#it looked like that because it was from the 16th century. fucking early new high german

[schadenfreudich]

Oh yeah, Wolfgang sure did proof his point that "aufbrüsten" is a real word, but seemingly not used in this century.

[jechristine]

I’ve had those thoughts about class distinction (and perception since it’s all about how people perceive Tom and Tim and not really reality) and how its rooted in some elitism in a way as well. It feel like ‘film twitter’ forgets there are many kinds of types of intelligence and I hope that Tom knows that as well - since looking at what Dom’s said, I don’t particularly think that he was encouraged in his intellectual strengths (he does certainly seem to have them) in the right way by his dad (which is a big generalization that disclaimer, might not be accurate either since I’m only going by what Dom’s stated in his blogs - he could be a much better or different father than he comes off as, who knows).

But looking at that twitter drama and knowing you’re a teacher, have you noticed social media interfering with education over the years? It just seems ironic to me that these accounts that preach intellectualism actually their voice arguments in a very anti-intellectual way. Looking at someone and reducing them to a failure lacks as much critical thinking as ‘stanning’ them, but all these people act like their opinion is fact and they’re often not interested in an actual debate where both sides are open to new info.

I feel like twitter might have benefits in making friends and also for sure spreading knowledge of social justice, but I also think that the short word count and engagement discourages critical thought and nuance so often that idk if the benefits outweigh what it might be doing to users. I know that when I take a break from twitter I feel less reactive and angry all the time, I can focus more - which is personal since I’m sure not everyone gets that way but for me the difference is huge.

This is a long and slightly disorganized way of asking your thoughts on twitter as a platform - do you think a short form app like that could be contributing to critical thinking skills shrinking too? Tumblr is more of an echo chamber with niche communities but I also feel like the extended word count gives the opportunity for complex discussions

Hey, Anon!

This is probably not what you’re asking for, but there are so many angles from which I want to think about your question. They’re all sort of related.

As a former medievalist & early modernist: the parallels between current outcries against social media and the 16th/17th century outcries against print culture and the printing presses are strong. We’re seeing just so many more people contributing their voices, languages, and ideas to the public space, and consuming so many others’. It can be messy because people don’t all have great things to say, and there are so many of them, but also the democratization of social discourse is so consequential. The printing presses in Europe (which is what I know) changed the course of history, leading as some have argued to the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and…capitalism. We don’t really know where social media will take us, but probably someplace new.

As a high school English teacher: I’ve been immersed in PD lately in what’s being called “the Science of Reading.” A lot of the American education system has fucked up the way we teach kids to read in the last 20 years, and we’ve created a huge problem, especially for our students furthest from opportunity, i.e. the majority of my students at a high-poverty Title 1 school with many English-language learners. (If interested, this podcast is so illuminating/horrifying.) I know this is American-centric, but that’s what I know. Problems exist in terms of who has access to knowledge and ideas that are so much deeper than character count on social media. I’d bet this is true in other parts of the world, too.

And I think one more layer, connected to that one, is that lots of people are engaging with subjects on such a superficial level, just kind of repeating what they’ve seen said elsewhere without the knowledge background or frame of reference to dig deeper or be critical. I’ve seen a ton of really excellent Twitter threads from which I’ve learned a lot—so I don’t think character count is really an issue. I think lots of people don’t use the thread function because they simply don’t have much to say.

(Finally, I know what you mean about tumblr being an echo chamber but also I do think my mutuals and I disagree plenty without being shitty about it. Sometimes disagreement is really narrow. In fact, I think the best disagreement is when “opponents” share values and thoughtfulness but come to different conclusions. I also think tumblr would be just as bad if it had as many users as Twitter does.)

[terpia]

Early Modern Drama Rec List (Non-Shakespeare)

So I just spend a year reading a lot of early modern drama and I thought I might as well put my degree to a good use and make a list of some of my favourite lesser known (i.e. not written by Shakespeare) early modern plays. All of these plays are in the public domain, so it should be very easy to find them online.

Comedies:

The Roaring Girl by Thomas Middleton and Thomas Dekker - a fictional story featuring a dramatized portrayal of a real person, Mary Firth, also known as Moll Cutpurse. Moll was a notorious pickpocket, wore a doublet and breeches, smoked a pipe, cursed, and was generally infamous for her 'mannish' behaviour. And she's a character in this play!

It is open to interpretation how positive the play's depiction of Moll really is, but she does play a very important role in getting the main pair of lovers together and ends the play happily continuing to live her life the way she wants, which is in itself pretty incredible. Overall, just a really fun read.

Galatea (or Gallathea) by John Lyly - a 16th century play that is both gay and trans??? Sign me up! In a village where the fairest virgin needs to be sacrificed to Neptune every 5 years (or he'll drown everyone), two fathers decide to disguise their beautiful daughters as boys and hide them in a nearby forest. While wandering around the forest the two girls meet and, falling for each other's disguises, fall in love. In the end (spoilers for the ending, but this is not exactly a play you read for the plot, lol), Diana stops Neptune, the two girls find out each other's true identities and decide they're still in love, and Venus turns one of them (we never find out which one) into a boy so that they can get married.

As must be clear from this summary, this comedy plays around with gender a lot. To add to the gender cocktail, remember that the two girls would have been originally played by boys. Although the ending was seen as heteronormative by early queer critics, the emergence of trans criticism within queer theory has led to a lot of interesting readings of the play. Well worth a read.

(also, if you have a device on which you can play DVDs and some money to spare, consider buying a DVD of the Edward's Boys production of the play. Edward's Boys is a group that replicates the format of early modern boys' companies, with all roles in their productions being played by boys. I will admit, when I bought a DVD of their 2014 production of Galatea, I expected to watch a glorified high school performance, but it turned out to be so good. All the boy actors were amazing, way better at performing Shakespeare than a lot of Hollywood actors. This just straight-up felt like a professional theatre production, I highly recommend it.)

The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont - I don't even know how to describe this play other than 'fantastic and fun'. A meta-theatrical city comedy, which starts with a pair of audience members (who were actually two dressed-up boy actors from the boys' company performing the play) jumping onto a stage and demanding to see a different play than the the one being set up. Things get only wilder from there.

A genuinely really funny play. I don't know of anyone who has read it and hasn't immediately loved it.

The Sea Voyage by John Fletcher and Philip Massinger - one of the least well known plays out of this list, which is unfortunate because this play is really fun. Short and sweet, it's a story of a bunch of (surprisingly honorable) pirates, who get shipwrecked on an island inhabited by a tribe of Amazon-like women. Predictably, hijinks ensue. An interesting look into early modern gender relations (apparently the main reason why living without men would be difficult for women is because of how horny they would get? I think Fletcher and Massinger need to take a lesson or two from Lyly).

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson - want to see three assholes con a bunch of idiots in increasingly ridiculous ways? Then this is the play for you.

Jonson's city comedies, which satirize the people of early modern London, tend to be much meaner in tone than Shakespeare's comedies and the other comedies on this list, but in many ways, that's what makes them fun. Viciously clever and at times really funny, there's an edge to the writing that makes it very entertaining. I had a lot of fun reading this (Jonson's Epicoene is also great, if you want a comedy that's even meaner and also has some very questionable gay stuff in it).

Tragedies:

Doctor Faustus by Christopher Marlowe - probably the most famous non-Shakespeare early modern play, and for a good reason. It has everything; pacts with the devil, a melodramatic anti-hero protagonist, homoeroticism (I mean of course, it's Marlowe), and a suitably gory and tragic ending. What more can you ask for?

The Tragedy of Mariam by Elizabeth Cary - this play is more interesting than fun, but I think it's still well worth a read. It's the first original play written in English by a woman. The play takes place in ancient Palestine. It looks at the way Mariam, a Jewish queen, reacts to the news of the death of her husband, the tyrannous Herod (yes, the baby-killing guy from the Bible). Most people seem to be relieved. Except oops, Herod is not actually dead.

A fascinating look at gender ideology in the early modern period, with the play centering around the conflict of a woman who tries to live up to the ideals of a perfect wife and woman, while stuck in a marriage to a tyrant. This play would also be a great read for anyone interested in how gender and sexuality intersected with race in early modern England, because this play uses a lot of racialized language to describe women.

The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster - a classic revenge tragedy. A recently widowed Duchess wants to marry her steward, but her asshole brothers throw a fit. Intrigue and death ensue. At one point a fake wax hand and some fake wax corpses appear on stage.

This play basically reads like a good thriller. Fucked up in a way that only an early modern revenge tragedy can be, this is a fun and thrilling read.

The Changeling by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley - speaking of fucked up. If you're planning to read it, be mindful that this play contains sexual assault. It's a story of a young noblewoman called Beatrice, who wants to get rid of her fiancé after falling in love with a visiting nobleman. To do it, she enlists the help of her villainous servant De Flores. Things end up going extremely badly.

This play can get very uncomfortable at times, but just like The Duchess, it's as gripping as any good modern thriller. Very engaging. The ending is as engrossing as it is stomach-churning, although probably not for the reasons it was originally meant to (reading criticism about The Changeling, it is genuinely shocking and disheartening to see how long it took for critics to start addressing the clear issues of consent in the play). The story also includes a bizarre virginity test that uses a potion which makes you drowsy or which makes you sneeze and laugh depending on whether you had sex or not, so hey, at least that's fun?

Antonio's Revenge by John Marston - ok, so this is definitely the least... good of the plays I've recommended so far, but listen. Do you like trainwrecks? Do you like violence so over-the-top that people to this day wonder whether it's actually supposed to be a parody of the revenge tragedy genre? Are you looking for a reading experience that will make you go 'what the fuck' throughout? If so, this is the play for you!

Very much in the so bad it's good category. Ridiculously gory. The only thing that makes it better is knowing that it was originally played by children (on a related note, I haven't seen this production, but I know that this play has also been played by Edward's Boys). If you like horrible, gory horror movies, you'll probably enjoy this play.

That's it for now! Hopefully at least a few of these plays catch your interest.

Btw, LibriVox, which is an organisation that makes public domain recordings of public domain texts, has most of these plays available as free audiobooks, if you're interested!

[suffering-and-happy-about-it]

I want to tell you... (Part 10.)

Description: Nathan Drake is not the exact definition of an unhappy man. His job is steady, his friends still see him from time to time, he plays football, but his marriage is his main problem. Many things will change when a special person comes to his life.

Part Summary: Everything was slowly going off rails again for both you and Nate. But at the same time, you decided there’s something lingering in the air, which you should ignore. 

A/N: We’ll be slowly falling down to the pit of bad news here. Anyway, if you’d feel as if you are trapped in a toxic relationship you’re not happy in, please, don’t let that to yourself. Try talking to your friends, family of professors/co-workers. Loneliness, cheating, fear and depression isn’t fun to deal with. And I’m speaking out of personal experience. You’re not alone. 

Word counter: 4.9 K

Tagging: @missdictatorme​, @peakymarvels​, @nemodoren​, @flavorishy​, @decadentwinnerjudgedream​

Series master list: H E R E

Nathan’s car sing-along playlist: H E R E

When you came home, the whole flat was still silent and dark. Mike was still at work, so you had a lot of time to just sit down on the couch and to think about the wild things Nathan had outlined. And when your boyfriend finally came home, after an hour of you sitting in front of a TV playing some rom-com. The man walked over to you and tried to lean down, kissing you on your forehead - and being the mad little bean you were, you moved away from him.

"Hey, come on." - The man put his bag next to the couch, sighing loudly when he realized that he's probably in trouble. Slowly, Mike sat beside you, leaning his elbow into the back of the couch, moving closer to you. - "I was working, I swear." - He leaned closer to you, kissing the crook your neck gently while smoothing your thigh up and down. - "And I had you on my mind all day, baby, trust me. I want you. I want you so fucking much now." - The man leaned closer and started to get more heated up than just a moment ago.

Maybe he was working? He was at the new workplace just for a month, he wouldn't have time to start some kind of a relationship, right? That would be too soon. Too bold of him when you still didn't quite trust him with keeping his dick inside his briefs. No. He surely wasn't cheating on you - and this thought sold you into leaning into the touch, kissing him back with equal passion. And with that, the last thought about Nathan and Sully being a part of a gang flew out of the window.

But not for long - the next few days, you've spent with buying you some textbooks and reference materials for your college, which you were about to start in October, you looked around for a few more decorations to put into your flat and overall, you tried to fight the loneliness on your own again. Why? Mike was constantly at work. Sure, you were aware that Mike is a workaholic, but it did rose your eyebrows that he is at every single day, working overtime so early after your new start.

Your boyfriend dismissed you with a small smile every single time. He told you that you have nothing to be worried about because he was just trying to impress his bosses so his payment would be raised quickly. And this time, you decided to believe him instead of jumping straight to conclusions - which proved to be right the last time nonetheless. But this time, you tried to keep your cool.

Which was proved quite difficult when Nate texted you about your schedule - he wanted to plan the hangout between his shifts so you would both have a lot of time to spend together. You were free anytime he would ask you to come to see him, so the date was set on next Monday, because Nate had a shift on Sunday, preparing meals for some rich people party in their restaurant. He texted you the address where his flat was at and on Monday evening, you were standing there nervously and waited before Nate will run the stairs down to open up the door for you.

He and his wife chose a nice location to have their flat at. It was one of those locations where families with children live their day-to-day life. The apartments there were spacious and modern, they had a nice feeling to them. It was close to the beach and the sea, so Nathan could go rollerskating every time he wished to. And you had just one question - why was Nate and his friends very financially secure beyond believable. There was something iffy about this whole company. Nathan was just about to tell you.

"Hey, hey, come in. I've been waiting for you." - The man told you as he opened up the apartment building front door, inviting you inside. Honestly, you'd love to end up in a flat like that if you would be about to start a family. Even the halls and stairs were spacious. The whole building was feeling very safe. No-one who was a villain secretly would be living in such a building.

The true moment of dripping a jaw came when Nate had unlocked the door to their apartment, inviting you in. It was beautiful - there were souvenirs from all around the world, hand-knitted colorful carpets - you loved a small corner with two bean bags which was somehow inviting. And next to these two, there was a whole wall covered in dream catchers. The rest of the flat certainly had that warm, family-like feeling. It wasn't tiny in the slightest, every small inch of the apartment was inviting and lightheartedly vibing to you. There were photos of Elena and Nate everywhere, which was the first time you had ever seen her. She was a pretty blonde woman, smaller than Nate with big brown eyes and big smiles in each of the photos. You had to note that she was athletic, to say the least - you could ever catch a glimpse of her jogging t-shirts in the laundry basket.

She was hugging his waist and they... They were looking very happy. But one thing that hit your eyes was the fact that these photos were fairly old. Nate caught you staring at one of them and he chuckled, pointing at his with a small smile. - "That was our vacation three years back. We were in Europe, in smaller countries like Czechia, Slovakia, and Austria. It was very nice." - You nodded with your eyebrows slightly arched as you looked at Elena wearing a summer dress.

"She's looking happy and, honestly, she's beautiful. You're a great match." - You stated quietly, which made Nate grin funnily. Neither of you commented on his grin - you put some sweets you bought on the countertop. When you commented on your cooking, you weren't trying to be funny. There was a high probability that your food would poison him, which made you realize that you should buy at least some donuts for Nate to snack on and buy yourself some coffee while you were at it. - "But now, you promised me to tell me about the... Things you and your friends anticipate in. And if you won't make me believe that you're not a white meat trafficker, a gangster or a drug dealer, we're done." - You looked Nate in the eyes.

The man was aware of his friendship with you being put on a tight line at the moment. But at the same time, he knew he had enough proof to show you that he, indeed, is an archeologist - well, maybe not exactly the archeologist you knew from real life, but he liked to consider himself one. IN the end, he was extremely passionate about history and he could go on about it for hours and hours. Yeah. Nate was most probably an archeologist.

"Okay, so, sit down here and wait for me. I'll bring you some stuff to show you. Books, journals, maps, artifacts, everything." - The part about artifacts made you furrow and straighten up as you sat down on the couch. Why was he talking about maps and artifacts? Was he smuggling stuff over the borders? What the fuck was Nathan working on in his free time? But he threw you out of your train of thoughts pretty fast when he dropped a box full of stuff next to you. You freaked out and sighed, closing your eyes dramatically while Nate bent over to take out one of the first books he had there, sitting beside you.

"This my mom's journals, the ones Florence was talking about back at the dinner." - Nate went through the pages until he found the passage he was most fond of before putting it into your palms carefully as if it was a commodity of a high price. First, you didn't have an idea about what you were looking at, and when Nate sensed your cluelessness, he smirked and pointed at the name. - "Henry Avery was a big pirate back in the day. There was this huge heist around the 16th century for which he got famous. To tell you in modern slang, this guy was huge. And according to some theories, this man had established the pirate utopia of Libertalia. But that's just a theory at the moment." - Nate sighed and watched as you read random passaged from his mom's journals with a slight furrow, mouthing each word to yourself. Just when you wanted to give him the journal back, a photo fell out of it - and when you looked at it carefully, you realized you're looking and much younger Nate.

The guy next to you was around his early thirties and this boy was... Around thirteen? God, was this picture even real to start with? Nate leaned over your shoulder to grin at the visual documentation of what he was looking like.

"This is my brother. Sam. He's a great guy and he got me through a lot of stuff." - Nate pointed at the other guy in the picture. The boys weren't looking alike at all, but something was telling you that these two boys were related. While you were stuck at the picture, Nate laughed victoriously as he pulled another photo out of the box. It was hidden in a small, leatherback journal that had a small hole from a bullet on the front side.

"Won't you look at that." - The man smiled at the memories connected to the photo. You could see someone somewhat similar to Sully. And the man was looking very similar to what he was looking for when you first met him, so the photo was pretty recent. - "This one is like... Two years old. We were in this rainforest, searching for the lost city of gold. You know what I'm talking about?" - Nate wiggled his eyebrows and gave you the photo.

He was there along with Elena and Sully, each of them was dirty and visibly very tired. Elena, with a big smile of gold, was sitting on big old crates, thus being the center of the picture. Nate, with a shotgun, leaned to his shoulder, was on her right side, leaned to the boxes as well with messy hair. Sully was looking the finest, standing on her left side with a smug grin and a lit-up cigar. Sure, each of them was tired, but they were happy as hell for sure. They looked like a family.

"Why do you have a shotgun here, Nate?" - You asked with a small grin. - "But no, do tell, please." - You leaned your back into the couch and let Nate talk. He just talked about the lost city of El Dorado, sir Francis Drake, and Panama.

He spoke about Rafe, Nate, and Sam getting locked up in a Panamian prison for the sake of research and about Sam getting his ass imprisoned for a few because hurting one of the guards. Nathan told you the story about how they met again, finding a brother in one another again.

Nate showed you small trinkets with a lot of historical value he collected throughout the years of treasure hunting, telling you about each of them. There were numerous photos of him and his partners in crime, of a woman named Chloe and a man named Charlie and many photos of him and Elena on various excavation spots.

Sure, Nate didn't keep his inability to keep at least one of the historical spots intact, but he was still a skilled and smart archeologist nonetheless. Sully managed to get him some good and well-paid gigs. It turned out that Victor knew Florence for some time now because some of these gigs were mostly her doing.

The Drake couple had many photos where they looked so happy it made you smile as well. But, the more photos of them you saw and the more Nate told you about the history behind each of them, the more the whole situation didn't make sense.

What happened to them? Why weren't they together at these spots anymore? Why weren't there any more photos? But when Nate was so passionate about everything, you couldn't just ask him, could you? That would bring him more pain than necessary. And you, in any case, didn't want to stir up the dust once it settled for at least a while.

That afternoon, you managed to drift off to sleep while Nate was telling you at least the seventh story about some pirate or who. But the man didn't wake you up. Nate put a blanket over your chest, tugging you in as he got to the preparation of dinner for you.

It was almost eight p.m. when your phone started to ring. It was just buzzing, but Mike's photo was lighting all over the dining room. Which made Nate sick from his stomach.

The memory of the conversation you and Mike had back in the day suddenly tickled Nathan's memory. Was the boy cheating on you? At the moment? Or not? Should he pick up the phone and ask about the topic like a man could ask a man?

He could and should do that. He would do that if he had the balls at the moment. So he just picked up the vibrating device and shook your shoulder gently. That woke you up instantly. When you realized what's happening and who's calling, you sat straight and tried to get the sleepiness out of your head.

"Hey, hey, baby." - You mumbled sleepily and got your feet, pacing around the room at a fast pace. Your head was still dizzy, but you tried your best to concentrate on Mike's voice.

"Oh. Oh. Again? That's strange. Yeah. I get that. Sure. Love you. Bye." - There was this deep sigh when you ended the call, looking at the phone in your hand. Nate was just cooking the cheese sauce for your pasta. His blue eyes flickered at you standing there with an empty look in your face. But he chose not to talk until you'd like to talk.

"Listen. It's late. I should go home now." - You mumbled sleepily, having those dizzy moments of just woken up person.

"Woah. Not a chance." - Nate answered immediately, turning down the volume of heat under his cheese sauce.

"I don't think you're a psychopath or human trafficker by now, but you can't hold me here, Nathan." - An angry huff left your lips as you went for your jacket.

"I won't hold you here, I'm not a monster. The thing is that the city is dangerous after dusk. And I'm cooking dinner. So you'll have dinner, a glass of wine and then I'll drive you home. And that's not a topic for a debate." - Your friend pointed a finger at you and dried his palms in a cooking towel. Immediately, you straightened and widened your eyes, putting the jacket on the back of the chair. Nate licked his lips, steering the almost finished masterpiece.

This man didn't look like the type who would be a general, but when he started to act like one, dear Lord. For a moment, there was a glimpse of something hiding under the surface.

"He stayed there overtime again?" - Nathan asked when the sudden hint of anger disappeared into the thin air again. First, you put your lips together and bit them nervously, sitting down to the table. When you came in, you didn't notice that Nate has fresh flowers on the table, but there were daisies he had picked up earlier that very day. But in the end, you nodded. - "He's there tomorrow as well?" - "No, tomorrow Mike's at home, we have some plans." - "Oh."

The rest of the evening was quiet in its entirety. It was strange to feel the fear dragging you deeper and deeper back into your head. Why was all of this so known? So reminiscing? And it all fell the lowest when you watched Nate driving off back home.

Again, you were walking back home all alone and on your own. The flat was pitch black and empty. Quiet even though the music coming from the street. Weird even though you were the leading designer of it, even though you knew every small corner of the flat... It didn't feel comfortable inside. When you sat on your couch, you let the TV turned off. Tears were streaming down from your eyes as you tried to keep it in. You drank the last bottle of wine you had in your room. Woah. Why should you be home alone when your boyfriend was caught up in your work again? You didn't see any reason for that.

Mike was honestly jealous of you hanging out with Nathan as much as you did. But why were you around the man so much? Huh? Because you moved across the fucking state when his sorry ass started to cheat on you and got caught with it. Every member of your family was back in your hometown where you met Mike and fell in love with him. And Nathan was just as lonely as you were. He and his friends accepted you as their friend and wanted to hang out with you too, at least that was what you thought this is about. Fuck Michael. Fuck him.

When you were drunk enough, you did the biggest bullshit you possibly could do. You got on your feet and left to search through Mike's stuff. People who loved and believed each other never went through each other's stuff. Huh. Funny. You didn't trust him since the first time he told you he has to stay overtime at work again. Last time he used that excuse in your hometown, you set on your journey to bring him dinner. And he was fucking one of his colleagues on his desk, moaning her name through the whole floor.

Your mom told you to break the things off with Mike immediately... But... He was sorry for a long time, he kept saying sorry, again and again. Slowly, he made you sure that all he needs is another chance. As soon as you told Mike you're willing to give him the chance, he asked for transmission to a different branch of the company where he was working. And they told him they have a good place in one city. And he accepted immediately just for the sake of your relationship.

Yet there you were fucking again. You were going through his stuff - sniffed his clothes, looked at the collars of his shirts, through his pockets and all the shit like that. And you found a small piece of paper at which you almost started to laugh. - "Amy. Amy, you motherfucker? Okay." - You mouthed and started to cry again. Her number was there too just as the heart drawn above her name.

Since that day, you hang out with Nate almost every day. He took you almost everywhere - on hikes, to have an ice-cream, roller skating, swimming, he taught you how to cook and even went shopping for your school supplies with you one day. Florence seemingly very liked you. She loved it when you joined them for dinner, you were a fun companion to have at her home.

Sully, if he'd have to be honest, was at a weird phase around you. It was beautiful to see Nate relaxed and contained after all those years of him and Elena getting further and further away from each other mentally and emotionally, but he was very much afraid that Nate will fall in love with you. At that point, you were just Nate's crush. The man was fond of you, which could be felt with every interaction you had. But Nate couldn't forget about still being a legally married man. Sure, he and Elena had a weird idea of romantic, but this relationship still had a chance to be saved.

One time, you invited Nate over when Mike was on his way to Seattle. He was supposed to stay there for the following five days, it was one of his daily work trips. You hadn't told anyone about the Amy paper you found in the pocked of Mike's jeans. But you needed to talk with someone about that. Ever since no-one other than Nate was free at that time.

"I would like to tell you why we had moved in here. We're actually from somewhere way out of the way." - You told him as you sat in front of the opened window, listening to the blasting life under your window. Nate sniffed his wine and smiled at you, nodding so you'd know he's listening to you.

"I met Mike at one party where I sure as hell wasn't supposed to be. I was... Young and dumb at that time and why I sure am older, I am not any wiser. He was this popular, funny guy who the girls went after like crazy while I was this normal girl. Dear Lord did I fell in love with him that night. Neither of us drank, we just sat down into the grass in front of the house and talked like two normal people. Honestly, Mike charmed with his humor and remarks. After that, we started dating." - While bringing up these memories, you were smiling as Nate leaned in lower into the plush chair, listening to every sound coming out of you. Even these were hard to hear at times. The man was fully focused on you.

"Because he was so much older, it naturally caught a lot of attention. But time passed by, I was almost finished with my high school and Mike had this good position at some company. He was good at what he was doing, but I noticed he's there a lot more than he should be instead of being with me. I mean, I didn't expect him to be with me every single day, no, but... We used to go to the cinema, on dates, walks when we were both free and suddenly, this seemed to be somehow problematic for him. I couldn't understand what was going on." - This had Nate to listen even more than before as he watched you gulping down the whole glass of wine at once, immediately pouring yourself another one.

"As usual, one night, I got a call from Mike who was at work way longer than he should be. And I decided to bring him some food, which I shouldn't do." - You lowered your head, furrowing at the memory. No matter how much Nathan wanted to tell you that it's not your fault, he stayed silent and watched you trying to gather yourself. - "It's strange to see someone who... Proclaims are in love with you pulling in and out into someone you've never met, telling them how beautiful they are. I thought I lost him at the moment I saw all of that. Christ help me, I was devastated." - You nodded to yourself. - "And to have a fresh start, we moved here. A good job proposition and a promise of getting it back together was what made me sure of it. But... It seems to slowly get back into the old trails."

There was a prolonged moment of silence between you and Nathan, who was slowly drinking his wine. You were extremely vulnerable at the moment, and not only that. You were also noticeably unhappy, worried, and mentally tired from the situation you found yourself at. Nathan was the man to understand all of it. He knew what you were talking about just like he felt just like you. So he decided to tell you his story.

"I met Elena through this gig." - The man giggled into his glass of wine, putting it down to his lap to take a deep breath. - "It was just after my brother was put into the sentence in Panama. Sullivan and I didn't have much money to take off to the Panamanian coast and... We needed funding. And a hell of money. That was when I saw her show on TV. It was talking about architecture and stuff. I thought it was a great idea. We wrote a business e-mail, telling her about the Panama things, about Drake and inviting her on our treasure hunt if her company pays for everything. Holy crap, they paid for every small thing Sully and I could imagine." - Nathan smiled at the memory, making you smile back at him.

"At first, Elena was annoying the living shit out of me. I swear to God, there were times when I just wanted to leave her there, but to my luck, I never did. After this thing was over, we started dating. And it was working out for some time. Soon, I realized she's the one I want by my side no matter what. Naturally, I proposed to her and she accepted - we got married, moved to a flat, started our normal life together. And it was quite nice for the first few months. For the sake of our relationship, I decided not to take any more gigs - but one day, she came home with this light in her eyes, telling me 'Nate, you're not going to believe this'. She was offered a job proposition in Europe, which is a huge thing for a journalist. I didn't tell her not to go, it was just for three months and I knew that once this will be over, she'll come back home and it will be just us again." - Nate looked at you, gently scratching his earlobe. Your head was leaned into the back of the couch and you didn't leave Nate off your sigh even just for a second.

"But then, she came with the gig in Africa, then, there was Dubai and now... She's in Thailand. Hadn't seen her for the last four months and the calls aren't as frequent as I would like them to be... But that's how things are. Elena is living her best life and she's one of the best tourism journalists out there. Y/N, honestly, I'm very proud of her..." - "But you'd like her to be here with you now rather than having her gone off the radar all the time, huh?" - You whispered, slowly licking your lips. It was an indication that you understood what he was telling you. Both of your relationships were troubled in one way or another.

Your partners seemed to be far away from you - and the closer they got, the more the distance grew. Suddenly, Nate picked himself up from the couch and checked his watch, arching his eyebrows. - "It's late, I should get going now." - The man told you quietly, hoping you'd say that you want him to stay there with you. Even for a small moment longer. But awkwardly, you nodded and walked to the kitchen to pick his jacket up from the chair.

"You're right. We both better get some sleep. The cycling today got me good." - You joked, giving the jacket to Nathan. That was the moment when your fingers crossed on the piece of clothing, yet neither of you pulled your hand back. It was fairly obvious from the last couple of days that maybe, Nathan felt something more towards you than a friendly relationship. Ever since the start, you tried to play Drake off as a witty, funny friend of yours who was just sweet and caring more than the other guys.

Although, the more time you spent with the man, the man undismissible these heavy eye contacts, inviting smiles and body language started to get husky. Not to make the saint out of yourself, thinking about kissing the man flew through your head all of a sudden a few days back too when he took you out swimming on the beach. This man was a hunk. A real one, if you'd ever seen some. But you tried to ignore it for the sake of keeping it in the friendly boundaries.

How much more obvious and harder could Nathan make it for you? Probably a lot, because you felt the tips of his fingers gently bumping to your knuckles, smoothing your fingers with his. The man's breath hitched as he moved a small inch closer to you, straightening above you to look down on your face. For the first time, he saw something that wasn't there before. The insecurity. Whether it was about what was happening or about the vulnerable side of you, which you showed him just minutes prior, the sudden vulnerability and reluctant feeling were present in your face.

A kiss was sure an option at the moment. Nonetheless, Nathan stepped away and pulled his jacket out of your palm, deciding to keep his cool. - "The hiking tomorrow. You still up for it?" - The man asked to beat the uncomfortable silence which accumulated around you. With your cheeks on fire, you smiled at the man and nodded. - "And a glass of wine at your apartment. I will be looking forward to that." - You answered as he was leaving your flat.

But really, was there any point in looking forward to something that could both of you cost your relationships? Or was it just a dumb wish?

[still-finding-our-way]

W11, W12, W13

30/12/2020

Waking the dead, life, love and gossip

Flakey, flake, flake flake. I admit it, I let myself down and my nearest and dearest. Oh, the fucking self pity. Despite the ever changing rules and regulations over lockdown, we had planned to get out and walk with our respective menfolk during Christmas and New Year. We set a date and located a route. The forecast looked splendid—crisp and clear—it was going to be amazing. The day came round. I got up late, too late for my early morning climbing session with my daughter. I got dressed in my walking gear, and half an hour before leaving I couldn’t do it. I just could not walk out the door. So I cancelled and went back to bed. Yup, the diary of a depressive. Jen was her usual sage self and pointed out it was ‘twixmas’ and everyone was feeling shit, upside down and the wrong way round, and I should stop beating myself up about it. As Jen and A were already on route they continued on and later sent a breathtaking photograph of the high moor with the sun setting in one direction and the moon rising in the other. Studying the image on my phone in bed, I might have been peering into another world—a martian landscape, the light from the setting sun scattering a Persimmon glow across the moor grass—bronze and gold, molten lava, heat and searing passion. Dear Persephone, Queen of the underworld, you should eat all the seeds. These are winters treasures. Am I looking at a take from an African plain or perhaps a still from the film Dune? No, this is Dartmoor in searing clarity. The sky divided, storm grey cloud drawn low on the horizon and above an endless cyan—a blue to swim in. I could breath the freshness, feel the cold stinging my skin. Oh, the guilt and longing. So, I went out for a run to try and temper the physical yearning, and the next day messaged Jen to see if she could squeeze in another Dartmoor visit, with the promise that I wouldn’t bail this time. Two seconds later—a ping back with ‘Hell yes’. 

This time we kept our sights local, and though not a long walk we were going to colour in three whole squares on the 365 map: W11, W12 and W13. It felt like an accomplishment, nearly a full house—a line of colour beginning to emerge on the southernmost part of the map. The proposed route bypassed our previous walk to Western Beacon and headed for Ugborough Tor. The day arrived and clearly Santa Claus had been kind to Jennie. She cut quite a dash in her new walking gear, all booted and suited with military style walking shoes and thermal clothing. We exchanged gifts. From me to her a pair of essential gaiters—or ‘garters’ as Jennie likes to call them, and from her to me, some stylish ultra retro sunglasses. We agreed walking on the moor does not mean having to leave aside fashion. We parked up in the tiny hamlet of Harford and headed straight for St Petroc’s church, a Grade 1 listed building dated to the late 15th / early 16th century.

On this grey mizzly day at the very end of the year, the church looked bleak and unwelcoming. It wasn’t helped by the metal grill shuttered across the porch with a blunt no entry notice. We mooched around the graveyard at the rear of the church. Neglected and overgrown, it had a definite gothic air. We read the gravestones and pondered over the groupings of names and families. New to the term, I find out we are quickly becoming ‘tapophile’s’ or ‘grave stone tourists’—a person whose hobby or pastime is visiting cemeteries, graves and epitaphs; not to be confused with ‘necrophile’ and the perversion of showing a sexual or physical interest in the dead!  Not so much a morbid past-time, but one that is curious about past lives. Anyway we are apparently in good company as Shakespeare was supposed to have been a ‘tapophile’, and the related study of ‘taphonomy’ investigating processes of decay in archeology sounds fascinating and important. The hierarchal order of a graveyard is telling. Usually the bigger the slab the more powerful, influential and wealthy the incumbent, closely followed by the decorated memorials of war heroes protecting the former, whilst the women and children and those that had to live out the consequences of the deeds of the big slabs are marked by simple headstones. With this in mind when we came across a large plot encircled by low iron railings, containing a headstone marked John Jeffrey Dixon, 1756-1828, and surrounded by several smaller plaques, engraved with initials and the year of death all listed as 1855, we were intrigued. What could have happened? Were these children? A family tragedy, disease or perhaps a virus or infection?

I should not be surprised to discover that I have leaning towards taphophilia. Death came a blunder-bussing down my family’s own door a few autumns ago bringing with it a tsunami of destruction that took away three loved ones in a matter of weeks. In our highly polished antiseptic 21st century lives, tragedy is supposed to happen elsewhere, on the telly or as macabre titillation on news feeds. Having seen the havoc caused by the sweep of death at such close quarters, I seem to have developed an ear for the hidden tragedy that lies behind the bureaucratic recording of birth and death dates. One such story came with the accommodation that Al rented in the early days of our relationship. He lived in what was part of a 15th century manor house, in the quarter that would have housed cattle whilst the servants lived above. It was basic and cold—think rickety immersion heaters, cranky plumbing and layering up to go to bed—it was also delightfully romantic and we found our own ways to keep warm. Sometime in the mid 19th century the resident family, farm-workers, lost all 9 children in a matter of months to either cholera or diphtheria, the parents surviving probably because they drank mead and not the contaminated water. Some of our friends said they picked up prickly vibes in one room, but we never did, though there was the one time when I woke up in the night to someone blowing gently on my leg dangling out of bed. It was so focused, like someone blowing through a pea-shooter on skin, and then it was gone. It definitely wasn’t Alex, he was snoring contentedly next to me, nor were there any drafts in that particular area, and so overcome was I by my  primordial nighttime terror that I dare not look under the bed. I could never find a rational explanation for it, other than a waking dream, perhaps? I like to think that if there is any paranormal phenomena out there, spirits or otherwise, they would be up for having a laugh and hiding under the bed playing ghoulish peek-a-boo. Never mind wailing ghosts and ghouls, the universe seems set up for tragedy and comedy, see-sawing together, tempered with a dose of absurdity to keep the balance.

But how to imagine the desperation and hopelessness of loosing all your children, of not being able to do anything—no mercy forthcoming, from god or layman, through prayer or witchery. Heart wrenching, gut wrenching, unrelenting grief. The stuff of nightmares and surreal in the telling. A tragedy, they say. Indeed, a tragedy that reveals the limits of knowledge, failing systems and medical bungles. Death can tell so much about a time, and I needed to find out what had happened to this family in 1855. 

I found limited information online so I contacted the church secretary and swiftly received a response that explained that a memorial existed inside the church to the Dixon family. The Dixon’s had been a local family, the father John Jeffrey Dixon dying in 1828 leaving behind a family of six daughters and one son. The daughters never married or had children and continued to live with their mother Mary Romeril Dixon. The son married and moved away. The eldest daughter Sophie Dixon (1799-1855) was a poet, of the Romantic tradition, and had had some of her work published. Maintaining a household of seven women and living the life of a published female poet in the early 19th century suggests a level of education, cultural knowledge and financial comfortability, however I could find no further detail on the fathers preoccupation. Instead I was delighted to find copies of Castalian Hours. Poems by Sophie Dixon (1829) online, alongside two travelogues she had written about walking on Dartmoor: A Journal of Ten Days Excursion on the Western and Northern Borders of Dartmoor (1830) and A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion on the eastern and Southern Borders of Dartmoor (1830). 

I find an online copy of the two journals bound together with an unauthored handwritten note that describes how the ‘two journals are seldom found together, and in this state are exceedingly rare’. The unauthored note instructs the reader not ‘to despise the untutored writing’ instead recognise that Dixon recorded what she actually saw, and ‘that she really saw a great deal more than most people’. Written nearly 200 years ago, the journals read anything but ‘untutored’ instead they present a style ahead of their time, combining acute observation with opinion that covers a range of subjects from education, poverty and religion that would not be out of place amongst the current plethora of travelogues and writings about place today. Nor was Dixon a faint heart—she was an endurance walker, with Donna Landry writing in The Invention of the Countryside how Dixon was not averse to enduring ‘incredible discomfort and fatigue’ walking up to 28 or 30 miles a day, and that she wrote to ‘expend feeling as much to capture or contain it’ (2001: 239). This is an impulse I can relate too. She was 30 years old when these works were published and was writing at a time that saw the countryside shift from being seen, at least by the middle classes, as a dangerous and impoverished place, to becoming appreciated for its leisure and therapeutic value. Despite Sophie’s passion for Dartmoor and poetry, little is recorded of her life unlike her male contempories—the walking poets—Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth, nor are her writings given due acknowledgment in the round up of important historic literature about Dartmoor. A woman writing about walking across Dartmoor—a harsh and unforgiving landscape at the best of times—and being published at a time when women weren’t allowed to go to university is no mean feat. Sophie’s poetry and writing reveal a sensitivity, of trying to capture the immensity and rich diversity of the moor; an artist, creating through doing, striding out in all weathers, feeling the raw elements, being buffeted by the wind on the high tor’s. And all in Georgian attire, heavy skirted, possibly with pantaloons and with no GORE-TEX or triple layered waterproof performance technology in sight. Despite her absence in the text books Landry observes that ‘the slightness of Dixon’s oeuvre is no measure of the significance of her achievement’ (239). My impression after reading her works, is a writer who is capable, forward thinking, engaged in current affairs and confident in communicating her thoughts, yet I have so many remaining questions about Sophie that perhaps a historian will give the time to uncover. She deserves to be more than just an initial or a footnote in history.

But what of her death and her family? In her preface to Castalian Hours Sophie writes about the loss of her father and subsequent grief and illness effecting her writing, however further tragedy was to come. According to the GRO death certificate her mother died of heart disease on the 14th December, 1855 aged 80. Three days later her younger sister, Emma Romeril, died of Peritonitis, and ten days after that, on 27th December, Sophie herself died from what is recorded as Typhus at the age of 56. The two other sisters, Cora and Lucy, who are listed on the church memorial and on the grave stones as dying in 1855, actually died two weeks apart in 1876 at the age of 69 and 70 respectively of Bronchitis and exhaustion, a contagious illness undoubtedly spread through close contact. How they all came to be listed as dying in 1855 is a mystery, with the assumption given that the memorial was erected when the brother Clemsen Romeril died in 1893, and that somehow the dates were conflated or misremembered. 

***

Wide, open moorland, away from the clutter and noise of modern life where we are constantly ‘ON’, hyper-stimulated, reading the codes, the signs, the subtext. Classification and analysis, polish the mask and smile ‘ta da', who do you want me to be today? It is exhausting. From my studio, I used to watch my chickens scratching and busying—pre bird flu lockdown—and envied their freedom, whilst I was penned in, tied to a screen and working 10/12 hours a day. Sometimes I forgot to move, going hours without drinking or eating. I had become a battery hen and no matter how many golden eggs I laid it was never enough. Putting in numbers and words that churned out more numbers and words until one day the machine broke. Now I have become frozen, a glitch in the matrix, stuttering and locked in. I have to rebuild, start again, set a new framework but to do that I have to first find a way to reboot the frozen system.

We marched up the hill chattering eagerly, airing and giggling over the silliness of families and Christmas frivolities. Despite the chill in the air we warmed up quickly and had to stop to strip off layers, breathing heavily and taking in the sweeping view. It stopped us in our tracks, the vastness of the rolling landscape calming us down, bringing us back to rights. Body and earth, right here, right now. We were heading for Spurrell’s Cross, a medieval stone cross that marks the crossing of two old tracks, one running from Plympton Priory to Buckfast Abbey and the other from Wrangaton to Erme Pound, but we had been too cocksure on setting off, wrongly assuming we were on familiar ground. As a result of our cocksurety we had missed the path and, as is becoming routine on our walks, we once again found ourselves stomping over tussocky ground. The lesson learnt from this walk is that perspective changes everything—so obvious in hindsight but familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt, which in our case was for the map. We were walking on the east side of Western Beacon and though only a few miles into our walk we had quickly become disorientated. The ground undulated unexpectedly hiding the tors previously used as landmarks and we realised that we hadn’t quite got to grips with distance on the map, and as a result could not work out whether we were too far north or south? Scanning across the moor, and with better long distance eyesight than I, Jen spotted a shape partially camouflaged against the moor grassland. With nothing to lose, except our bearings, we ploughed ahead and thankfully hit base, laying hands on the cold stone of the old cross in gratitude. Back on track, we were able to stroll comfortably up to Ugborough Tor.

A space to decant—we talk about all sorts, everything and nothing, from work to children, to ageing and sex; to clothes, cooking, cars, consciousness and ex's—the ex's are most fascinating, the other women, they are set up as the opposition that we share so much in common with and who you can never, ever, know too much—to fungi, lovers, philosophy and death. It is not so much Sex and the City but Sex and the Moor. Everything gets emptied out and overturned. Nothing is trivialised, it all has its place—the worries, the niggling anxieties, superstitions; the casting thoughts that might dissolve into nothing or rankle away and fester without the ear of a trusted confident. Our grandmothers were right all along, a good airing, whether clothes, houses, babies, people or thoughts, makes everything feel better. Men and children so often fascinated by what women talk about… and no wonder, women talk about the under belly of life, paring back the fat and gristle, sifting the wheat from chaff. The talk that unites, strengthens social bonds and builds trust—what social psychologists refer to as cultural learning. In the stone age, this chatter was crucial for sharing information that would enhance survival, and whilst we no longer have wild animals to fear, sense checking about who’s who and what’s what remains essential for our well being. 

As children, Jen and I used to be fascinated by our mothers afternoon chats, tongues loosened by a dab or two of sherry. We’d quietly linger in the kitchen, turning the tap ever so softly to get a glass of water, or sit on the stairs ostensibly playing, all the while zoning in on the hushed tones, regularly punctuated by raucous laughter, our eyes widening at what we heard. Rogue men and wildish women, the drawn out agony of someones death, money—the lack there-of; clothes and weight gain, diets, boobs, hot flushes and farting. When they caught us listening they’d call us elephant ears and the conversation would drift to more mundane matters. On occasion the conversation would lower to a whisper, to more darker talk. We’d strain hard, catching snippets of a violent man and a vulnerable child. The school bully, the blond and pretty girl, always with shiny new things turned out had a not so happy home. This was a grown-up world that was somewhere else, far more entertaining and scandalous than watching an illicit late night episode of Dallas or Dynasty huddled together under the bed clothes.

Today out on the moor we find ourselves talking, amongst other things, about the origins of cellular life—as you do. Where once life was understood to have started at a particular point in time and from there on in evolution began spiralling outwards in a chronological timeline from A to Z. We’ve all seen the poster, some of us have the T-shirt—cell blob, lizard, monkey, ape-man, human, Trump. Then some clever spark asked the question, if life started at A—assuming it was down to 'abiogenesis'—where life emerges from non-living matter through natural processes as opposed to counter theories that posit life came from outer space, then surely life must have emerged previously, and continues to appear at point B and C, and so on and so on? Between huffing and puffing up the hill, it is not so much the biology but the shift in the question that fascinates us—alter the boundaries and framework of the question and a whole different perspective opens up, revealing the wood and not just the trees; the whole picture and not just the jigsaw piece. No surprise that Jen and I have dabbled in statistics—she in teaching the subject and I by presenting different sets of data, coloured pie-charts illustrating how the Arts can change lives, which is very difficult to prove in evidential terms but ask a slightly different question and the coloured pie-charts will look ever so pretty, so give us some money, please. It is all about the questions, the scientists and statisticians cry. If only we could step outside of ourselves we might understand so much more. But it is hard to shake off our human skins. 

Keep turning the stone over and take a walk around the hill. Anything and nothing. Our conversation continues to spiral upwards and outwards. We bat around ideas, snippets of information snatched from radio, social media, books, conversation—finding relevancy, knitting them together. It feels like moulding and sculpting, work in the studio with most falling to the floor as detritus. The artist Paul Klee said drawing was like ‘taking a line for a walk’, and so it is with conversation—take it for a walk and give it a good airing. Walking in the time of viral contamination is vital. It has become the new 18th century coffee-house, the place renowned for scintillating conversation (if you were a man of course); it is George Seurat’s glistening Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, minus the fancy pants and with walking boots, purpose and pace. It is the city flaneur but without the pomp or privilege. It is Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie, but without the boulevards and pulsating lights. It is our mother’s sherry and Sophie’s journals. Hitch up your skirts and put on your garters and take a walk on the Wild Side. A walk in the park. An escape. Let the words wander or wonder, drawing shapes, hitting dead-ends and taking u-turns.

From the origins of life, depression and death our drawing circles around to the language of love, with Jen telling me how the ancient Greeks had several words for different kinds of love: love for children, love for god, sexual love, self love, whereas in the English language ‘love’ is pinned to its romantic roots—the all or nothing kind, of passion and intensity, valentines cards, red roses and the impossible happy ever after. We find ourselves wondering what is the word to describe the love between old friends? 

We reach Ugborough Tor, the temperature has dropped and we think it might snow. In truth, this is the southernmost tor as Western Beacon is not classified as a tor. There are four rocky outcrops: Creber’s Rock, Eastern Beacon, Beacon Rock and Ugborough Beacon; several cairns and a tumulus—an ancient earth burial mound. The view to the East is striking, what is known as Beacon plain slopes gently away then suddenly descends steeply into a valley, so abrupt is the descent that we can’t see the bottom from our vantage point on the tor. The effect is dizzying; the fields and houses rising upwards on the yonder side of the valley look like play mobile houses. We are 378 metres high (1240 feet) above sea level and can see the A38, or the Devon Expressway, snaking northwards. Jennie points out a prominent landscape feature, what looks like a Drumlin, a large teardrop shaped hill probably caused by the receding ice flow of the last ice age some 11,700 years ago. It was previously understood that Dartmoor lay beyond the ‘Quaternary glaciations’ however recent research of the landscape has challenged this notion. We amble our way back and it starts to snow; big heavy flakes, some the size of coins come down thick and fast. We are alone in this vast landscape and run and whoop like children. Back at our cars, as we turn to say good bye, we shout ‘I love you’ to each other. I think we might have always said this, but now we know somewhere it has a name.

Later, I look up Aristotle’s definitions of ‘love’, in particular ‘philia’ which is usually translated as friendship love, or ‘brotherly love’, denoting an altruistic loyalty between equals. This research takes me on a journey that considers what Aristotle defined as ‘good’, and ‘diakaios’, meaning what is ‘fair’, ‘just’ and ‘right’ in accordance to the laws of the universe—laws that draw on the ancient Greek idea that there exists within the universe an order. According to Simon May in ‘Love: A History’, Aristotle elevates ‘philia’ above all other forms, including romantic love and the virtuous love of god. May then goes on to explain how self-knowledge, a virtue much prized by the Greeks, is essential to becoming a well-balanced human being, yet Aristotle understood that ‘it is hard to know ourselves’, we are masters of our own deceit and that we need the aid of a ‘second self’, a person who holds similar values but serves as a mirror reflecting back to us who we are. May goes on to explain that it is not so much that our second self tells us who we are, but that we see in them a part of ourselves, quoting Aristotle directly ‘… with us [humans] welfare involves a something beyond us, but the deity is his own well-being.’ Of course, for this to work the second person has to be the right person—a person who has similar virtues, or values, as ourselves, then ‘philia’ becomes ‘diakaios’—‘when it is in accordance with the laws of the other person’ nature … If love isn’t in such accordance it is inauthentic and hollow’. (67)

How does this analysis of love, nearly 2400 years old, relate to my life long friendship with Jennie? Without a doubt Jennie is suitably different in character to myself—more gregarious and outgoing, her humour is deliciously wry and observant; she is clever, astute and canny, her readings of people and situations are always spot on and she is open-minded whilst still being firmly rooted in reality (the latter being a virtue that I cannot always say about myself); she is a fierce and protective mother, committed to family; ambitious and tenacious. Equally, she is interested in ‘self-knowledge’, if not ‘self-love’, which our deferent Englishness finds a little too gushing, however, she has never been afraid to look in the mirror and face her demons, to own up, reflect and rebuild. Her honesty about our lived contradictions—how we say one thing and do another, that we self sabotage to avoid shattering our fragile self-image and so on—is so refreshing in a time when you might be socially hung drawn and quartered for taking thoughts and words for a walk that do not directly fit the current view. Some of these characteristics I share, others extend my world view. If she serves as a second self, then hell, I need to learn to love thyself! I can count on three fingers the friends I share this type of relationship with, though I’d argue that we are constantly shaping ourselves against our interactions with others—whether children, parents, the shop-assistant, the teacher or colleague. Perhaps I need to be more discerning in my choice of lovers and husbands, as when it comes to the language of love I am clearly better at ‘philia’ than the ‘eros’ kind. In the meantime I’m going for a walk.

SC

Reading

Crossing, William. (1888) Amid Devonia’s Alps; or, Wanderings & Adventures on Dartmoor Plymouth: Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Online, 05, January, 2021: https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Amid_Devonia_s_Alps/lfoVAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1

Dixon, Sophie. (1829) Castalian Hours. Poems. London: Longman, Orme, Hurst, Brown, and Green, Print.

Dixon, Sophie. (1830) A Journal of Eighteen Days Excursion and Dixon, S.(1830) A Journal of Ten Days Excursion on the Western and Northern Borders of Dartmoor. Online, 05, January, 2021:https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=d_4GAAAAQAAJ&hl=en_GB&pg=GBS.PA2

Evans, D.J.A. and Harrison, S. and Vieli, A. and Anderson, E. (2012) 'The glaciation of Dartmoor : the southernmost independent Pleistocene icecap in the British Isles.', Quaternary Science Reviews., 45 . pp. 31-53.

Landry, Donna. (2001) The Invention of the Countryside: Hunting, Walking and ecology in English Literature, 1671-1831. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

May, Simon. (2011) Love: A History. London: Yale University Press.

Sampson, J. ‘Women Writing on the Devon Land: The Lost Story of Devon Women Authors up to circa 1965’. August 13, 2018. Online, 05, January 2021: https://newdevonbookfindsaway.blogspot.com/2018/08/on-ways-to-old-literary-roads-around.html

[sprigxfthyme]

((so this is going to be a rambly, stream of conscious meta about alice’s personality and behaviors.

like we all know alice to be a bit of a troll in the modern day, who likes messing with people and who shifts between crankiness and just not giving a fuck about anything. but she’s also pretty heavily characterized by the rigidness and cold personality she developed in the 16th century, with a cocky self-assured air added in the mid 18th century, and the constant drive of ambition. we’re gonna ignore how clunky that last sentence was. so this is a look at how and why her behaviors developed and changed

Alice came into existence when Roman control and control was already well-embedded into Britannia’s civilian zone (present-day central and south-east England). Although she knew nothing of life before or without the Roman Empire, Alice was very aware of what she was: a territory of another political and national entity, a culture that only existed because of foreign rule. That seriously embittered her, knowing that essentially, the purpose of her existence was to be ruled over, when there were others like her (nations) who came to be of their own accord. So her inferiority complex began pretty much at the beginning of her life, meaning she was never without the desire to prove herself, and that she had a deep and immediate resentment of anyone who would try to exert power or influence over her, or even hint at doing so.

Still, Alice was a very high-spirited child. She was never not talking, brimming with non-stop questions, and eager to make friends. But as she was looked after by a series of guardians rather than proper parents, adults tended not to have patience for her inquisitive mind. Alice’s many questions went unanswered, leading her to believe that the answers she wanted were obvious, and she just wasn’t very smart.

As Rome withdrew from Britannia and pockets of Anglo-Saxon communities and small, early kingdoms cropped up, Alice thought it was going to mean the end of her life. Because not only was Rome, which had brought her into the world, gone, but the Anglo-Saxon migration was hardly the singular, uniform conquest that people seem to think it was. There were multiple kingdoms, formed by migrants from different backgrounds (some from central Germany, some from Jutland, some with distinct Anglian/Scandinavian influences). There were nonetheless strong cultural similarities, such as language, architecture, and metalworking, and the regional differences were caused by the pre-existing state of Romano-British communities that the Anglo-Saxons encountered - hence how I justify the continuity of Roman Britain into the early Anglo-Saxon period and further into what would become England (and also there is textual reference to Anglo-Saxons referring to “England” despite the existence of multiple kingdoms).

Still, despite her survival, Alice felt as though this all wasn’t quite her’s. Which granted, is contradictory, she literally was the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. But she wanted time, time to grow on her own terms and come into her own, so to speak, to flex her muscles without anyone looming over her. The Viking and Norman invasions obviously through a wrench into that idea.

All this desire to gain and show off power, and have an identity that was purely her own culminated in the Hundred Years’ War. Nationalism surged in both England and France, and in England this was best seen in the replacement of French as the common language of the higher classes in favor of a dialect of Middle English. But for all the territories she had gained and the infamous victories she had won, it was all pulled out from under her feet at the end, followed by a tumultuous civil war.

Alice was basically at her wit’s end, deflated, and spent the beginning of the 16th century doing what teenagers do best, #brooding. The religious conflicts at first only exasperated this issue, but the idea of England breaking apart from the rest of Europe and not beholding to the Pope, only to itself, lit a new fire in her. In a way, she reinvented herself, drawing on all her life experiences. She mastered the art of learning through careful and clever watching and listening and how to socialize for nothing else than gain. She was keen to get in on the pushing and shoving that was going on between European countries, but did so with an extremely guarded persona and a bit of a self-righteous attitude. She new what she wanted: power. And nothing else mattered.

As she came to be recognized as a force to be reckoned with, Alice could afford to drop some of her stiffness. Mid-18th century and onwards Alice uses an air of cockiness to enjoy making others squirm, but she never grows complacent. She knows how little it takes for everything to slip away and at her core remains cold and rigid, only now presented as aloofness. 

And that’s pretty much it. How Alice went from her 18th/19th century self to today is fully explained in this post.

More on Alice in Roman Britain is here.

[shirlleycoyle]

These Are the People Making Porn Out of Your Favorite Childhood Memories

This article appears in VICE Magazine's Stupid Issue, which is dedicated to the entertaining, goofy, and just plain dumb. It features stories celebrating ridiculous ideas, trends, and products; pieces arguing that unabashed stupidity can be a great part of life; and articles calling out the bad side of stupidity. Click HERE to subscribe to the print edition.

Missy Martinez is painted hot pink in places it doesn’t seem possible to get paint: edged up to almost the inside of her vulva, across her anus, and certainly everywhere that her scene partner Brenna Sparks has put her face so far. Right now, Martinez’s anime costume, which includes a soft mound the size of a large squash glued to the top of her head, is getting between her and Sparks’ clitoris. Her six-inch foam headpiece is slipping. But she perseveres.

Martinez is retired from porn now. She set aside her 10-year career in May 2019, one year after her debut as Vagin Buu, the pornified version of Dragon Ball Z’s Majin Buu.

“You can only do the sexy stepmom or babysitter—these contrived roles that are cookie-cutter—so much,” she said. “To not take porn so literally and seriously… Sex is supposed to be fun. If you’re not laughing while you’re having sex you’re doing it wrong.”

It looked like something someone might only do on a lost bet, but ultimately, Martinez asked for this. In fact, when Lee Roy Myers, the cofounder of the porn production studio WoodRocket, asked her to star in one of his freak-show-esque parodies, she leapt at the chance.

As a die-hard DBZ fan, she considered this a dream role, pink paint and all.

“When they were airbrushing my genitals, I was like, ‘Ohhh, no…,’” she said.

Martinez is not alone; everyone I spoke to who’s been subjected to a WoodRocket costume treatment or roped into Myers’ madness said they have that moment she described—the point of no return.

There’s a controversial theory among historians that parody porn brought about the French Revolution. Robert Darnton’s “pornographic interpretation” of the events of late 18th century France suggests that smutty literature depicting the monarchy in pornographic cartoons—as just as base and sex-crazed as the subjects they thumbed their noses at—emboldened the people to revolt.

“Sex is democratic,” the sex historian (and VICE contributor) Hallie Lieberman told me. “There’s a reason why we have the saying the emperor has no clothes: It reduces him to the same status as everyone else.”

But porn-as-parody goes back hundreds of years before the 18th century. An anonymous author in 16th century Italy published Ficheide, an erotic parody of Homer’s Illiad. Another erotic text of the Italian Renaissance, La Cazzaria, featured disembodied genitals satirizing political figures, and its relative virality (or as viral as something could be in the 1500s) sent its author, Antonio Vignali, running into exile. The 1748 novel Fanny Hill, regarded as the first example of English-prose pornography, is political parody. The Pearl, a monthly pornographic magazine published in London in the late 1800s, featured parodies and was itself a parody of a family magazine. The British authorities shut the magazine down after two years, citing obscenity laws.

In the early 20th century, small porno pamphlets called “Tijuana Bibles,” which peaked in popularity during the Great Depression, contained raunchy parodies of pop culture icons like Popeye, Superman, Lois Lane, and Wonder Woman getting into all sorts of hijinks. Fast-forward to the 90s and early 2000s, and everything in the porn world exploded with the advent of the VHS tape (and porn viewing from the comfort of one’s home), including parody films like Forrest Hump and Everybody Does Raymond.

“Class and sexuality are closely associated in our society, so things we deem respectable inherently have some kind of discretion when it comes to sex,” said Laura Helen Marks, a porn scholar and professor of English at Tulane University. “It can feel exciting and fun to watch the ‘low’ genre of pornography expose the perversions and hypocrisies of mainstream media… It feels like a momentary and satisfying leveling.”

Today, we have WoodRocket. The Vegas-based studio has made a name for itself in the last eight years in part by being pseudonymous with parody porn. If you hear about a new video featuring SpongeBob SquarePants or life-size Lego figurines fucking, you can bet it’s WoodRocket’s doing.

People have been using parody, satire, and sexuality to punch up at the systems and institutions that surround them for hundreds of years. Today, things are no different. Only now, we’re punching backward, at our own nostalgia.

In the late 90s, Myers was working in a video store. He’s worked a lot of jobs since then, from camera equipment guy to executive for a pay-per-view company. But he points back to that place and time in the video store as the earliest inspiration for his current work.

“I was in the store, and I was watching Edward Penishands, and he has these horrifying giant dildo arms, and it’s so ridiculous… It’s so gross, and weird, and funny, and I don’t know what parts were supposed to be intentionally funny or not,” Myers said of the film, directed by Paul Norman. “But it always stuck in my mind like, Oh, if I could do this, that would be amazing.”

For years, Myers worked roles he can only describe as “a job.” He’s never felt suited for the nine-to-five grind. But during programming and production gigs, he was making a lot of friends and connections in the adult industry. One of them was Scott Taylor, founder of a porn studio called New Sensations, who in 2008 was looking to take the studio in a comedic direction—and tasked Myers with making an erotic parody of the same nine-to-five grind he felt trapped in. Myers came up with The Office: An XXX Parody, the first of eight pop-culture television parodies he’d churn out for New Sensations that year.

“Fuck yeah, man, that sounds fucking ludicrous”

Things snowballed from there. By 2012, Myers had a front-row seat to the adult industry’s seismic shift from VHS tapes to DVDs and then to something else entirely. The internet was changing everything, and suddenly fewer and fewer people were willing to shell out money for smut. They could get it for free, on any number of tube sites filled with stolen clips and full films.

Instead of fighting against this unstoppable sea change, Myers and his industry partners started thinking of new ways to ride the wave of free internet content while still making enough profit to keep paying for cast, crew, and the lights. After years of hustling out dozens of porn parodies for other studios, Myers founded WoodRocket in 2012, with the goal of bringing comedic, silly porno to the mainstream—for free.

Myers is Canadian, and defines his directing style as “scary public access television,” with shows like The Hilarious House of Frightenstein influencing his low-budget, single-room sets and makeup that looks like it’s been applied by an overly enthusiastic high school theater student. WoodRocket launched its first film, SpongeKnob SquareNuts, in January 2013, with a press release complete with a “safe for work” trailer and a link to the full, X-rated film on WoodRocket.com.

From top to bottom: Aladdick, Dragon Boob Z, Mr. Rimjob's Neighborwood, The Loin King, Red Dead Erection.

This included a theme song that would toe the line of parody homage without crossing into copyright infringement. For that task, and most WoodRocket musical scores and lyrics, Myers has entrusted the Brooklyn-based sound designer David DeCeglie.

When Myers approached him to write the parody version of the iconic SpongeBob theme song, DeCiglie still remembers his response: “Fuck yeah, man, that sounds fucking ludicrous.”

And it was. Within an hour of the film’s release, the newly launched WoodRocket website crashed under the server load of people clicking to watch it.

The runaway success of the studio’s first original parody was doubly shocking, because Squarenuts was the “most fucked-up thing to date, at the time,” that Myers and his crew had made. The construction of the giant square costume was the work of Tom Devlin, who’s been involved with WoodRocket since the beginning. The directive from Myers, Devlin told me, was to make it look kind of like Pizza the Hutt from Spaceballs. In other words, like an actor is trapped inside a repulsive homemade costume that swallowed him whole. The result was a poly-foam fabrication glued onto a box.

“It was just… creepy.” Devlin said. “It was really hard for him to move around, and really hard for him to perform. But it just adds to the weirdness and uncomfortability of the parody.”

“He looked like a monster,” Myers said, of SpongeKnob. “And, you know, it was funny—or at least, we found it funny—and people either loved it or hated it. But they watched it.”

Devlin and Myers share a similar ethos: Don’t think too much about how the performers will perform. Just make the costumes and see what they do in them.

“Sometimes it’s not about whether or not the actors can be comfortable. It’s about what is the silliest thing we can put out there,” Devlin said. And at this point in the studio’s reputation, a performer signing up for a WoodRocket shoot knows what they’re getting into.

Rizzo Ford’s role as “Dikachu” in Strokémon XXX is unforgettable. She looks like one of Dr. Seuss’ cartoon mice if it ran into traffic. Her head hangs a little. She hunches forward. The mass of foam latex and thick yellow and black paint molded to her head and nose is forcing her to breathe through her mouth and keep her eyes partially shut.

“Dikachu! Dikachu, Dikachu,” she squawks. She and “Fisty,” whose pubic hair is shaved and dyed into a neon orange landing strip to match her anime-orange hair, are together going down on “Gash,” played by Tyler Nixon. As I watch the video online, I’m legitimately concerned about her ability to come up for air.

“I feel like comedy and porn should go hand in hand,” Ford told me. “Sex is silly. We make silly noises with our mouths and bodies. I think that by having comedic porn it normalizes things that might make us embarrassed if they were to happen with a new sexual partner.”

Ford not only survived this shoot, but would do it again “in a heartbeat” even after taking multiple showers and soaking in a tub to get all that makeup off.

“He’s not going to stop being Super Mario because his flying raccoon dick is out"

There’s really no preparing oneself for the process of a WoodRocket costume and makeup session.

Just ask Will Tile, who answered a casting call to be a WoodRocket extra in 2018, for Red Dead Erection. Just a few months prior, he was a virgin in the adult industry, looking for a new way to make a living. He’s since played a cop in Dick Hard (the Die Hard parody) and a lip-syncing genie in Aladdick, released May 2019.

When he got to the set of Aladdick, Myers told him to head to makeup. “I’m thinking they’re just gonna like, spruce me up,” he recalled. Instead, he spent half an hour getting spray-painted bright blue from the waist up.

Tile thought he could get into porn and be “one of those big scary black male performers,” nondescript beyond a stereotypical male performer, virtually anonymous at his level. But after Aladdick, things changed. “That’s when everything went to hell. That’s when everything went straight to shit,” he said.

Now he can’t walk onto most sets without someone pointing out that he was the genie. Or a cop. Or Simba. Or a reptilian creature from Ten-Inch Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Tile’s mom has even seen him painted blue and half-naked in a porno.

Tile is an ex-Marine, a former wildland firefighter, and an EMT-in-training, so his family is accustomed to worrying about him. Now they can rest easy knowing he’s perfectly healthy and happy, playing a cop with a glued-on mustache or a raunchy blue genie.

“For two years they had to worry about me coming home in a box, if I came home at all. And then when I took the wildland job, it was like, ‘Is he gonna get burnt up, or fall off a cliff and die?’” he said. “Now they’re like, ‘Oh, porn? Yeah, that’s fine.’”

Tommy Pistol’s erect penis juts out from a green spandex bodysuit. He’s moaning from inside a fully enclosed alien mask, while April O’Neil and Lauren Phillips—two glittery trespassers who look like they’ve wandered out of a Burning Man camp onto Area 51—caress each other and his body, laid flat on a surgical table. He waggles the long, floppy fingertips of his bodysuit in pleasure.

Pistol’s been friends with Myers since 2010, when they met during production of a Sex and the City parody for New Sensations. He’s played a variety of roles for the company since then, and somehow keeps ending up playing characters that involve poking his boner through the most unsexy full-body costumes.

Having convincingly good sex for the camera is a feat of athleticism even on a normal set. Having sex while in character as a childhood memory is a whole other thing.

“If you came to see Super Mario fucking the princess then you’re going to see Super Mario fucking the princess,” Pistol said. “He’s not going to stop being Super Mario because his flying raccoon dick is out.”

Lance Hart, who played “Mr. Rogers” in the studio’s most recent film, Mr. Rimjob’s Neighborwood, said that even this mindfuck of a role was easier than wearing a heavy BDSM mask or leather apron, as he’s had to do in other movies.

“It’s definitely a little weird when something felt really good and I needed to moan but also pretend to be Mister Rogers, but I’m kind of into it,” Hart said.

Adding to the ego-death exercise of wearing a glued-on mustache and painting one’s butthole neon, WoodRocket’s studio is in Las Vegas, where to film, they have to cut off the noisy air conditioning. Full body paint, elaborate costumes, and hours of rigorous sex when it’s over a hundred degrees has made for some interesting moments.

“With this job, it can’t just all be buttholes and elbows. You can actually get to do the good stuff"

“I’m pumping away, and I can feel myself about to pass out,” Tile said, recalling his role as Simba in The Loin King, where he and Kira Noir wore thick, fuzzy lion hats and gloves during their sex scene. “I’m like, I’m about to pass out on set. This is how I go out.” He didn’t, and made it through to the cut, and said he would still do it all again.

Holly Myers recently started stepping in to direct films for WoodRocket. With Holly behind the camera, the movies are no less hilarious, and she still takes a lot of care to make performers comfortable and safe.

“Generally, I try to keep the mood on set light and positive,” she said. “We are already asking them to put themselves in front of a camera to have sex—already a brave step—then going beyond and asking them to do it in a potentially uncomfortable costume, while staying in character.”

During Martinez’s headpiece-impaired performance of Vajin Buu, they stopped and reshot new takes at least five times when the paint and glue started slipping. She said, “It’s like, ‘Cut, OK, same intensity, aaand go!’ when I was in the middle of an orgasm or leading right up to it.” It’s challenging, not just physically, but mentally.

“We always know it’s not going to be easy, no matter how much you adjust things,” Myers said. [Porn] is not like real sex, it’s opening up and making sure the camera and lights get in there… I’ve heard it described as fucking around a corner.”

But it might also just take a special kind of performer to work through the giggles, and the discomfort, and the sweaty paint. Pistol said he feels like sex in these costumes comes “weirdly natural” to him. “It honestly keeps me sane after doing this for so many years,” he said. “Laughter is my therapy… I understand jerking off at home while laughing out loud isn’t for everyone. But comedy porn breaks down barriers.”

At this point (or likely, a lot earlier), you may be wondering who gets off to this stuff? Is there an audience craving a sexualized Mister Rogers? Are there people out there who are horny for a grotesque Pikachu, or a nightmare simulacrum of SpongeBob with a hard-on?

That question is flawed from the start. First of all, yes, undoubtedly, there are people who seek out WoodRocket because they’ve always had a Lego fetish or the like. But humor has always been a part of porn. Sex is fun and, often, funny.

“Humor and porn share a lot of similarities,” Lieberman, the porn historian, said. “The end goal of both is an involuntary physical reaction: an orgasm or a laugh. We watch comedy and we watch porn to experience pleasure.”

To laugh along with the people in porn can be a subversive act, said Marks, the porn scholar. “Within the context of a sex-negative, censorious society, pornographic material is politically antagonistic—unavoidably so and regardless of intention—and this frequently means poking fun.”

For the performers themselves, doing a parody shoot can be a release they don’t get in other studios. For Tile, having WoodRocket as his first studio experience showed him a different way of performing—one that most people don’t associate with porn. “With this job, it can’t just all be buttholes and elbows,” he said. “You can actually get to do the good stuff.”

I’ve seen a lot of the buttholes and elbows and painted labia that WoodRocket has put into the world, but there’s still one work of theirs that I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch. Mr. Rimjob’s Neighborwood opens with Hart lip-syncing, “Welcome to my neighborhood, where we’ll ruin your childhood,” and I fear it would be true. I loved Mister Rogers as a kid.

There was a moment during production of Mr. Rimjob, Myers told me, when he did hesitate. The man has likely ruined hundreds of childhoods with his releases, and this was the one that gave him pause.

“As we started getting closer to making it, it was the first one where I started to feel a little regret,” he said. “I grew up watching Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I was a PBS kid in the late 70s and early 80s… but, I thought I could do it in a way that it’s not really him, it’s spoofing the genre as much as it’s spoofing the ‘land of make believe…’ I don't think it’s insensitive to him being who he was as a person.”

It turns out there are only three things Myers said he’ll never touch in future WoodRocket productions: anything that’s intentionally punching down, anything where the characters doing the fucking aren’t clearly over 18, and any more Donald Trump stuff. He’s “so tired of that,” he said. Everything else is fair game.

“We have to find a balance,” Myers said. “Actually, I don’t know if there is a balance. But we had to find a balance between porn and whatever that was. And so we, in the process, created our own balance, and it’s something different to everybody.

“So some people will love it. Some people hate it. Some will be disgusted by it. But I think everybody can agree that we’ve ruined everyone’s childhood.”

These Are the People Making Porn Out of Your Favorite Childhood Memories syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[thisislizheather]

May Musings

I have officially done a year’s worth of these monthly roundup posts.

Is it clear how much I love to write them? I guess I’ll keep doing them until they become a bother. Here’s what went down in May!

I’m still screaming from the rooftops about how great Booksmart was, can’t get over it.

Losing my mind over how good these Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Almond Butter Cups are.

And look, I tried to try more of the collagen powder but Nathan finished it all (and his hair has been looking pretty good lately now that I think about it) and I’m waiting to get more. I promise to finally take this regularly next month.

One of the regulars in my snack rotation has been these zucchini pizza bites that are surprisingly delightful, especially if you’re adding sopressata and/or jalapeños as part of the toppings.

I saw Jason Mantzoukas walking in Soho and he was so handsome I was afraid to say anything. Like alarmingly handsome. I knew he was good looking, but in real life? Whoa.

I am in love with this font. Someone tell me if it has a name.

I attempted to start season two of Barry, but it’s been so long since I saw the first season that I forgot most of what has happened. Could I have just rewatched the finale of season one and then moved on to number two? Sure. Will I? Now that’s another question.

Someone was singing this on the subway and I’d never heard it before, but Jesus Christ. So lovely.

This was a pretty heavy podcast month for me (kill me for that sentence), I did three of them! The first one is with Nathan talking about the new apartment, the second one is with Irene talking advice and the third one is with Nathan again talking abortion.

I just bought a pair of these heavenly, high-waisted, button-fly Gap jeans and I think everyone should go buy them ($42 right now with the sale), they fit like a dream. I might go back and get another pair in a different colour. Actually, yeah. I’m definitely doing that.

Ate at La Contenta and it was absolutely nothing special. Everything was too salty, overpriced and crowded.

I’ve already made three batches of these banana walnut muffins, they’re so perfect for the morning or for a snack. Ignore that they’re paleo, I promise you they’re good. Definitely not a party muffin, but a good-for-you muffin.

So excited that people will finally stop talking about Game of Thrones. Usually I don’t mind when other people love something that I don’t care about, but with this show it’s just been overkill. We get it. It was a show. Let’s move on?

So excited to hear that there’s going to be a new Mindy Kaling book next summer!

Nobody told me about how smokey it gets when you attempt to make burgers in your kitchen at home? Or was everyone aware of this already but me?

I just bought pink sunglasses (at Nathan’s encouragement) and I just became cool. May 2019. That’s when it happened. (I’d post of photo of them but I’ll be wearing them until I’m cold and dead in the ground, so believe me, you’ll see them on me soon.)

I can’t believe how good this looks. I love it when fall movies just say fuck it and come out in late summer.

I can’t say that I 100% relate to everything in this piece, but some parts of it are so on the money: “Men Have No Friends and Women Bear The Burden.“

I tried the mozzarella sticks at Big Mozz in Chelsea Market and whoa. They’re pretty serious. The tomato sauce that comes with them is insanity, too.

My niece Tianna came to visit New York for the first time! Some highlights: I finally ate a cronut and they’re waaaaay too sweet, and coming from me that should mean something because I love all things dessert. Maybe it’s because we ate it so early in the morning? I don’t know. I really don’t understand the big deal about them, though. We also walked through Chinatown and down to the financial district to get lunch at Manhatta, which was lovely. I forced her to eat my favourite pad thai at Lovely Day in Soho. We shared a cheese plate at The Cellar at Beecher’s, walked around the west village to see the Friends building and the stoop from The Cosby Show, we had dinner at L’Artusi where she had her first steak tartare. We walked through Grand Central Terminal to get to the dog museum (which is cute as hell), we saw and went backstage at the musical Waitress, had dinner at Shake Shack, saw the 9/11 memorial, shopped at Century 21, walked the Brooklyn Bridge, got pizza at Juliana’s (which wasn’t as good as I remembered?), walked with Baby Dog in Central Park to see the Balto statue, perused Chelsea Market and walked along The High Line, went to the galleries on Thursday night where we met Luis Guzman (!), and ate gelato at Grom. This was all within four days. No idea how we did that much stuff, but I slept for 13 straight hours the day after she left, so maybe I’m not as young as I once was.

Above Photo: Tianna, backstage at Waitress in NYC

Above Photo: Tianna on The Brooklyn Bridge

Above Photo: Tianna & Baby Dog in Central Park

I started watching the new version of The Twilight Zone with the assumption that I’d dislike it since the original is so great, however I’ve only seen one episode so far (the blue scorpion one) and I think I really like it. Obviously the classic series is untouchable, but this one is done really well.

I learned about the existence of Book Off in midtown, it’s a store “for the people who don’t want to waste.” They buy your old CDs, DVDs, books, action figures, electronics. It’s amazing.

Season three of Riverdale is over! This is the only show that I watch every week, so it was a big deal for me. And honestly, it was a fun season, despite everyone on earth’s opinions of it. Favourite tweet from the finale?

Strawberries are about to be in season, so I got a huge carton of them from a farmer’s market and made these strawberry oatmeal bars. Pretty good! They also work well crumbled up in greek yogurt.

Another good snack idea? These baked sweet potato fries.

I have made this chicken marsala so many times that I’m taking a break from them. But for the first few times I made it, it was so, so satisfying.

All right, look. I fully expected to love Wine Country on Netflix, but maaaaaan. It is not good. It isn’t funny or sweet or anything. I think I also hate it when Tina Fey tries to be a character actor, it’s always just the worst. Do not watch.

Here’s your semi-annual reminder that Bath & Body Works is having their huge twice-a-year sale starting on June 1st, I think. It’s never advertised in advance, but I’m almost positive that it’s the first week of June. Apologies that this sounds like an ad, I just really like their foaming hand soaps and I’m cheap as hell.

Made the roasted cauliflower, feta, orzo salad from Chrissy Teigen’s cookbook and yes it was really, really good. The only issue is that the portion size is way too big. We had leftovers for days and got pretty sick of eating it, so if you’re doing this for two people, definitely size it down. Also, I had no idea there were different types of feta. French feta is creamier than traditional Greek and maaaan is it good.

Loving this kale salad lemon dressing.

This shall be my June mantra.

And this is just great.

What am I looking forward to next month? I’m planning on seeing Mindy’s new movie Late Night, watching some more of the new Twilight Zone episodes, polishing off my spring list, preparing my summer list, thinking about if I’ll ignore or celebrate National Best Friend Day on June 8th, figuring out a Father’s Day gift for the 16th, I do want to see Toy Story 4 but it feels weird to not see it with a niece/nephew, and I’ll definitely take photos of the new apartment and my favourite items that I bought for the apartment post I promised last month.

If you’ve enjoyed this post, here’s a years worth of other ones like it: April 2019, March 2019, February 2019, January 2019, December 2018, November 2018, October 2018, September 2018, August 2018, July 2018, June 2018 & May 2018.

[aliceviceroy]

When Queerness Is Cultural Capital, Lesbians Go Broke. June 27, 2017 There’s a video going around social media this Pride month: the ABCs of the LGBTQA. It says “those six letters will never be enough…” while smoke in every color of the rainbow swirls around a multicultural dance troupe. The video, produced by an expensive gym franchise, is further proof that Pride has been fully co-opted by identity capitalism. A is for ally, aka a straight person who identifies as woke. E is for exhibitionist. H is for heteroflexible. K is for kink. What I learned from this abecedarian of narcissism is that LGBT didn’t include enough people, so we added literally everyone else. We are witnessing an interesting cultural trend of inclusion so radical that it demands a catchall (I know I don’t have time to list out those 26-to-infinity letters): queer. What this viral Pride season commercial illustrates is that queer identity is about more than who you love or fuck. There’s no requirement to be homosexual, just to be open-minded. This whole thing is less about “labels” and more about the lifestyle attached to sticking a “Love is love” sign in your front yard. How did we get here? How did queer go from a slur, to a political slogan, to an identity, to this purposefully impossible to define denotation of the in-crowd? This marketing campaign? And where do lesbians fit? Do we get to sit at the cool kids table? Or should we return to our camper vans where we won’t inconvenience anybody with our folk music and our boring monosexuality? Cara, the former etymologist at Autostraddle, writes that queer comes to us from Old Scots, and its first recorded use was in an insult competition. Before 1508, its Old High German antecedents referred to strangeness or eccentricity. She writes, “According to the OED, “queer” first showed up on paper in 1508, in a transcription of “The Flyting of Dumbar and Kennedie.” Flyting, very popular in early 16th-century Scotland, was a public entertainment in which bards “would engage in verbal contests of provocative, often sexual and scatological but highly poetic abuse.” Whether as an insult or a synonym for not-normal, queer was only ever used to cast out those people deemed freaks, to bully anyone gender non-conforming, to rally the mob for a game of smear the queer. When the queer reclamation project began in the bullhorns and on the picket signs of gay liberationists, the purpose was to strike back against heteronormativity. “We’re here, we’re not like you, and we don’t want to be.” Or how about, “We’re here, we are what we are, and you don’t get to define normal anymore.” Judging by the mainstreaming of the term, queer is hardly considered derogatory to many in the LGBT family. Reclamation projects are not always so swiftly accepted. Women who’ve tried to reclaim “slut” (eg Slut Walk, slutshaming) have not successfully ended rape culture or the virgin/whore dichotomy. The difference between unsuccessful reclamation projects like “slut,” and wildly popular projects like “queer” is the degree to which not only the word can be normalized, but also the people who it is used to describe. It reminds me of that Weezer song, “everyone’s a little queer…” See “queer” as a term has become an umbrella that accommodates not only the type of sex you have and with whom, but also how you identify the sex you have, how you identify your personality, your aura, the ineffable je ne sais queer that may or may not be related in any way to your sexuality, or even the way you present yourself to the world, but simply some deeply held, internal feeling. You don’t actually need to share a common oppression or a common romantic or sexual behavior. You don’t need to share the common experience of gay bashing, having your Christian parents disown you, or any kind of homophobia. You also don’t need to share the experience of getting sweaty palms and weak knees when Rachel Maddow is on TV, or when K. Stew shows up in your Instagram feed. You don’t need to weep all through Carol because it’s the first time anyone made a mainstream movie about lesbians where nobody died in the end. That’s cool; I mean there is no homogenous experience of being gay, and not every lesbian shares with me those experiences I just described, so why should I mind that I have literally nothing in common with the genderfluid individual marching next to me at Dyke March, other than we both have short hair and only wear eyeliner when the mood strikes? The reason I mind is because queer, in functioning as a catchall, serves to obscure what it is about my life, my community, my partners, that I needed to learn to be proud of in the first place. Because for me and all the other lesbians I know, figuring out your sexuality is hard enough, but the real work is in accepting yourself, demanding acceptance from others, being willing to walk away when that acceptance is denied. Lesbians are women, and women are taught that we’re supposed to be sexually available objects of public consumption. So we spend a lot of time saying “No.” No, we won’t fuck or partner with men; no, we won’t change our minds about this; no, this body is a no-man’s land. Lesbian, straight or bi, women are punished whenever we try to assert a boundary. Queer as a catchall term makes it really hard for lesbians to assert and maintain this boundary, because it makes it impossible to name this boundary. The inherent boundary-less nature of queer as its meaning has morphed from an insult to an identity has not necessarily made more spaces for gay and lesbian people so much as moved the furniture around. I’ll give you an example. I recently moved to a new city and was hoping to start a group house to save on rent. I joined a Facebook group called Queer Housing. I made an ad looking for queer roommates, and what I got was a whole lot of messages like “I’m a cis guy and my nonbinary femme girlfriend and I are looking for a house where we can enjoy watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race with other queers.” OK. I was kind of hoping for a house that looks more like the group house in Dykes to Watch Out For than the episodes of the Real World where the token bisexual makes out with a heteroflexible girl while the guys egg them on. One where we have a common culture, common interests, and common cause politically. Meanwhile, lesbians (people who are, legal or not, discriminated against in housing, suffer with fewer job prospects and tend to make less money than straight men, will have one less cheap housing option because the str8s are in here taking up space. Oh but A is for Ally in Queer Land, right?). Yet again, space created by and for people marginalized by their sexuality is colonized by people who enjoy all of the benefits of heterosexual privilege. It’s really hard to talk about privilege — who has it and who doesn’t — in the paradigm of queer theory, because one’s self-perception is the basis of one’s standpoint, rather than one’s membership in a broader social class like man, woman, gay or straight. I witnessed a woman in a heated Facebook argument weaponizing her queer identity as the standpoint for why her word on queerness and queer rights should be the last. A gay man asked “does your queer identity include sleeping with someone of the same sex?” She responded angrily that her queerness was spiritual and deeply personal, and that she didn’t need to share the many ways in which she was queer. That’s fine, although no one asked you for a play by play of how you reach orgasm. While my lesbianism is also deeply personal and spiritual, it’s impossible for me to hide behind “well I don’t need to tell you in what ways I’m a lesbian.” I can’t walk down the street without some man telling me that I look unfuckable. I can’t hold my sweetie’s hand in public without some man yelling “Why don’t you let a real man try? I could fuck you straight, girl.” It was a choice to come out, but I come out again every day. I could pass for straight if I would let my hair grow a little longer and stop wearing such practical shoes, but as soon as people see the way I interact with the women in my life, they know. I don’t want to indulge in “binary thinking,” in setting up a dichotomy between homos and heteros. Of course I know for some people, sexuality is fluid, and for others, it is very fixed throughout their lives. Many straight people have confusing crushes or days of experimentation, just like gay people do. Lots of people find themselves all sorts of places on the Kinsey scale. Goddess knows I was all over the place before pitching my tent in Dykesville. Yet, queer is not exact enough for me. Maybe there have been parts of me that dabbled in polyamory and BDSM, but those parts are subcategories of my specifically lesbian experience. So who cares if every letter of the alphabet is celebrated during Pride? What do I lose when lesbian is lumped in with queer? Well, for starters, political cogency. Last I checked it wasn’t the kink bars or the swingers parties that the cops raided in the 1950s, it was the gay bars, and anyone caught there could be roughed up, thrown in jail, raped or molested by cops and guards with total impunity. When Mike Pence advocated for conversion therapy as a Congressman, he wasn’t targeting those people who like to be ball-gagged or beaten during sex. He and his cronies are coming for those of us who want to live that gay lifestyle (with and without ball gags). Theresa Butz didn’t get to explain the infinitesimal nuance of her identity to the man who raped and murdered her for having the audacity to live with her girlfriend. The violence that lesbians experience is specific to being lesbian, and the culture that lesbians enjoy is specific to being lesbian. Both ends of this, the good and the bad, are the stuff a movement is based on. Queer identity and queer culture both stop short of speaking to this lesbian experience. These days when I hear someone call themselves queer, I just assume that their sexuality is too complicated to understand without a liberal arts degree. Honestly, I don’t care. I only need to know what labels you use if we’ve both swiped right, or when I’m sending out the invites to the potluck where we plot the overthrow of the heteropatriarchy. It does annoy me though, that everyone who has ever watched “lesbian” porn, or had an asymmetrical haircut, or read The Ethical Slut is demanding a rainbow participation badge. It means the market for selling not-normal, edgy, cool-ness is bigger and more profitable to lifestyle brands. It means anyone who is not-normal, edgy or cool has something to sell. It’s actually OK to let your freak flag fly without calling yourself queer or joining our parade. You can be proud of the fact that you’re not the kind of person who would slur a homo in public, the kind of person who wouldn’t bat an eyelash when you see Abby Wambach kiss her girlfriend in the stands. Ally, exhibitionist, heteroflexible, kinkster, and so on, your pride is not the same as my pride. It’s OK that I’m different from you. It’s OK that you have more in common with straight people than with LGBT people. Then again, I probably just don’t understand the personal and spiritual aura of queerness you carry deep down."