is well written or not kind of embarrassing, but when people start bleating about how confused womenfolk will get bad ideas from it, you should be suspicious, whether they're radfems or fundies.

"The hot billionaire falls in love with me for no reason and does all the work to make sex hot while I lie there like a dead fish" is a common fantasy. It really doesn't say anything about the woman in question, nor does it make the patriarchy stronger.

The big one to look for from nothorses list is #5:

Sex, in particular, is more often exploitative than not. Only some kinds of sex are not exploitative. Many kinds of sex that we think are consensual, or that people say are consensual, are either rape or proto-rape.

This is saying "BDSM is rape", which is something that most radfems do think once you scratch the surface. Rape roleplay is also rape and furthering the patriarchy.

Even if they make some small allowance for informed adults doing BDSM in some strict environment with specific rules, show them 50SoG and women's right to choose goes out the window. Sure, the relationship in the book looks pretty unhealthy, at least at the beginning, but the thing being criticized is readers' right to choose.

Even the radfems who support butchness and don't think butch women are gender traitors will usually be assholes over trashy wank material like 50SoG.

And once you open the door to "your libido is political", you've started down a very dark road that leads to a bunch of naturally kinky tumblr teens sitting in their bedrooms, staring at their computer screens, and wondering if they're a future rapist because they like a/b/o or sex pollen or something.

--

I get where you're coming from. Maybe you're in a context where most women are pretty miserable. But I'm not. I was raised by a mother who thought diets were stupid and telling your daughter what you think of her body is active child abuse.

Being a victim of abuse, including "you're too fat" type abuse, is neither inherent nor unique to women. Sure, women tend to be under the microscope, but so are lots of people.

As an upper middle class anglo white woman in the US and moreover as a woman who looks fairly conventionally femme even with my very hairy legs (much to my annoyance), I honestly don't experience that much policing. I already, through no fault and certainly no merit of my own, conform reasonably well to the "neutral" standard of white womanhood. My male equivalent would be the most unmarked in the US, but I'm only a little marked.

What this gender-obsessed analysis misses is that it's not about womanhood: it's about failing to be the "neutral" default. Poor people fail. Black people fail. Asian people fail. Disabled people fail. At least in the US. In Japan, third generation Korean-Japanese fail. Burakumin fail despite being ethnically Japanese due to having been a separate caste for centuries.

"Intersectionality" on social media tends to get used as miserypoker: the speaker with the most listed oppressions wins the argument and you should signal boost them or you're a bad person.

In actuality, what intersectionality means is recognizing that gender and sex may sometimes just not be very important in a given person's life if they experience enough privilege or if, conversely, they have such a profound lack of privilege elsewhere that this other identity overshadows gender in terms of their lived experience.

Radfem ideology says I must prioritize Woman out of my many identities. But, in reality, I feel more kinship with bisexual men than with lesbian women. I feel more kinship with kinky straight people than with bisexuals who want AO3 and pride parades to be nothing but g-rated hand holding.

--

I get that it's upsetting for people to be railing against something called "feminism", but that's like saying that disliking the Jews for Jesus makes you antisemitic. The whole point is that a lot of people feel that radical feminism is pretty anti-woman in many of its core values.

I don't think you're a bad person. I do think that some of the underpinnings of radfem ideology lead directly to sensitive people who are concerned about such things wondering if they are.

[pastelwitchling]

               Michael never wanted to wake up.

               The night had had a miserable beginning. Michael had been tossing and turning for the better part of three hours, had gone down into his bunker for the next two, but no matter what he did, the image of Alex lying unconscious haunted him and made his fingers tremble.

               Their last confrontation with Mr. Jones had left them little more than bruised, but the image of Alex lying there, limp and unresponsive, made him antsy. In the end, his thoughts were too overwhelming, and he found himself pulling up into Alex’s driveway.

               Michael tapped his thumb against the steering wheel. He shouldn’t have been there, he shouldn’t have come to bother an already restless airman, especially after having just healed. But his jaw was still clenched and his bones were vibrating, and if he didn’t see Alex soon, his mind would implode.

               He stepped out of his truck, exhaling slowly. He raised his fist to knock on the front door, and paused. What if Alex really was asleep? What if Michael knocked and woke him up just to make sure that he was still alive, and then he had trouble going back to sleep? What if he was still healing, and Michael dragging him to the door slowed that down?

               Michael pursed his lips. If he let himself in, he could check on Alex himself without the risk of bothering him. Keeping that thought in mind, the desire to see Alex breathing and resting safe so strong it nearly swallowed his heart and left a gaping hole in his chest, Michael undid the lock and silently swung the door open.

               He was careful not to make a sound as he walked the dark hallway. He was just starting to wonder whether or not he remembered where Alex’s bedroom was when he came upon the scene in the wide living room, and he stopped.

               There, nestled in a bunch of blankets on the carpet in front of the lit fireplace, was Alex. His back was to the door, so Michael assumed he’d turned over in his sleep. He wore a thick black hoodie, his face half-turned into his pillow, his cheeks red.

               Michael stared, feeling like his heart had lodged somewhere in his throat. First thing was first, Michael’s eyes fell to Alex’s chest, and he sighed with relief as it rose and fell with every deep breath he took. Alex’s brows weren’t furrowed in pain, his lips weren’t turned in a discomforted frown, and his body was, for once, not tense and awaiting an attack. He was safe, at peace. So warm and comfy that Michael’s legs moved him forward of their own accord. He didn’t stop until his boots were just in front of the heavy duvet.

               Michael could hear his own breathing in his ears, and before he realized what he was doing, he toed off his boots, took off his black hat, and laid down next to Alex. He bit his lower lip hard enough to bleed as he pressed his chest to Alex’s back, putting a hand on his waist.

               “Mmh?” Alex stirred, already alert and moving to sit up. When he saw Michael, he narrowed his eyes. “Guerin?”

               Michael felt like his cheeks were on fire. When he spoke, his voice was quiet and timid to his own ears. “I – I couldn’t sleep.” I wanted to check on you, he tried to say and couldn’t. I was worried.

               But, as he always managed to do, Alex heard the truth in Michael’s words and his shoulders fell. Michael’s hand was still on Alex’s waist, and his grip tightened on his hoodie. He didn’t want to be asked to go, to be reassured that Alex was okay only to leave him again.

               Alex must’ve been too tired to say anything about it though because he covered Michael’s hand on his waist with his own as if in silent assurance, and turned back around, laying down in his blankets. Michael hesitated before he laid down, too. When Alex didn’t tense up or send him away, Michael dared to wrap an arm around his waist and pull him in unbearably close. He pressed his nose against the back of Alex’s head, inhaling his vanilla scent.

               He exhaled deeply, feeling all the tension that had been building up since the attack fade away with the light crackle of the flames and Alex’s soft breathing.

               He was sure he wasn’t very comfortable to sleep against. He was still wearing his jeans and jacket, and he’d been working out tirelessly in the sun all day, trying to distract himself from Alex’s condition. But if Alex had any complaints, he wasn’t saying.

               In fact, at one point, just as Michael was beginning to drift off himself, Alex turned in his hold and nuzzled Michael’s neck, slipping a hand under his jacket to wrap around his own waist. Michael’s heart hammered in his chest as Alex breathed against him, his lips against Michael’s collarbone, Michael’s own lips against his soft hair. Michael thought he might die with the warmth of Alex’s body against his own, holding onto him as if he was the world’s most comfortable pillow.

               Then –

               “You smell so good,” Alex murmured, the sound as faint as a kitten purring.

               Michael swallowed, at a loss. He’d been mocked and scolded and occasionally insulted for the way he smelled, even by people he’d wanted to impress. Dirt and grease and bourbon. He’d always shrugged or laughed it off like it never bothered him. And for the most part, it didn’t. But sometimes, when his muscles ached from having been stuck under a hood most of the day, or his temples throbbed from having stared at calculations and projections and star alignments in his bunker for the entire night, the constant jabs stung a little. He was different, he was dirty, he was separate from everyone else. There was always something to point out, even his scent. But Alex . . . Alex never talked about him like he smelled, like he was stupid – like he belonged on the outside. Alex always talked to him like he was desperately trying to hold onto him, to keep him close. Like the grease and bourbon and rain was something so inherently Michael, so inherently wonderful and worth taking note of.

               You belong with me, he always seemed to be saying, even in his disappointment whenever Michael couldn’t believe it himself. Don’t you want to belong with me?

               And Michael did. More than anything. Through everything, it was the one thing he’d always wanted.

               He wrapped his arms more tightly around Alex, holding him closer. “Yeah?” he whispered.

               “Mm hm,” Alex hummed, curling in deeper against Michael as if trying to take in as much of him as possible, eager and wanting and loving. Michael ran a hand up Alex’s spine, and was rewarded with a faint whimper. He used his powers to raise the blanket to Alex’s shoulders, keeping him warm.

Ever since he’d met Alex, he’d had this protective instinct that he hadn’t experienced with anyone else. It was consuming, it made his heart race, and if it meant getting to have Alex like this, then he wouldn’t have traded it for anything.

               Michael’s eyes fluttered shut as he held Alex in his arms, the gold light and crackle of the flames their only companion in the darkness, and he fell asleep.

***

This is something that’s come up quite a bit, and I just wanted to post something very fluffy and loving about it because Guerin and Vlamis are beautiful. Listen to Tyler, Vlamis. You smell good.

[ichika27]

Mairimashita! Iruma-kun s2 ep 3

Another episode of Iruma-kun! I nearly forgot this was today cause I was so excited due to this week’s TWEWY episode. hehe

Ameri suddenly changed personality. They call this “maiden mode” and it’s really strange seeing her like this.

The poor student council is not only worried about her but are also having trouble with their jobs cause their leader isn’t herself. They also gotta do her share of the work cause she couldn’t in this condition.

I was debating on which one I’d use as this post’s cover photo but thought this’d be spoiler so I decided not to use this.

She looks so cute here but this is also worrisome. Like watching a child be given important work they shouldn’t be touching with a 10-foot pole lol. She’s slow and is too chill but the others can’t really complain since they understand why she’s this way.

We finally meet the culprit, it seems. Introducing the new character: Ronove Lomiere!

He’s loud and almost always sounds like he comes with his own mic (and sometimes, his voice echoes lol). He even comes with his own introductory song (which is pretty catchy, not gonna lie). He also hates being touched by guys. He annoys the other student council members and proclaims he’ll take over as Student Council President since obviously, Ameri isn’t fit to get the role currently.

He then challenges them to a Dissolution Election - a duel that can’t be rejected wherein they could hold an election to take down the current president and vote on a replacement.

Meanwhile, Iruma’s grandpa misses him. It’s been so long since the boy had been home.

This guy has the power to get people’s attention via his charisma and is now campaigning to get everyone’s votes. While he admits not really knowing what to do, he promises everyone that he’d make things interesting and fun and it seems to be good enough.

This is in contrast to poor Ameri whose having trouble with her speech.

Clara is asleep after having caused chaos in the game battler. At least she’s having fun unlike Asmodeus whose miserable without Iruma lol. Iruma calls on the two to ask for help.

Ali-san makes another appearance today to give a little lesson on magic and how there are attacks that won’t work on an individual based on something they inherently have. He says the curse on Ameri seems to be weakening but something inside her is making it hard for her to fully recover.

Hmm... what’s this? Is she actually back or...?

--

Elections next week! I find the new character entertaining, honestly. I thought I’d hate him but he’s just so fun to watch even though he’s also annoying haha. I wonder what would happen next episode? I guess we’d find out once it comes out!

By the way, I’m getting used to the new OP. It’s as catchy as the first one! Also, I just found out the ED is sung by Amatsuki which makes me happy for some reason. I really enjoyed some of his cover songs and he has a good voice! I’m happy to be hearing him sing an anime song.

[mariecuttlefish]

Stay Warm/Stay Here [3k words, OCxOC fluff]

A recently-finished writing commission for @kibbulation​! Vague spoilers for their series, Mint Condition [AO3 link], as this takes place around a decade after Piperidine and Lone Pair.

External links: [Google Docs], [AO3]

Warnings: None. Appropriate for all ages.

Description: After the house's heating breaks during a cold winter day, Hatchet is struggling to stay warm. Pascal is more than happy to help solve the problem.

—–

Tick.

Tack.

Tick.

Tack.

Hatchet stared up at the ceiling. The book she had just put down laid flat on her chest, nestled into the folds of the blanket pile she'd buried herself in. It was a good read, and she still had a bit to go before it was done, but after dedicating the past few hours to it her eyes had started to strain. Now she was back to being just as bored as hours prior, struggling to think of and not terribly interested in doing anything better than laying there and trying to stay warm. With a grumble, she pulled the heaviest blanket further over her and nuzzled into the pillow propped against the arm of the couch.

The house's heating had given out early that morning. It was an outage that wouldn't be fixed until tomorrow, no doubt due to the number of other homes facing the same problem in the dead of a bitter winter, and as such the building had been unbearably cold since just before breakfast. Nattie, thankfully, wasn't present to suffer through the freeze - she'd been at a friend's house for a sleepover and had gotten permission to stay there an extra day - but while Hatchet was better equipped to handle the chill than a teenager, that didn't make it any less miserable to endure. Most of her afternoon had been spent there on the couch, trying to pass the time as well as she could while keeping movement to a minimum. Having by now grown tired of both random novels and rerun episodes of her favorite detective series, she found her options to be quickly depleting.

Tick.

Tack.

Tick.

Pascal sat at a small table across the room, tinkering away with an old clock they had been asked to repair. Normally all their mechanic work was kept to its own space in the house's spare room, but some time ago Hatchet had helped them clear a corner of the living room as a place for smaller jobs so that they could spend their time around others instead of being holed up all day. The space had seen regular use ever since, and the quiet shuffles and clicks of them fiddling with whatever device landed in their hands on a given day was something familiar to Hatchet by now. It was a comfort of sorts, even if she hesitated to admit it; Pascal worked quietly enough to be unobtrusive, and the noise provided a consistent reminder of comfort, that one of the people Hatchet cared most about was right by her side and happily so.

Hatchet turned her head to look over at Pascal, watching their back as they worked with silent dedication. She wondered how it was possible for them to stay so focused with only a light sweater and shawl to keep them warm. After only a brief venture into the cold to check the mail and put out garbage it had been a relief for Hatchet to come back inside and gather up every blanket she could possibly stand to lay under, but Pascal could withstand the cold that made her shiver any time she was forced to reach out of her cloth cocoon to grab something. Maybe, Hatchet thought, that was just an inherent benefit of being as tall and bulky as they were.

She wanted to enjoy some of that natural warmth too.

Tack.

Tick.

Tack.

"Pascal," Hatchet said, trying not to sound grumpy despite her temperature-fueled frustration. Pascal looked up from their table and turned to face her, remembering to stretch now that they were pulled away from their work.

What's up? they signed. Do you need me to get anything for you? 

Normally Hatchet tried to sign back to them when they were the only two in a conversation, or at least to sign along with her speech - it helped to keep her knowledge of the language from slipping - but it took minimal thinking to know that pulling her arms out from under the covers was not worth the effort it would take. "These blankets still aren't keeping me warm enough," she said plainly. "You look warmer than me. Come over here."

A tiny part of her brain kicked itself for being so blunt about it. Even after something like a decade of living together and months of being "a couple", whatever that meant to her, Hatchet still had difficulty when it came to outwardly expressing affection. Pascal, to their credit, seemed to understand the invitation perfectly well despite this; their expression lit up as soon as the words were out of Hatchet's mouth and, without hesitation, they set their repair tools down and stood to come join her on the couch.

The two danced the brief and awkward dance of trying to let Pascal get comfortable without completely sacrificing the coziness Hatchet had already attained. It took a few moments of shuffling about and settling in before they managed to find a satisfying arrangement, Hatchet curled up in Pascal's lap with the blankets wrapped around both of them while Pascal rested their head on the couch's back. Just as expected, the extra body heat was infinitely more pleasant than the lukewarm couch cushions. Hatchet couldn't help but try to get closer, wrapping her arms around Pascal as though she was worried about being pulled away.

Pascal was, unsurprisingly, delighted by this; glancing up, Hatchet saw a broad smile draw across their face as they draped their arms around her. For the most part Hatchet's friends had always been much better with physical affection than she was, but Pascal above all had always loved any opportunity to be cuddly with her - even long before the two of them started dating, which had made it that much more difficult for her to tell how her roommate felt about her. Looking back, she couldn't help but wonder how much of the closeness Pascal had displayed over the time since their first meeting was just in their nature and how much of it was spurred by that crush they had apparently been harboring for years. Whatever the answer, it did mean Hatchet could simply say the word and be near-instantly surrounded by warmth and affection, so she wasn't exactly going to complain about it.

She did sometimes wish, though, that she could be better at reciprocating that affection. Silly as it was to think that there was a way to be better at something like cuddling when all it involved was laying still with another person, Hatchet was still new to the idea of being in a romantic relationship and couldn't help but worry about whether she was doing things the right way. Pascal never seemed put off by the difficulty she had with initiating things and always respected when she wasn't quite in the mood for closeness, but would that be fine forever? Would things start to sour if the "honeymoon phase" ended and they realized she was still returning the love they gave more than she was offering her own?

No, she thought, all it took was one look at the way Pascal smiled every time she looked at them to know that they would never hold that against her. Despite how different her personality seemed from nearly everyone around her, there was no denying the patient, understanding love in her partner's eyes every time their gazes met. She shifted a bit in their arms to get more comfortable and they gently rubbed her shoulder in turn, instantly erasing the fears they likely had no clue she was even thinking of.

Laying still with another person, just enjoying their closeness... maybe that was exactly it. If Pascal's favorite way to show their fondness was through giving physical affection, maybe Hatchet's was simply allowing herself to receive it. After all, a decade ago the mere thought of being this close to someone would have repelled her, would have made her bristle and growl at them to back off, and even after years of being surrounded by good friends and plenty of therapy to overcome her social aversion it still wasn't like she would let just anyone into her personal space, even among friends. Maybe the language her love spoke didn't have to look like everyone else's to still hold meaning and intimacy. Maybe Pascal already understood it innately, the same way they seemed to understand everything else about her so much more easily than any other could.

"...Hey," Hatchet said quietly, not so much breaking the comfortable silence between them as adding sound to it. There wasn't much Pascal could do to reply with both of their hands preoccupied holding her, but they turned their eyes down to meet hers, the comfort and love clear in the softness of their expression. Hatchet couldn't help but give a lopsided smile at the sight; there was something she wanted to say, but for a moment all she could focus on was how clearly in love Pascal was and how overwhelming it was to know that all of that feeling was directed at her. "I, uh--"

The quiet chime of their house's doorbell interjected before the words could finish stumbling out of Hatchet's mouth. She and Pascal looked to the clock on the wall in sync, both wordlessly remembering the takeout they had ordered for dinner some forty minutes ago. The voice at the back of Hatchet's mind quietly whined. But I don't want them to get up, this is cozy...

Despite her internal protest Hatchet sat up, keeping the covers close around her as Pascal rose. She was feeling hungry, after all, and with how cold the inside of the house was she definitely didn't want to be the jerk who made the delivery driver stand outside and freeze on the front porch. Pascal picked up their notebook and pencil as well as the money that had been set aside as a tip, then disappeared around the corner to the front door. Hatchet, meanwhile, slowly moved to sit on one side of the couch, making room for Pascal to sit beside her and trying to position the blankets so that they wouldn't fall off of her as soon as she moved her arms.

Not long after she heard the front door click shut and Pascal returned, the alluring smell of fresh food following them into the living room. In one hand they gripped a large takeout bag, and in the other their notebook; as they walked in they tucked the latter under their arm to offer a polite wave, a gesture a younger Hatchet likely would have deemed sappy given they had only been out of the room for a few minutes. Now, however, the first word to her mind was a bemused cute.

The meal was short and pleasant - two omelets and a shared paella dish from a local restaurant that their place was just inside the delivery range for, all mercifully kept warm enough by the takeout containers that Hatchet actually had to wait a moment to let it cool down before eating. The pair huddled up on the couch together as they dined, Hatchet leaning into Pascal's side to stay anchored to whatever warmth she could get. The internal warmth brought by the fresh food was a welcome relief, but still didn't negate the chill all around her - a fact that Pascal evidently noticed, as they casually scooted closer on the couch when a sudden draft caused her to shiver.

By the time Hatchet finished her meal (as well as a small portion Pascal offered from their omelet, which Hatchet stubbornly insisted was not too spicy for her to handle (it was)), the cold was once again becoming unbearable. The sun was beginning to set, which she knew all too well meant that the temperature was about to become even more unpleasant. "Think I might just get into bed and try to sleep before it gets even colder," she said, rising from the couch with a slow stretch to discard the empty takeout trays. She didn't feel tired so much as she just felt bored, but at least being in bed would mean not having to move when it was time to sleep.

Pascal signed a quick good-night to her as she returned to the living room to gather her blanket hoard. The sudden look of disappointment on their face was plain to see, and Hatchet didn't need to guess at what was wrong. She hesitated for just a moment before gently nudging their shoulder. "Do you... wanna come up and cuddle some more?"

Pascal nodded enthusiastically at the offer. Hatchet breathed out a half-chuckle; even though she had made it clear by now that she didn't mind affection from them, Pascal still tried not to impose on her personal space without being sure it was okay with her first. It was sweet in a way that made  her smile as she bundled up her blankets and set them in their lap. "Alright, then hold onto these."

They tilted their head. Do you want me to carry them up for you? they signed.

Yeah, Hatchet returned, both of my arms are going to be occupied. Pascal started into a curious reply but was interrupted by Hatchet leaning down to slip her arms under their knees and shoulders and scooping them off of the couch. A bright blush tinged their face as they realized her intent to carry them up to the bedroom. "Let's go, then," Hatchet said, and she couldn't help but smirk at her partner's reaction.

* * * * * * *

A short moment later Hatchet stepped into her bedroom, nudging the door shut behind her with her foot. Through the window near the bed she could see out into the street below, where a thin layer of snow had gathered with more steadily drifting down from above. Just the sight of it made her feel even colder still.

"Let's hope it doesn't snow us in overnight," she muttered, only halfway joking. She set Pascal down in the bed gently and wasted no time in joining them, curling up by their side as Pascal fumbled through laying the blankets over the both of them again. They wrapped an arm around her to keep her close, their other hand coming up to idly brush through her tentacles. Hatchet fidgeted for a moment in an effort to get comfortable, only finally settling in once the lingering cold began to give way to relaxing heat once more.

Hatchet smiled and scooted in closer until she lay halfway on top of her partner, one arm lazily draped over their torso. This was perfect: the way her head fit just so into the crook of their neck; the slow, rhythmic rise and fall of their chest accompanied by the quiet sound of their breathing; the bracing comfort of the hand on her back and the fingers slowly stroking the back of her neck... 

She sighed contentedly, nuzzling in to try and be even closer to them. Pascal smiled at this, and almost on cue the hand that was resting on the back of Hatchet's neck moved to sit just behind her ear. Of course, she thought: ever since Pascal had discovered that sensitive spot it had become their favorite weak point to target... not that she had much of a problem with that. Slowly and gently Pascal rubbed the back of her ear and Hatchet felt a low purr rumble up from the back of her throat, both her ears drooping as her entire body relaxed.

"Comfy..." she mumbled, her voice muffled by Pascal's shoulder. Pascal's only response was to keep going, happy to let Hatchet be as cozy and serene as possible.

The words Hatchet had wanted to say earlier - what she had been trying to get across before dinner's arrival had interrupted her - suddenly sprung back to mind. Pascal hadn't commented on it or asked her to continue afterward as they usually would. Had it slipped their mind? Or had they simply gathered that she was hesitant and opted not to push her?

Whatever the reason, she didn't want to let those words go unsaid. Even if it was an effort for her to make the words come out, she knew without a doubt that she meant them. No amount of uncertainty or difficulty with expressing her emotions would convince her otherwise.

"Pascal..." Hatchet slowly lifted her head from where her face was buried against the skin of their neck, realizing as she met their gaze that her eyelids were already starting to droop as well. Pascal looked at her as though they were greeting someone who had just woken up, their soft, tender smile the only thing she wanted to look at in the moment.

She tried to fight back the tingle of embarrassment she felt in her cheeks as she pushed herself to speak. "I..." Another moment of hesitation, but Pascal didn't try to urge her on. They simply continued as they had been doing, rubbing and patting her back as if to say It's okay, take your time.

Hatchet breathed in and closed her eyes for a second, shaking off the nerves that seemed to build up with every second she let pass. Squeezing Pascal in a gentle but firm hug, she finally pressed onward: "I wanted to tell you that... I love you." 

Whatever Pascal might have expected her to say, those words had a clear impact. Their blush returned, lighter but fuller this time, and the corners of their eyes welled with tiny tears. They withdrew their hand from behind her ear to give their response, short and simple: I love you too. Hatchet didn't doubt that they would be saying much more if one of their arms wasn't trapped under her at the moment, and the smile that gradually drew across her lips reflected all the things she imagined they would be saying if they could.

As significant as the interaction felt, it was over almost in an instant. Just speaking the words shouldn't have been so hard, Hatchet thought, but then, it was the sort of feeling she hadn't ever had much reason to convey before. The words meant vastly different things depending on the context; the regular "I love you"s she exchanged with Nattie were unique from the once or twice she had actually managed to say it to her friends, and this was a world apart from either. From the way Pascal responded she was sure they understood that, but neither felt the need to commemorate it with any grand show of affection or any special ceremony. That was something she liked about the phrase - it could carry some of her deepest, most difficult emotions in just a few words without any need to make a big deal out of it or spend too long explaining herself.

With no further words needed, the two returned to their comfort, Hatchet once again burying her face against Pascal and closing her eyes. Despite the cold still nipping at the back of her head, she was quickly getting comfortable to the point of drowsiness. All she could hear beyond the dampened noise of wind outside was the sound of Pascal quietly sniffling; she gave them another light squeeze to help steady their emotions, and they returned the gesture by placing their hand in hers, loosely lacing their fingers together.

"You big sap," Hatchet murmured sleepily. The gentle rumble of Pascal's chest shaking in silent laughter was the last thing to register before Hatchet drifted to sleep, warm and secure and wrapped in gentle love.

[ohwereusingourmadeupnames]

For sentence prompts: "I'll always be on your team" starker 😊

I’ll Get You Up On Your Feet

Pairing: Peter Parker/Tony Stark (Starker) Rating: General (G) Word Count: ~2.5k Notes: I’m not the biggest Noah Cyrus fan, but I thought of her song Team almost instantly. I kind of went from there - I hope you enjoy the cheeky fluffiness, nonnie! Warnings: None, it’s saccharine sweet, y’all.  Summary: 

Tony is used to the media blowing his name up. He’s dealt with it his entire life. Peter, on the other hand, is still adjusting. A nasty comment on a special picture gives Tony insight on Peter that he never had before. 

do the thing, send in all the prompts 

For the most part, Tony didn’t mind being a household name.

A lot of years, his name had a negative connotation connected with it – whether it was because of his weapons industry monopoly or the playboy portion of his notorious nickname, people turned their noses up at his name in the headlines.

His stint in the desert changed not only his perspective, but the general public’s, too. Everyone loved a good sob story, even if it came at the price of a bit of Tony’s sanity and the inherent safety he felt up until that point. Though the Iron Man suit brought him positive notoriety, Tony pursued the good he could do with it for purely selfish reasons. He survived the miserable conditions and all odds bet against him for a reason. That guided his moral compass.

Then, he met Peter Parker. At first, his interests were strictly on Spider-Man and the brilliance that Peter could create when behind the mask. Even in pajamas and pool goggles, he moved marvelously and got the job done without any hesitation. It became abundantly clear that with a good support system, the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man could easily be a hero that the world needed.

Try as he might, Tony did not possess the strength to keep Peter away from the dangerous situations. Besides the fact that they needed the skill and intelligence he possessed, Tony was acutely aware of the truth that Peter did belong amongst them and his youth was not an exclusionary criterion. It couldn’t be – not when Peter understood what it was like to carry the world on his shoulders.

After Thanos, there wasn’t denying anyone’s worth – the entirety of the Avenger’s collective put everything they had into the plan, execution, and inevitable defeat of the biggest foe the world took on to date. From that point on, there was no point in trying to deny anything – especially when it came to Peter. The boy he met in the small apartment in Queens was no longer the youth Tony forced himself to categorize him as. It was easier to think of him as a kid than admit that so many things he saw in Peter were exactly what he was looking for.

Even though the realization came, Tony still felt a little hesitant. He offered Peter a position in his lab that equated to something full time in R&D while he went to school, so they were always around each other. There seemed to always be a power balance between them – one that, when the media got a whiff of, would be the highlight of the story; not the relationship that Tony knew they could have. Though, the more he thought about it, the easier it was to see that any relationship with Peter would be scrutinized – their history together was too deep.

Peter did not have the same qualms, however. Tony noticed the flirting when he first started working in the lab. It wasn’t subtle, though, he didn’t think Peter was trying to be. At 20, Tony remembered the ruthless way he went after the things he wanted – he recognized the hunger for that in Peter’s eyes almost instantly. Tony tried to resist it for as long as he could, but the siren call of a connection that just made sense couldn’t be fought. Especially when, in most circumstances, Tony was a hopeless mess that never picked the right fights.

At least Tony felt the satisfaction of finally making the first move. It was only a matter of time, the two of them were dancing around each other – Tony let himself lean into Peter’s touches more and when the dam broke, he pulled him in by the hips and pressed their lips together so tenderly. Peter’s gasp gave him just enough room to deepen it; and suddenly, the line was crossed.

Most of the people around them took to their relationship pretty easily. Of course, the team had a few reservations about objectivity, but with the way Tony was trying to take a step back from the actual battle part of the Avenger gig, it wasn’t too difficult to reassure everyone that missions would come first. When it was reasonable, at least. Though, Tony didn’t voice that to anyone but Peter. May wasn’t hard to convince once Peter was able to make her understand that the move was recent and that at 20, he was more than capable of making his own choices.

For the sake of actually enjoying things between them without the world’s opinion, Tony and Peter spent the first 2 years of their relationship keeping it on the way down low. They were plenty open in front of the team and around Happy and Pepper who were surprisingly supportive of the whole thing – but in public, Tony tried to keep the dopey smile off his face and worked exceedingly hard not to touch Peter, no matter how much he wanted to.

When Peter graduated college, Tony took things one step further between them and got down on one knee in the comfort of the sleek kitchen of Stark Tower. The dark tungsten of the ring looked good on Peter’s skin and immediately drew media attention when it was in pictures the very next day. It seemed like a good time to finally let the world know about the love that ran so deeply between them.

Of course, Tony’s worst fears showed their ugly head almost immediately. Every media outlet that ever wanted to say something bad about Tony decided to pick apart the entirety of their relationship – starting when Spider-Man joined the Avengers. It was a rough blow to the wall he created around the precious thing between him and Peter. They’d been in the dark hiding for so long, it took him a little while to adjust to the bright light of unrelenting cameras flashing and rumors being created just because.

He figured that letting a news outlet like People take care of the photography for their wedding would calm the craziness down a little bit. The entire thing was understated and highlighted who they were together as a couple. Peter smashed cake in his face, and they ended the night with the cheesiest walk under sparklers that were some of the hardest things to procure out of all the wedding supplies that ended up being necessary.

The photos were beautiful and the write up that went with it actually did justice to the sincerity of the relationship between him and Peter. It took the heat off of them for a little while – the cuteness and novelty of two of the world’s superheroes getting hitched sparked an entirely different discussion than the age different between two consenting adults.

That’s what he thought, anyway.

A couple weeks after coming back from their honeymoon, Tony found Peter on the couch looking at his phone with the grumpiest expression. The ache to rub the crease between his brows away settled in the tip of his fingers, but he ignored it, sitting on the cushion next to him instead. “What’s up, Pete?” Tony asked as he leaned in to press a soft kiss to his husband’s temple.

“Pepper told me not to ever look at the comments when I first joined up, you know?” Peter mumbled, his voice a little hoarse from the obvious emotion coursing through him. The question was rhetorical – that was rule number one when trying to keep ahold of sanity while constantly under public scrutiny. Peter knew that, too – but sometimes desire easily bypassed rational thinking.

“I put up the most beautiful picture from our wedding. The one where you’re gazing at me like I’m the greatest gift to the world. And I forgot – just for a second. That people suck.” Peter shrugged, the defeated gesture making his heart pang.

For the longest time, Peter didn’t want to sit in the limelight – Tony and the rest of the crew did what they could to make sure Peter’s identity remained a secret. It was enough to get him through high school and then another year or two through college before it got too hard to hide. Tony remembered the conversation they had about Peter taking the last step out of the dark vividly – even then, he’d been apprehensive. More than anything, Tony understood the mourning of his private life.

Wrapping his arm around Peter’s shoulder, Tony pulled him tightly against him, the shininess of the ring on Peter’s finger catching his eye – he still got a little giddy thinking about the look on his face when Carol pronounced them husbands. He grabbed up that hand and pressed a kiss to the ring and the knuckles surrounding it.

“It sucks, doesn’t it? Being under the microscope of people that don’t know you or anything about you or your life. The judgement of a populace that only gets news presented to them by people that have an agenda.” He bite down on all the other comparisons that wanted to flow out of his mouth – Peter got the point, he could see it in his eyes.

“What doesn’t suck, though, is the fact that you’re mine. Or the fact that despite what people want to believe, our relationship is built on a foundation that is unshakable and as pure as the carnality of a marriage can be. Fuck them, Pete. If I’ve learned anything, that’s all the really matters. We didn’t save the world to live within it half-assed. I love you. No one gets to take that away from me – or us.”

Peter leaned into him; the frantic nodding of his head felt against the solid part of Tony’s chest. He recognized strong arms circling around his middle, crushing him against Peter in a way that he’d grown familiar with over the years. His husband was so incredibly cognizant of the truth of his statements – Tony could tell by the silence that engulfed them, and the way he merely squeezed him tightly.

“You’re right, Tones. You’re right. It just got under my skin – the way people decided to disregard something that’s so real and pure and honest. I always want to defend you. Your character shouldn’t suffer because love for you came in the package of someone that’s younger. It’s grossly unfair,” Peter retorted, the huff in his breath making his voice come off pouty and the slightest bit childish.

It warmed Tony’s heart.

“Pete, the fact that you’re on my team is more than enough. I’m used to the outlandish things people want to paint me with. You’re all I need. Knowing that you don’t think those things, is the easiest way for me to stay firm and not care about what people think.” Turning a little, Tony grabbed Peter’s cheeks softly, his thumbs tracing the seam of Peter’s lips.

“I’ll always be on your team,” Peter whispered, his lips kissing at Tony’s thumb with every pass of the digit. “I love you, Tony.”

Tony leaned forward and pressed their lips together then, his eyes closing when Peter wrapped his arms around his middle and pulled him in closer. He still needed to go back to the lab and finish the latest experiment they were working on, but in that moment, it felt more important to keep Peter close and enjoy the fact that his husband loved him so damn much. Enough to be offended by the shit people said about him, to want to stand up and defend him for all he’s worth.

The unfortunate truth of the matter was, Peter would have to get used to it – Tony couldn’t escape his past or the fact that the people believed that he owed them a piece of himself. Of course, Tony didn’t need to throw that in his young husband’s face just yet; there’d be more than enough time for that learning lesson. Instead, he let Peter lead them through a deep kiss, their lips kiss swollen when the need to breath pulled them away from each other.

“I love you too, Pete,” Tony muttered against Peter’s lips, “but, I know you knew that already.” He pulled back and tossed Pete a beaming smile. A moment later, an idea slipped across the front of his mind and made the look on his face transform quickly from affection to mischief.

“Want to really say fuck ‘em?” he asked, getting up off the couch and pulling Peter with him.

He walked them down the hallway until they were outside of their bedroom – Peter quirked a brow at him but didn’t say a thing. Tony walked them forward until he was kicking off his shoes and crawling into the middle of the bed. “Come on,” Tony beckoned, his back flat against the mattress and arm spread open wide for Peter to settle in against his chest.

Peter, being the beaming baby that he was, didn’t hesitate to crawl into the space Tony left for him, his face settling into the nook of his husband’s shoulder. Tony wrapped his arm around Peter’s wide shoulders and pulled him close.

Getting his phone out of his pocket took a bit of maneuvering, but he finally did and fucked around with it until the camera was facing them. “Be extra cute, Petey,” Tony said, his voice soft as he lifted the camera above them. Wrapping Peter up and turning his head, Tony snapped a few shots – his thumb hitting the button over and over again.

Greedy hands took his phone from him before Tony could swipe through the different pictures he’d taken. It was all well and good – he and Peter both looked amazing in any pictures they ever took of each other or together. The prints from their wedding they decided to have put up a couple of days ago were proof of that.

A soft rush of air leaving Peter’s lips had Tony looking over, his eyes softening when he saw the picture that Peter was looking at. Tony’s lips were spread in a smile against Peter’s forehead. Peter’s eyes were closed and the expression on his face was absolutely blissful. His hand was on Tony’s cheek where the gleaming wedding ring was abundantly obvious. The natural way they fit together came through in the picture – there was no deny it.

“Put that one up. Force those shitty people to see just how good we are together.”

The vibration in his pocket a little while later had him pulling his phone out. Grinning when he saw the @PeteParkerStark Instagram notification and quickly went about pulling the post up. He closed his eyes and let out a soft sigh when he saw it – the little reminders of why Peter Parker Stark was his husband never failed to blow him away.

There, under the picture they’d just taken, was a caption that read – ‘fuck ‘em <3’.

[longswordsinlondon]

Anxiety Advisory

This is written in response to a (super cool and awesome) friend confessing that they’ve been struggling with anxiety when it comes to their HEMA sparring and competition. I’m not a qualified mental health practitioner. At most I’m only mental. Here’s my advice:

Martial arts are inherently adversarial (he says, baiting the aikido-kas) and it's no surprise that people get nervous. It can be very helpful here to work out what it is that you’re actually nervous about. Is it a fear of injury? Well, the friend in question said it wasn’t, so I’ll skip that. Is it some other negative consequence like losing? Social embarrassment? Pretty much all the games people play from The Inner Game of Tennis have a “winning” and “losing” element, even if they’re not about winning or losing the apparent game of fencing - what effect will this match have on your social circle, public image, chronic shoulder pain, or whatever you’re concerned about?

Once you’ve identified what it is that you’re afraid of, make peace with it. Easier said than done, but I do find it helps. In the course of competing in different martial arts, I’ve been tapped in under 30 seconds in BJJ matches, I’ve been stabbed so hard in the groin that I did a forwards roll in a HEMA tournament, and I’ve been knocked the fuck out. From the point of view of fear and anxiety, that’s been super helpful, because I know I can survive any of that and come back. Beyond an hour or so of light ribbing, no one gives a fuck. So why should I?

At it’s most involved, this could be compared to

“Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.” ― Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

If you lose a match, so what. Every match has a loser if it has a winner. Today that was you. It doesn’t mean you won’t win next time. If your teammates are embarrassed by your performance? Then they’re assholes. Not your problem. Separate your value as a person from your performance in a single outing of a niche sport. Accept the risk of injury, certainly try to minimise it, but don’t let fear of getting hurt rule you.

Once you’ve accepted that the worst might happen, and hopefully discovered it’s not as catastrophic as you thought, the next step is to think about what could go right. A lot has been written about visualisation and I’m not here to repeat all of it. One other source of fear is the unknown, though, so it makes sense to do as much as you can to familiarise yourself with what you’re going to be doing, and visualising yourself fencing calmly, skillfully, and victoriously is one way to achieve this.

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” - HP Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature. Even a massive racist is right sometimes.

The other way to familiarise yourself is, guess what, to do it. I try to make each stage of training an introduction and preparation for the next. This seems obvious, but it means I try to minimise the gap between the more free drills and the more limited sparring exercises, and between the more intense bouting and a competition match. In fact, in the run up to tournaments we’ve held mock matches with judges and corners and everything to mimic the conditions of competition as closely as possible. Inoculation against the stressors.

One special case worth mentioning is perfectionism fuelled anxiety. In some ways, HEMA culture seems primed for this one. Some parts of the HEMA world place a big emphasis on perfect performance. Performing a set piece combination or textbook form on your lunge is as praiseworthy as actually landing hits. I think that, once again, the solution lies in accepting the unattainability of perfection, that it can serve as a goal but that it’s not a destination that can be arrived at.

For most of us, the real objective in HEMA in to have fun. Being more than slightly afraid or anxious is not fun. If someone has to admit “tournaments are miserable for me”, even after trying all this? Fuck it, stop competing until you’re in a better head space. I have.

If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong

The ultimate aim is to shift the goalposts and begin playing with healthy objectives - not perfection but improvement, not fearful anxiety but positive excitement, not victory but the best game you could fence in that moment. It’s difficult, and it’s hard work to relax (!) but if you can get there, you’ll find joy again. Make staying in a positive emotional state as much, if not more, of a goal as the physical fencing. You’ll probably find the fencing improving as though on its own.

https://streamable.com/vt2iy - mandatory link to Robbie Lawler telling his corner how he feels mid-fight

I’ve drawn heavily, in this, from The Inner Game of Tennis, which I really do recommend. I’m not about to begin Zen meditation, but it definitely makes the case for mindfulness.

[lindoig4]

Chicago - Part 1 - 11 July

11 July

Before starting my Chicago commentary, I said I would discuss the difficulty of identifying the birds we have seen over here.  Apart from the difficulty in seeing them well enough to use an app to identify them, the apps themselves are pretty poor.  The best one (Merlin) needs to be online to operate – not easy when internet access is as problematical as it is for us.  I downloaded several other apps from home, but they are very poor.  If you know the name of the species you are trying to identify, they will usually present you with a single (sometimes 2 or 3) photo of the bird – usually not the aspect of the bird you saw so they are not very helpful – especially when I almost never know the species name anyway. At best, they might confirm my suspicion of what the bird might be and provide a link to the page in Wikipedia for more information, but they are pretty useless for identifying the species from a description or from photos from a different angle to the one/s displayed. Maybe there are purchasable apps that are more useful, but I have failed to identify quite a few birds, even using Merlin and even when I have photos to assist the ID.  The second best one I have includes many species that are not even found in the US – but excludes some that definitely are!  Frustrating to say the least – but I have managed to identify 27 species so far.  It is difficult though.  As an example, I had quite a good view of an all-white spoonbill flying near us in Chicago – but all the literature indicates that there is only one species of spoonbill in the US and Canada and it is mainly red and only exists in Florida more than 2000 km away.  I reckon I know what I saw, but the experts say I couldn’t have seen it.  And we have seen plenty of Common Starlings – even have good photos of them – but the apps say they don’t exist in the US (although Wikipedia certainly says they do!!!)

Back to our adventures……..

Our first day in Chicago and we ordered brekky from room service – 2 scrambled eggs and toast that we intended to share before we went out, possibly to supplement the hotel fare out on the street.  The eggs must have been laid by an ostrich – and then there were 3 big rashers of bacon, three slices of toast, a mess of roast potatoes and strawberries.  We both ate all we could manage and left the rest for the homeless – an extraordinary breakfast and we are glad we decided to share rather than order one each!!!

We walked the few blocks to the Rookery where we were to join the Frank Lloyd Wright architectural tour.  The Rookery is a wonderful building with a colourful history and we started with a mini-tour of the lower floors before boarding a coach to take us to the Unitarian Universalists Unity Temple.

(One version of the way the Rookery got its name is from the crows that inhabited the area after the great fire that destroyed almost all the city in 1871, but the other version sounds more plausible to me – it was the temporary seat of municipal power right after the fire and everyone got rooked by the Mayor and Councillors of the time.  It seems that Al Capone was one of the minor criminal figures in Chicago’s history and we heard numerous stories of gross political and financial corruption from inception until today!  The only improvement over time seems to have been development of a more sophisticated criminal element today – they hardly ever use machine guns to accumulate their wealth and power today.  A hundred-odd years ago, most powerful people had their own cadre of enforcers and hitmen to keep the citizenry’s collective pocket open.

Our guide, Will, was very knowledgeable and happily answered our questions at length, often in an entertaining way, setting a lot of his commentary in its historic and social setting – making it more understandable in its context.  We went to a restaurant for our pre-ordered lunch and I thought it was delish.  I am not a great beer drinker, but seem to have been perpetually thirsty since leaving home so have tried quite a few different ones over here: nothing that really grabs me, but most are OK - other than the very sweet ones.

We then went on a wonderful ramble through allegedly the only winding street in Chicago to Wright’s studio and home for some years.  The house itself was quite interesting, but I enjoyed the stroll past the shacks of the rich and famous (then and now) en route to the destination.  Despite it being Chicago, I got an impression of the southern states – not quite plantation style, but I saw a lot of very similar homes in the Garden District in New Orleans years ago.

After lunch, we were driven quite a way, including along the foreshore of Lake Michigan (one of the Great Lakes we heard about in school) to a Prairie style house, the epitome of Wright’s design in that style. The scale of these places needs to be seen to be understood, but Will brought them alive for us, if still a little Fairylandish for those of us who will never have the billions to burn on the lifestyle inherent in such outlandish and extravagant designs.  There were many interesting comments about how various features led you into particular feelings or created specific environments but I frequently wondered (not aloud!) whether they were design features or architectural/tour guide wet dreams or perhaps simply recent interpretations of what might have (or might not have) been in the mind of the architect at the time he or she was doodling on the way to a design.  Was the low ceiling designed to create an intimate family dining environment – or did such an environment arise because the mezzanine requirements resulted in a low ceiling.  Not a good example, but quite a few times, I wondered which was cause and which effect, perhaps what was originally intended and what was just interpreted after the event. Was history being created at the time or did events or usage at the time create the history.  OK, OK, maybe I am a cynic, but it is sometimes easier to ascribe significance to a feature or occurrence after the event than to create something consciously to cause the condition or event.

Irrespective of the debate, it was a really interesting and provocative tour and we ended up back at the Rookery for a final, somewhat parsimonious, glass of bubbly before trekking the few blocks home.  On the way, we back-tracked to a pharmacy to buy some pills.  Somehow, I managed to come away without the most important of my meds, despite getting an extra prescription and filling it before leaving home to avoid just this situation.  Fortunately, I was able to buy an acceptable equivalent.  Otherwise, I would have been having a very miserable couple of months feeling sick almost all the time.

We bought a pizza (and a couple of bottles of good Aussie wine) on the way to the hotel so we survived the night without serious hunger and thirst.  It was a good day, if tiring, and we both slept pretty well.

[bbclesmis]

Wordsworth: Les Misérables

Sally Minogue looks at Victor Hugo’s novel and Andrew Davies’ adaptation for BBC Television 

Let me start by saying: this was a magnificent adaptation. Week by week we viewers turned up, battered and bruised by the previous episode, battling the sheer act of turning on the television in order to watch some fresh hardship, wretchedness, physical horror or malign turn of fate. And this was exactly as it should be. Hugo’s novel is relentless in its examination of poverty and destitution, but even more so of the way the inequities of the world throw some a hand so hard that they never recover from it. The standard backdrop of this series, as of Hugo’s novel, was one of ineluctable, grinding distress, born of nothing other than the chance of birth. We may all at one time or another lead lives of quiet desperation; but these were lives of noisy, unremitting, vicious desperation. Not for nothing does the title Les Misérables remain untranslatable.

Against this given, this inherent malign social inequity, Hugo sets a massive struggle between two flawed characters. Perhaps they represent forces or ideologies, but it doesn’t seem so in the way that Hugo plays out their intertwined fates. Rather, they are complicated human beings who happen to cross swords. Jean Valjean’s life is marked and marred forever by his act of stealing a loaf of bread. For that, the weighty forces of state and law come down on him, and pursue him almost to the end of the novel. His nemesis, Inspector Javert, is likewise marked by his obsession with Valjean, and with an extreme and rigid form of justice. This adaptation had at its heart the struggle between Valjean – a brilliant Dominic West – and Javert, the brooding David Oyelowo. The one quibble I’d have here is that Valjean was the dominant partner, televisually and dramatically, in this struggle. Maybe that’s the case in the novel as well. Javert’s quest is all on one note, while Valjean oscillates between his past and, as he sees them, inextinguishable wrongs, and his constant attempts to expiate them. When Javert finally admits Valjean’s ‘goodness’, he also admits the defeat of his own moral system. It’s his one moment of complexity, and Hugo gives it full weight in Book Four of Part Five of this massively sprawling novel. Book Four is devoted entirely to Javert’s change of heart and his attempt to make sense of it. Here he comes face to face with himself in a moment of genuine existential uncertainty, quite different from the highly dramatised interplay of action and introspection characteristic of the novel. ‘What had become of him? He searched and could not find himself. ... Destiny comes, at certain points, to a sheer drop above the impossible, beyond which life is nothing but a precipice. Javert had come to one of those sheer drops.’ It’s not the fault of the actor that it was difficult to bring this existential drama to life. The sheer drop of the inner being could only be translated on television by his allowing himself to fall into the Seine.

Dominic West was given more to work with as Valjean struggled continually with his past sins (helped by the ever-present props of the candlesticks bequeathed by his benefactor, the Bishop of Digne, who set him off on the road to goodness). But it must be said too that West was remarkable in the way he revealed the complex inner workings of his mind, heart and conscience (given full play and articulation, and at length, in the novel), with only his own face and body as vehicle for those.

And then there’s the rest! Waterloo. Buonaparte. Aristocracy versus Republic. God. The nature of morality. Revolution. Love. Motherhood. Fatherhood. Brotherhood. Sacrifice. And none of these are treated simply. There is disruption and irony at every stage of the novel. Fantine, trying to be a good mother, fails her child yet remains a good mother. Valjean makes the best father a non-father could ever be. Marius makes himself a good son having been a bad one. Thenardier is a despicable saviour. None of the revolutionaries is heroic, while the street gamin, Gavroche, dies a hero’s death. And no-one knows the effect of the legacy they leave, whether good or bad; only through the play of time do earlier actions show their full effects. In such a long novel, we are privileged to see that earlier distresses can carry beneficent effects, but in the interplay there is much unhappiness, some of it final and unredeemed.  

It’s entirely fitting that the major and final scenes of the novel, as of the adaptation, are played out in the Paris sewers. For a brilliant exposition and analysis of the relationship between dung and gold, equal to that of Engels in his description of Manchester in The Condition of the Working Class in England, see Book Two of Part Five of the novel. Here we are brought right back to the degradation which is Hugo’s real subject. As the flawed Valjean rescues the man he’d most like to see dead, by dragging him, literally, through the fluid shit of the sewers, we see the human struggle played out before us – not so much for goodness, just for survival. (Surely these chapters must have influenced Andrzej Wajda’s great film Kanal?) And at the end, keeping the gate, is the vile Thenardier, an inverse Charon, taking his tax from the outgoing bodies, freeing them from the Styx.

As Valjean and Marius stagger out into the fresh air, it’s a sort of redemption, though in the full knowledge of all that has gone before. None is free from blame, except perhaps Cosette who can go forward with Marius to make a new world. But we know the depth of the old world that lies behind them, as we know the sewer that runs below Paris. Hugo never lets us off from that for an instant. Nor does this adaptation, which has been tremendously brave in testing the viewer to the limit. This wasn’t your standard Sunday night period drama. It brought us full face to horror, inflicted sometimes carelessly, sometimes carefully, by human on human – les misérables. It brought us love and redemption too, but only by the skin of its teeth. It was a play for today.

Les Misérables is available from Wordsworth Editions in two volumes. The BBC adaptation is now available on BBC iPlayer. Friedrich Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 is included in the Wordsworth edition of The Communist Manifesto.

http://wordsworth-editions.co.uk/blog/les-miserables-review

[raygoodwinmajournal]

Epochal Territories Shoot #2 - 2/12/2020

It didn’t take me long to go back to shooting film. As much as I like shooting digitally, the instant results and high quality, there is something about film which I cannot keep my hands off of. The ability to create physical, analogue images with a cameras the same size as a DSLR, yet create massively higher quality photographs is immensely attractive and alluring. 

In addition to this, a camera I have become addicted to is the Mamiya 7ii, which I shot the entirety of Mileage May Vary with. The 7ii is small, light, shoots a massive 6x7 negative and the lenses are incredibly sharp, almost clinically sharp. This might be a deterrent to some, but personally I enjoy across the frame sharpness and detail.

The film is also a massive part of the sharpness of the image, as well as the glass. Developing 120 film is a sour point for me and always triggers my short temper. It is incredibly fiddly and every time I have done it, it has failed miserably. If only there was a simple solution to shoot B&W but not have to develop it oneself - Ilford XP2 Super. This film is a C-41 process B&W film, meaning it can be developed at any photo lab which processes C-41 colour film. XP2 Super isn’t often used by many, but by those who want a simple way to get B&W images without having to buy any chemicals and either develop film at home or find a specialist lab. But it should be regarded higher, as it is a splendid film, which has the added benefits of C-41 colour films such a dynamic range and enjoying some overexposure. 

I decided to take a walk, without any aim to where I was going. I started by walking towards Exeter Street, with this image taken on the Tothill Bridge, overlooking the trainline which used to lead to Friary Station, which was demolished in 1976 and passenger services stopping in 1958. I used to live along this line on Desborough Road, and all to often was woken up by British Rail Class 08 or ‘Gronk’ pulling freight up and down the line. Where Friary Station used to stand is now the Friary Retail Park and Friary Court - all bearing the same name as the old railway station.

I progressed with my walk and ended on walking on Embankment Road, which in itself is an odd street that reminds me of a South London street with ancient looking green grocers and out of place shops. On one of the corners is this depilated Volkswagen Passat estate, which with a cursory look at Street View has been parked there since at least 2009, with the Passat gradually becoming worse and worse condition as the years go on. The more urban areas contain more alienation than the rural, where it is a lot more nuanced.

Treeby Court is an strange landscape of concrete and rubble, often used for amusement fairs and travellers. As far as I can remember, it has been empty for years and hasn’t contained anything more than the aforementioned fairs and travellers. It is an incredibly wasted area of space, which could be used for some good, and as far as I can imagine would be rather pricey. In the background is Saltram House, which is where I eventually headed to.

On the outskirts of Saltram House is the more industrial areas of Plymstock. This whole area is inherently alienating, because there is such a lovely landscape with industrial estates, recycling centres and traveller sites nestled within it. The pylon is the centre point of the photograph, taken on a bridge to get a higher vantage point to make the cars and buildings below seem smaller. Within this area is a gas works company, as well as Stagecoach South West, with Chelson Meadow situated next door. 

The road leading to Chelson Meadow is called The Ride, which now features a wealth of new houses and estates, which is a reoccurring theme in Epochal Territories. I used the 80mm F4 this time with the 7ii, which is equivalent to a 50mm in the 135 format. I feel that this image would have worked better with the 65mm, which is equivalent to a 35mm. For this, I had to stand next to the perimeter wall to get in what I wanted, but with the wider lens I would have got more in view. 

I eventually made my way to Saltram House, which was a terribly alienating experience. A stones throw from Saltram is Chelson Meadow, an old landfill sight and reclaimed land from the 1800′s. It was also once used as a racecourse for horses but later became the aforementioned landfill, which I remember from my tenure of walking to and from school. The sight was covered in thousands of tons of topsoil which might eventually be safe to use. Yet, the ground seeps out dangerous gas and liquid from the thousands of tons of waste which I decided to dump, with the gas filtered through onsite turbines and sent back to the grid. I came to this National Trust property to escape the city, but I couldn’t ignore it around me. I had to write down my thoughts of what surrounded me. 

Transcript:

quiet serene national park rolling hills road noise trains passing sirens wailing meaningless chit chat chew the fat diesel rumbling overhead powerlines humming phone scrolling effluent estuary landfill turfed over leaking gas air pollution its not safe to live here mutations gas turbines has lines this might be a park one day 17,000,000 tons of rubbish 60,000 tons of topsoil brushed under the rug under the topsoil fridge buzz flytipped traveller site burnt rubbish police stationed nearby concrete overpass cold breeze littered pathways dont breathe the air dont drink the water the water could cause ailments this area is extremely dangerous please repent your sins

This shot was entirely accidental, purely because of the 7ii’s sensitive shutter button. My intention was the half press the shutter to meter and see if I wanted the shot, but because of my cold hands I took the shot at about 3 stops over exposed. Thankfully, XP2 Super works well in these conditions, which is really where this film shines. Compositionally it isn’t consistent with the rest of my work, and in my eyes isn’t what I wanted at all.

Another mistake is my shadow, which didn’t show in the view finder as I took this photograph. Along with the traveller site is a wealth of rubbish which is left at all times. A long time ago, there was a burnt down caravan further along The Ride which was still smouldering. Here is a mountain of rubbish, left by the local travellers. I felt extremely uneasy in this area, as I didn’t think the travellers would take to kindly to a man walking around with a camera photographing their site, so I took as little time as possible walking past. Thankfully, there was a police car parked in the site which made me feel a little safer. 

In the centre of the photograph is part of the on-sight turbine where the gasses from the landfill is processed and sent back into the grid. The landscape is a strange mishmash of disguised landfill, rolling hills, rubbish and the faint smell of effluence. I didn’t feel right about our mess being brushed under the carpet, which spews out hazardous material and just looks like a common or garden hill, which is in fact years of detritus and waste. I find this image to be particularly weak because of the dark shadows. I usually trust the meter of the 7ii, but I did have a feeling that the shadows would suffer because of the high contrast lighting due to the lower position of the sun at this time of year. 

The roll finished whilst I was exiting The Ride, with one of the sorting buildings of the recycle centre. The mass of road signs, street lights and pylons are visually confusing and the junctions in the foreground give a sense of space to the scene. I never went below F8, with this photograph taken at F11 to increase the depth of field. Amongst the trees and grass, is a place to recycle rubbish which in contrast was ironically was used to dump any rubbish we had. Despite us trying to be kinder to the environment, we have already done so much damage which is beyond repair. At the end of the walk, I was extremely alienated to what I had experienced.

8.27 miles and 17,411 steps later, I made it home. I found my walk to Saltram House was incredibly estranging and made me think about where we spend our time to escape the city and where we live. This was the first time I had gone to this area in around a decade, and this was when Chelson Meadow was still a functioning landfill site. I was able to see the site from across the river when I walked to a from school, which usually featured numerous Caterpillar Bulldozers pushing rubbish around and swarms of Seagulls circling the site hoping to find something to eat. Yet now has turned into what looks like a luscious rolling hill, but is in fact still a huge pile of rubbish, sometimes reaching 26ft. I couldn’t help but write down my thoughts and findings of what it was that I found so alienating, which I found incredibly cathartic and made me think deeper about the area I was photographing. I do think that I should do this on every shoot to make sense about what it is that I am doing, and why I am doing it. Perhaps this can be a part of my work, with text accompanying the photographs. 

A coda. Despite finding my walking to Saltram leaving me feeling indifferent to my surroundings, I did however enjoy the experience of revisiting a place that I hadn’t been in a long time, viewing it with a fresh set of eyes through the viewfinder of a Mamiya 7ii. This is an area I had planned to revisit many times before, and didn’t get around to it - I must have subconsciously made the decision in my head to aim to that area, which I am glad about because I did make some more photographs that I am proud of. Ilford XP2 Super is a great film which deserves a lot more praise than it gets. It is a fantastic solution to shooting B&W and delivers some incredible image quality for a competitive price. The 400 ISO rating is also nicely versatile, with the look of the film certainly improving when it is given more light than it needs. The Mamiya 7ii also didn’t disappoint, apart from it’s very sensitive shutter button which can cause some issues regarding unwanted exposures. Apart from that, it performed incredibly well as per usual and keeps me wanting more. I find that the 7ii paired with XP2 Super is a great combination that I would like to undertake again, and could be my go-to film setup for Epochal Territories. 

[dxmedstudent]

Hi, is it possible for people who are considered 'slim/thin/average' to develop type 2 diabetes? Because my knowledge was that the onset of type 2 diabetes was due to being categorised as obese. Apparently saying 'obesity is a risk factor' is 'fatphobic' (according to some articles I have read. What's your take on this?

Oh boy. What a topic. Perhaps it’s not the right thing to discuss after a long shift, but you’re caught my attention, and I feel like answering it. I hope this makes sense. Yes, it is. You can be diabetic and within the BMI range classed as ‘normal’. It’s more likely if you’re South Asian, because they are at particular risk of diabetes, and they can become diabetic even if relatively trim. I’ve certainly met patients like this. I want to say that being skinny or ‘normal’ weight is not a guarantee of good health. It doesn’t mean you can’t have high cholesterol. It doesn’t mean you can’t have a heart attack, like my uncle. Society often forgets this, because we’re very set on the message that fat = bad (which is not 100% true).  You can be overweight and not be suffering from high cholesterol or diabetes or other health problems. But it’s not correct to say that obesity is a risk factor’ is ‘fatphobic’, in my opinion. And  think framing it as such is in itself problematic, because it frames any discussion about any possible risk associated with increased body fat as inherently harmful or phobic. 1) Saying something is ‘a risk factor’ is not saying ‘you will develop diabetes if you are fat’. It just means that it is more likely. 2) Current evidence suggests that people who are ‘overweight’ are at increased risk, that is to say, more likely to develop diabetes than those who are not. This is not something that is controversial; it’s something most of us working in medicine have seen. There’s a correlation. That is not to say that it is 100%; you will get skinny diabetics and fat people with no health problems. People are diverse, so on an individual level you need to treat people as individuals. 3) Fat is not just padding. It is metabolically active tissue, and having fat in particular distributions can affect your metabolic system more than others. We are only just beginining to understand what fat does, and it’s pretty fascinating. But I believe that treating it just as ‘stuff that happens to be there but has no effect’ does not go along with what science is telling us. We need to research what fat is doing, because current science tells us it is probably doing much more than what we first thought.

4)Discouraging research of fat will not help fat people; it could put them at risk for longer, because we will remain in ignorance of what is going on in their bodies. They deserve to have research that reflects their needs. Fat is just tissue; the value we place on it says more about us than about the science.

5) Even if being overweigt increases your risk of diabetes, that is not a value judgement on the person. It does not make you a bad person, or a weak person, or a person less deserving of respect or having your health needs fully addressed, than if you are not fat. Any more than someone who smokes, or drinks etc. I hold no truck with the idea that people are less deserving of respect or help if their condition is ‘self inflicted’, and in fact the framing as such genuinely makes me quite mad. So I think we need to get beyond reflexively saying “but I can be fat and healthy!”. Yes. it’s true. You can be. Though many are not. And I think we get hugely hung up on this detail, and most discourse seems to surround it when it’s not actually what the main focus should be. Focusing on the healthy does not help those who are suffering.  I’m also here for the fat person who isn’t the “model healthy fat person who is therefore morally acceptable”. I’m here for the fat person who is unhealthy. The fat person whose weight is ‘self inflicted’. The fat person who is vilified and who doesn’t diet or eat healthily or do exercise etc.  I don’t think we need to defend fat as healthy and therefore morally acceptable, we need to abolish the need to attach morality to someone’s weight at all. And by defending that fat can be healthy and beautiful and good (which is all done with the best of intentions) what we’re really doing is separating fat people into deserving and undeserving. And that’s not on. How can we address the health problems many people struggle with, if we get to a point where even saying there’s an increased risk of something if you are very ‘morbidly obese’ (which is a horrible, horrible term), is brushed aside as fatphobic? How can we help anyone if any commentary, even from a pure health perspective, is lumped in the same category with frank abuse?

The difficulty with this conversation is it’s incredibly frought, and emotive on all sides.  I’d argue that the difficulty sometimes lies not with the statement, but who is saying it, and how it is said. Because discussion about health is frequently co-opted by people who really aren’t worrying about health. The fact that people are incredibly patronising and rude to overweight people, and go out of their way to make their lives miserable by fat shaming them, actually has a huge negative impact on how we approach being overweight and health. I’ve seen some commentary which I feel is well meaning and heartfelt, but sometimes scientifically inaccurate from the body positivity side, but I can completely understand the place they are coming from. To spend your entire life fighting fat shaming in a society that values being thin and beautiful above all else is brutal. Society has a lot to answer for.  And the defensiveness is understandable. Though I believe in being honest where there are risks, I don’t believe in the current conversation we are having at all.  I feel that we need to put lots of research into what fat as a metabolic tissue is doing. And into our metabolic process in general. And itno the effects that modern sedentary lifestyles are having on our health, and what we can do to reverse it. I feel that we need to be able to have frank conversations about the health risks of fat, just like we should be able to discuss the risks of smoking, or drinking, or living on a diet of mars bars etc. In short, I feel that we, as medical professionals, and as a society, need to be able to discuss fat without any reference to aesthetics, without value judgements, and without losing sight of people as individuals. And I think we owe it to fat people to not neglect the health implications of fat just because the topic has been hijacked. I’ve seen a lot of truly horrible fat-shaming commentary from ignorant individuals bent on making others miserable. I don’t think any of these people care one jot about the health of fat people, and I wish they left well enough alone. It’s really not their business to bully people for their weight, and I don’t for one minute genuinely believe they care about fat people’s health. I say this because the same people (and society as a whole) are much quieter about say, smoking, or drinking. Alcohol excess is a huge problem, but people largely ignore it. Why? Because smoking or drinking are socially acceptable because they don’t change how you look. I don’t think people who fatshame are concerned about fat people’s health, I think the vast majority are belittling and bullying people based on how they look, and then trying to cover their backs by sneeringly pretending that they care about that person’s health. And that is cowardly and unacceptable.I have no love for people like this hijacking the discourse surrounding the health effects of obesty. Because their bullying makes things worse. And because their trolling makes it hard for us as a society to speak honestly about the risks and benefits. and because they and the fatshaming culture they reinforce make life hell for people I know and love. And I personally cannot forgive that. So, what I’d like to say is that if people, in general, cannot have a polite, value-neutral discussion about fat as metabolic tissue, and about complex health problems, without fat-shaming or abuse, then they should should leave fat people alone to discuss their health with their healthcare team. My patient’s weight is between me and my patient. If all someone is  going to do is upset my patient, then they can jog right on.

[garywonghc]

The Perfection of Wisdom

by Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

In general, Buddhist wisdom deals with seeing things as they really are and not how we see things as projected through the distorted lens of our ego. Therefore the most important Dharma practice is to see through the distortions of our ideas about the self. There are two basic approaches in Buddhist wisdom. One is dealing with the so-called reality of external objects and the other way deals with the mind that conceives - although ultimately these two approaches come together.

When I first began to meditate, my teacher was an old yogi and he started by pointing to the table and asking, ‘Is this table empty?’ Well, I had already read some books on philosophy like a good nun, so I said, ‘Oh, yes, the table is empty!’ The yogi replied, ‘Do you see it as empty?’ ‘Well, no.’ Then he asked, ‘Is the mind empty?’ So I said a bit more confidently, ‘Yes’ and he said, ‘Do you see it as empty?’ ‘No.’ He continued, ‘Which do you think is easier to see — the emptiness of the table or the mind?’ And I said, ‘Oh, the mind’. So he said, ‘Okay, then you belong to us.’ Naturally I enquired, ‘What if I said the table?’ The yogi laughed, ‘Oh, then I would have sent you to Sera Monastery down the road!’

Because there are two approaches to this issue of emptiness. One is the scholars’ approach where phenomena are analysed intellectually through the study of Madhyamika, so mainly the emphasis is posited on the emptiness of external phenomena. Then of course one also has to meditate on that. But the yogi way is to look at the mind itself which analyses because it is the mind which projects our sense of solidity onto external phenomena.

Modern physics shows us that indeed this table is empty, that actually everything is reduced to the protons and neutrons and they are basically space and energy, so we can never find the thing in itself. Philosophically this is approached by saying that nothing exists from its own side and that everything exists in conjunction with causes and conditions. Because we tend to solidify and reify everything, then this analysis can show that however much we may reduce and reduce the object, there is nothing which can be pointed to as the thing in itself. It’s inherent existence is just a convenient conceptual label. So the fact that nothing exists from its own side, lacks inherent existence, and depends on a combination of causes and conditions, is in Buddhist parlance called ‘emptiness’.

In Buddhist meditation we are trying to get back to our original nature also called Buddha nature, nature of the mind, Dharmakaya and so on. But these are just names. One time I saw a documentary on meditation during which a Russian Orthodox priest said that the first thing that he was taught as a novice was that anything that he might think about God — He is not that! In other words, ultimate reality really is ultimate and is beyond our conceptual mind. Our ordinary thinking mind is by its very nature dualistic. That means that the conceptual mind thinks ‘I’ and automatically ‘others’ (who are not I). It naturally thinks good-bad, highlow, big-small. This is the nature, the very functioning of our dualistic conceptual mind. It also thinks within time. The dualistic conceptual mind is trapped in past and future. It has a very hard time staying in the present. We are usually not even conscious of this because we are so busy thinking, but to stay actually in the present moment without commenting is very difficult for the mind.

So normally we are governed by this conceptual mind which solidifies into our perception of something which we call ‘a self ’. And we believe in this self. It’s who we are. So we do everything we can to placate this self - to make it happy and to try to avoid any suffering. However the ego itself is not concerned with happiness or suffering, the ego is actually happy to be miserable because that still makes it seem like something really existing. We notice that people who are really unhappy are usually totally centred on themselves and their suffering. People who are psychologically disturbed in any way are normally totally focused toward themselves. Perhaps this is one reason why psychiatrists and therapists flourish, because they are paid to just sit and listen while the patients endlessly talk about themselves and their miserable childhoods.

Insight meditation deals directly with looking straight at this sense of ‘me’ nestling at the centre of our thoughts and asking ‘who am I?’ Once the mind has quietened down through shamatha meditation, the thoughts are now moving more slowly and our attention is more single pointed. Then we turn that searchlight of focused attention back onto itself and we look at the stream of thoughts, because everything we can know only through mind. But the mind itself we don’t know, we never look, we never question.

It is like someone sitting on the banks of the river watching the water flow by. Normally we are in the river being swept along. Where the stream of thought goes, there we go. But now we are still and we are just observing. So we just sit there relaxed and looking on without judgement or preference.

Then we can start to analyse. It’s like we have a big question mark in our mind. What is a thought? What is an emotion? Where does it come from? Where does it go? What does it feel it? What does it look like? Who is thinking? When the mind is very busy or when the mind is quiet with no thoughts and the awareness which knows the difference, are these the same or are they different? Are the thoughts the same as the awareness of the thoughts?

So we begin to look into the mind. One could also generate a strong feeling such as recalling a time when we felt angry and then try to recreate in ourselves that sense of the frustration and anger that we felt. Then look at it. What is that feeling? How does it feel? Where did it come from? What is it? Where did it go? Don’t just think about it but really look with this questioning awareness. We live in our mind so our only way to be free is to fully understand the mind. This is accomplished not through the intellect but through direct experience. Meditation isn’t something just passive, feeling nice and peaceful. The body may be immobile but the mind is for the first time waking up and using all its energy to really look into itself. We have to realise the empty nature of these thoughts and feelings. It’s not enough just saying, ‘Oh yes, thoughts are empty’. As long as we haven’t experienced that they are empty, they are not empty for us.

As the thoughts decrease and our awareness becomes more profound and clear, there sometimes appears like a gap between the previous thought and the next thought. Before they are linked together, there is just a momentary opening. Because our awareness is so one-pointed, at that moment we might perceive the nature of the mind. But then usually, we think: “Oh well, yes!” and then we’re thinking again.

Imagine that we are in a cinema and there’s the screen and a movie is being shown. This film which we are watching is full of movement and sound and light and we are totally absorbed in it. (In fact, we’re playing the starring part at the same time.) So if it’s a good movie one is completely involved in it. If it’s sad, then we’re crying and if it’s a comedy, we’re laughing and if it’s an action movie, then our hearts are pumping. If it’s a well-made movie, then while we’re watching it, we’re immersed and enchanted. But if we look backwards, what is actually happening is that there’s a projector and running in front of the projector are transparent individual frames of film moving very, very fast. The projector shines light through these fast moving frames and the whole drama is thus projected out in front of us.

This analogy definitely has some affinities with what is happening in our minds. Fundamentally there is what is called the clear light nature of the mind. The nature of the mind is naturally primordially unborn pure awareness. The fact that you can read this page is because you are aware, because you are conscious. But normally we are not conscious of being conscious because we’re too busy, absorbed in thinking. This endless film show is being played in our mind — moment to moment mind states — and that is projected out in front of us as our external reality. Now as long as we are fascinated by the movie in front of us, then we believe it and we become deeply involved in what appears to be happening. But if we look back and realise it’s just a mind-show that we are projecting, then even though we can still enjoy it, we are not going to be totally devastated if it’s a tragedy or completely engulfed if it’s a romance. We know it’s just a movie.

[naturopathytreatments]

9 Natural Remedies for Seasonal Allergy Relief

Oh, seasonal allergic reactions. They truly can make life miserable. The good news is, there are things we can do! Many individuals unnecessarily deal with seasonal allergic reactions when a couple of easy natural remedies can provide a lot of allergic reaction alleviation.

Research studies estimate that over 25% of the population experiences allergic disorders and climate change theories suggest the problem is growing. Usual allergen activates include plant pollen from yard and trees, the fecal bits of allergen, pet dander, particular foods, air contamination, appeal item ingredients, and even insect attacks.

As prime allergic reaction season approaches (at the very least in our location) I'm sharing the natural remedies that I use as well as help us when required. These will not be as instantly reliable as a drug, yet over the long-term these approaches have actually lessened my seasonal allergic reactions considerably.

What Triggers Seasonal Allergies?

Here's the deal:

Diet plan, solid intestine health, as well as wellness overall can make a big distinction when it involves seasonal allergies since allergic response has whatever to do with the body immune system.

I like to define the body as a bathtub. Every single time anything enters our bodies-- be it from our food, water, air, etc.-- our body reacts. This is great and nature's way of keeping the body in a state of balance (homeostasis).

At a certain factor if too much goes into the bath tub, it's going to overflow. Overloaded as well as overstimulated, the body immune system replies to normally harmless materials as if versus an unsafe foreign invader.

Exactly How Allergic Reaction Effects Beginning

" The conception that antibodies, which must safeguard against condition, are additionally responsible for illness, appears at first absurd.

Clemens von Pirquet (1906 )"

Researchers have learned a lot about allergies considering that Clemens von Pirquet first created the term.

Specified as "an uncommon adaptive immune feedback," allergic problems occur when the body responds to a normally safe substance with an increase in IgE connected to mast cells in the body and also Type 1 T assistant cells (Th1). Responses such as tightness of the bronchial tubes, mucous secretion, and raised vascular permeability may occur within minutes.

If the exposure goes beyond the body's first immune response, this reaction starts to trigger additional activation of leukocytes and Kind 2 T assistant cells (Th2). This is a stronger immune action the body places to points like parasites as well as physical invaders. This shows up in various means depending upon the person's genetics and also where the body perceives the intrusion. Signs might include:

fatigue (in some cases extreme).

hay fever (runny nose, itchy eyes, blockage).

nasal drip.

digestive upset and queasiness.

dermatitis.

bronchial asthma.

even anaphylaxis.

When Allergies Become Chronic.

With duplicated direct exposure the inflammatory response comes to be persistent. A 2008 journal article on the development of allergic swelling discusses this systemic sensitive reaction as:.

" Persistent swelling induced by long term or recurring direct exposure to certain allergens, generally defined not only by the existence of large numbers of inherent and flexible immune cells (in the form of leukocytes) at the affected website however also by considerable adjustments in the extracellular matrix and changes in the number, phenotype and feature of structural cells in the afflicted cells.".

Simply put, the torment allergic reaction patients really feel is really actual and also greater than a situation of the sniffles!

Allergy screening might be practical to determine triggers but common treatment typically involves consistently taking an antihistimine or corticosteriod which can have undesirable adverse effects. There are two major ways to help stop allergies naturally:.

Limit exposure to possible irritants (like putting much less in the tub).

Assistance a solid healthy body immune system (like raising the dimension of our bathtub).

Exactly How to Treat Seasonal Allergies and Get Alleviation Normally.

We don't struggle with numerous allergies any longer after our time on the GAPS diet plan, however I still occasionally get hit with an allergy attack from dust after cleaning however (a factor not to clean up? I think indeed!) and my hubby sometimes responds to yard or pollen.

These basic natural solutions have been really effective for allergy alleviation in our family. Various individuals appear to gain from different treatments relying on specific hereditary factors and also which irritants you are responding to, so it might be worth trying greater than one of these to see which works best for you.

I'll start with basic recommendations as well as develop to options for more major allergic reaction troubles.

1. Apple Cider Vinegar.

Apple cider vinegar is an age old solution that is commonly recommended for a variety of health and wellness problems. I've personally used it for allergic reaction alleviation (and also heartburn relief) with fantastic success. The theory is that its ability to lower mucous production as well as cleanse the lymphatic system makes it beneficial for allergies. It is additionally claimed to assist digestion, weight management, and more so it is worth a shot!

What I did: When allergic reactions strike, I mixed a teaspoon of natural, unfiltered apple cider vinegar with "The Mother" (that component is essential) right into a glass of water as well as consumed this three times a day. "The Mom" is just a nest of beneficial microorganisms existing in some natural and unfiltered ACV brands. Inspect the tag, it should provide if it includes it.

I use this brand name but it is additionally rather straightforward to make your very own. Apple cider vinegar assisted me with relief of severe allergic reaction signs as well as seemed to help avoid allergic reaction assaults too when I do it daily, so if you suffer from allergic reactions at a specific time of year start well before.

2. Laundry Your Nostrils.

This remedy works by avoiding the annoying allergen (or a minimum of as much of it) from entering your airways.

Neti Pot.

Shockingly the Neti Pot is one all-natural solution I have not directly tried since I'm a huge scaredy cat regarding pouring points in my nose. I have close friends that advocate it and also numerous health and wellness specialists I trust tout its benefits. The fundamental theory is that you make use of a Neti Pot loaded with a sterile saline service to flush out the sinuses of irritants as well as irritations.

Remarkably, I have actually heard this advised by traditional as well as alternative physicians, as well as it seems that it doesn't really have a drawback. It is advised to utilize formerly boiled or distilled water, not water straight from the faucet (because, parasites ... I do not truly like to consider it!).

To utilize: Either make use of a pre-made saline rinse or make your very own by liquifying 1 tsp of Himalayan or simply simple sea salt in a quart of boiled distilled water. Cool completely. Place in the Neti Pot and also put with one nostril as well as let it drain out the various other.

Saline Spray.

An option for Neti Pot sissies like me: I like this natural saline spray with xylitol for added help with comforting swelling and opening up air passages. We utilize it for among our youngsters with big tonsils too to assist maintain post-nasal drip and also sore throats away.

To utilize: Spray saline right into nostrils a few times a week or perhaps everyday for routine maintenance (whether you have symptoms).

3. Quercetin.

Quercetin is an all-natural bioflavonoid that is said to assist support pole cells to keep them from launching histamine. It is likewise a powerful antioxidant that is said to help reduce inflammation. It is best utilized as a long-term solution and also many people start taking it concerning 4-6 weeks before allergy period to assist stop allergic reaction signs.

Similar to any type of herb, you ought to talk to your physician before using, specifically if you have a liver problem, are expectant, or are on hormonal contraceptives.

To use: Though quercetin is naturally found in foods like citrus as well as broccoli, it is really challenging to obtain the quantity needed to relive allergies from food alone. An extra dosage from a high quality resource can be valuable for avoiding allergic reactions or aiding intense symptoms. Begin 4-6 weeks prior to allergic reaction season for finest results.

4. Nettle Leaf.

Nettle fallen leave is one more all-natural antihistamine that can be very reliable as it naturally blocks the body's capability to generate histamine. It expands in numerous locations as well as can be made in to a cast or tea, but also for allergy alleviation, capsules made from dried nettle leaves are the easiest and most effective option.

Nettle leaf can also be made use of in combination with various other natural herbs to make a soothing organic tea for allergic reaction relief. It is commonly mixed with peppermint fallen leave and also occasionally red raspberry leaf to make a revitalizing allergic reaction relief tea. Mommypotamus likewise has some wonderful info about exactly how nettle tea is one of the most reliable as well as very easy to nurture the liver as well as minimize histamine reaction.

What I do: I often consist of nettle in homemade herbal tea during allergic reaction season (recipe at the bottom of this blog post) and utilize pills for severe alleviation of allergy signs.

5. Probiotics.

Allergic reactions are the result of a discrepancy in the body immune system that triggers the body to respond also highly to a stimuli. Lots of research studies link the existence of beneficial microorganisms in the gut with lowered occurrence of allergies.

Proof is also emerging that a mommy's gut microorganisms while pregnant as well as nursing can impact a kid's likelihood of obtaining allergic reactions throughout life, as can exposure to excessively clean and sterile atmospheres.

While we can't do much about our mommies' diet plans while they were pregnant, balancing digestive tract bacteria now and consuming enough beneficial bacteria can have a favorable result on allergies now.

What I do: I make sure we consume a varied diet plan that includes lots of fermented foods and beverages which can assist improve digestive tract bacteria. We likewise take a premium quality probiotic capsule.

6. Neighborhood Honey.

There isn't much clinical proof to back this, yet there appears to be a lot of unscientific proof from individuals who have tried it. (Also Mark Sisson weighed in on the topic right here). The concept is that taking in neighborhood honey from where you live will certainly assist your body adjust to the allergens in the setting there. This is supposed to function like a natural allergic reaction "shot" and does not seem to have a drawback.

What I do: Eat a tsp or even more of raw, unprocessed neighborhood honey from as near where you actually live as feasible. Do this several times a day to help eliminate signs. It is often recommended to start this a month or so prior to allergy season.

7. Anti-inflammatory Foods.

Foods, teas, as well as spices with recognized anti-inflammatory benefits might contribute in reducing undesirable allergy signs and symptoms. A 2016 study in the Journal of Nutritional Biochemistry and biology discovered that ginger provided orally to mice decreased sneezing and congestion in addition to reduced pole cell reaction. Environment-friendly tea shows comparable effects.

What I do: Serve a lot of natural herbs and also spices with dishes, as well as green and herbal teas. Likewise combine three of these pointers in one by making this Ginger Switchel beverage.

8. Diet regimen Modifications.

7 All-natural Remedies for Allergic reaction ReliefIf all else falls short, in some cases dietary adjustments can be the solution to allergic reaction problems. Lots of recovery bone brew and conducting a removal diet regimen are excellent locations to start.

After our experience, I 'd definitely motivate this as an option, particularly for serious allergic reactions or those seeking digestive tract healing/rebalancing.

What we did: We followed the SPACES diet for numerous months and had success improving our seasonal allergies and also healing some instead severe food allergies in among our kids.

9. Gut Screening.

If you really experience allergies as well as suspect a comprised gut at the end of it, think about getting screening to obtain clear photo of what is taking place in your digestive tract and also exactly how to repair it.

Yes, this literally indicates mailing poop to a laboratory but I learned a lot from this examination and also still continue to gain from understanding certain methods to boost my individual gut. Advancements in at-home screening suggest you don't need to go to a physician or a laboratory.

The post “ 9 Natural Remedies for Seasonal Allergy Relief “ was originally seen on Wellness Mama

Boost your overall health and disease prevention with the help of naturopathic medicine. Contact your nearest naturopathic doctor - Dr. Amauri Caversan ND.

[chrisoncinema]

Chris on Cinema’s Top Films of 2019

Before we go any further: the best movies of the 2010s that is about the 2000s is The Social Network. The best movie of the 2010s that is about the 2010s is Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. No other film captured, with pop-art colors and four-quadrant appeal, the greatness – and great responsibility – that has been thrust upon Generation Z. In the past few years I have been so inspired by the brave, tireless work of people like Mari Copeny, David Hogg, and Greta Thunberg. They teach us that we all have a role to play in improving our world. In fighting for what is right. I hope that our art in 2020 reflects their courage and lives up to the idea that tomorrow will be brighter if we choose to make it so.

Anyway, here are the movies I couldn’t stop thinking about this year.

10. An Elephant Sitting Still

One could spend the entirety of An Elephant Sitting Still’s four-hour runtime debating whether director Hu Bo’s tragic death diminishes, elevates, or simply distracts from the film itself. It’s a thought that is hard to ignore given that the film is steeped in malaise and haunted by death. An Elephant is difficult to watch but impossible to ignore or look away from; it is full of characters who are difficult to love but impossible not to empathize with. On paper, nothing could seem more one-note or more disheartening than this film and yet its existence challenges us to consider the why of our hurt and our selfishness and our apathy.

9. The Report

The Report is not really interested in being a movie and since it cannot be a documentary it decides to be a dramatic reenactment. It is doggedly journalistic and its matter-of-factness stands in stoic opposition to cathartic sensationalism. The Report owes much in form and function to Steven Soderbergh, for whom Scott Z. Burns, its writer and director, has previously written four screenplays. Soderbergh has made a career of information delivery that is cool and frictionless but still compelling. The Report never quite reaches those heights but it benefits greatly from Adam Driver who is endlessly interesting to watch. Sometimes that’s all you need: the facts and America’s most compelling actor under 40.

8. The Farewell

We can complain about movie ticket prices, we can complain about the number of ads and trailers that delay a movie’s screening, but the fact remains that movies are cheaper than plane tickets and easier to swallow than a semester studying sociology. And therein lies their beauty. The Farewell gives us a seat at the dinner table of a loving but dysfunctional Chinese family. We learn, as with any family, the layers of emotion and meaning embedded beneath seemingly simple conversations. In this way, a simple conceit – the inevitable death of a family member – is imbued with complex and bittersweet repercussions. The Farewell is ensemble piece but it is carried on the slumped shoulders of the charming, emotive Awkwafina. She was new to me here – I look forward to her becoming an old friend.

7. The Lighthouse

Midway through Robert Egger’s new horror two-hander, The Lighthouse, Willem Dafoe gives a dramatic monologue that is so intense, so impassioned, and, most importantly, so long that I could not help but burst out laughing. Despite the film’s cold, miserable, gross conditions, The Lighthouse may have been the most fun I had at the movies this year. Pair that with the film’s astoundingly ecstatic penultimate scene and the aforementioned Dafoe’s craggy face filling the high-contrast black-and-white frame, and you have something purely, simply cinematic. Even if there isn’t much going on below the torrential surface.

6. Uncut Gems

Upping the darkly comic ante is Josh and Benny Safdie’s new film, Uncut Gems. I love the Safide Brothers and I love how much they clearly love film. I love that they know exactly how to use Adam Sandler’s manic, desperate energy. I love that they are constantly daring me not to throw up upon witnessing their exquisitely nauseating characters and cinematography. I do hope their style evolves. Those who have seen the Sadie Brothers’ previous film, Good Time, will not be too surprised by anything here. But the cinematic schadenfreude works for me. As Qui-Gon Jinn said, “Whenever you gamble, my friend, eventually you lose.” Sandler’s Howard loses in the spectacular fashion of a firework malfunction where everything explodes at once. We leave covered in soot, ears ringing, hands shaking, laughing nervously for the rest of the night.

5. Ad Astra

Ad Astra snuck up on me in a way that only James Gray movies seems capable of. It was one of my most anticipated movies of the year but when the lights came up I felt perplexed and disappointed. Days later, though, I could not shake the image of Brad Pitt floating alone in his spaceship. I realized upon reflection that no other film has captured the banal, isolating imprisonment that space travel so obviously portends. Suddenly, what seemed like saccharine melodrama was reframed as the necessary tether back to a humanity so easily lost in the din of industrialization. Before worrying about whether or not we are alone in the universe, we must find reconciliation for those with whom we already occupy space.

4. The Last Black Man in San Francisco

The Last Black Man in San Francisco is odd and specific and observational and soulful. It is about gentrification and race and the performative nature of identity without ever becoming preachy or overly obvious. San Francisco may have benefited from a shorter runtime but what you gain in expediency you undoubtedly lose in atmosphere and in the overflowing humanity and warmth developed by director Joe Talbot and lead Jimmie Fails. The film quietly and gently teaches us that our endless and exhausting irony is often just a mask to hide our ignorance. It’s easy to claim to hate that which you do not know or understand. Love is hard. But investing in something – a relationship, a place – means that against all odds it’s harder not to.

3. Marriage Story

Remember that time Kylo Ren smashed a wall fighting Black Widow and also Alan Alda was there? What a time for movies. Marriage Story’s thesis can be summed up thusly: “Criminal lawyers see bad people at their best, divorce lawyers see good people at their worst.” We all deserve agency and autonomy but what do we owe each other? And what do we allow others to tell us we’re owed? And what, by our actions, do we tell others they deserve?

2. Parasite

It seems that every year there is a movie that, for my skeptical self, does not live up to the hype. Kindly cancel me for stating that Under the Skin, Fury Road, and Annihilation are among them. I respect these movies for their singular vision and for not being made by Disney, but my interest goes that far and no farther. Parasite should have joined that list but I found myself completely engrossed in its intricate twists and turns. I won’t bother reiterating what everyone else has already said about it. It’s one of the best movies of the year.

1. A Hidden Life

The best movie, however, can only go to A Hidden Life. Because when Terrence Malick is good, he’s the best. And his latest film includes an element that has been missing from some of his recent works: necessity. The true story of Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer who refused to pledge loyalty to Hitler, is an important story for our time and for all time. As with so many movies on this list, A Hidden Life is about the cost of doing what is right rather than what is easy or safe. It is an overwhelming film not only because of its subject but because of the beauty in every fluid shot’s composition. There is a heaviness in A Hidden Life but it is never hopeless. It is a rallying cry for the inherent value and beauty in life. I struggle to write more about it not because it is undeserving but because a Gesamtkunstwerk like this is almost untranslatable. It must be seen. If one of the few theaters that is actually playing A Hidden Life is near you – see it. Full stop.

[ratmor]

Fairytale Lies Along (Russian Fairytales in OUaT)

5. THE NIGHT

Spending the night in the backseat of our Beetle is not something to expect from a seemingly normal ending of the evening with a relatively pleasant conversation with the mayor of a small town in the wilds of Maine, is it?

As a result, Emma and I - she’s a little tipsy, and I’m a little discouraged - we are going on sly through the town. It all seems suspicious, you know. When Regina Mills subtly asked if she should worry about Henry's father, I literally forced my dear ward to say that she could call the boy's father if this a little bit imbalanced woman would like so.

Sometimes Emma can be a huge slowpoke when it comes to such a long con, like the one I thought of, making this Mills think that Emma can still somehow claim to be Henry’s mother, despite all our assurances that this won’t happen. After all, if Mills does not twitch, then all our stay here really ends extremely unproductive and quickly. Emma won’t stay if she feels the kid is loved. True, Emma very much regrets putting the kid for adoption, but it was too long for us not to cope with her self-blame much earlier than the kid showed up. So, on the part of Emma, Regina never really had a problem, and we would quickly ride back to Boston, regardless of the strange town and its inhabitants, and I urgently needed to come up with something to keep us here for a longer time. A confrontation with the adoptive mother of this tiny piglet, who, by a misunderstanding, considers himself our son, would be reason enough for Emma to stay. She is a keen and stubborn person.

Here in this town I need time to find my salvation from being only nearby the body of my ward, because I don’t really want to kill her if that heroism I've been waiting for begins. Well, I just could not wait for twenty eight years of her life for it to begin but…

Everything is too strange, because I definitely remember, and Emma just didn’t yet add the pieces to the puzzle. The little Us happened to be found in this particular area in the state of Maine.

As soon as it reaches Emma’s dimwit brain, it will be even easier to convince her to stay here, leaving her not quite miserable life in Boston and moving into these still waters with magical stink.

After all, I still feel this... Not just some obscure strangeness of this town, I kinda recognized something dormant and at the same time immensely familiar. I felt it a long time ago while in my travels as still a disgraced prince I wandered into the City of Masters on the border with the Infinite Forest and couple of Distant Kingdoms.

It housed a rarely used portal supposedly leading to other realities and parts of the world, but usually it was connected to the Tower of Silence, which was used at that time to expel those who had problems with those who were in power in my realm. That tower actually belonged to the Princess Nesmeana, the One Who Never Laughs, the great grandmother of mine, The Immortal Stone Princess.

She was called such a nickname in ancient times, when the curse of the Stone Heart was in action and it fettered her feelings, when she was the sovereign of the Dark Forest, she was the daughter of one of the ancient Yaga and the strongest witch of her time, and of mine too actually. By my time she had already settled down and turned soft, it became possible when she returned her fiery heart and felt the heart-ache for the first time in hundreds of years. That story is long and I don’t have much to say about it, I was not there and I did not eat bread there, as they say in The Thirty Realms. [ Authors Note: that’s the saying you say if you want to admit that you have no idea what you’re talking about but you still try. It’s related to the other saying that shows that you’re going to tell something that’s hard to believe in but you still try. “I certainly was there, Mead and wine I drank, I swear; Though my whiskers bathed in wine, Nothing passed these lips of mine.” ]

That blood relation to the Princess, by the way, once upon a time allowed me to positively participate in the skirmish that was extremely profitable for me at that time and also allowed me to receive the support of the City of Masters in my claims for throne in the Distant Kingdoms. I managed to save those who were in opposition to the acting regional government of one of sovereigns, they still existed those days.

It was from the City of Masters that my conquest began at the time...

Meh. Well, this is not what I’m talking about right now. The city of Masters was at the crossroads of worlds and, as we the poor inhabitants of a world without magic say, it was more magical than real. Here everything seemed diametrically opposed, although in its own way similar - the fairy tale was only in the air, and now it wasn’t so unattainable to get to Magic.

The portal to the Tower was through the well, and I never tried to go to other worlds - I had other things on my mind, but it is worth looking for something similar to that well here. Here's the problem - as long as I'm so tightly attached to Emma it's just hard to do. And the last time I separated from her …

First of all, everything did not end too well, and I still think that partially I was to blame for what happened with that jerk Neal and with that giving the child up thing. After all, if I had not disappeared for such a long time after she fell in love with that dull dude …

And I would not have disappeared if it weren’t for that very “second of all”, which goes after “first of all” by the default.

Second of all, I tried to seize Emma’s body. As you can see from the result, I did not succeed.

I remember, it was also a restless and half-drunk night …

***

“Well, hello, Emma,” - I said to Swan, who had not yet realized anything, while she peered into my eyes with all curiosity she had in her and tried as if to absorb my face in her memory.

“Hi ... You are ... Old man, right? Don’t look like the old one. Why you never correct me if you look like thirty years old? Where are we?” - she bombarded me with questions, looking around, but I looked at her point blank until she finally stopped talking and looked back, asking the most important one. - “Why are we here?”

A green steppe stretched around us, an almost boundless and life-giving plain, familiar to me from times of travel and conquest. The steppe united three states - the Golden, Silver and Bronze Realms. Where the Three Wise Lady-Sorceress ruled since time immemorial, and that land was called Wonderful, because their castles were - one’s more beautiful than the other and besides in the colors inherent in the name of each kingdom, and in the castles those were gardens of magical plants, and in the middle of that steppe was the source of healing water, it was also called the Death Water. A tidbit, if you look at it like that ... Meh, wasn’t going to go there now.

“Because I'm sick of enduring it,” - I came closer to her, without meeting the slightest resistance of the surprised girl, and put my hand into her chest, squeezing the pulsating heart with the usual gesture.

She looked back with pain and incomprehension, so vaguely familiar and unpleasant to me, that I decided to remain silent and finish it as quickly as possible, tugging at the focus of her power.

The next moment I was blinded by a bright light, and the steppe turned around, then whitish magic began to shimmer, cast in gold, but cold ... And then I discovered my spirit, barely dense and quite visible, outside of my girl’s sleeping body.

Next to Emma, Neal Cassidy slept, whom I hated with every bit of my soul, because it was because of him that I made the decision.

She wasn’t even eighteen yet - it was not by my rules. She should’ve never fallen in love so much. My reaction even reminded me of some kind of irrational jealousy. Irrational because I was dead for a long time and never even supposed to respond to the romantic relationship of my, let's say, random transit point, but no, I was ready to devour her and kill her just because of that relationship. It would be extremely strange if it weren’t for the constant vague feeling that slipped into me gradually… I had to prevent the continuation of that relationship, because I was seized with fear every time I imagined that I’d stop playing the primary role in her life, she would gain more power and get rid of me.

And now she knows that I am not her friend anymore, and I don’t have much magic left.

I touched her forehead and measured exactly half of the remaining mana on the spell.

The condition is… She will remember only when she finds true love and a dear soul in the world, which is saturated with magic no less than my own, and will share the kiss of true love with that person. It will never happen, will it? Indeed, in this world there is almost no magic.

My limbs grew dim, and I became fully disembodied again. But it's worth it - I now have where to come back. And now I’ll let her be alone. Now she remembers only that we shouted at each other, and I left her, promising to return someday.

And I came back when she called. And then, too, was the night. That night Henry was born.

“His father’s name is John,” Emma said, noticing me behind the midwife who was holding the baby — I was only visible to her, and she looked into my eyes with regret and pain, so that my heart would have sank in if I had a the body and the heart. - “John Oldman.”

“You screwed up my name,��� - I said and smiled like I shouldn't have smiled.

I looked at her face with an undoubtedly noticeable painful tenderness I felt, and she smiled encouragingly at me - even now she remained the same Emma, whom I would never touch or try to do what I did, my baby Emma, whom it was impossible not to adore. And I touched her cheek.

She began to cry, still smiling shyly, and she snuggle up to my hand, forgetting that I’d been dead long ago, and the child had been taken away - I had not even looked in his direction.

“Honey, hush. Hush, do not cry. We'll figure something out. We always come up with something.”

“I gave up the kid,” - she whispered. - “I didn’t think you’ll appear. Together we’d come up with something.”

“I also didn’t think I’d appear,” - I touched her forehead with my lips and then pressed my palms to her cheeks, looking into her dilated pupils. - “Take me back again. Forgive me. Is he already impossible to?..”

“Impossible,” - she closed her eyes and began to cry softly again, barely sobbing and swallowing tears.

I hugged her and disappeared again, losing my freedom.

Before that I looked through the prison hospital window.

There was a moonless night