#love 2 incorporate dead languages at every opportunity

[domini-porter]

I’m Writing You A Scary Story: I Dare You

(Rizzoli&Isles, F/F, rated E for Explicit Witchery)(and sex)

Sooooo hi again; here’s the first part of this lil Halloween trifle! It is, as always, kind of weird. But I hope you like it so far!

Jane and Maura have weekend reservations at a remote cabin in the woods so that Maura can share in the Rizzoli tradition of Halloween dares, but ‘tis the season for things to go terrifyingly awry ;)

“Is that it?” Maura asks, leaning forward like an extra four inches closer to the windshield’s gonna crack the case.

“It better be,” Jane mutters. She’s trying to be nice. Well, not as cranky as she actually is. But she’s been driving in what feels like smaller and smaller circles around the darker and darker rural Massachusetts—or maybe it’s New Hampshire by now—woods for what feels like hours, and it’s pitch-black except for the glow of the moon just starting to rise huge and white over the treetops, and she’s got a headache, and she’s sick of being in this dinky little car, and she has to pee.

“My apologies for not anticipating a tree falling across the main road,” Maura mutters back from the passenger seat. “But that’s it. The listing said there’d be a big oak at the edge of the clearing, look.”

“Thank god,” Jane sighs, directing the Prius onto the dirt track she’s hoping is supposed to be the driveway, since she’s driving on it. Cuts the engine a few feet from the little cottage. “Uh, Maur . . .”

Maura’s squinting at her phone, frowning. “This is the place,” she mumbles. “The GPS agrees. And the pictures of the property look similar, but . . .”

“But I’m pretty sure the house in the pictures has, like, lightbulbs,” Jane groans. “Maura—“

“Jane,” Maura says back, matching her frustrated whine, but Jane knows it’s directed at her, not the . . . house. Even though the house, such as it is, deserves a lot more whining than she’s doing right now, particularly after she’d been forced to drive them in circles for three hours.

She grumbles. Huffs. “Is there, like, a key box or something? There better be plumbing in there, or I’m going behind a tree.”

“The key’s under the rock carved with a triskelion,” Maura says.

“And what’s a tri-skeleton, please,” Jane says as calmly as she can manage, even though her knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

Maura just rolls her eyes. “I’ll find it.” She’s out of the car and marching up to the creepy, darkened old cabin before Jane can even protest about bears.

“Maura,” she calls, struggling out into the chilly, silent evening. Her breath a white fog in front of her. The sound of her voice echoing around the little clearing, the spiky, crooked cottage in the center, the promised oak tree at one end, its massive branches spreading like a hand, reaching for her. She scoffs. Shakes her head. It’s just a tree, and it’s just dark, and she’s disoriented from driving in circles, and the place they were spending a relaxing long weekend turned out to be a creepy witch’s shack that might not even have a toilet, contrary to the listing Maura had found.

Maura, who’s using her cell phone flashlight to examine the dozens, maybe hundreds of rocks placed around the splintery front door in what look to Jane like deliberate patterns. Maybe a quarter of them have some sort of design carved on them. Great. Another sigh. “What are we looking for?”

“A triskelion,” Maura says crisply, not looking up at her. So she’s annoyed too. Perfect. “A design with three interlocking spirals. It represents—“

“You know I can’t look and listen at the same time,” Jane mutters, sweeping her own phone flashlight over the carefully-arranged patterns of stones. The designs were nearly all unfamiliar; symbols that looked almost like things she’d seen before, but not quite. Some of them made her gut clench when she looked at them too long, but she chalked that up to the rapidly-increasing urgency of her full bladder. “This one?” She nudges at a flat, oblong stone, groaning in relief when lifting it up revealed an old-fashioned iron key, half-buried in the dirt. “See? Triple skeleton.”

“Hmm,” Maura murmurs, holding out her hand for the key. “Can you shine your light on the lock?”

Even though Jane’s pretty sure if you find the key you get to unlock the door, she’s handing it over, wiping her hand on her jeans. Shining the light at the rusted old iron lock. “We can probably just break in,” she mutters. “Ten bucks says the door crumbles when you try to unlock it.”

Maura just ignores her. Works the skeleton key into the heavy lock, Jane half-expecting the whole place to crack into dusty splinters when she twists it.

To her surprise—and Maura’s too, given her little gasp—the key turns easily, smoothly, silently; the door swinging open with a faint creak.

They both gasp when the inside of the cottage is revealed. In stark contrast to its ragged, weatherbeaten exterior the inside’s warm, cozy, charming. A fire crackling in the stone hearth at one end of the main room, casting the interior in a cheery yellow glow.

“The owners must’ve come out earlier,” Maura murmurs, taking it in. “Though I do disagree with the wisdom of leaving a fire unattended.”

“Well great news, you can attend it now. I’m gonna find the bathroom.” She heads in the direction she’d most expect to find a bathroom, trying all the hand-hewn doors she sees—a closet, a cramped, dark room, a steep, narrow staircase—before finding what she sought; to her relief the facilities were, in contrast to the rest of the place, almost disorientingly modern despite being illuminated by a dozen wax candles in tall glass holders. Plain white toilet, claw-foot bathtub, chipped pedestal sink. Something about it seemed a little off, in a way she couldn’t put her finger on, but the pressure was good and the hot water came right out of the tap with no groaning or clanking or five-minute delay, so she counted her blessings and went back into the firelit main room, feeling at least a little more human.

“Any light switches in here?”

Maura’s prodding at the fire. “None I can find. There doesn’t seem to be any electricity at all, which the listing didn’t point out.” She stands up. Sighs. “We can go back home if you want.”

Jane feels that little crumple of guilt in her gut. The one she always gets when she’s been a whiny baby about something she feels better about now. Still, she’s a little sore about all of it, even if the bathroom had been nice. But Maura’s got that look. That disappointed look she’s trying to hide. “It’s late,” she shrugs. “And I doubt anyone’s gotten a whole-ass tree off the highway yet so if it’s between driving in circles for three hours the other way or roasting marshmallows in here I guess marshmallows it is.”

She doesn’t miss Maura’s brief, hopeful glance. The one that always makes her feel like an absolute jackass. It’s not like she hadn’t agreed to come on this little jaunt. It’s not like it hadn’t been her idea, practically. Hers and Frankie’s, sort of. They’d been talking at Sunday dinner about the Halloween dares they’d all used to set for each other every year, getting more and more dangerous as they got older until fifteen-year-old Frankie’d ended up in the hospital with a broken arm trying to run away from what he thought was Bigfoot but was actually Jane with Tommy on her shoulders, both of them draped in a brown sheet.

And Maura’d gotten that soft, wistful look on her face like she always did when she was watching Jane with her family, but especially when they were reminiscing about stuff they’d done as kids. Stuff she’d never done. Like daring each other to spend the night at the Witch Cabin out past Leominster State Park. The one thing none of them had ever seriously entertained, because nobody needs to get possessed by the spirit of any of the Salem witches, thanks.

“But Salem isn’t anywhere near Leominster,” Maura had frowned, pouring another glass of cab sauv.

“Yeah,” Frankie’d said with a knowing nod. “Made it a lot harder to track ‘em down, huh?”

Maura had looked confused. Jane and Frankie had exchanged sly glances.

“Maur, everybody knows about Salem. But you’re telling me you see all these accusations and trials and hangings and you don’t think you’d blow town?” Jane scoffed.

“But they were all false accusations,” Maura had pressed. “There’s no such thing as witches; simply religious persecution, political manipulation, and the combined persuasiveness of several teenage girls.”

“That was the scariest part,” Frankie shivered.

“Definitely the scariest part,” Jane had nodded. “But even though all those people were innocent victims, the Witch Cabin is real. One-hundred-per-cent.”

“Hmm,” she’d murmured, but Jane had seen the glimmer of interest. Not about witches being real—obviously the witch trials had been nothing more than sanctioned murder—but about the prospect of a Halloween dare. “Outside Leominster?”

And Jane had forgotten all about it, until Maura had sent her an email last week, with the subject line I dare you. Inside was a reservation for a cottage in what looked to be the middle of fuck-all nowhere, somewhere west of Leominster State Park. A rickety, pointed, ancient-looking place. It wasn’t the Witch Cottage she and her brothers had held in reserve as a nuclear dare—that was just an overgrown abandoned house on the outskirts of Fitchburg—but if there was ever a place witches had once lived, it was this one.

She’d felt a little ripple run through her at the message. The subject line, especially.

I dare you.

Maura knew how competitive she was. That she’d never chicken out on a dare. That, plus the context of it. Maura was inviting her on a long weekend to a spooky cabin in the middle of nowhere, because she and her brother had mentioned some dumb made-up legend. Because she wanted that kind of dumb joy, too, and who was Jane to refuse to take a day off work to support her best friend’s Halloween dream?

Maybe if she’d known how frustrating the drive would be and how there wasn’t any electricity she wouldn’t have hit reply so fast. Or would’ve typed something other than piece of cake.

“There’s marshmallows?” Maura says, perking up a little.

“Yep,” Jane nods. “Cheap ones. Full of chemicals. Perfect for toasting. But we’ll need to get sticks.”

“What about those?” Maura asks, pointing to a wooden rack hanging on the rough plank wall, a half-dozen thin metal skewers dangling from leather straps.

Jane looks at them, but feels something weird and clammy come over her at the way the glow of the fire paints their sharp points in liquid red light. “Nope,” she says, tearing her eyes away with a quick gulp. “You gotta harvest your own toasting stick. Those are the rules.”

“But it’s so dark—“

“I dare you,” Jane says smugly, folding her arms over her chest.

Maura makes a little noise of protest, then scowls, trapped. “What about bears?”

“Make a lot of noise,” Jane says. “But they should be going into hibernation anyway. Don’t worry,” she smirks. “You’re way too skinny. Not even a decent midnight snack.”

“Jane—“

“Double-dog dare,” Jane says.

Maura blanches. “That’s not fair.”

“Dares ain’t fair, sweetheart,” Jane grins. “And anyway, this place is surrounded by trees, it’s not like you’ll have to go into the big scary woods.” Waggles her fingers.

Maura’s scowling in earnest now. It always takes a little prodding to get her into the competitive spirit, but the way she’s marching over to the kitchen—what’s supposed to be the kitchen, at least, since there’s a huge wooden table and a hulking iron stove and racks of heavy iron pots and pans and a whole row of big, spooky-looking cleavers dangling from hooks—and rummaging around until she makes a noise of victory, turning back to reveal a small fixed-blade knife, its silver edge gleaming. “Last one to get their stick has to unload the car.”

And she’s out the door.

“Maura!” Jane starts after her—she’s left her phone, so she doesn’t even have a light; so much for being paranoid about bears—before realizing the game’s already on. She rushes into the kitchen area, shuffles around, but all she can find is one of the four huge cleavers. Hefts it. Not too shabby, all told. More her style than some cute little dagger, anyway. Leaves her phone too, so it’s fair. Fairer, anyway. And it’s not like they get signal out here.

“Maura?” She’s shivering as soon as she steps past the threshold. It had been chilly, and it was warm in the cabin, but she didn’t think it would be cold. “Maura, where are you?”

No answer. It’s silent out here. She frowns a little as she strains to hear Maura, rustling at the edge of the trees as she searched for the perfect toasting stick. To hear anything, actually; at first it had been the disorienting lack of city noise, but now she’s realizing it’s silent-silent. No animal noises. No sound of the wind in the trees, even though she can see the branches waving, black against the silver glow of the enormous moon. Naturally Maura’d booked the place for the full moon; if you asked her—or didn’t—to do a thing, you could believe she’d do it right.

“Maura?”

She pauses. Listens. Just that loud silence, filling the small glen. She scans the treeline. Thinks she sees movement off toward the south. A flash of something light-colored, anyway. Maura’s wearing a cream-colored sweater, but why’s she moving into the trees, away from the cabin?

“Maura, hold on, where are you going?” A little stab of annoyance as the pale shape disappears into the darkness. Jane sighs, heads after her. “It’s just a stick, Maur, I saw like fifty good ones between the house and here.” No answer. The trees are getting thicker. She stops. Listens again. Brow furrows as she hears running water. “Maura, are you over there? Just—just stop moving for a second, okay? I can’t see the house any more, and I don’t want to die on vacation.”

Just the faint rush of water, getting louder. A stream, maybe. And when she listens closer, a soft voice, murmuring. She sighs. Scowls. They’ve been here for twenty minutes and Maura’s already dragging her off on some unscheduled sightseeing trip. Even though she can barely see through the shadowy canopy, silver moonlight filtering down only intermittently as the branches shift in the soundless wind.

She can see what looks like a break in the trees a few yards ahead. In the direction of the burbling water sounds. Of Maura’s low murmuring. Must be the creek. Pushes her way toward it, hesitating at the treeline a couple feet from the silvery ribbon cutting through the forest. The pale figure she’d glimpsed was a ways off, kneeling on a wide, flat stone jutting over the bank of the stream. “Maura?”

The figure was facing away from her, holding something in the water. A woman, Jane guessed, but not Maura, unless Maura’d secretly brought along an old-fashioned long-sleeved high-necked nightgown.

Her pulse quickens. Breath gets thin and rapid. All the usual automatic physiological reactions to fear, or whatever years of voluntarily walking into dangerous situations has turned fear into. Awareness, maybe. “Hello?”

The woman doesn’t seem to hear her, or if she does, she doesn’t seem bothered. Jane inches out of the trees, wishing briefly she had her gun—even though she’s dealing with a woman in a nightgown—but she adjusts her grip on the heavy cleaver, which makes her feel a little better.

“Hey,” she says, louder. “Are you all right?” Takes a couple tentative steps toward her.

She’s still not paying any attention to Jane, but Jane gets the distinct impression she knows she’s there. As she gets closer she can make the woman out better; pale and slim under her loose, rough-spun nightgown. Long, rippling golden-red hair tucked over one shoulder, hiding most of her face. The moon’s fully up now, bigger than Jane’s ever seen it, its edges brushed with blood-red, and it’s making the water of the little stream glitter like silver, and the woman’s hair shimmer like rubies, and even though Jane’s years and years of training and experience are screaming about how none of this is a good idea, she’s still inching up to her. “Hello? Are you—“

The woman finally acknowledges her. Turns to face her. Jane nearly drops her cleaver when she sees her.

It’s not Maura, but not even the Superintendent himself would’ve blamed her for thinking it was. The same wavy red-gold hair. The same straight nose. Round cheeks. Wide, curious eyes. She looks younger, though. Or, no. Older?

“Uh,” Jane stammers. “I’m—“

The woman merely smiles at her. Lifts what she’d been holding under the water—a hollowed-out gourd, like Jane had seen at any number of Puritan village reenactments. The water inside’s the same silver as the moonlit stream, even though the woman’s body is blocking the light from reaching the jug; it’s almost as if the water itself is glowing, and not the moon.

She needs to get back to the cabin. To find Maura. The real Maura. And this woman—barefoot and underdressed for the weather as she is—doesn’t seem to be at all uncomfortable or distressed. Maybe she’s just one of Western Mass’s healthy complement of outdoorsy weirdos, living in hollowed-out trees and eating berries and drinking from streams until some intestinal parasite forces them back into the arms of civilization. Happens all the time. Not usually when it’s this cold out, but maybe she’s one of those witchy-types who always tend to replace the liberal arts undergrads around this time of year. Point being, she seems fine, and Jane’s suddenly totally okay with letting her do . . . whatever it is she’s doing.

“I’m gonna, uh, I’m gonna go,” she says, gaze flicking between the woman’s uncanny face and the softly-shimmering jug in her hands.

“Aren’t you thirsty?” the woman says. She’s got a weird accent, one Jane can’t place. Almost British, but that could just mean she’s from Rhode Island. More than that, though, her voice sounds rusty, somehow. Not unpracticed, but literally rusty. Creaking and groaning and like bits of sound are flaking off as the words come out of her mouth. Like she’s the thirsty one. Like she’s dying of thirst. Like Jane is, all of a sudden, staring at the glimmering water the woman had pulled from the glimmering stream.

It looks more like water than any water Jane’s ever seen, the closer she gets to it. Cooler and more refreshing and more delicious than any water ought to look, but every step nearer makes her mouth, her throat dry out, until by the time she’s next to the woman with the jug she can hardly get a rasping breath into her lungs. She’s got that yearning feeling in her chest as she looks at the gourd, the water inside rippling placidly. Maura had told her once that that yearning feeling often meant the body was signaling some sort of deficiency; that whatever she was yearning for contained whatever vitamin or mineral her body was running low on. If that’s true she has no idea what exactly she’s low on right now, but whatever it is, it’s right in front of her. Smooth and silver and she can practically smell it now, like the thickest, juiciest green leaves, like a shovel of damp earth being overturned, like the mineral sharpness in the air before it rains, like—

She stops dead, practically panting. It smells like honey, almost. Like flowers, somehow. It smells sweet. Thick. Heady. And she’s so thirsty now. So thirsty she could cry, if she could find any extra water in her for tears.

“Hold out your hands,” the woman rasps. At least she doesn’t sound like Maura, and now that she’s close—so close—she doesn’t look nearly so much like her. A lot, sure, but more like some old portrait of a distant great-great aunt or something. Not as refined, maybe. Still. Jane obeys.

The water glows like moonlight as it slips from the gourd into her cupped hands. Glows in her cupped hands. “Is it—“ she glances up at the woman.

“The water is sweetest in the fullness of the moon’s light,” the woman rasps. “Drink.”

She thinks vaguely about all the dozens of bacteria swimming around in creek water. Parasites and brain-eating amoebas. Things that fall in and die, sure. But also things that spend their entire lives there; being born and eating and fucking and fighting and dying and rotting, over and over. But instead of being grossed out like she vaguely knows she should be, all she can think, when she looks at her handful of glimmering water, is drink.

And when she does, it’s like she’s swallowing life itself. All those creatures being born and dying and being born and dying, over and over, the water itself seeming to be filled with all of that. All of those tiny lives. Millions. More.

And the glow. That goes inside her too. She can feel it spreading through her. When she looks at her hands, her fingertips are shimmering.

She can remember, sort of, being thirsty. So thirsty she’d wanted to cry. Like if she’d waited a second longer to lift her cupped hands to her mouth, it might have been too late. But now she feels quick and vital and strong. More than she’s felt in longer than she can remember. Like she’s just slept for a year, a hundred years, a thousand, and she’s finally woken up.

She takes a deep breath. Everything tastes alive, even the dead and dying things. The rotting leaves underfoot. The sludge of decay at the edges of the marshes dotting this whole part of the state. She can smell the creek, too, stronger now. Not like fresh green leaves, though. The thick, heady tang of iron on her tongue. Sucks in another breath, like a mouthful of blood, and it makes her feel like she’s swelling, expanding, like something inside her’s cracked open, something hot and eager and starving.

She can hear the wind now, she realizes. The scrape of the branches against the sky. The way the twigs sing and sigh as they rasp together. And then, just across the stream, something soft, quieter than silence, but she can hear it; can hear the sweep and shift of each feather as the owl swoops from a branch, as it vanishes, as the sounds of the living forest rush in to fill the soundless void the beating of its wings trails behind it.

The sensation is incredible, indescribable; she’s never experienced anything like this. Like every cell in her body’s thrown open the door to welcome in the night. She could stand here forever, maybe, letting it rush into her, but she hears the snap of a branch far off—hears it right next to her ear, but knows, somehow, it’s Maura, over on the opposite side of the clearing—and turns toward it.

Gasps when she nearly runs straight into the woman who’d offered her the drink. Standing right in front of her, right at the entrance to the trees. “Thank you,” she says, but it’s oddly difficult to get the words out. Like they’re coming from some place farther inside her body than usual. “But I have to—“ The woman shifts, and Jane thinks she’s moving out of the way, until she realizes the woman’s moving straight toward her. Is about to collide with her. “Hey, watch—“

—watch out

“Oh,” she breathes. Cold, sharp air, into her warm, soft body. Quick and vital and strong.

hey

“Trii mageti dugiou mi honorou. Nemeton. Betu-gi. Andero. Trii mageti dugiou mi donom.”

wait

“Tri anfofynn a wnaethpyd. Uchel. Rhyng. Islaw. Un rhodd a dderbyniwyd. Ei fwynhad triushed.”

what’s going on

“Three offerings I have made,” she says. “One above.” She reaches toward the unblinking silver eye of the moon. “One betwixt.” Kneels slowly, places her palms flat on the cold earth. “One below.” Digs her fingers into the soil. “One blessing have I received. The blessing of the Three.”

the what of the what? wait, just hold on, just—

“Rebecca,” she murmurs, and the sound of it is sweeter even than the sound of the brook; at last more than a plaintive whisper rasped out by the branches, driving her mad, madder, with each passing second, each passing day, each passing century.

each passing what? who’s rebecca? what the hell’s going on?

She’s slipping easily through the forest; she’s done it a hundred times, a thousand, and even though it’s been long, so long since she’s done it in a way that makes the dry leaves crush under her feet she still picks her way swiftly back into the clearing. Pauses at the edge, the breath in her lungs pushing out painfully at the sight of home.

home? uh, hello? what’s happening? why can’t i make anything move like i want? why—why can’t i talk?

Listen.

who’s there? what’s happening?

Listen.

She closes her eyes. Tips her face to the moon, its silver light cold as it pours down over her. The wind in the branches. Their creak and rasp. Things creeping through the tufts of dead grass, sliding and skittering. Things in the trees, shifting their talons, the bark splitting and splintering.

Listen.

The hiss of smoke escaping the stone chimney. The crackling of the fire at its other end. A bat, its leathery wings flapping so close to her face she felt the faintest puff of air against her cheek.

“Abigail.”

Her eyes opening. Her heart—thick and strong and hot inside her chest—beating faster.

abigail? my name’s jane. is that maura? why did she say abigail?

Listen, Jane.

She wants to run, to run straight across the moonlit clearing to her, but even though it’s been centuries, lifetimes, she knows they have to do it exactly according to the Way, else all will fail.

“Rebecca,” she calls back. Her voice holds.

“We meet by moonlight.”

“And by all the grace we have gathered.”

The wind rises in the trees. She turns her face to the moon again, feels a rush of awe, of fire as its silver face is curtained beneath a blood-red veil.

“Uchel.”

“Nemeton,” she responds. Raises her hand. Palm to the sky. The flash of her beloved silver knife from across the clearing. She raises the heavy cleaver.

whoa whoa whoa, what the hell—

Listen.

The blade cuts into the warm, soft flesh of her palm easily, as she’d known it would; no number of years would dull a single edge in their home, would blanket a single surface with dust, would let die a single ember in the hearth. She gasps, shivers at the sensation. The awe of it. How clean and pure. The lush heat of the blood sliding down her arm as she thrusts the offering skyward.

“Rhyng,” she hears from across the clearing, and though it’s not her voice, it’s her, at last.

what do you mean, ‘not her voice’? that’s maura, that’s what she sounds like

She sinks to her knees, the blood in her palm, on her arm warm, warmer, almost hot, almost unbearable as she offers it to the ruby moonlight. A sigh of relief escaping her when at last she lays the sliced-open palm flat on the cold, wet ground. “Betu-gi,” she calls back.

“Islaw.”

She raises the cleaver.

hey, wait, what the fuck—

Listen.

Brings it down only a hairsbreadth from her hand. Gives her wrist a hard turn, sending a wedge of damp earth flying. Lowers her bleeding palm into the space. Feels the blood drip from the cut into the earth. The roots of the plants. The home to which all creatures surrendered their flesh, eventually. “Andero.”

hey wait no I’m serious, what’s—what’s happening to me—

Us

us? wh—what

Jane

jane, that’s—that’s me

abigail

that’s

“Jane,” she says, and it sounds odd. Her voice sounds odd. Deep and rasping. Only for a moment, she thinks. It will only feel odd for a moment, if all was done well and true. Tries again, more forcefully. “Jane.”

“Jane?”

Across the clearing. Next to her oak tree. She looks different, of course she would, but jane seems to find her pleasant to look at, which inspires the same in her; it hardly matters, anyway, as long as—

She’s edging cautiously around the rim of the clearing. Not stepping directly into the moonlight until she’s well past any shadows cast by the wretched old oak. When she does, she seems to be infused with the moonlight itself.

“You said your name is Jane?”

“Jane,” she whispers again, the word dying on her lips as she leaps the last few steps across the silver-cast clearing, sweeping her into her arms, their mouths crashing together, biting and licking and sucking as though trying to consume centuries in seconds.

When at last they pull apart—gasping, choking, lips bitten, mouths smeared red—she can hardly stand, hardly breathe. “It was a success,” she rasps.

“Yes.”

“We do not have long, my love.”

“I know.”

And she’s got her by the hand, their wounds pressed together, blood singing into each other again, and it feels—it feels.

Even though they don’t have much time until the veil slips off the moon to complete their work, she halts them just before the door to their beloved cottage, its fire crackling warm and bright through the sparkling glass windowpane. Slides her tongue greedily into her mouth again, growling when she bites down, growling at the sear of pain, the rush of blood, at her tongue, just as greedily lapping it into her own mouth with a whimper, a moan. Her hand, the unopened one, briefly stymied by whatever strange garments she was wearing until that suddenly became clear, became fly, became zipper, became elastic, fingers recognizing along with her mind as she forced her hand eagerly, roughly, into the thick heat between her legs, both of them crying out, the sounds of their reunion echoing in the clearing, making the wind moan through the tops of the trees.

She lets her harsh yelp echo too, as Rebecca—Maura, she recognizes—finds the tender place on her throat where her heart moves closest to her skin. Closes her teeth around it, until she feels the skin break. Maura’s hot groan, the rush of wetness around her fingers, how easily she’s able to plunge three of them inside her in one hard thrust, as she gives herself over to her ravenous desire, to her hot, dark lusts, to all the things she’d promised herself for years. Centuries. All the things Maura had been promising herself, though her name hadn’t been Maura, it had been something else, something she can almost remember, though every gasp and wail in her ear pushes it farther and farther away.

“Jane,” she keens, the force of her coming apart making the trees shake down to the foundations of the earth.

When they return to their bodies, the wind is gently swaying again, though there’s a harsh, terrible noise coming from the other side of their house. Lights, flickering crimson and gold. She prepares to run for a moment before Maura stills her, a hand on her arm.

“Car alarm,” she says. “I know how to make it stop. Come, I’ll show you.”

By the time they’re inside, however, she knows, too. Grabs Maura’s keys from where she’d left them, tossed carelessly on the table. Jabs at the button, sighing with relief when the lights, the noise abruptly cease.

“How long have we—“ Maura begins, but Jane silences her with another kiss. Tender, this time. Lapping gently at the cut she’d bitten into her lip outside.

“Too long, and long enough,” she murmurs. Somewhere she feels her. Feels jane, kicking and struggling. She wonders if Maura feels the same thing.

“No,” she says with a crooked grin, one that makes Jane feel unsteady; jane too, somewhere down deep. “She’s very curious. She’s watching now, if you’d like to see her.”

She leans close. Gazes into her eyes; no longer the color they once were, but she can’t recall it any more; not that her last had been her true eyes, either. She likes these, though. The color of the autumn forest. Red-brown like a stag’s dropping velvet. Threaded with the gold of sapping leaves; flecks of green like patches of moss. Her eyes. maura’s eyes, whoever she had been. Gazing back at her, bright. Alert. Like a fawn, she thinks.

“She’d like to know if she can see jane,” Maura murmurs, reflecting silver moonlight back at her once again.

“jane is less curious,” Jane sighs. “She doesn’t understand, and not understanding frightens her, so she’s fighting it. She’s underneath, now. Until she listens. Then she can see.”

Maura frowns. “But we only have a little time.”

“I know,” she says. “We will use it well.”

wait—don’t—i don’t know what’s—maura—

[kryptsune]

Tell us more about the mythology of Yokaitale, or perhaps even what specific versions of Wonderland inspired Wonderfell (like did you take anything from the 2 American McGee games at all?)

🌼 Wonderfell is a fun one. I take inspiration from way too many adaptations to list here but yes you are correct I am a huge fan of McGee’s interpretation so that does creep in. If you noticed Chesh has a hoop earring. That is definitely inspired by that version. I don’t take too much from the Disney version since... I know this is controversial but I don’t think it’s the best adaptation. It gets the usual Disney family-friendly treatment. Which is fine I still love it but if you know me I like things a little more... mature. 

I was also inspired by games like Alicemare, IB, Yume Nikki. It doesn’t make sense now in the context of the fic but it will. Wonderland has always suspended the real and the surreal and I definitely play with that concept a lot. Things are not always as they seem. 

I always felt like Undertale initially was an Alice in Wonderland variation from falling down a hole into a magic world, to a cast of colorful crazy characters, to having to sacrifice or grow in some way along the journey. It’s why I made Wonderfell because I have always seen Sans as a Cheshire archetype and not just because of the grin. It’s more like his abilities. The Cheshire cat can disappear and re-appear at will. It’s not a direct one to one but his teleportation abilities are very similar. Pap has always embodied the Mad Hatter for me especially with his fascination with puzzles instead of riddles. 

I also really wanted a more fun and colorful take on UF stuff. I am really tired of Boss always being angry or Red always being abusive... or I don’t know that characterization that made me make my own version (Underworld AU) in the first place. Or god... them being just a shit post. I know it’s nice to have those every once in a while but I always felt the missed opportunity to actually make them something other than cardboard cutouts. In my opinion, I feel like a lot of my boys have taken on a life all their own. It’s why I am using them in my original work.

Yokaifell? Well, it kind of stems from some of my favorite anime of all time, Kamisama Hajitemashita being one of them. There is just something really cool about yokai lore because I always make the joke that if you go to Japan anything can and will kill you. There are so many yokai to work off of too so that's where the inspiration comes from.

{READ MORE FOR LENGTH PURPOSES}

Mythology wise my Yokaifell lore post goes into quite a bit but the things that I have not mentioned in that is how the world works outside of the main story. 

As I continue to develop Souly Damned I have been wanted to add more and more of the things that have influenced my storytelling so they kind of cross over in ideas. The realm of yokai in this instance is a separate realm (I do know they are spirits but just bear with me). You can think of it as another dimension separate from our own but still accessible. It is possible for mortal souls to enter the spirit realm but souls are kind of the key here. 

Normally humans just walk through the gates and never end up in the realm because they don’t believe in the realm or its inhabitants. Those that can see have the realm's magic buried within them and the more they worship/believe the more that influence grows. In the majority of my work, I ascribe to the idea that the eyes are the windows into the soul so the more magic you have the more vibrant your eye color. 

Since Yokaifell is set in modern-day most humans have normal eye colors. Basically, magic = key in this lore. Now you may be wondering why my Frisk, little out of her element bean that she is, is able to run through the gate. She starts off as a normal unsuspecting human who is lost in the forest whom Ryou accidentally lures. Usually, he does that on purpose to mess with humans but in this case, he is just playing his koto and relaxing. Since the town that Frisk moves to is more in the mountains the people there are very in tune with the old ways. They even warn her not to go into the forest because of it. She just doesn’t listen since she doesn’t believe in magic or superstition. 

 The yokai in my lore can only be seen by those with magic in their soul unless they drop the veil. Obviously being a foreigner she has 0 idea what Ryou is trying to tell her when she first encounters him. That is until he imparts just a sliver of magic on her soul so that she can actually understand the language. But... uh... whoopsie. Humans with magic are rare and that makes them incredibly yummy to the yokai around the area. This creates a chain event where she ends up in the spirit realm and because of Ryou’s mistake she is able to pass through the gate like one of them would. The oni chasing them ends up smashing the gate they came through and there you are... she is stuck which you can already gather is dangerous. 

Ryou and Kuro are two yokai you don’t really want to mess with because their past history is seeped in blood. They both despise mortals for some unknown reason. One that is revealed further down in the spoiler section. How they went from practically killing mortal and yokai to laxer is also kind of a question mark. Kuro is able to quell his rage by serving the kami (in this case Asgore) while Ryou... uh... ok he doesn’t really handle it all that great. He is just a very salty boy. 

Like my lore for Souly Damned lower level of yokai can not just jump to the mortal realm whenever they want. There is a hierarchy established and fortunately, Ryou and Kuro are pretty high up there so they can interact to some degree. I have that outlined further in the lore post.

 I will say that in order to explain this I have to toss up a spoiler warning for anyone that does not want to see it. {THERE BE  SPOILERS AHEAD}

So... spoiler time but Ryou and his brother Kuro used to be humans at some point. This was centuries ago but they both died when a rival village tried to eradicate their own. Kuro being the proud warrior went off to fight, leaving his little brother to watch over the rest. Unfortunately Ryou never actually sees his brother again and yeah... it’s sad to say but he dies on the battlefield. Ever since he was a child he wanted to be a warrior. He dies fullfilling that dream.

Ryou though being younger tries to fend off the attackers but he is eventually mortally wounded and left for dead. He bleeds out as the snow starts to fall again which is why his design not only incorporates red but also the snowfall aspect, especially his human guise. 

In that time there was more magic and yokai roamed freely. The souls were far stronger and because of both Ryou and Kuro’s deeply held emotion that affects their souls eventually calling out to the Kami... they are then reborn as yokai in the process. Ryou as the mischevious Kitsune and Kuro as a gashadokuro samurai. So it’s established that humans can become yokai but it's rare as the centuries progress. It takes an incredibly strong soul coupled with some kind of deep emotion which could be anything from rage to love. 

[kingdomofthelogos]

3 Tips for Prayer

Prayer is clearly an important part of Christian life, but does the church do enough to assert the full role of prayer? Prayer should not be desperate, but something with aspirations and hopes. Our lives should be organized to grow towards Christlikeness, and prayer is instrumental in this. Prayer should aspire to strong language and be connected to reading and observation. Moreover, it should be modeled after how Jesus taught us to pray.

The church has a fair amount of questions regarding prayer. How should we pray in public? Are lengthy prayers bad? Should we only pray in secret? Is it wrong to pray using pre-written prayers instead of coming up with words on the spot? In this article we are going to look at three tips for asserting prayer.

Tip 1: Pray Lord's Prayer 3 Times a Day

In order for us to have aspirations and goals, our whole Christian life needs to be organized in so that we can truly be transformed day by day into the Image of Christ. We must build up our character, and regular rituals can be helpful in creating a schedule of fortified Christian living.  Saying the Lord’s Prayer three times will help us organize our lives towards holiness. This can and should be done in addition to other prayers that might occur at intermittent times, but one should at minimum say the Lord’s Prayer three times.

Prayer should be aspirational, something that moves us closer to God and further from sin. It should not be desperate, and something which only appeals to the lowest elements of carnal nature. When we say that prayer should not be desperate, we mean that prayer should not be something that appeals to God with the aim of staying in sin or even non-sinful low points. It should not want to stay in the pit, it should want to be ever rising.

The early church utilized a text called the “Didache,” or “The Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations,” that was a handbook on Christian living and church life. This book taught believers to say the Lord’s Prayer three times a day, so this is not a random suggestion. The church has long understood the importance of saying this prayer three times a day.

Tip 2: Read

I love this saying by Isidore of Seville regarding prayer: "when we pray, we talk to God, when we read God talks to us." Isidore taught Christians to observe everything in the world while being open to revelation. As we read and observe the world God will speak to us. If God is truly the Master of Creation, then everything is theological, whether it is in pursuit of God or in spite of God.

We should spend time daily reading. This should include scripture and other texts as well. Our technology has increased faster than our wisdom of how to use it. Reading is much slower placed and much more deliberate than other activities. Reading helps us think clearly and position ourselves so that God can speak to us. Reading truly can help our brains slow down and think with clarity, even though we often would prefer something faster paced.  We should move through scripture carefully and transform our minds by being active readers. Even while reading material other than scripture, we will find that certain words or phrases can strike our minds and allow us to see the world differently.

Now, we must not allow ourselves to become unchained to orthodoxy, because sin and temptation also want to capitalize on our desire for answers. As God tells Cain, keep up your countenance because evil is crouching at the door and it wants you. Evil will try to speak to you through revelation as well, and we must have a solid foundation to differentiate between that which is holy and that which is corrupt.

Our brains naturally want to incorporate our experiences into systems of thought. We tend to mimic and emulate the world around us. Reading well written material will help your brain construct well developed thoughts, and this is very important when considering the profound truths of God. This why so many of the songs we sing are working against good theology, they are not written in such a way that encourages precise thinking. When we pray we should use precise thinking, and reading will help us to think clearly.

If you are not used to reading, obtain an audiobook along with a copy of the same book in some textual form. Follow the words while the audiobook reads to you, and you might find it easier to build the discipline of reading.  Audiobooks are great, but the goal should be to have the skill of sitting down to read.

Tip 3: Use a Strong Vocabulary

Using a strong vocabulary doesn’t necessarily mean you know every word in the dictionary, but it means you dedicate energy to speaking and thinking well. The church needs to use precise language, and this is especially true when we speak about the nature of God.  The church is crippled when theological language is used poorly. It is important to use a strong vocabulary in prayer that aims to be as clear as possible. When you pray, go into detail about your requests. Forces of evil like to twist words and truth, and vague language makes it easier to obscure truth. God knows our hearts and minds, and He can grace us with understanding when we purse clear language when praying.

If you go to the doctor, do you desire the doctor to be vague about an illness? When we go to the doctor’s office we do not expect them come back with results from a test and say “we have found that you feel bad,” rather, we expect them to come back and say “you have an infection, and we are going clean out the infection.” Our faith is a serious matter and we should do our best to be precise in our language about God. This does not necessarily mean we have to learn massive words with many syllables, but it does mean we are doing our best to speak clearly to God and about God.

Modern church culture has allowed the fact that there are inexplicable aspects of God’s nature to be confused with the alternative idea that God’s nature is subjective. God’s nature is defined by God, and not by our feelings. Thus, we should be diligent in using precise language regarding the things we know about God and do away with this notion that there are no standards because no one fully knows the nature of God. God’s nature is beyond human explanation, but that does not mean there should be no standards in how humans discuss it. God is perfect and has commanded us to be perfect as well. We are to be transformed in the renewing of our minds. This is aspirational and not desperate; moreover, the goal of holiness should drive us to be excellent in all areas of life just as the Lord is perfect. It is a challenge to draw near to God and His holiness, not an indicator that we should wallow in imperfection.

Vague language and buzzwords plague modern church culture. Often modern praise songs are vague in their language, and this is a problem because so many people get their theology from the driving force of music. Leaders in the church want to speak in a soft tone that doesn’t draw criticism from the world; furthermore, some leaders in the church go so far as to adopt the buzzwords and thought patterns of the world that are outright antithetical to the Gospel message. We should reject desperate theology that seeks to stay in the pits of life and embrace the command of God to be transformed and perfected by Christ. We are all sinners and we have all been called to turn from sin and receive the holy transformation from God. Having a strong and precise vocabulary is a surprisingly effective tool for clear thinking and fortifying yourself against the worldly forces opposed to Christ.

Prayer in the Sermon on the Mount

We should take joy in the opportunity to pray a prayer given to us by the Lord Himself, and if we look to the 6th Chapter of the Gospel According to St. Matthew we find Jesus teaches us to pray as follows:

Matthew 6:5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

7 “When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

9 “Pray then in this way: 

Our Father in heaven,

    hallowed be your name.

10     Your kingdom come.

    Your will be done,

        on earth as it is in heaven.

11     Give us this day our daily bread.

12     And forgive us our debts,

        as we also have forgiven our debtors.

13     And do not bring us to the time of trial,

        but rescue us from the evil one. (NRSV)

Jesus teaches us to pray with a very short and sincere prayer. Each term is chosen with precision and meaning. If any of these words were removed, it would drastically change the outlook of the prayer.

Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew 5-7, there is a sentiment taught by Jesus that we should work out our faith in secret with fear before God, knowing that it is He who sits in Heaven with the authority to judge both the living and the dead. The Sermon on the Mount clearly emphasizes the role of secrecy when living out the Christian walk.

This secrecy is not done just for secrecy's sake, but it is done for the sake of sincerity. We are not to live out our faith to get rewards from the world around us. This is why the long wordy prayers are found lacking by Jesus. The prayers referenced by Jesus are not done with sincerity, and there is good chance that their many words do not add much to the message of the prayer.

There are times when we must pray in public, and Jesus gives people a prayer that they can use. For thousands of years Christians have prayed using pre-written prayers as well as those which are spoken from the heart in a given moment. As Jesus teaches us, there is nothing wrong with using pre-written words to pray if those words sincerely represent our hearts.

Prayer is important, and it should be one aspect of a strong Christian walk. We should not desire to stay in the pits of life, but we should always be moving towards the excellence that God has called us to. Prayer should not be cut off from other areas of life. Reading will help our prayers, as will using precise language when we pray.

[havekiddoswilltravel]

Everyday Black History: Educational Guide to Incorporating Black History into your Homeschool Year-round

February is Black History Month and I would love to encourage all educators, parents and adults in general to incorporate these best practices into their daily lives throughout the year. My definition of educator is very broad. If you have a sphere of influence to speak into the lives of future generations, then you’re an educator as far as I’m concerned. I believe in intentional education and thus we should never limit an entire group’s history and contributions to 28 days.

- Be intentional in your read alouds, independent reading and book list choices. Make sure that you incorporate books that provide a well rounded perspective on history, literature, geography, language arts and even math. 

- Diversify your homeschool social media feed. Connect with, read works by and learn best practices from other homeschooling parents and educators of colors.

1. Follow My Reflections Matter and incorporate their diverse resources to your educational plans.

2. Check out Negra Bohemian a self described:  a free spirit redefining motherhood through a socially conscious, faith-led and wandering lifestyle.

3. Check out Trippin’ Momma to be inspired by a single mother who’s recovered from domestic violence and is exploring the world on her own terms.

4. Follow Dr. Kira Bank and her work on Raising Equity.

5. Follow my friend Sarah’s adventures in her blog and be inspired to take adventurous trips with your kids to destinations like Dubai, Hong Kong and Kenya.

6. Follow The Spring Break Family and be encouraged to take adventures with our kids even if they’re not homeschooled.

7. Check out Our Kitchen Classroom and learn how to connect food with culture - travel.

If your a Christian, read this: No Days Off...

“This February, lay down the burden of ambassadorship and let Black History Month be your swimming lessons. May it be a reminder that each stroke forward transforms our weaknesses into strengths, powerlessness into purpose. We’re not treading water. Kingdom ambassadors make new wave moves. Look back and see how God is moving us forward.”

Additional resources Click on bold sections for more information:

- Learn about Racial Identity from Dr. Beverly Daniel Tatum. 

https://youtu.be/l_TFaS3KW6s

- Check out 100 Read Aloud Books for Black History and Beyond.

- 30 People from Around the World.

- Learn the truth about the Green Book by watching this documentary.

- Have your preconceived notions rocked by A blessed Heritage’s writings on faith and black history.

- Host a Black Living History Wax Musuem event at your school, home or community.

- Black History is American History.

- Race: The Power of Illusion.

- Read about why Martin Luther King JR. Day is not a day off and start planning your service project for next January.

- Why we shouldn’t forget that U.S. presidents owned slaves.

Published on Feb 2, 2017

"When you sing that this country was founded on freedom, don’t forget the duet of shackles dragging against the ground my entire life." This how poet Clint Smith begins his letter to past presidents who owned slaves. In honor of Black History Month, Smith offers his Brief But Spectacular take on the history of racial inequality in the U.S.

Learn about the musical, historical and African roots of Puerto Rico’s Bomba.

- Watch online Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Movement.

- 28 Ways to Celebrate Black History Month by the NAACP.

- Watch and be inspired by: Black Made That.

- Meet The Fearless Cook Who Secretly Fed — And Funded — The Civil Rights Movement.

- Watch Kevin Hart’s Guide to Black History on Netflix.

- Check out Wu-Tang Clan's GZA shows his genius in Liquid Science on Netflix.

- Add diverse puzzles by Puzzle Huddle to your bookcases.

- Decolonize your family bookshelves and learn more about awareness by following The Consious Kid.

- 28 More Black Picture Books That Aren’t About Boycotts, Buses or Basketball (2018).

- 5 Reasons You Should Celebrate Black History Month.

- Beyond The Painful Chains Of Slavery: Phillis Wheatley, The First Published Female African-American Poet.

- Continue learning throughout the year with various subscription options of the Because of Them we Can boxes.

- Check out Black Then for a wealth of information.

- Check out Story Corps:

StoryCorps’ mission is to preserve and share humanity’s stories in order to build connections between people and create a more just and compassionate world.

- Diversify your podcasts. A friend sent me this pod cast and I had to share: Black and White: Racism in America.

Exposure to Black Theater and Arts.

- Check out my review of Hamilton. 

- Go watch Black Violin. 

- Go see Alvin Ailey - American Dance Theater.

- Diversify your holiday traditions and enjoy the Hip Hop Nutcracker or the Urban Nutcracker. 

- Exposure to the history and sounds of Gospel music.

- Singin’ Us to Glory: The Life and Legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer.

- Black History Month is a chance for white parents to learn how to talk about racism.

Pin for later:

- Incorporate Black History Sites into your family travel. This has been a huge way for us to incorporate our story into our learning. These are some of our favorites or ones on our bucket list:

 1. National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC.

You can read more about my family’s trip to this history packed museum by clicking here.

2. The Tuskegee Airman National Historical Museum in Detroit, Michigan.

3. The National Underground Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio.

You can read more about my family’s road trip to the freedom center by clicking here. 

4. Frederick Douglass National Historical Park in Washington, DC.

5. International Civil Rights Center and Museum in Greensboro, NC.

6. Martin Luther King, JR Memorial in Washington, DC.

7. Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, MO.

8. Museum of African American History in Boston, MA.

9. North Star Underground Railroad Museum in Ausable Chasm, NY.

10. Visit Martha’s Vineyard and learn about the Polar Bears.

- Check out this blog post with a large list of destinations to include in your Black History Travel Bucket List: Must See Destinations to Learn About Black History.

- Study the history of Soul Food and host a Soul Food Feast for family and friends. 

The Soul Food Born of the Harlem Renaissance.

Read An Illustrated History of Soul Food with your kids. 

This is a great video of the celebrates African American food and chefs.

- Teach the history of the Harlem Globetrotters and then enjoy a  game. 

- Take a #foodies road trip to some of America’s top Soul Food Restaurants which are full of history, music and culture.

1. Sylvia’s Restaurant in Harlem, NY.

2. Amy Ruth’s in NYC.

3. Luella’s Southern Kitchen in Chicago, IL.

4. The Coast Cafe in Cambridge, MA.

5. Roscoes Chicken and Waffles in Los Angeles, CA.

6. Busy Bee Cafe in Atlanta, GA.

- Provide opportunities for your students to read, memorize and recite black poetry. Some of our favorites are. 

Let America Be America Again

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed— Let it be that great strong land of love Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme That any man be crushed by one above. (It never was America to me.) O, let my land be a land where Liberty Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath, But opportunity is real, and life is free, Equality is in the air we breathe. (There’s never been equality for me, Nor freedom in this “homeland of the free.”) Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? And who are you that draws your veil across the stars? I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery’s scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek— And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. I am the young man, full of strength and hope, Tangled in that ancient endless chain Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land! Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need! Of work the men! Of take the pay! Of owning everything for one’s own greed! I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil. I am the worker sold to the machine. I am the Negro, servant to you all. I am the people, humble, hungry, mean— Hungry yet today despite the dream. Beaten yet today—O, Pioneers! I am the man who never got ahead, The poorest worker bartered through the years. Yet I’m the one who dreamt our basic dream In the Old World while still a serf of kings, Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true, That even yet its mighty daring sings In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned That’s made America the land it has become. O, I’m the man who sailed those early seas In search of what I meant to be my home— For I’m the one who left dark Ireland’s shore, And Poland’s plain, and England’s grassy lea, And torn from Black Africa’s strand I came To build a “homeland of the free.” The free? Who said the free?  Not me? Surely not me?  The millions on relief today? The millions shot down when we strike? The millions who have nothing for our pay? For all the dreams we’ve dreamed And all the songs we’ve sung And all the hopes we’ve held And all the flags we’ve hung, The millions who have nothing for our pay— Except the dream that’s almost dead today. O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free. The land that’s mine—the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME— Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. Sure, call me any ugly name you choose— The steel of freedom does not stain. From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives, We must take back our land again, America! O, yes, I say it plain, America never was America to me, And yet I swear this oath— America will be! Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death, The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies, We, the people, must redeem The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers. The mountains and the endless plain— All, all the stretch of these great green states— And make America again!

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Copyright © 1994 the Estate of Langston Hughes. Used with permission.

Still I Rise

Maya Angelou, 1928 - 2014

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries? Does my haughtiness offend you? Don’t you take it awful hard ‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines Diggin’ in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? Does it come as a surprise That I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou. Copyright © 1978 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc

Lift Every Voice and Sing

James Weldon Johnson, 1871 - 1938

Lift every voice and sing, Till earth and heaven ring, Ring with the harmonies of Liberty; Let our rejoicing rise High as the list’ning skies, Let it resound loud as the rolling sea. Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us, Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us; Facing the rising sun of our new day begun, Let us march on till victory is won. Stony the road we trod, Bitter the chast’ning rod, Felt in the days when hope unborn had died; Yet with a steady beat, Have not our weary feet Come to the place for which our fathers sighed? We have come over a way that with tears has been watered. We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered, Out from the gloomy past, Till now we stand at last Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast. God of our weary years, God of our silent tears, Thou who hast brought us thus far on the way; Thou who hast by Thy might, Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee; Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand, True to our God, True to our native land.

From Saint Peter Relates an Incident by James Weldon Johnson. Copyright © 1917, 1921, 1935 James Weldon Johnson, renewed 1963 by Grace Nail Johnson. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.

Dreams

Langston Hughes, 1902 - 1967

Hold fast to dreams For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird That cannot fly. Hold fast to dreams For when dreams go Life is a barren field Frozen with snow.

From The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes published by Alfred A. Knopf/Vintage. Copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates Incorporated. All rights reserved.

About Ruth: I’m a wife and mami of 4 active and globe-trotting kiddos. I’ve always loved a good adventure and truly believe that it’s possible to travel with kids. Join me, as I share our adventures and inspire you to get out of the house with your kiddos. Whether you’re planning a family vacation, a road trip or a trip of a lifetime to an exotic destination, I’ll share insights, trip reports and information that will inspire you. Check back often to stay up to date on things to do with kids at your next travel destination.

[blackkudos]

Dennis Haysbert

Dennis Dexter Haysbert (born June 2, 1954) is an American film and television actor. He is best known for his appearances in commercials for Allstate Insurance. He is also known for portraying baseball player Pedro Cerrano in the Major League film trilogy, Secret Service Agent Tim Collin in the 1997 political thriller film Absolute Power, and Sergeant Major Jonas Blane on the drama series The Unit. He is also known for playing U.S. Senator (later President) David Palmer on the first 5 seasons of 24 and has appeared in the films Love Field, Heat and Far from Heaven. As of late autumn 2016, Haysbert co-stars in the science fiction series Incorporated.

Personal life

Haysbert was born in San Mateo, California, the son of Gladys (née Minor), a homemaker and house cleaner, and Charles Whitney Haysbert, Sr., a deputy sheriff and airline security guard. He is the eighth of nine children, having two sisters and six brothers. His parents were from Louisiana. Haysbert was raised Baptist.

Haysbert graduated from San Mateo High School in 1972. After high school, being 6 ft 5 in tall, he was offered athletic scholarships but instead chose to study acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

Haysbert is a twice divorced father of two. He announced in April 2009 that he was starting a TV, film, and documentary production company. His first project was to be a documentary for HBO about an up-and-coming boxer. During the 2010 California elections, Haysbert supported Democratic Senatorial incumbent Barbara Boxer by appearing with her at campaign events, as well as recording radio commercials.

Career

Television

Haysbert has been acting in film and television since 1978, starting with a guest role in The White Shadow. His television guest starring roles include Lou Grant, Growing Pains, Laverne & Shirley, The A-Team, Night Court, Dallas, The Incredible Hulk, Magnum, P.I., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and Duckman. In 1993, he had a featured role in Return to Lonesome Dove as outlaw Cherokee Jack Jackson. In 1999, Haysbert starred with Eric Close in Now and Again, which was cancelled after its first season.

In 2001, Haysbert became best known when he was cast in 24 as U.S. Senator David Palmer, who served as America's first African American President (in the context of the show) during the second and third seasons. He also returned as a guest star in the last six episodes of season 4 and the first episode of season 5. He was nominated for a Golden Globe and for a Golden Satellite Award in 2002 for this role. Haysbert stated in an interview for the show that the three men he admires most—Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Colin Powell—collectively embody his idea of what a President should be. Haysbert believes that his playing of David Palmer on 24 helped Barack Obama—whom Haysbert supported—to win the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Haysbert was the first actor to portray DC Comics character Kilowog, a member of the Green Lantern Corps, in a medium outside of comics. He provided the voice of Kilowog on various episodes of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited. On March 4, 2006, Haysbert guest starred on the Saturday Night Live episode hosted by Natalie Portman as the host of a live action/animated TV Funhouse cartoon called "Belated Black History Moment". In his role, Haysbert paid homage to fictional short-lived Saturday morning cartoons featuring black characters, such as Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Outer Space. He also portrayed Nelson Mandela in Goodbye Bafana (also released under the name The Color of Freedom). Haysbert portrayed the lead character Jonas Blane in the CBS action-drama The Unit. He hosted and narrated the Military History Channel presentation of Secrets of Pearl Harbor, which documented his scuba dives with a film team on World War II-era Japanese and American warships in the Pacific Theater. In March 2013, Haysbert narrated the documentary The World According to Dick Cheney on the Showtime television channel. In 2015, Haysbert played Detective John Almond in Backstrom.

In November 2016, Haysbert began his co-starring role in the nightmarish world of 2074 Milwaukee in Incorporated. The planet is in post-climate-change hell, and civilization is now ruled by a handful of super-corporations, not governments. They dole out precious resources to the lucky few and ultra-rich in the comfortable "green zones," leaving the rest to eke out a horrific living out on the fringes in the dystopian "red zones." British Emmy® Award-winning actress Julia Ormond plays beautiful but iron-fisted and, when she deems necessary, sadistic, Elizabeth Krauss, the head of Spiga BioTech, the largest of these corporations. Haysbert plays Julian, cast against type for American TV audiences as the tough, ruthless Spiga security head whose job it is to squeeze every possible bit of info out of any suspected mole, assassin, or mere malcontent - regardless of true guilt or innocence. The early word on this 10-episode first season has drawn critical praise. Ben Affleck and Matt Damon are co-executive producers on the series, which was shot in British Columbia, Canada, and airs on Showcase in Canada and Syfy in the U.S.

Film

In 1989, Haysbert made his first major role as Pedro Cerrano, a voodoo-practicing Cuban refugee baseball player, in Major League. Haysbert followed that up with a role in 1990's Navy SEALs, which also starred Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn, before moving on to another baseball movie, Mr. Baseball with Tom Selleck. In 1991, he also starred in K-9000, where he played a police officer named Nick Sanrio. In 1992, he co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in Love Field, a film about a series of events occurring contemporaneously with the assassination and funeral of President John F. Kennedy. In 1994, Haysbert reprised his role as Cerrano in Major League II. This was followed by low-key appearances in Waiting to Exhale, Heat, and Absolute Power. In 1998, Haysbert made another appearance as Cerrano in Major League: Back to the Minors. In 1999, Haysbert played a police detective in three different films: The Minus Man, The Thirteenth Floor, and Random Hearts. In 2000, Haysbert played the role of Zeke McCall in Love & Basketball.

In 2002, Haysbert played the role of gardener Raymond Deagan in Far From Heaven. He won three awards (Satellite Award, Black Reel Award, and Washington DC Area Film Critics Association Award) for Best Supporting Actor for that role. In 2005, he had a supporting role in Sam Mendes's film, Jarhead. In 2007, Haysbert returned to the big screen to portray Nelson Mandela in Goodbye Bafana and an FBI agent in Breach. In 2012, he voiced General Hologram in Wreck-It Ralph and served as an official judge for the Noor Iranian Film Festival. He replaced the deceased Michael Clark Duncan as Manute in Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (2014). In 2014, Haysbert played the role of Dean Fairbanks in Dear White People and Dead Rising: Watchtower.

Commercials

Haysbert is the official spokesman for the Allstate Insurance Company. His commercials typically end with one of the two Allstate Corporation official slogans, either "Are you in good hands?" or "That's Allstate's stand." More recently however his commercials have combined the two with "That's Allstate's stand. Are you in good hands?". He has also appeared in Spanish-language commercials with the line "Con Allstate, Estás En Buenas Manos." (With Allstate, you're in good hands.) In 2009–2010, Allstate used the Neil Sedaka song "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do" in television commercials to promote Allstate's car insurance. Breaking up is hard to do, the ads averred, unless one has an Allstate agent to undertake the deed for the customer (switching from another insurer to Allstate). The viewer learned that "breaking up is easy to do" as reassured on the screen by Haysbert. In his role as spokesman for Allstate, Haysbert officiated the coin toss prior to the 2007 Sugar Bowl between LSU and Notre Dame.

In 2008, Haysbert was featured in national television ads to raise public awareness about lending discrimination. The ads were commissioned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity. In one of these ads, Haysbert warns consumers about lenders' targeting minorities for inferior loan products.

For the 2006 college football season, Haysbert did voice work for ticket sales promotions for Brigham Young University. He did it as a favor to his younger brother Adam, who played wide receiver at BYU in the early 1980s.

Haysbert also voices the Military Channel's commercials with their official slogan: "The Military Channel. Go Behind the Lines."

Video games

Haysbert has also done voice work for various video games, such as Irving Lambert in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, the narrator in Call of Duty: Finest Hour and David Palmer in 24: The Game.

Theater

In June 2010, Haysbert joined the cast of David Mamet's Race on Broadway as character Henry Brown, performing alongside actors Eddie Izzard, Richard Thomas and Afton Williamson. The play ran until August 21, 2010.

Wikipedia

[juniperpublishers-fashion-b-blog]

Fashion and Death Ethnographic Explorations on Ubiquitous Styles - Juniper Publishers

Abstract

My anthropological glance will focus one a fashion shows in Rio de Janeiro and a “passista” carioca in the carnival 2011; a Karl Lagerfeld’s fetish design (body-corpse); a bizarre mannequin I met in Belem (Brazil). I’ll try to demonstrate the deep connection between living body and death corpse in a meta-fetishist perspective and - by the meta-morphic dialogue written by Giacomo Leopardi - on fashion and death (Figure 1).

Fashion Rio

The model is stationary, as a doll-like, in the sense of “dollifyng” her body: an empty gaze directed towards nothing, both arms inert by her side, her legs in a hopelessly waiting. The trained eroptic (8) eye targets her without hesitation, not so much the bikini, but what is tattooed just above her pubis: a vida não é assim, nunca, para nem para sempre (‘life is not like this, never and even less for ever’). A philosophical statement presented by fashion as a reflective affirmation of itself. A meta-communication of the profound meaning of ‘what’ is actually fashion. Rio’s designer is a philosopher as much as Zaha Hadid. Philosopher in both, the show composition and the public / pubic text tattooed for the observer’s sexualized eyes. From this ‘eroptic’ dimension, I offer two reflections based on dialogues with two poets-essayists, Horace and Leopardi [1].

Horace

The Roman poet known for his proposition on time that, in the unsurpassed simplicity of the Latin language, offers an oblique perspective through which time can be observed. Indeed, a time that is not only Kronos, as the Greek masters taught, but also Kairos: a nonlinear time, less mathematic and relentless time in its orderly flow, but also casual, random, sudden as his god. Indeed, Kairos’ hair is just in front, placed forward whilst his back is bald. When he presents himself, a unique, unrepeatable, irregular opportunity faces the subject and, if missed, taking it back will be impossible as his hair is just in front of his head. Carpe diem ... this famous ‘carpe’ refers to Kairos’ hair, passing quickly, before our undecided eyes. For this uncertain reason, life is not what the “usual” pubis seems to offer: Eros’ pleasure is ephemeral and it does not exist forever in this carnal temporality. So, the carioca designer is a kind of philosopher who addresses every glance from the model body to the bikini style and finally to her tattoo. My emotive reflection about the style is crossing through the three contiguous but not identical panoramas. And the last one, the tattoo, is offered as a novel (or a myth) that threatens the model’s beauty: in every moment, the doll-like body may become a skeleton, a pile of dismembered bones without any connection. In my fantasy, this reflexive fashion designer updates the famous sentence of Horace in an original composition: he reinvents and accentuates the seduction of the unrepeatable and unstoppable caducity [2].

Leopardi

The poet of Recanati was also an essayist. In his “Operette Morali”, Leopardi plays a philosophical dialogue between Fashion and Death, with a capital D because both are living beings. Fashion is what defies Death: she says they are sisters, claiming a deep consanguineous affinity between them; she explains to the hasty Death that they are both daughters of transience.

Fashion: I am Fashion, your sister.

Death: My sister?

Fashion: Yes, don’t you remember that were both born from transience?

Death: What I remember is that memory is my capital enemy.

She, the Fashion herself, cannot tolerate the life of a present dress, that’s why she imagines how to eliminate it with the next trend. The fashion, better saying, Fashion, as a person without the article, cannot stand what is alive and present. She-Fashion looks at the impeccable design of a transience dress that is quiet obsolete when it is worn even for the first time: in the wrinkles of cloth, folds of flesh have already traced what makes it old, oldfashioned not in the sense of antiquate but in the sense of a recent one. Only the revival of vintage retains the buried items (hidden in attics, drawers and warehouses) and makes it rise again with a sense of chic. This Leopardi’s affinity between Fashion and Death sparks reflections and phantasmagoria. Buying new clothes is not just a quirk of the consumption more or less encouraged by news agencies or advertising: it is a challenge to feel alive, to become life, to challenge through the new style the heaviness of the older one. What was just worn, is already assimilated as dead. There is something of theology in Fashion that challenges eternity with its creatures. One talks about Fashion creation, but in effect, they seem more like creatures: a concept, as some may remember, that challenges the only possible creativity, at least according to Christianity - the divine one... A Fashion show has something about agrarian archaic rituals that, at the end of winter, not only celebrated but favoured (‘caused’) spring’s arrival and with it the rebirth of the floral nature, frozen by wintry season.

I say that our nature and common custom is to continually renew the world”, Fashion explains. This generative cult is what makes Fashion and Death sisters: both make life reborn because both cut off what is alive; Leopardi clearly expressed the reason for this decisive act: “As if I were not immortal”, Fashion proudly replies when Death threats to fetch her; and then Death, intrigued by this bold statement, questions more information to her unexpected sister. And Fashion’s answer is brilliant [3].

Well, although it is not good manners to speak plainly, and though in France nobody speaks so as to be heard, yet, since we are sisters and need not stand on ceremony with each other, I’ll speak as you wish. I say, then, that the tendency and operation common to us both is to be continually renewing the world. But whereas you have from the beginning aimed your efforts directly against the bodily constitutions and the lives of men, I am content to limit my operations to such things as their beards, their hair, their clothing, their furniture, their dwellings, and the like. Nevertheless, it is a fact that I have not failed at times to play men certain tricks not altogether unworthy to be compared to your own work; as, for example, boring men’s ears, or lips, or noses, and lacerating them with the trinkets which I place therein; or scorching their bodies with hot irons, which I persuade them to apply to their persons by way of improving their beauty. Then again, I sometimes squeeze the heads of their children with ligatures and other appliances, rendering it obligatory that all the inhabitants of a country should have heads of the same shape, as I have ere now accomplished in America and Asia. I also cripple mankind with shoes too small for their feet, and stifle their respiration, and make their eyes nearly start out of their heads with tightly laced corsets, and many more follies of this kind. In short, I contrive to persuade the more ambitious of mortals daily to endure countless inconveniences, sometimes torture and mutilation, aye, and even death itself, for the love they bear toward me. I say nothing of the headaches, and colds, and catarrhs, and fevers of all sorts, quotidian, tertian, and quartan, which men contract through their worship of me, inasmuch as they are willing to shiver with cold or stifle with heat at my command, adopting the most preposterous kinds of clothing to please me, and perpetrating a thousand follies in my name, regardless of the consequences to themselves.

In short, all the previous practices and also the current ones (from tattooing to piercing, from the brand of fire and cranial or bone deformation) are anticipated and offered to Death’s listening, and to all of us, who - still alive - are listening this Leopardi’s lesson. At the beginning of XIX century (1824), for the poet fashionquestion is much more complex than contemporary common sense or simplistic sociology have been imagined: fashion as as conspicuous consumption, manipulated homologation or a caprice to be ‘up-to-date’. Fashion emerging in the Western culture is not a simply dressing up, she first affirms herself globally, then is reworked locally and finally she presents glocal fragments, in which styles of different cultures are coexisting in a body assemblage made of fabrics, stitching, accessories, makeup, folds that the designer draws and each subject adapts or reworks to his/her own figure. Fashion incorporates the anxiety of changing an identity as one, a fixed and packaged identity, an ambivalent anxiety that characterizes a currently cultural dynamics toward continuous inventions under the sign of extreme diversities. Presenting Fashion as a whole is almost impossible: she has a multiverse that does not coincide with cool designers, pret-a-porter productions, discounts department stores, fake imitations, outlets with delayed brands, immortal vintage, individual recycling and etc. Fashion is immortal and metamorphic. Her destiny is to delete or to melt all that is solid because its immanent fate is mutation - where life pulses. She is immortal and polytheistic: there is no fashion god, but a brotherhood and competitive different deities who, each in their specificities, marks the future as philosophers were used to imagine few decades ago. If now philosophers are silent and rethinking only about their past history, with no desire or ability to interpret nor to change the present, it is because philosophy migrated to visual artists or street artists, fashion or sound designers. Zaha Hadid, Pan Sonic, Gaetano Pesce or Cindy Sherman emanate philosophy with their liberationist speeches, dissonant architectures, compulsive music, eccentric design, and mutant photos. They use a different alphabet from the one based on words: sensorial concepts that can conquer each person and anticipate what will be an innovative way of thinking about public/private body’s aesthetics. This dichotomy is perhaps even questioned by a few daring designers. Some of these, Armani, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Dior, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen are to be placed on the same level of Zaha Hadid. They have their own philosophy [4].

So, in addition to the words written above the pubis, what does the model, or Fashion, says? The words are ambiguous and can be read in a traditional, almost obvious sense, and then in a more complex one. “Life based on the desire for sex, insolently shown in this catwalk, not only will never be forever like this, ever, but even now it is not so. In fact, what I show is the bright object of desire, a mix of bikini and vagina, but none will ever be yours, not now or never. So, please surrender, you male and female spectators to a vision at a distance that represses you to the same extent that excites. This object of desire is not to be given to you, not in the past, much less in your future. And then I, my own self, will never be like this to you nor to anybody else, even if I wear or show it. Never. That’s why I assimilated myself to an amorphous doll, a half-living thing and a half death body. My seductive bodycorpse is dedicated to Madame Death, my inspiring aunt, because I know that, even incorporating at least for now a carnal Fashion, soon I will be rotting flesh and my caducity will be the triumph of my relentless sister. I am only a temporary appearance. I am here to affirm The Triumph of Fashion and Death. Buying a piece of fashion is booking death in advance. I said ...��.

And that is what whispers the model, a caducous still life, a sublime beauty that is undoing the triumphant exposition of her body and writing in front of immobile spectators. Following my synchretic and fetish perspective, I find a “caducity” affinity with a Samuel Cirnansck’s fashion show in Rio de Janeiro. Some models parade with their body covered with very traditional veils and fabrics. One of these stops with her hands on her hips as if challenging the viewers, showing bizarre fingers ringed with black cylinders that anticipate her menacing nails just as black. Has long been that accessories are no longer marginal, but they became as essential as the rest of the performance. At large, everything is an essential accessory in a catwalk. But here, a special accessory emerges: the mordaça de ferro (scold’s bride). What impressed me most is to see that this parade takes place in Rio, probably near the church Nossa Senhora do Rosario dedicated to the Escrava Anastasia‘s (‘Slave Anastasia’) cult: every models wear a mordaça as an accessory, without expressing a single tribute nor even mentioning the tragic and symbolic story concerning the whole Afro-Brazilian movement or the Anastasia’s liberationist role against slavery. Perhaps such a bizarre staging needs an interpretation. Of course, the key is the culture of fetishism that relentlessly expands in the different genres of contemporary sexualized communication. What was once a torture instrument, the gag, became now an accessory. This instrument owes its invention to the need of taming animals making them thus docile. Domesticated, in fact. The Western culture transferred this instrument from animals to human beings, especially heretics, a few centuries or perhaps a millennium later. These heretics were considered by the Catholic Inquisition not worth using the ultimate expression of humanity: the language (Figure 2).

Language is what differs animals from humans; hence, an heretic is not a human, being diminished to an animal state, having to be tamed and subordinated to a dominant ‘specific’ power that removes the right of the word whilst waiting for the final punishment. Giordano Bruno, philosopher and humanist, was burned alive in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome with a muzzle on. In the same period – around XVI century - another phenomenon changes Western political and cultural geography: the conquest (or the so called “descobrimento”) of America with its consequent imperative of imported slaves, whilst the native populations preferred to die than to work in such conditions. In this way, the rebel slaves coming from Africa have their mouth gagged, to show publicly that any slave was an animal, that s/he had to work in a domesticated way, eventually copulate and eat to survive. Toni Morrison - the great African-American writer - recreates in her novel Beloved what a person with a piece of iron in his teeth for 12-15 hours a day would feel. A madness withheld and violated by the capillaries of one’s reddened eyes, from the slow drool clotted on one’s lips, the heavy breathing and an explosive and diverted anger.

He wants me to ask him about what it is like for him – about how offended the tongue is, held down by iron, how the need to spit is so deep you cry for it. She already knew about it, had seen it time after time in the place before Sweet Home. Men, boys, little girls, women. The wildness that shot up into the eye the moment the lips were yanked back. Days after it was taken out, goose fat was rubbed on the corners of the mouth but nothing to soothe the tongue or take the wildness out of the eye” (Morrison, 2004). And then, what does it means a fashion parade with this accessory inside the model mouth, in a country that last abolished slavery and in a city where Anastasia is venerated as a saint? (Figure 3).

The symbolic power of the slaver or heretic iron bit is decaying, it evaporates into a simple code through a de-symbolized process, an exciting sign is ambiguously parading between political amnesia and liberationist pleasure. A kind of s/m performance offers an apparent feminine submission playing with symbols and signs as gadget to be offered as a dark desire to the audience that may imagine some quiet private games. So, this model, as a Fashion’s amnestic body, fractures the historical link with the slavery past, cancels the force of the oppressive symbols, displays a seductive excess that dominates by showing herself as submissive ruling woman. And it is precisely this apparent submission that proclaims, in contrast, the triumph of fetishism. I’m sure that the visual proliferation of fetish current meanings expresses the subtle connection between Fashion and Death (Canevacci, 2015). In Leopardi determinant dialogue, visual fetishism is the missing link that manifests the deep sisterhood between these two restless Ladies through the impudent mordaça de ferro. Perhaps, Anastasia will not be scandalized by this tampering, maybe she perceives that - through the symbolic emptying of what was her instrument of torture - justice is finally served. Perhaps now Anastasia can finally smile and show those magnificent white teeth and her carnal lips that made very jealous the wife of the slave master, a wife in turn slave of a jealousy based on her classist privilege (Figure 4).

Karl Lagerfeld is a famous fashion designer. The obvious decision to add him to a research project on syncretism comes from this photo and a more general hypothesis: new visual fetishisms have in cultural syncretisms one of the potential applications in the field between the unstable and mutant zone of fashion and art. Visual fetishisms and cultural syncretisms develop the potentialiality of wandering arts. These are the ones oscillating among different genres and with the tendency to suppress boundaries. Lagerfeld designs clothes for humans; designers dress things, objects and goods. Coca-Cola has in its body, that is, in the body of the bottle and in its written vintage, its brand and style, perhaps even its taste. Coca-Cola’s feminine design form has been long discussed. Why is a sophisticated and dandy stylist as Lagerfeld entrusted to create the new look of the brand?

The first reflexion is simple: the body of the bottle is a bodycorpse, meaning that it transits between a living body and a dead corpse. This tendency of visual fetishisms distorts and amplifies the traditional analysis on the “nature” of fetish objects. Accordingly, this ambiguous drinkable body is always in need for new clothing and has to find temporary solutions between tradition and innovation. Examples are indeed endless on this subject. The interesting point here is that most classic products of mass culture do intersect an equally classic elite’s designer. The super fetish Karl. The mentioned dissolution of boundaries between genres is a gray area (or a brilliant one) where oscillating syncretism flows. To achieve a fit-for-purpose result, syncretisms hybridizes with fetishisms [5].

Whilst observing the picture with some sort of careful obsession, a few obvious points came up: the bottles are actually two, perhaps a male and a female version. Both are Coca Cola Light written with the traditional font but with different colour, so conscious and faithful consumers can even compute the calories swallowed from a glass of a coke. Above the drinkable brand, there is the designer brand: KARL in bold letters and LAGERFELD in thin ones. Below, the year of production is shown, like a vintage wine: 2011 - 1/3; 2/3. Looking with more attention, it is possible to discover on one side a black silhouette observing the result. Widening the perspective on methodological fetishism, my glance understands that the bottles are three: he, Lagerfeld, is the third bottle, a good between the goods, his value added is the fetish art he manages in order to incorporate himself into the two bottles. His dark identity transits between the polka dot and the sinusoidal striped dress on the bottles. It is well-known that Lagerfeld always dresses in the same way. Paradoxically, his diversified styles occurs whilst he wears always the same dress. A man in black with an eternal dandy collar, sacred accessories, impenetrable glasses as much as his face-mask is. Clearly, Karl Lagerfeld is also the hyphen ‘-‘ where syncretic fetishisms flows. He is the body-corpse creator. He objectifies himself as the third bottle, as much as he enlivens the other two with their glamorous clothes. The Coca-Cola bottles come to life and can be dressed like any human being, only because he assimilates himself to a living commodities. Observing a little bit closer, and even better, being a little bit naughty, one may notice that his body rests on one foot, in this way his silhouette creates a slight curve that accompanies both bottles’ sensual curve (the sexiest coke hips). Finally, Lagerfeld’s crossed arms assimilate even more him to the two ‘persons’ on his side. Everybody lack of arms.

These three beings are perhaps trans-gender. The final result of this fetishism/syncretism crossing reaches the sex-game: visual goods, with their hyper-sexed design that spreads and mixes organic and inorganic, nature and culture, mass consumption and elite’s art, are alive because they transit between identities, styles and beings (Figure 5). Belém is a city on the source of the Amazon River. As all of Brazil, Belém is changing fast, the co-presence of different codes is even more enlarged than the ‘normal’. The city’s markets are an excess of colours and flavours, as its craftsmanship and, off the coast, the large island of Marajó where traces of pottery and other products of great beauty were left by a refined ancient culture. Whilst casually visiting a popular market on a large, beautiful and messy square, I was drawn to a mannequin. Clearly, this was a mannequin of Chinese origin, as nearly all popular ones everywhere, not only in Brazil. I believe the production of these beings have really invaded the world. Yet, here I am, blocked by astonishment looking at her. I reckon it is a spontaneous work of art in which, once again, the ‘objective’ fetishism built into each mannequin is crossed and augmented by some sort of Sino-Brazilian syncretism. Colour is the first thing: a well-defined orange I have never ever seen on any another mannequin or person for the matter, Chinese or Brazilian. A mutant being for sure, I reckon. Then, a missing arm, the left one, leaving an emptiness that looks like a round eye-mouth hollow yawning its surroundings [6].

The most disturbing ‘thing’ is her head: clearly detached, perhaps lacking internal support, like the cervical one, properly connecting it to the torso. Right there in the usual spot, slightly tilted though, looking like a guillotined head that has been put back into place simply to enhance the show. A baldhead with such a smooth skull looking like no wig would remain seated there. Finally, the eyes: the mannequin’s eyes and even the eyebrows expressed infinite sadness, something I have never seen in other mannequins, usually displaying a dull face, rather expressionless. Here, however, the pain is obvious, something terrible must have happened to this mannequin; of course, the arm is missing; the head, detached; all hair is long gone; but it is not only that. Mannequins are used to such misfortunes. This one, however, must have suffered a recent experience that printed in her physiognomy a sense of anguish, anxiety, perhaps even horror due an encounter or even a terrible fate. Eyebrows and lips are bent down, its eyes troubled and plain sad.

Go to

Dismembered Body

Maybe this mannequin feels it might be a work of art, living art, jetting globally around galleries and museums; perhaps it feels its destiny, created by an artist or artisan, is unique. Maybe it is not like the other mannequins, always a bit vulgar and yet, ever so identical. This one is unique. It is the only one expressing these unusual colours and a dismembered body. Certainly, the mannequin cannot exactly recall how it happens to land there, in that beautiful square, but surely, not worthy of her status. Her memory is confused. Clearly, a princess she is. Her extreme nobility is expressed by her behaviour, which continues to be dignifying even in such disastrous and inadequate situation.

I understand very well what disturbs her more than anything: it is the bra she wears. Really ugly, she knows, the mannequin feels it. How is that possible that her person is forced to expose herself with such an … awful object. Yes, the bra is handmade, but is not gracious, it is too wide, with three strings attaching behind. Who would buy a similar object? And how long was she forced to wear that cover, thankfully other garments cover her bottoms, also not appropriate but eventually bearable. No, not the bra, though. If the mannequin had both arms and a less stiff neck, she might have been able to take it off and proudly show her beautiful orange breasts. But she cannot. And her dismay increases, becoming rather uncontrollable, reaching out and making even me worried. would have loved to buy that orange woman-mannequin. I thought about it for a long time whilst going around her in circles. Truth is, this was an encounter with a well-lived work of art, one that has travelled and suffered, that resists despite or because of her semiabandoned condition. She should really be displayed again, as in her recent past, in a wandering art gallery.

Her beauty is vague. Vague is the only appropriate adjective to her bodily condition. The madam of that outdoor stall, seen in the background, was an elegant woman, mastering her movements, organizer of her goods. What kept me from asking her about the price of the orange mannequin, was the idea of travelling by plane with her. I was embarrassed with the idea of having she sat next to me, whilst departing to São Paulo and the other travellers giggling. I was an incompetent or a coward. I abandoned setting she free from her current fate, saddened as the expression on her face, only because of my timid hypocrisy. And the mannequin, so shiny and sweaty, dismembered and erected, so sad and resolute, royal, would lie abandoned who knows where. She is a spontaneous work of art, mixing and exposing all the syncretic fetishism of its body-corpse. A mannequin, travelled from different continents and cultures, incorporating the ambiguous desire of a being that is still alive even in most disastrous situations. For me, it / she is more attractive and desirable than the other three hyper-fetish human bottles previously observed. She is alive and vague.

My final cut on fashion: Madame Fashion is and even more will be ubiquitous, syncretic, plyphonic, meta-fetishit and metamorphic

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[jewish-philosophy]

Jewish Assimilation in Austria.

The accession of Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790) as sole ruler of the Habsburg lands in 1780 ushered in a tumultuous decade of change. The enlightened absolutist emperor intervened in the internal affairs of his Jewish subjects on an unprecedented scale, with the intent of altering the contours of Jewish culture and society.

Joseph II’s mother, Maria Theresa, had, during her 40-year reign (1740–1780), already introduced major reforms aimed at strengthening her vulnerable dominions. As an absolutist ruler, the empress had sought to concentrate power in her hands and bring about a measure of uniformity in her far-flung realms.

Joseph II was determined to pursue the absolutist policies of his mother, but abandoned her caution and perceived half-measures, and was clearly influenced by the Enlightenment. Mother and son had dramatically parted ways over religious toleration. In a sharp exchange conducted while Joseph was on a visit to France in June and July 1777, he questioned the wisdom of the prevailing policy of discrimination and urged complete freedom of worship. His mother was appalled, viewing his religious toleration as a sign of indifference that would prove disastrous to her realms. Most probably it was not by chance that it was during this very time she penned her oft-cited bitter assessment of Jews: “I do not know a worse public plague than this nation; with their fraud, usury, and money dealing they reduce people to beggary, practicing all sort of evil transactions that an honest man abhors. Therefore, they are to be kept away from here and [their numbers] diminished as far as possible.” While her son shared many of these sentiments—“I have never regarded the so numerous Jewry in my hereditary lands as the best kind of people,” he wrote in 1788—he nevertheless tried to overcome his aversion and improve their lot. His reign inaugurated the modern tutelary state’s policies of tough love toward its Jewish subjects.

Within a year of succeeding his mother to the throne, Joseph issued a cluster of sweeping reforms, among them the Edict of Toleration for Protestants, permitting private worship and access to public office. Addressing a different set of issues, he also issued Edicts of Toleration for his Jewish subjects, separate patents (systematic regulations made public) for each of the various possessions where Jews had been permitted to reside in significant numbers: Bohemia, 19 October 1781; Lombardy, Goricia, and Gradisca as well as Trieste, between September and December 1781; Austrian Silesia, 15 December 1781; Lower Austria (Vienna), 2 January 1782; Moravia, 13 February 1782; Hungary, 31 March 1783; Galicia, 27 May 1785 and 7 May 1789.

Earlier, on 13 May 1781, Joseph had made his intentions known to both the supreme chancellor Count Blümegen and the Hungarian chancellor Count Pálffy, outlining a series of measures that would make the “numerous members of the Jewish nation more useful to the state.” Utility was measured by the standards drawn from current ideas of political economy, heavily influenced by populationist and to some extent by then outdated physiocratic notions that judged Jewish economic endeavors as “unproductive,” a term that carried moral and not only economic connotations.

The means to achieve a useful and “productive” Jewry involved a dual transformation: economic and cultural. The languages of the Jews bred mistrust, misunderstanding, and corrupt practices; hence, Hebrew and Yiddish were to be confined strictly to the religious sphere. Within a space of two or three years all documents were to be formulated in one of the local vernaculars. Education was the means to accomplish this linguistic shift; Jews were to establish their own schools under state supervision or were to send their children to Christian ones without prejudicing in the least their religious beliefs. Universities and other institutions of higher learning should now be opened to Jews. Economic transformation was to be accomplished by removing existing constraints, expanding the range of new branches of livelihood in order to channel Jews away from their “characteristic usury and deceitful trade” toward productive occupations such as agriculture, transportation, crafts, arts, and manufacture. Jews were to be restored to their dignity: their notables could carry swords; they were no longer obligated to pay the degrading body tax or display discriminatory signs such as yellow bands or beards.

In the months that followed, intensive discussions took place at all levels of administration in the different Habsburg dominions where Jews lived. There were objections, especially at the lower levels of the bureaucracy. The emperor felt compelled to issue an imperial resolution on 30 September, later incorporated into the Silesian edict, to clarify the proposed legislation. The main purpose of the new laws, he stated, was not to increase the number of Jews in the realm, but rather through enlightenment and economic opportunities to render Jews no longer harmful to society. In time they would become either good Christians or would improve their moral character and become useful citizens. It is noteworthy that Joseph’s edicts did not abolish the Familiants Laws that limited the Jewish population in the Bohemian lands, or the restrictions on tolerated Jews in Vienna, or the Toleration Tax.

In the wake of the edict, Jewish Normalschulen (“normal” schools; a pedagogic system) were established during the decade of Joseph’s rule: one each in Trieste and Görz, 25 in Bohemia, 42 in Moravia (probably exaggerated), 23 in Hungary (certainly too low), and 93 (rising eventually to more than 120) in Galicia and Bukowina. These schools, located often in quite backward areas, provided thousands of Jewish boys and girls with modest skills in reading and writing as well as arithmetic. (While German was not mandatory, it did become the language of instruction throughout the empire, except in Italy.) This was a utilitarian program, which the traditional Jewish establishment could cautiously accept. Celebrations accompanied the inauguration of schools in Trieste, Prague, Pressburg, Lemberg, and Brody. There is no reason to suppose that there was any principled opposition to these schools; if anything, it was the financial burden that posed a problem. However, a new phase began when Herz Homberg was appointed supervisor of the Jewish normal schools in Galicia in 1787, and a bit later as supervisor of religious education as well. His unprecedented autonomy with regard to the Jewish communities; control of relatively large resources, funds and manpower; supervision not only over the secular, but also the religious educational network; and Haskalah-inflected worldview that did not balk at coercion, aroused suspicion and opposition.

In the years that followed the initial edicts, a number of additional decrees, regulations (more systematic), and patents were issued in order to bring Jewish legal status in line with general reforms. Among these were several that were seen by Jews as unwarranted intervention in their internal religious affairs. In general, the period from 1785 onward was characterized by a more systematic and radical bent, in some ways more liberal, but also tending toward rash social engineering. The promulgation of the general Justice Patent led to a confining of the authority of rabbinic courts to arbitration, proscribing the ban of excommunication, and restricting communal autonomy to purely religious matters (27 May 1785 Galician Patent). The general Marriage Patent of 1786 also impinged upon specific Jewish laws and customs such as divorce (17 January 1788), as did the mandated waiting period of 48 hours before the dead could be buried (3 July 1786). The normal-school certification came to be increasingly exploited as a convenient prerequisite for any number of matters: engaging in certain occupations (already in the Hungarian edict of 31 March 1783); marriage (15 April 1786); qualification for Behelfers, that is, assistants to religious teachers (20 December 1787); and the rabbinate and Talmud study for children (1789 Galician edict).

Potentially more damaging were the emperor’s proposed regulations of Jewish economic activities. Already in the first years of his reign, Joseph ordered the brutal expulsion of several thousand indigent and vagabond Jews from Galicia. Although these draconian measures affected only about 1 percent of Galician Jewry, they gave an indication of what the emperor was capable of. Joseph, like many of his officials, perceived a Jewish presence in the countryside as harmful to the peasantry. Only those Jews who personally worked the land were to be tolerated, even encouraged, in rural areas. At first, the early edicts of toleration spoke only of the possibility of leasing, but the 1785 Galician Patent already permitted Jews expressly to purchase such land. Similar ordinances were passed for the other dominions of the empire. Two months later (16 July 1785), Joseph went further and proposed that Jewish agricultural colonies be set up along the lines of German settlements then being established in Galicia. Groups of Jews petitioned to settle in such colonies: the first of these, Dombrówka near Sandz (Nowy Sącz), was founded in the spring of 1786; the best known was Neu-Babylon near Bolechów. The 1789 Patent declared that every Jewish community was to designate a number of families for agricultural settlement; a quota of 1,410 families was set for Galicia. Inexperienced, lacking funds and allocated poor farm lands, these colonies had little chance of success.

Excluding Jews from leasing various monopolies became the object of a string of ordinances between 1784 and 1787. These measures would have been disastrous to the approximately one-third of Galician Jewry engaged in leasing of one sort or another. Another third would also have been adversely affected by the ban on peddling in Galicia, although buying up produce from peasants was still allowed (27 May 1785 Galician Patent).

Just how far these decrees were implemented is not clear. At times they did not apply to current leases, only to new ones, and at other times a grace period of several years was allowed. The emperor was also none too consistent when dealing with dominions other than Galicia. In May 1786, Joseph proposed that after the termination of present leases in Hungary, Jews should be prohibited from leasing inns. Here, too, about a third of the Jewish populace would have been affected had the emperor not been dissuaded by his Hungarian vice-chancellor Pálffy of this rash move. Likewise, peddling in Hungary was explicitly allowed (7 April 1788) as it was also in Bohemia (4 June 1787).

These various decrees and their reversals were summed up in the 7 May 1789 Galician Patent, which was also meant to be implemented for the rest of the empire. All restrictions on choice of livelihood were now lifted, but the prohibition of leasing of peasant landholdings, mills, tenths, market fees, and inns was maintained. The leasing of entire estates and associated monopolies, however, was now permitted for the first time. Peddling was also allowed in both urban and rural areas. After the death of the emperor, most of these measures were reversed or observed in the breach.

One decree that did have far-reaching consequences ordered Jews to adopt personal and family names (23 July 1787). This was yet another expression of bureaucratic standardization linked to the obligation that rabbis now maintain parish registers (Matrikel) of births, marriages, and deaths. The personal names were expressly ordered to be German ones and were chosen from a prepared list of ostensibly biblical, but often bizarre names such as Abdenago, Achitophel, Nabuchadonosor, and Semiramith. At the same time, typical postbiblical names such as Meir and Akiba were missing. These choices were soon rectified. Jews were usually free to choose their family names (there is little actual evidence of the abuses that reportedly were visited upon Galician Jews by malicious officials); most, save the Italians, chose German names though there were a few who elected Slavic or Hungarian ones.

Military conscription of Jews began in Galicia in February 1788 and spread to the Bohemian lands and Hungary in the months that followed. This was the first time that Jews served as soldiers in modern times. While the war council consistently opposed Jewish participation in the army and recommended that instead Jews be permitted to hire mercenary substitutes, the emperor was quite adamant that Jews do personal service. Repeated petitions and delegations to the emperor proved useless. At first, Jews were designated only for transport and hauling artillery, but soon were permitted to volunteer for combat and to serve in the infantry. It has been estimated that 35,000 Jews served in the Habsburg armies during the quarter of a century of French wars.

The Edict of Toleration issued for Galicia on 7 May 1789 was the most far-reaching to date. It tried to resolve the following question: Were Jews to continue their existence within the state as a separate corporate entity with special privileges and liabilities, or were they to be set on equal footing with other citizens and all that implied as far as rights and duties were concerned? It reiterated what the 1785 Patent had decreed, that the traditional community was now abolished and that Jews were to be fully incorporated into their locales, subsumed under the authority of the local judicial and administrative authorities. The Jewish community was to be conceived from then on as a guildlike association intended only to serve strictly religious needs. The 1789 edict added a new dimension: Jews were now granted equal civil rights in their places of residence along with passive and active voting rights in municipal elections. But what did it mean that Jews were to be treated as equals in a society where inequality of estates still obtained?

The 1789 edict had hinted at its vision in a subparagraph stating that if Jews worked land that incurred urbarial obligations—that is, labor duties of a serf—then they had to fulfill them. But if Jews could be conceivably viewed as serfs, was there a possibility that they could also become nobles? A few months later, a decree enabled Jews to buy up entire estates with all the attending feudal privileges. Israel Hönig applied immediately to purchase the Velm estate, and in consequence requested to be ennobled. On 2 September 1789, he became the first Jew in the Habsburg monarchy to be raised to the nobility.

The 1789 Edict was probably the most influential piece of Jewish legislation in Central and Eastern Europe, since in a truncated fashion—that is, divested of all its truly liberal clauses—it became the model for the Bohemian Judensystemalpatent of 1797, the Prussian legislation for the newly acquired Polish lands, the General-Juden-Reglement für Sud- und Neu-Ost Preussen, and the Law of 1804 and subsequent Russian legislation. Even earlier, Joseph’s initial edicts of toleration had a noticeable impact on many German principalities and even on revolutionary France.

Contemporaries well recognized the importance of the 1789 Edict. Historians have overlooked the explicit reference to Joseph II’s 1789 patent in what has become the classic statement on behalf of Jewish equality, Count Stanislas Clermont-Tonnere’s speech of 23 December 1789 before the National Assembly. “Everything must be refused to the Jews as a nation; everything must be granted to them as individuals...Jewish judicial, legislative, and corporate autonomy must be abolished, he went on. “They must not constitute in the state a political body or estate. They must be individually citizens and if they do not wish to be so, then they must be banished”. “There cannot be a nation within a nation.” 

What was this if not a rehearsal of the main features of the Galician Judenpatent? The liberal count continued and made the following clinching argument for Jewish equality: “The Jews in the state of the emperor enjoy not only the rights of citizens, but also still the possibility of attaining those honorific distinctions [meaning Hönig’s ennoblement] that we have destroyed and which still survive there in all their force.” The legislation of Joseph II in 1789 thus represented the farthest point to which enlightened absolutism could move toward Jewish equality within the context of a feudal society of legally differentiated orders.

source

[kaspermakowski-blog]

Transformation Commitment

January 27th, 2017

So after keeping a journal for some time, for the purpose of keeping track of my start overs, my thoughts and my off of destructive habit day counts, I’ve concluded that it would be nice to have my desires and intent distributed into space and time. I’ve never blogged before and I’m not even sure if I’m doing this right and if the content is actually going to be posted somewhere for someone to read, but I do know that I’m about to embark on a journey and its going to be fucking interesting not only for me, but for anybody that also likes to ponder as I do and is a soul searcher and a believer of magic.  

After recent events of developing anxiety and then later becoming an unfaithful father who later became so lucky to have a relationship with his baby mama and his mistress knowing the pleasure of having two girlfriends and a son under the same roof, then one and then none, I’ve realized that I have a lot of internal work to do.

The aforementioned mistress Meagan had provided me with a lot of joy but also a lot of sadness and frustration. She wasn't happy in the 2 girl relationship so I chose her, she did make me very happy and the intimate life was amazing. However she developed distrust probably due to me choosing her instead of the mother of my child. I did maintain a positive relationship with the mother of my son Kaleb and spent nights at the hospital/ hotel and at Jessica’s house (mom), fighting through Kalebs developmental disorder called biliary atresia. To make a long story short Jessica and I....  we’re still cool, cooler than most x couples and this threatened Meagan, strained our relationship and turned me into an asshole or kept me one... it was a battle I could never win.

So we broke up... well kinda. We still saw each other talked to each other on the phone  every day and were exclusive to each other, apparently I wasn’t even able to have single female friends. So as you can see... still a dysfunctional relationship. But I’d take anything, I guess my confidence needed work.  So this went on for some time, I leaned on my addictions to tobacco, weed, porn and daily gratification to get me through the days. My self love was hindered, my confidence lacking in the bedroom, developing fear of the next encounter with her and my social life was lacking.

I ended up trying to take control of my insecurities by getting healthy mentally, and physically. I stay away from conventional meat and dairy... most of the time and I’m 60 days pot and tobacco free.This provided me with a flawless digestive system (which I was having problems with) lungs to breath with, a stronger immune system and some confidence but small victories.....

Some of my not so proud accomplishments... porn again, after day 50 and long sad attempt of connection with my one and only I made myself feel better, ... I did not feel better. But I think I’ve severed the link between me and Meagan for the last time.So hence the time to start fresh? (Meagan always said that I was addicted to starting over....) I have not started to meditate which I really want to, but I always come up with an excuse why its a waste of time...my mind is so funny. But then. I also always find a way to waste my time (shows, social media and what not). My interaction with people sucks too... I judge, I seem to have the right answers where I really I cant even get a grip on my own shit, and I seemed to always argue even when I don’t want to. Finally, I’m swimming debt, I work seasonally and have no stability, my house needs to be renovated and at least cleaned.  

So I know I’m capable of awesome momentum because I had some prior to my relapse, So I’m making a commitment to myself and the world to pick some rituals. There’s this motivation speaker by the name of Tony Robbins, the guy really speaks to me and I know what to aim for, I need structure, I need focus i need to start now and be comftorable with being uncomfortable. I’ve developed some areas of improvement on paper that describes my ultimate vision and purpose in various category’s such as health, love, family and fiances. I plan to focus on the category’s as I progress on this journey. So this is my 90 day commitment.  Which mostly includes controlling undeserved instant gratification, a global epidemic.

1. Monk Mode No Fap.... look it up. But it means no mindless watching of porn (this is the big one), but also movies, shows, trolling the facebook, dating sites but also controlling personal sexual thoughts. This also means no masturbating, touching or stimuli of any kind.  No more gratification to artificial and imagined stimuli. Real relationships are ok, providing their fulfilling and  based on love and affection.

2. Daily Stretch Morning and night, I never liked it but I know that flexibility helps in life period, it makes you well... flexible to what life throws your way and connects your mind to your body. We as people are always in our head and never in our bodies stretching provides a link and its one way to simply take care of yourself.

3. Daily Meditation/ Mindful Gratitude So this is a hard one for me but I’m going to develop a daily practice, there’s lots out there on way I should, or why everyone should so I won’t tell you all my reasons. But the main one, I want to be content, I want to know the world I live in, I want to control my thoughts and not have them control me. I don’t want to worry about things that do not matter. I want to live an authentic life and connect with the world and with the people in it. I want to appreciate what I have, what I experienced and what is to come. Because I am one fucking privileged individual.

4. Daily Exercise Another one that does not need to be explained but. Training for life, to feel good, to be confident, to be strong. To take care of myself. To give purpose to this young body so it doesn't wither away to nothing. To improve all the processes that are inside me.

5. Daily study. languages, reading and development I never have time for the things I would actually want to do with my spare time so I need to incorporate improvement in my daily activities or I’ll never improve. I speak Polish but not good enough to speak freely and confidently with my family member is Poland so I want to improve. Also, ever since I had the time of my life with Meagan in Cuba I’ve been dead set to learn Spanish, so I’m going to learn Spanish! I also have a lot of growing to do in how i communicate and think and plan so developing those through reading and study is also important to me.

6. Working to complete Renovations. My house is my ticket out of the secluded little town of Wawa. I’ve loved nature but I also really need a life and I will never get what I want here. So the fact that I’m in debt but own a house gives me an edge... the market here sucks, all houses sell for less than 100k if that gives you an idea and also I bought my fix me up er for 24600 so less than most people spend on a car. But if I’m to get out of this hole I need to rent or sell my house, and fixing it up will get me there.

7. Developing Time Management and my Personal Legend. I need to develop focus and discipline and I’m starting now. I know my mind tells me what I feel like doing, well I need to tell my mind what to do. This is key, my actions or no action is all determined by what I’m thinking and how juiced or excited I am about something. The more I do it, the more momentum it will acquire. Go to bed a decent time, wake up early and enact my rituals. I must be successful and continuously strive to better my life situation. This means I must actively be looking for opportunities, improving my resume and networking.

8. Exclusion of unhealthy substances entering my body. I’ve had a problem with smoking, toking, drinking  and generally eating like shit. NO More of that! I’m going to be mindful of what I allow into my body, because I’m the master of that and that is an important position that I will not take lightly anymore.  I will plan my meals so that their nutritious and delicious with lots of the good things I need to power me through my day. Thats not to say I’ll never have a glass of wine or smoke a joint in good taste in a comftorable social environment it just I can’t right now I need to gain control first. As for the smoking tobacco, its safe to say I’ll never touch the stuff again because I’m a fiend to it and I know that so goodbye forever or kill me slowly forever... I prefer the goodbye.

9. Keeping a clean environment/ being Mindful. I’ve been living in filth and its depressing. If I want to feel better I need to keep the house, my car and my mind clear of clutter. I need to be aware of the clutter of my mind and ensure that I’m grateful and mindful of the moment I have and of what I’m thinking and feeling in that present moment, being alive is an active activity and it can pass you by if your not paying attention to it.

10. Fast for 21 days This will be the door way into my new life, I would have had my body and mind prepared to take this on and after the fast I will begin the new chapter of my life with past mistakes a thing of the past. My rituals will be well established and I will really get some clarity to the road that lays before me. THis is going to happen in April, the month of my sons birthday and the end of my first 90 days. I will have a whole other blog keeping track of this I think but we will see if I can figure this blogging stuff out first. So there you have it. I just watched my last porn clip, almost bought a joint to send me off, but I’m still doing great there so I decided against it.

Conclusion

I feel shitty now and that’s a good indication that I need to get on my path, as soon as I post this its on, and I’m not stopping for no one. If your reading this wish me luck and hopefully it might inspire you to get off your ass and get your shit together, but really all this is, is mostly a prayer to solidify my intent. I burning my boats and taking this fucking island and when I get discouraged I’ll remember that a bucket fills drop by drop. I’ll keep everyone posted.  

Kasper over and out

[douchebagbrainwaves]

OK, I'LL TELL YOU YOU ABOUT STARTUP

Every audience is an incipient mob, and a large class of startups that need less than they used to. The standard excuse, back when C was the default language, was that Lisp was too slow.1 Someone who was strong-willed person stronger-willed.2 Only a few do so far, but I found that the Bayesian filter did the same thing for me, and moreover discovered of a lot of programmers have started to see Apple as evil. They would seem to have been headed down the wrong path. Fundraising is still terribly distracting for startups. 97 probability of the containing email being a spam. 96.

Start small. Using that heuristic, I'll predict a couple more things. And a particularly overreaching one at that, with fussy tastes and a rigidly enforced house style. He had all of us roaring with laughter. Mathematicians don't answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. A deals per partner per year. Make it really good for code search, for example.3 A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Still, anyone who proposes a plan for spam filtering has to be replaced with a new from-address, so you can't risk false positives by filtering mail from unknown addresses especially stringently.4 I know this may sound oversensitive, but if we had such a thing is to treat individuals as interchangeable parts. I had stopped believing that.5

Not a couple million.6 Business people in Silicon Valley and the whole world, for that matter have speculative meetings all the time.7 A rounds?8 You'll be better off if you operate like Columbus and just head in a general westerly direction. The whole site was organized like a funnel, directing people to the test drive. Domain names differ from the rest of the text in a non-German email in that they often consist of several words stuck together. Thanks to Sam Altman, David Greenspan, Aaron Iba, Jessica Livingston, Robert Morris, Peter Norvig, Lisa Randall, Emmett Shear, Sergei Tsarev, and Stephen Wolfram for reading drafts of this. 01 describe 0.

Irony of ironies, it's the computer Steve Huffman wrote Reddit on.9 The whole Viaweb site was made with our software, even though the latter depends more on natural ability.10 But I don't wish I were a better writer? Don't try to construct the future like a building, because your current blueprint is almost certainly mistaken. That's what these ideas say to us. This pattern is repeated over and over, and it's all about the ratio. Recognizing nonspam features may be more accurate to describe a market as a degenerate case—as what you get by default when organization isn't possible.11 Why are programmers so fussy about their employers' morals?12 But the wrong kind of interruption can wipe your brain in 30 seconds. Perhaps the optimal solution is for big companies not even to try to do it will have an individual spam probability of.

They get away with maltreating developers, in the short term, because if everything else in the email is spam.13 It would be a bad sign if they weren't; it would mean you were being too easy on them. When we were working on our own startup, back in the 90s. And strangely enough, the better, because any measure that constrains spammers will tend to displace suits whose skills lie more in raising money from LPs.14 In fact, if you restrict the sales pitches spammers can make, you will inevitably tend to put them out of your incoming spam. Of our current concept of an organization work differently from the rest. The other reason Apple should care what programmers think of them is that when you sell a platform, developers make or break you.

One of the more surprising things I've noticed while working on Y Combinator is not to think of programs at least partially in the language they're using to write them.15 Arguably it's a sign of weakness. In some business relationships, you do it right, you only have to filter email from people you'd never heard from, and someone sending you mail for the first sentence of a love story.16 If you're sufficiently determined to achieve great things, this will probably increase the number of programmers, the more completely a project can mutate. There's an advantage as well as writing does, where you go to college. It would also be a need for such infrastructure companies. But invariably they're larger in your imagination than in real life.17 9189189 localhost 0. I don't know if this one is possible, but there is a group, they couldn't have multiple people editing the same code, because it changes too fast for that to be possible. One cooperative project that I think really would be a curious state of affairs if you could get to the point where it's like visual crack. Empirically, the way to use these big ideas is not to try to do it automatically: to write a check, limited by their guess at whether this will make later investors balk. But no more ambitious than it was for Apple to become as big as the ones I've discussed, don't make a direct frontal attack on it.

If you don't, you're dead. There was another speaker who was much better than me. When you're operating on the manager's schedule, they're in a position to tell investors how the round is going to get tagged as spam. Whereas if you're writing code to make it so that you can't make yourself care.18 And though there's going to be broken up, I'm slightly less likely to start something ambitious in the morning.19 Look at the individual, not where they went to college. Of our current concept of an organization work differently from the rest.

Notes

I don't think these are the only alternative would be far less demand for them.

Bureaucrats manage to think of the words won't be trivial. A less upstanding, lower-tier VC might be digital talent.

Forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups. Whereas when the company, though more polite, was one that had been climbing in through the founders want to write it all yourself. Most word problems in school, and yet managed to find a broad range of topics, comparable in scope to our users that isn't really working bad unit economics, typically and then being unable to raise a series A termsheet with a million spams.

When you had a contest to describe what they made more margin loans. And yet there are few things worse than the long term than one who passes. Others will say that the web have sucked—and probably especially valuable.

Picking out the same work, done mostly by hackers. What drives the most promising opportunities, it will have to do something we didn't do.

Different sections of the corpora. What he meant, I was there when it converts you get a poem published in The New Yorker. And then of course. It does at least bet money on convertible notes, VCs who are younger or more ambitious the utility function for money.

Wufoo was based in Tampa and they succeeded. Most computer/software startups. Most of the company at 1.

And it would be unfortunate. Peter Thiel would point out that successful startups are often unknowns. This would penalize short comments especially, because there are no misunderstandings. I don't know of this type: lies told to play games with kids' credulity.

Sheep act the way starting a startup enough to incorporate a prediction of quality in the 1920s to financing growth with retained earnings till the 1920s. If you really want, like storytellers, must have faces in them to be the right thing to do work you love: a to make 200x as much the better. The company is Weebly, which is the least important of the auction. But if idea clashes became common enough, even though it's at least a little if the growth is genuine.

Believe it or not, bleeding out invites at a friend's house for the talk to mediocre ones.

If anyone wants.

But filtering out 95% of the art business? I'm clueless or being misleading by focusing so much the better, and stir. Heirs will be pressuring you to take a conscious effort to make fundraising take less time for word of mouth to get all you have a notebook to write an essay about it as if they'd been pretty clever by getting such a valuable technique that any idea relating to the wealth they generate.

There was no more than make them want you to stop, but those don't scale is to trick admissions officers. I replace the url with that additional constraint, you need. I don't think they'll be able to. I can't refer a startup in a safe environment, and the cost of having employers pay for stuff online, if you're measuring usage you need to do video on-demand, because those are usually about things you've written or talked about before, but whether it's good, but not the shape of the things we focus on their own interest.

People only tend to be started in 1975, said the things you sell. It is the post-money valuation of zero. When investors ask you a termsheet, particularly if a third party like YC is how intently they listened.

Except text editors and compilers. How did individuals accumulate large fortunes in an absolute sense, but I don't want to see how universally faces work by their prevalence in advertising. Reporters sometimes call a few people plot their own interest. Two customer support people tied for first prize with entries I still shiver to recall.

Whoever fed the style section reporter this story about suits coming back would have gone into the shape that matters here but the nature of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being a train car that in three months we made a better story for an investor who merely seems like he will fund you, it is unfair when someone gets drunk instead of uebfgbsb. If you want to wait for the same way a restaurant is constrained in b. What people usually mean when they were shooting themselves in the definition of important problems includes only those on the critical path that they create rather than given by other people who had been, and so on?

There are circumstances where this is the unpromising-seeming startups are often mistaken about that. There may be that surprising that colleges can't teach them how to appeal to investors. Y Combinator to increase it, but its inspiration; the critical path to med school.

They hate their bread and butter cases.

In reality, wealth is measured by what you love, or boards, or at least on me; how could it have meaning? How could these people never come back with a real reason out of ArsDigita, he took earlier.

[hauteculturefashion]

The Purépecha are a indigenous group of people located in Michoacán state Northwest of Mexico city. They speak their own language and reside predominately in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range on a volcanic plateau surrounded by forests and lakes.

The women of this region dress in a style soaked with Spanish influences and stitched with stories of folk life.

Two young ladies wearing their feista fashion for a traditional wedding in the Village of Angahuan. The ladies dress aprons display an elaborate about of frills, colourful flowers and commercial metallic lace.

Traditional Purépecha attire as seen from the front

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Where tradition meets present. The traditional pleated flada made from fushia pink and gold sequins.

The Purépecha people were a considerable pre-columbian civilization that maintained their independence from Aztec Empire despite numerous failed conquest attempts. It wasn’t until the 1530s when the Purépecha were eventually overruled by the Spanish conquistadors and their armies.

Despite being converted to Catholicism the region has managed to maintain it’s rich traditional customs, as well as it’s reputation for producing folk art and fine crafts. Copper, carpentry, painting, ceramics and textiles have been traded by the same towns for over a thousand years, making Purépecha products some of the finest and most sought after in Mexico and beyond.

The Purépecha people have a well earned sense of passion and pride about their artist ancestry and culture. This can be witnessed on the local women who strut their textile skills daily on their traditional dress.

A proud Purepecha women stands outside her home in the village of Cocucho showing off her fuchsia velvet apron covered in lily and love heart punch needle motifs.

Close up details of the punch needle embroidery which is created using a hollow needle that creates loops much like that used on rugs.

Inside a Purepecha women’s bedroom the walls are adorned with handmade aprons and skirts which have been covered in plastic bags to project them from dust in between wears.

Purépecha women have a distinctive ethnographic dress adapted from Spanish influences which is recognised today as the Purépecha style.

Rebozo – A long rectangular piece of fabric around 2 meters in length and 1 meter wide woven on a back strap loom. The rebozo is an integral and essential part of a Perepecha women’s daily ensemble as it is used for protection against the sun, keeping  warm on cooler days and for carrying children or other small items.  Traditional striped designs are unique to the Purepecha Rebozo.

Delantal – An ornamental apron worn as an fashionable accessory, not for protecting ones garments underneath. Usually made of gathered or pleated horizontal panels narrowing at the waist and tied at the back with a connecting belt. Perepecha aprons differ in design from village to village and depending on the occasion.  Lace, lurex, sequins, cross stitch,  frilly boarders and fleur de lis motifs are common characteristics of this ornamental piece.

Traditional Purépecha delantal featuring bold floral machine embroidery (left) and hand cross stitched fleur de lis with scalloped lace boarder (right).

Blusa – One of the styles often referred to as the (derogatory) “Mexican Peasant Blouse”, this charming garment is comprised of simple small rectangular panels sewn together (often by hand) and with short sleeves that sometimes have a draw string hem. Cross stitch designs often made by the women wearing the blusa are the primary focal point which largely feature motifs of flowers, birds, baskets and other elements from village life. 

Falda –  A calve-length skirt made from 10 meters or more of knife pleated fabric. The majority of the skirts are made from commercial satin, but more more contemporary and somewhat kitsch versions using sequin fabrics are seen at fiestas and special events. Each skirt takes around 8 hours to make.

A mother and daughter stand outside the doors of a local church in Cocucho wearing their rebozo, blusa, aprons and pleated skirts.

This cross stitched blue bird and red rose dress apron took months to make by hand.

Lady in a local taco diner happily displays her hand cross stitch blusa.

Ten meters of one inch deep knife pleats are machine stitched under the waist panel to make this skirt. The zig zag ribbon details have been appliquéd onto the fabric before pleating.

Two ladies wearing their distinctive pleated skirts share a rebozo to shield themselves from the midday sun.

The back of a young women’s more contemporary falda which incorporates silver foil fabric insert.

A lady protects her head from the sun with her rebozo whilst attending to the graves of loved ones during the Dia de Muertos festival on Janitzio Island. Cross stitched kittens decorate her blusa and the bold fleur de lis motif featured on her apron is a common design worn by the women living here.

A lady from Janitzio Island co-ordinates her finest collection of hand made pieces together to look their best during annual Dia de Muertos event held every year at the local grave site.

Purepecha women prepares the family grave stones with marigolds whilst wearing a (almost) matching floral ensemble of her own.

The bold and beautiful cross stitched Fleur de lis (French for Flower of the Lily) design used to decorate these aprons are distinctive of the Purepecha women on Janitzio Island.

This unique travel opportunity and insight into Purepecha women’s style was supported by Tia Stephanie Tours during the Day of the Dead festival in October & November 2017, to find out more and participate, about this unique experience click here.

  Have you been to Mexico? Did you see any unique traditional dress or textiles on your travels? Please share your experiences, ideas and suggestions on where to go in Mexico in the comments box below.

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Purépecha Style, A Indiginous Identity Stitched With Pride The Purépecha are a indigenous group of people located in Michoacán state Northwest of Mexico city. They speak their own language and reside predominately in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range on a volcanic plateau surrounded by forests and lakes.