#keri dreams

[kerizaret]

Bro I had a ruikasa dream that thr weirdo wombo combo became such a popular duo in kamiyama (in-universe) that the (apparently existing there) school newspaper club, which often released short written stories or drawn mangas by the students who wanted to promote themselves, started using the "troublemaker loud-and-smart 1-2 duet" as a REOCURRING TROPE in said stories 😭😭. Like so often if uou read those fragments there would, even for a moment, appear a mention or a little scene with such two characters (of different names but the similarity was noticeable) and they were usually comedic relief characters

The dream was basically Rui and some other character i genuinely cannot recall who talking about this phenomenon which rui was aware of and found extremely funny. He even said how whenever it was a manga where they appeared there were almlst always two matching panels right next to each other specifically dedicated to a close-up of the two of them. Then the other chatactrr mentioned that there was once some romance manga where the main character was apparently falling in love with a different person each chapter and one chapter was them falling in love with the smart part of the duet and trying to get his heart only to find out that he was dating the loud part the whole time (I do NOT know if rks were dating in the dream)

And rui also remembered that manga fragment and caught up that yes it was also a super dramatic reveal scene with cannons shooting roses -- and he promptly started to just?? act the scene out?? Like he started to laugh like tsukasa and was saying some dialogue I can't remember and out of nowhere pulled up a cannon??? But the commotion attracted the real tsukasa who started running up to them and shouting at rui for bringing a cannon to school again, but rui then fired the canon and roses actually started to shoot out of it (but not far and didn't make a huge mess. Surprisingly) and just as tsuksds ran up, rui just caught one rose and gave it to tks who literally just. Paused. Looked at it, said "oh, thanks!" and left???? Just??? Zero questioning of it???? Just a casual thanks???

And i woke up so I didn't know Rui's reaction 😭😭

[thegodthief]

Dreamt I was told a story, and the storyteller wanted me to share it with others. And for the most part, the story was one I was comfortable sharing, until it got to one certain point. I considered what other people have done with the stories I have shared before, and realized this wouldn't be a trivial anecdote.

I asked the storyteller if I could rewrite that portion, they declined. I had to write it the way it was told to me. I asked them if I could leave that part out entirely, and they declined that, too. That portion was the whole point of telling.

I asked the storyteller was it necessary that I share the story in the first place. They remained silent, but their face hinted at a feral smile.

If I did not share the story, they warned, then it would devour me instead.

It has been four days since the storyteller told me a story. It has been four days since I have declined to share it. I have considered the story coming and going. I see where my detractors will accuse me of bandwagoning and where they will accuse me of cultural appropriation. I see where my traumas made themselves known and the wishful thinking I thought was left behind but is still hooked to my legs. I see how the story is just one more in an ocean of words, but I also see how the story is unique to itself.

And each time I come to the scene that made me pause. I don't want to tell this scene as it was told to me. It's not that I am ashamed of my actions in the story. To be honest, my actions are no different in the story than it would be in any other event, waking or dream. It's not that the storyteller laid bare one of my fears. Those who have read my words from the beginning know all about my fears, and how I have worked to overcome them.

"You are a storyteller. Tell this story."

"I have a duty to those I tell stories to."

"The only duty you bear is the telling. What they choose to do with your words is their consequences to bear."

"If I leave a hot pan in reach of a child, and the child scalds themselves, whose fault is it? The fault of the person who knew better, or the fault of the innocent?"

"Do you write for children?"

"... No."

"Do you write for innocents?"

"... Heh, no."

"Then, who do you write for?"

"... I have been asking myself that from the moment I started telling stories. The answer has yet to reveal itself to me. I will sit on this story until I find the audience for it."

"It will devour you."

"As do many."

[janedances]

NATALIE PARIS AND COURTNEY MACK ARE THE BRAND NEW SEYMOUR AND HOWARD ON THE ARAGON TOUR WTF

[gennsoup]

This night is full of music. Even the tea is singing.

Keri Hulme, A Drift in Dream

[the-one-that-weeps]

Anyway after I fell asleep again the second dream I was in Spanish class and the prof was PISSED at us for some unknown to me reason. And decided she would give us an impromptu test. On BRIDGES.

Now APPARENTLY we were learning about spanish bridges recently. I wouldn't know I was in that dream world for like 2 minutes max and my dream self did not remember AMYTHING about bridges ever. But the STUPIDEST thing was that when she gave us the papers with questions, turns out we were supposed to identify some specific Spanish bridges, write their names and where they're located BASING OFF OF KEY WORFS. but not some logical ones. Just. It was just like.

Imagine a page. You're asked to identify the bridge. And your ONLY clue as to what bridge that is is the word "sunflower" ?????? Or "leaf"???? How??? Am I??? Supposed to know that??? So I didn't write anything 😭😭 and I saw nobody else in class did, or they wrote like one or two. And when the prof collected the pages I started arguing with her about how stupid this exercise is and how the hell was I supposed to know that but she was arguing that I just didn't study and would've known and anyway I was so angry snd baffled that I just woke up because??? What kind of an idea is that???

Anyway also i remember I drew robonene on the other side of the page. As a treat

Me when I am so pissed by the dream that I just exit the mindset and wake up. What the hell /pos

[khattikeri]

if they dub omniscient reader to english i NEED them to get jerry jewell for kim dokja

[mudstoneabyss]

had a dream where there was, in a Strex episode, some death robot mentioned and it wasn't even necessarily an anthro robot but people still drew it as one and shipped him with Lauren. pretty sure its name was deathmeister but idr whether that part was canon or fanon

[lethalchiralium]

Baby's gonna be so sad hearing her with his best friend and not him 🥲😈

simon’s not gonna spoil shit. he loves threesomes 🫣

[pedropascalsx]

Kinktober - Day Seven: Somnophilia.

Dave York × F! Reader.

Summary: Dave wakes you up in the most delicious way.

Warning: Fic contains consensual somnophilia.

Word Count: 654!

A/N: Prompt from @absurdthirst’s list! And a massive thank you to Keri for helping out where I was stuck. Hope y’all enjoy.

The rise and fall of your chest paired with the soft moans of his name made his entire body shiver. You’re asleep, and you’re clearly dreaming about him, his name and the most delicious noises slip from your lips with ease as he watches your lips curl up into the most beautiful smile.

With your chest pressed up against his he can feel every breath you take, each breath gently coating his skin and making the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He tries to ignore the way his cock twitches against his stomach, hard and crying out for some relief as you tempt him sweetly in your sleep.

You had spoken about it before after Dave had teased the way you moan his name in your sleep, and he affectionately began referring to you as his dirty little temptress and that’s when you started to plead with him… “You have my consent,” you murmured against his lips, “Awake, asleep… whenever. Fuck, Dave, I want you to wake me up just to overwhelm me… Just to take what you need from me.”

Your words feel like ice water being dumped over him as he replays them over and over, he had considered it before yes, but tonight he isn’t sure he has the strength to deny himself.

He gives himself a few tugs, swiping his thumb over the head and massaging the droplets of precum that had started to drip into his shaft before sighing loudly and replaying those delicious words. ‘You have my consent.’

He reaches over and gently drags a finger through your slit, groaning at just how wet you are from dreaming about him alone.

He knows that he’s too thick to just slip himself in, even with the amount of slick dripping from you. He turns himself slightly and then slowly presses a finger inside of you, pumping it softly over and over before curling it up against that spongy spot. The moment you stir, he freezes, letting a few moments pass by before resuming his motions.

His cock twitches impatiently as your moans fall more freely, and his name is the only word left to hang in the air. He twists his wrist a little more as your walls flutter against his digit, before adding a second and then a third and pumping them faster and faster until you clamp down and cry out so beautifully in your sleep.

Comfortable that you’re stretched out enough to fit him, he coats his cock in the arousal you dripped down his fingers and his hand. Dave slowly brings himself closer to you, dragging the tip of him through your folds just to hear you cry out again, before pressing himself against your entrance.

With the softest snap of his hips he pushes just the tip inside of you, studying your face before slowly inching himself in until you’re filled with him. He moves your leg a little higher and starts to rock back and forth, hissing as he finally gets a little relief as your walls flutter against him.

He groans your name as he starts to build up his pace, needing you to wake, so he can capture your lips and steal your breath in more ways than just one. “Baby,” he growls against your ear, and groans as you just stir again, “Fuck, baby,” he growls from behind his teeth before fucking you even harder.

His cock shreds up something devastating inside of you, and you wake with a scream of his name, clamping down and flooding his cock with your cum as he smashes his lips against yours.

Groaning in relief as he stiffens, filling you with his cum in thick ropes. You had told him that he could wake you up to overwhelm you and from the dazed look of bliss on your face, it had been a hell of a wake up alarm.

[fatehbaz]

Didn't wanna clog up your post, and these sources are more about relationships of time with space/place, but here's some stuff that I've encountered:

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“Temporal sovereignty”. Contemporary US/Australian claims over time-keeping. Reclaiming agency by operating on Indigenous/alternative time schedules. The importance of the “time revolution” in the Victorian era to Euro-American understandings of geology and deep past, precipitating nineteenth-century conquest of time. Mid-twentieth century understanding of “deep time” and its co-option by the Australian state. "Deep time dreaming".

Laura Rademaker. “60,000 Years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts.” Postcolonial Studies. September 2021.

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How "time is a form of enclosure". Checkpoints, "baroque processes to apply for permits to travel", fences, incapacity to change residences, and other "debilitating infrastructures" work to "turn able bodies into a range of disabled bodies" by "stretching time". This is a "slow death" and a simultaneous "slowing down of life" because "it takes so long to get anywhere" and "movement is suffocated". Thus "time itself is held hostage". This "suspended state" of anxiety and endless wait-times "wreaks multigenerational psychological and physical havoc". "Checkpoints ensure one is never sure of reaching work on time. Fear of not getting to work then adds to the labor of getting to work [...]. Bodies in line at checkpoints [...] [experience] the fractalizing of the emotive, cognitive, physiological capacities" through a "constant state of uncertainty". "The cordoning of time through space contributes to an overall 'lack of jurisdiction over the functions of one's own senses' [...] endemic to the operation of colonial rule". This "extraction of time" produces a "depleted" and tired person "beholden to the logistics" of administrative apparatuses, community suffers and "communing is thrawted".

Jabir K. Puar. "Spatial debilities: Slow Life and Carceral Capitalism [...]." South Atlantic Quarterly 120. April 2021.

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The "apocalyptic temporality" that presumes extinction. Indigenous Polynesian/Pacific perceptions and ways of being "destabilize the colonial present" and also "transfigure the past" by "contesting linear and teleological Western time". Indigenous "ontologies of cyclical temporality or inhabitation of heterogenous time". How United States and Europe colonized Oceania for weapons testing and conquest of tropical Edens while rendering local Indigenous people "ungrievable" and "without future". "Pacific time is a layering of oral and somatic memory". Instead of accepting an apocalyptic future or doomsday or nightmare, assert the possibility of a livable future, in spite of "Western temporal closures".

Rebecca Oh. “Making Time: Pacific Futures in Kiribati’s Migration with Dignity, Kathy Jetnil-Kijiner’s Iep Jaltok, and Keri Hume’s Stonefish.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies. Winter 2020.

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Colonial "space-time homogenization". The experience of "homogenous, empty time". Orientalist "time lag" and the naturalization of a supposed East-West hemispheric divide. Late Victorian imperial conceptions of temporality. The British establishment of the Greenwich meridian and International Date Line. The influence of British imperial seafaring and cartography on the establishment of time and on European/US feelings towards the Pacific Ocean. How the origin of English science fiction literature, space travel aspirations, and time travel narratives coincided with the Yellow Peril and xenophobia targeting East Asia.

Timothy J. Yamamura. "Fictions of Science, American Orientalism, and the Alien/Asian of Percival Lowell". Dis-Orienting Planets: Racial Representation of Asia in Science Fiction. 2017.

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Imprisonment as time-control. Here “the question of the past the present and the future indeed time itself looms” especially around the prisoner. “The law renders punishment in units of time”, taking away a the right to a future. There are alternative worlds, many of them, which have been practiced and brought into being, which colonization tried to obscure. There is “a whole anthropology of people without future embedded in the assumptions that justify mass imprisonment as poverty management”. "The prison’s logic exterminates time as we know it”. In prison, bodies have been alienated from time and history ... the punishment seems endless ... to “achieve a measure of agency and possibility it is necessary to redeem time”, to refuse the doom, fated to a life of abandonment.

Avery Gordon. “Some Thoughts on Haunting and Futurity.” borderlands. 2011.

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Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Martin J.S. Rudwick, 2010) explores how the advent of European sciences like geology, preceding the "time revolution" when Europeans experienced revelations about the scale of "deep time", happened alongside and after the Haitian Revolution and other abolitionist movements. French, German, and British naturalists translated the explosion of "new" scientific knowledge from the colonies, so that the metropolitan European audience became a market for historical and scientific "narratives" about how "nature" and time functioned.

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Prartik Chakrabarti's writing on time, temporality, and "the deep past" as British imperial concepts built in conversation with colonial encounters with South Asia. (British Empire reaching such heights in the middle of the nineteenth century at the same time that the newly professionalized sciences of geology were providing revelations about the previously unknown vast scale of "deep time". New colonial anthropology/ethnology also presumed to connect this "primitive" past with "primitive" people.)

See Chakrabarti's "Gondwana and the Politics of Deep Past". Past & Present. 2019.

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We must witness and consider "multiple space-times" to understand how "unfree labour" of plantations was "foundational" to contemporary work, movement, subjugation, health, etc. We must "trace the geneaology of contemporary sovereign institutions of terror, discipline and segregation" [workplaces, imperial/colonial nations, factories, mines, etc.] back in time to plantations. How "the [plantation] estate hierarchy survives in post-plantation" times and places, with the plantation "being a major blueprint of socialization into [contemporary] work". The plantation was "a laboratory for [...] migration regulation in subsequent epochs" that practiced methods of racializing and criminalizing.

Irene Peano, Marta Macedo, and Colette Le Petitcorps. "Introduction: Viewing Plantations at the Intersection of Political Ecologies and Multiple Space-Times". Global Plantations in the Modern World: Sovereignties, Ecologies, Afterlives. 2023.

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“Slow life” and the relationship between “settler colonialism, carceral capitalism, and the modulation of ... registers of time,” including “historical time, the stealing of time through the expansion of labor time, ... and the cordoning off of space through time”. For example, as in occupied zones or at border checkpoints, “the cordoning off of space through time” includes physical architecture like fences and customs, obstacles that impede movement and rhythm, so that “nothing ever happens on time” and there is “a stretching of time”. All the wasted time spent in line, showing papers, waiting for confirmation, etc. “is not a by-product of surveillance, it is the point of surveillance”. Such that “uncertainty becomes a primary affective orientation ... flesh as felt” with a racializing effect“. "This is a biopolitics conditioned through pure capacitation and its metrics”:

Jasbir Puar. In: “Mass Debilitation and Algorithmic Governance” by Ezekiel Dixon-Roman and Jasbir Puar. e-flux Journal Issue #123. December 2021.

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"Starfish time". Indigenous Australian/Aboriginal perceptions of time and "attending to more-than-human agencies of time". Acknowledging the timescales of entire ecosystems, as part of multispecies relationships, a "transcorporeal collaboration". Cyclical time vs linear time. Contrasting timescales experienced by insects that only live a few days and creatures that live for decades. "Starfish may seem to be still" but they slowly move; "larval time" and "the time it takes for eggs to develop and hatch"'. The "immensity of the alterity is literally incomprehensible"; "we can't know what these beings know" but we "should seek respect and be aware of how our lives are entangled".

Bawaka Country including, S. Wright, S.  Suchet-Pearson, K. Lloyd, L. Burarrwanga, R. Ganambarr, M. Ganambarr-Stubbs, B. Ganambarr, D. Maymuru. “Gathering of the Clouds: Attending to Indigenous understandings of time and climate through songspirals.” Geoforum. January 2020.

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The use of calendars, dates, clocks, and industrial/corporate temporality as fundamental to the rise of plantations and financialization in United States/Europe, with a case study of the modern Colombian/Latin American state. Observance of certain dates and strict adherence to specific calendars support "mythologized deeds and heroic retellings" of colonization and industrialization. “The evolution and internalization of disciplined concepts of time” were intimately tied to the rise of wage labor in industrializing England and later during the global ascendancy of work and industrialized plantation monoculture, but the persistence of alternative time should “serve as a reminder that futures and the demarcation of epochs are never as simple as a neatly organized calendar”.

Timothy Lorek. “Keeping Time with Colombian Plantation Calendars.” Edge Effects. April 2020.

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Indigenous people of Alaska and the US control over time management. For the past 50 years, Yupiak people have been subject to US government’s “investment in a certain way of being in time” which “standardized the clock” and disrupted human relationships with salmon. This US management model “anonymized care” and made “a way of attending to the life and death of others that strips life of the social and ecological bonds that imbue it” with resilience and meaning, which “ignores not only the temporality of Yupiaq peoples relations with fish, but also the human relations that human-fish relations make possible”. This disregards “the continuity of salmon lives but also the duration of Yupiat lifeworlds ... life is doubly negated” ... “futures depend on an orientation to salmon in the present”.

William Voinot-Baron. “Inescapable Temporalities: Chinook Salmon and the Non-Sovereignty of Co-Management in Southwest Alaska.” July 2019.

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"Idling" and "being idle" as a form of reclaiming agency and life. Case studies of fugitive Blackness in Caribbean plantation societies. “Disruptive waiting”. “The maroon’s relationship to time challenges [both] the totalizing time of the modern state, but also the [...] narratives to negotiate struggle in the [...] present" in "antagonistic relationship with colonial power". Defying the “European narrative of modernity”. Refusing to be productive.

Amanda Lagji. “Marooned time: disruptive waiting and idleness in Carpentier and Coetzee.” Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies. March 2018.

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Indigenous futures. "It is important to remember that some futures never went anywhere" and "yet they survive. These are futures suppressed and cancelled by colonial power." These are "parallel futures". "Colonial power must control the past so as to deny the emergence of" an alternative future; "colonial power creates a future in advance so that no others will take its place". Poor, racialized, Black, Indigenous people manifest alternative futures.

Pedro Neves Marques. "Parallel Futures: One or Many Dystopias?" e-flux. April 2019.

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The "legacy of slavery and the labor of the unfree shape and are part of the environment we inhabit". The "idea of the plantation is migratory" and it lives on "as the persistent blueprint of our contemporary spatial troubles", so we must seek out "secretive histories" that no longer "rehearse lifelessness".

Katherine McKittrick. “Plantation Futures.” Small Axe. 2013.

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“The temporal dispossession” of Congolese people. There is an “impossibility” of “predictable time” because temporal dispossession “disrupts the possibility of building a future”. Livelihoods/income is driven by market and price fluctuations in United States and Europe tech industries, so “there is an inescapable day-to-day sense of uncertainty”. As Mbembe says, “in Africa, the spread of terror ... blows apart temporal frames”.

James H. Smith. ‘Tantalus in the Digital Age: Coltan ore, temporal dispossession, and “movement” in the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo.’ American Ethnologist Volume 38 Issue 1. February 2011.

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“Slow death”. Chronic illness not just as a byproduct of colonialism/dispossession, but also as part of its aim, a weapon that debilitates people, who become exhausted. Dooming poor and racialized people to lives “without future” through debility, “a condition of being worn out”. Relationship of illness, lack of healthcare, and debt as functionally incapacitating, a form of death sentence. A “zone of temporality” unfolding unlike abrupt/sudden traumatic events and becoming an inescapable condition.

Jasbir K. Puar. The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. 2017.

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The extension of poverty, landlessness, homeless, and imprisonment. "To be unable to transcend the horror of such a world order is what hell means", and "without a glimpse of an elsewhere or otherwise, we are living in hell". The utopian is not only or merely a “fantasy of” and for “the future collectivity” but can be claimed and built and lived here, now. There is "no guarantee" of “coming millenniums or historically inevitable socialisms”, no guarantee that “the time is right” one day if we wait just long enough. Instead: "can a past that the present has not yet caught up with be summoned to haunt the present as an alternative?" The "utopian margins", an alternate world crossing time and place, an "imaginative space and temporality to trace the remains of what "was almost or not quite, of the future yet to come", living as if it were the present. Colonialism tried to crush the many headed hydra of the revolutionary Atlantic, those who challenged the making of the modern world system.

Avery F. Gordon. As interviewed by Brenna Bhandar and  Rafeef Ziadah. “Revolutionary Feminisms: Avery F. Gordon.” As transcribed and published online in the Blog section of Verso Books. 2 September 2020. And: Avery Gordon. “Some thoughts on the Utopian.” 2016.

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The US/European "city is the site of regulatory regimes" that try to impose a definitive narrative about history, progress, and possible futures. But it cannot achieve "a wholly Apollonian, seamlessly regulated realm" because the land "continues to be haunted by the neglected, the disposed of, the repressed". The "commodification" of landscapes "circulates an imaginary geography" mediated through advertisements, labels, soap operas, television, etc. which celebrate "sanctioned narratives and institutionalized rhetoric". A "wild zone" of informal spaces, debris. "Ruins are places where the things, people, and "other memories can be articulated". There is "a spectral residue" that "haunts dominant ways of seeing and being". "Alternative stories might be assembled", so that we can respect the people banished to abandonment, the periphery, and reclaim agency.

Tim Edensor. “The ghosts of industrial ruins: ordering and disordering memory in excessive space.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space volume 23. 2005.

Also, how "master narratives of history as progress decompose" when faced with "a continuously remembered past" when "the ghosts of this past rear up in the ruin" to expose "the debris of unprecedented material destruction" of colonialism/empire-building. These "hauntings rupture linear temporality" and recall those people beaten down as "the trash of history". It is "essential to see the things and the people [...] banished to the periphery [...]."

Tim Edensor. "Haunting in the ruins: matter and immateriality". Space and Culture Issue 11. 2002.

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"Many kinds of time" of bacteria, fungi, algae, humans, and "Western colonialism meet on the gravestones". Some creatures, like lichen, are very long-lived and "these temporal feats alert us that modernity is not the only kind of time, and that our metronomic synchrony is not the only time that matters". The "long duree evolutionary rapprochements to the quick boom and bust of investment capital" where "minor forms of space and time merge with great ones". Extinction is "a breakdown of coordinations with reverberating effects". Ghosts remind us that we live in an impossible present, a time of rupture. "Deep histories tumble in unruly graves that are bulldozed into gardens of Progress". "Endings come with the death of a leaf, the death of a city, the death of a friendship".

Elaine  Gan, Anna Tsing, Heather Swanson, and Nils Burbandt. “Introduction: Haunted Landscapes of the Anthropocene.” Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. 2017.

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Everywhen: Australia and the Language of Deep History. (Edited by Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker, and Jakelin Troy. 2023.)

Chapters include: "Bugarrigarra Nyurdany, Because of the Dreaming: A Discussion of Time and Place in Yawuru Cosmology" (Sarah Yu et al.); "Songs and the Deep Present" (Linda Barwick); "Yirriyengburnama-langwa mamawura-langwa: Talking about Time in Anindilyakwa (James Bednall); "Across 'Koori Time' and Space (John Maynard)

[kerizaret]

I had a dream Nene gave Tsukasa two wind chimes for his birthday and he hung them up at the windows next to his desk so every time he sat there and the wind chimes rang he was just looking at them with the softest gaze possible OUGH IT WAS SO SWEET

[thegodthief]

"Hey..." The curl of animated smoke wound around one leg before swirling up around my body to curl around one arm. "What do you say we start to get to know each other?"

I pulled my arm back. "How about... no." They had tried to tighten themselves on my forearm, but that area reminded me of someone else and kept me from being taken in.

"You're going to have to face me eventually. The longer you put it off, the harder it will be to do anything about it." The smoke flowed to encircle my waist like a belt. To my surprise, it did not attempt to evade me when I pulled it off of me as if I was plucking errant lint.

"I hate that you have a point. But I know enough of your nature to know that I'm not ready to have any dealing with you." I took a step back and felt the rim of something like a manhole just at the edge of my heel. I recognized it immediately and felt more secure in myself. I wasn't alone. I had help if I wanted it. "You're going to have to wait your turn."

The smoke puffed and formed a shadowy humanoid shape. They made themselves a little shorter than me, a little stockier than me, but a lot more arrogant than me as they grabbed my other arm and leaned in like they were trying to hit on me in a dark bar. "But what if I don't want to wait? What if I've been waiting all this time and now I'm bored? What if there's no one else to play with and since you can see me, we can play now?"

Something flowed out over the rim to cover my foot. It didn't attempt to soak into me, but made its presence very clear. The sensation was literally grounding and I knew that there was a huge mass just behind me that I could fall into for protection against my would-be suitor. They looked down at the crud and scowled. They pulled themselves away from me.

"Fine. FINE. I'll wait. For now. But I won't wait for much longer. Now that you're no longer their plaything, you can come into your own and I can help you with that, but I'm here for my own reasons, and I will see those to the end just the same."

They dissipated into the surrounding darkness with a derisive humph. Los Olvidados held on to my foot without comment nor motion.

"Thanks, guys." The crud squeezed my foot in comfort. "I'm starting to feel them more and more, but never this amount of interaction until now. They do have a point. I need to get with it, but I don't know where to learn more about this." They squeezed my foot again.

"Everything is accelerating again and I barely have my head out of my ass, much less any feet on stable ground. How am I supposed to run when I can barely walk?" I looked down at them. "Present company excepted." They squirmed around my ankle, tickling me, and then retreated back to the buried cistern behind me.

"I'm afraid," I whispered to the nonpresences around me.

~~~

"Words have meanings! But those meanings change with time, place, and language. What could have been a very positive compliment in the language that coined the term could become a derogatory insult in another. The context in which these words are used is often more important than the word itself."

The lecturer wrote several words on the chalkboard. I recognized the first one as an English word. Each word they wrote after was a slight change to the one before, but then the alphabet of the words changed. I was able to recognize some Greek letters, but the words that followed eluded me.

The lecturer turned back to the assembled class. "Take the word 'demon', for example. In common use in the English language, it currently means something nefarious and ill-intentioned. But the word it is derived from, the Greek δαίμων, is a neutral term and simply refers to a class of beings that may or may not be helpful to the speaker."

"When speaking, or really, when using any method of communication, consider not only the words and phrases you are using, but also consider the method you are using and the sophistication of the person receiving your communications. I don't mean for you to be a dick, as the parlance goes, and judge the receiver for your perception of their lack of education by whatever standard you call education. I mean, make the effort to use words, and meanings, that are mutually understood. if that means creating new phrases and terminology that can only be understood between you, then do so. You don't have to explain your terminology to those who are not in your audience."

They stood at the lectern and placed their hand on a book. "Your homework is to take a word or phrase that has been in use for at least a century and compare how it is used now against how that usage has developed over that century. Extra credit will be given if you document the development of that phrase over time to the earliest recorded use and what the modern equivalent of that earliest recorded use could be. You cannot use the demon-δαίμων example I just gave. Class dismissed."

They closed the book and disappeared as the sound pushed me into an alternate time of the classroom. All the other students also disappeared, and the time shifted from bright day to late night. Moonlight flowed into the high windows to illuminate me and the seat next to me. In the cold beam, an entity was revealed.

"Demon. Daimon. Bah! I'll tell you what a demon is... An excuse! A justification for the speaker to avoid doing the right thing! To avoid doing anything! A scapegoat for those who are too afraid to do anything that might strip them of the false comfort they have decided is their fate in life."

A red eye solidified in the mass of thick smoke and focused on me. "A demon is a construct of your fears, shame, and guilt. It is assembled from all the pieces of yourself that you pretend to be 'bad' so that you can justify being helpless against your own nature. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned."

I swallowed the rage that was strangely building within me. "If that is a demon, then what are you?"

A second red eye opened as it solidified and focused on me. I noted the mismatched pupils. "Well, finally you ask the right question." No face was there to hold the mouth that opened to speak. The teeth gleamed in the non-space they occupied.

"I am not a demon. I am a devil. There is a difference."

I thought of all my encounters and could not find a parallel or commonality with this entity. If anything, I realized a few key distinctions. "What is the difference?"

A cold hand rested on my forearm. "I don't give a shit about your feelings. That's the difference. I don't need your attention, your worship, or your fear to feed or sustain me. I am independent of you." Another cold hand gripped my shoulder. I recognized where I had encountered this being before.

"But you are in need of me. There is something I can do that you cannot, and you want that thing done."

The hands stopped moving. "I do."

"I guess you're my homework then."

"I am."

I looked around the empty classroom. This could be the lecture hall of any small or community college. I smelled echoes of chemicals and heard forgotten music. At first, I thought this could be any place, but then I realized all of my senses were equating the hall with one very specific place, even though I have never set foot in that building in my life.

I still felt the echoes of it just the same.

"Ah. You're that homework."

"I am."

I looked back at the devil, still formed of cold black smoke save for two red eyes and a tight black mouth. "I'm not afraid of you." I was surprised to realize that and even more surprised to say it out loud.

"Good. Fear of me would only cloud your senses and limit you. I know what was done to you." They looked around the dark hall. "Ah, if only you had grown up here. You wouldn't have to dig so hard to find the answers."

"Yea, well, as an old bitch, looking back, I can say that it's very likely a good thing that I didn't. If you know me, then you know how I was regarded. I would have been taught nothing, or worse, I would have been given a demon greater than I could bear."

They smiled to hear me use their definition of the word. "Yes, you understand, then. Good." They withdrew their hands. The nonspace around me felt warmer somehow. "I look forward to our mutual partnership and benefit. Class dismissed."

Before I could say anything, the dream completely dissolved.

~~~

What if I'm taking things too slow? What if in my fear that I'm going to rip open barely closed wounds, that I wind up dragging myself over uneven ground instead and create new ones? I trip and fall down. My knee is bruised. Those who witness scold me for not being careful enough, for not knowing my place as a neophyte, for not taking the path they keep saying is my right to walk.

Those who witness tell me it is my own fault that I can't score a goal because I'm not playing the game according to the rules that no one can agree on. So I go back to the beginning and try again being extra careful not to step on the same path twice, not to make the same mistakes, not to say anything that would get me scolded again.

Only to wobble and fall.

How many times do I practice writing the shape of the letter before I give myself permission to learn what the letter is? How many times do I practice the sounds that this collection of letters represents before I am permitted to learn what this collection of letters means? How many times do I wait for someone else to give me that permission?

I will never sound like a native speaker, because I'm not. I can only sound like myself.

I do not know the sound of my own voice. I have spent so much of my life mimicking others.

So much of my life trying to learn the right thing to do, the right way to be, the right way to apologize for the sin of existing. I realized that in trying to recover myself, I was making the same mistakes again and again and again.

I want to be found acceptable, and I need to let that go. Sangre sucia. [I]niquitatem magis quam loqui aequitatem. I know what that means now.

It means I need to take responsibility for myself.

And still... I wait for a sign that it's okay to do just that.

~~~

The morning of this post, I received that sign. Scrolling my dash because it's too early for the alarm and too late to go back to sleep, I see a thing and am reminded what it personally means for me. I recall the public history of it, how it went from Point A™ to Point B™ and how that became intertwined with the history of that branch of my family and how I came to understand what that personally means for me.

I saw the thing and realized just how much of a fucking coward I am. How I have burdened myself with unnecessary complications so that I have the excuse to do nothing but cry under the covers that no one loves me and how hard it is to be alone in this cruel world.

Which is true. But why am I remaining in this false comfort? In this set of circumstances that I would be encouraging my worst enemy to do their best to get out of, but here I am, turning over and going back to sleep.

Sure, I could try to do something and fail, but at least I fucking tried.

I know I'm waiting for the cycle to reset. I'm waiting for the inevitable trip so I can fall and skin my knee and be told what a horrible person I am for daring to think that I can be better than the filth in the gutter.

As if that same filth in the gutter wouldn't hesitate to kick my ass and send me back out.

I'm standing again. I have been stripped bare and forced to see myself for what I am and instead of turning away in shame, I am standing.

Okay. This is what I have. This is what I am. No amount of shame or wishful thinking is going to change this. If I am going to be what I have always been, then I need to step up and take responsibility for myself. Those who watch will judge me according to their definitions. I can't change that.

This is not going to be a walk. There is no safe speed to move forward here. There will be obstacles and confrontations and private derision and public aggression and there will always be someone telling me that I'm not clean enough to sit at their table. Okay. How is any of this new?

There are demons and there are demons and there are devils and there I am.

Okay. Let's go.

[konjaku]

小菫[Kosumire] Viola japonica

小[Ko] : Small

菫[Sumire] : Violet

On a day after the midnight rain, while strolling through a wooded area where the sky became brighter than in autumn, I found violets blooming among the fallen leaves, which had darkened in color with moisture. As looking around, I saw them growing here and there, and almost all of them were in bloom.

The leaves were much larger than those in the spring and were not uncommon for the leaves to be well over ten centimeters in length. So finding them was easy, but on the other hand, identification was a bit of a struggle.

Blooming when it is not in its natural season, or unseasonable blooming, is called 狂い咲き[Kurui-zaki](lit. wrong blooming), but this is not the case, since they are all blooming at the same time, it is 返り咲き|帰り咲き[Kaeri-zaki](lit. returning blooming) or 二度咲き[Nido-zaki](lit. twice blooming).

Kaerizaki is called 帰り花[Kaeri-bana] in haiku and poetry, and was also called 忘れ花[Wasure-bana](lit. forgetting flower) in earlier times.

木枯に 匂ひやつけし かへり花

[Kogarashi ni nioi ya tsukeshi kaeribana] I wonder if that Kaeribana aromatizes the cold wintry wind By 松尾 芭蕉[Matsuo Bashō]

春��夜の 夢見て咲くや かへり花

[Haru no yo no yume mite saku ya kaeribana] Kaeribana, are you blooming while having a dream of a spring night? By 加賀 千代女[Kaga-no Chiyo-jo]

小春日に 菫も返り 咲きにけり

[Koharubi ni sumire mo kaeri -zaki ni keri] Violet flowers are also returning in an early winter day that feels like spring By 室生 犀星[Murou Saisei] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murō_Saisei

[gatheringbones]

best books of 2022 rec list:

fiction:

chouette by claire oshetsky

forty thousand in gehenna by cj cherryh

fierce femmes and notorious liars by kai cheng thom

sula by toni morrison

everyone in this room will someday be dead by emily r. austin

jane eyre by charlotte bronte

villette by charlotte bronte

non-fiction:

gay spirit by mark thompson

we too: stories on sex work and survival by natalie west

transgender history by susan stryker

blood marriage wine & glitter by s bear bergman

love and rage: the path to liberation through anger by lama rod owens

gay soul by mark thompson

between certain death and a possible future: queer writing on growing up in the AIDS crisis by mattilda bernstein sycamore

the man they wanted me to be: toxic masculinity and a crisis of our own making by jared yates sexton

nobody passes: rejecting the rules of gender and conformity by mattilda bernstein sycamore

cruising: an intimate history of a radical pastime by alex espinoza

gay body by mark thompson

what my bones know: a memoir of healing from complex trauma by stephanie foo

the child catchers: rescue, trafficking, and the new gospel of adoption by kathryn joyce

the opium wars: the addiction of one empire and the corruption of another by w. travis hanes III

a queer history of the united states by michael bronski

the trouble with white women by kyla schuller

what we don't talk about when we talk about fat by aubrey gordon

the feminist porn book by tristan taormino

administrations of lunacy: a story of racism and psychiatry at the midgeville asylum by mab segrest

the women's house of detention by hugh ryan

angela davis: an autobiography by angela davis

ten steps to nanette by hannah gadsby

neuroqueer heresies by nick walker

the remedy: queer and trans voices on health and healthcare by zena sharman

brilliant imperfection by eli clare

the dawn of everything: a new history of humanity by david graeber and david wengrow

tomorrow sex will be good again by katherine angel

all our trials: prisons, policing, and the feminist fight to end violence by emily l. thuma

if this is a man by primo levi

bi any other name: bisexual people speak out by lorraine hutchins

white rage: the unspoken truth of our racial divide by carol anderson

public sex: the culture of radical sex by pat califa

I'm glad my mom died by jenette mccurdy

care of: letters, connections and cures by ivan coyote

the gentrification of the mind: witness to a lost imagination by sarah schulman

skid road: on the frontier of health and homelessness in an american city, by josephine ensign

the origins of totalitarianism by hannah arendt

nice racism: how progressive white people perpetuate racial harm by robin diangelo

corrections in ink by keri blakinger

sexed up: how society sexualizes us and how we can fight back by julia serano

smash the church, smash the state! the early years of gay liberation by tommi avicolli mecca

no more police: a case for abolition by mariame kaba

until we reckon: violence, mass incarceration, and a road to repair by danielle sered

the care we dream of: liberatory & transformative justice approaches to LGBTQ+ health by zena sharman

reclaiming two-spirits: sexuality, spiritual renewal and sovereignty in native america by gregory d. smithers

the sentences that create us: crafting a writer's life in prison by Caits Meissner

[girlcrushart]

It’s not like I’ve been watching her in anything bc I’ve fully exhausted that well, but I still managed to have a dream about Keri Russell. Or at least a new character of hers I formulated in my brain. Because it wasn’t Keri in my dream. Keri is bubbly and fun and joyful. The characters she plays tend to be fierce and scary and badass. That’s who was in my dream and it was awesome. She wasn’t wearing an outfit like this one… it involved more leather and straps and zippers, but this does capture the level of off-the-charts sexiness, bc the thing about Keri Russell is that whether she’s playing a character or just being herself, the sexiness is always off-the-charts. That’s just a given. Today’s girlcrushart guardian is Keri Russell.

[heartsopenminds]

Con and Nathan, highlights #4

Q. What’s the wildest thing you’ve ever done that you’re willing to share?

Nathan said he’s the worst person to answer this as he’s ‘nauseatingly sensible’ and just wants to stay at home, keep warm and safe and drink lots of wine. Con said er, I’m not going anywhere near that question thanks!

Q. What actors or creatives are on your wishlist to work with in the future?

Con said Tina Fey and Al Pacino, Nathan was a hard agree on Tina Fey and also said Kathryn Hahn but that he’d never be allowed anywhere near her because he loves her so much he’d just go feral. Nathan said Maya Rudolph, and Con came back with Keri Russell as he thought she was exceptional in The Diplomat, then they dragged themselves for giving such earnest answers. Nathan said he’s been working on a long-term project over the past year with someone who isn’t super high profile but who he has huge admiration for and he’s really excited about it, and then Con said he’d loved to work with Russell T Davies again because he’s a genius and a wonderful human.

Q. (to Nathan) [Very long and hilarious introduction to the question in the style of how Nathan interviewed Kristian at Comic Con a couple of weeks before, which I couldn't even attempt to summarise!] How was it to act with the Royal Shakespeare Company?

Nathan said it was amazing, and something he’d never dreamed he’d end up doing as he’d had such a bad time with Shakespeare at drama school. He didn’t have time to prepare much for the audition and he thought he’d absolutely tanked it but ended up getting cast and was surprised at how creatively fulfilling he found the whole experience.

Q. What’s the perfect cheese plate?

Con loved this question, and took it extremely seriously! It needs to have a good mixture of cheeses including something hard, something soft, something blue (preferably also soft), something really strong, some kind of cheddar and he quite likes a goat’s cheese in there too. Also homemade chutney, innovative crackers (which Nathan said should be their band name) and some pickled or sliced onion, but said Branston and Jacob’s crackers can fuck off.

Nathan said give him a packet of Jacob’s and an entire wheel of Brie and he’s happy, and if he's allowed to dabble in some charcuterie, a little chorizo would be nice.

Then Con realised he'd forgotten about including fruit - Nathan suggested persimmon, Con said definitely no grapes although when prompted by one of the moderators, conceded that an exception might be made if they’re in balsamic

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