#me: i need more hours. monkeys paw: day 4 out of 9 days in a row of work

[ilonacho]

ough 2024 art summary. yea

[serrj215]

Family

The night was angry, rain punished the earth, and lightning cracked the sky again and again. Trigon was gone. The king of demons was trapped in his own little corner of reality. Still that didn’t stop him from making an occasional appearance in his daughter’s dreams. It was 4:00 am when Raven had jumped out of her skin. A summer storm shook the windows and rattled on the roof above. Raven looked down her body to see a pair of sleepy annoyed green eyes.

She jerked her leg in waking up. Sweet Potato yawned then went back to using Raven's left ankle as a pillow. The small orange cat was asleep in moments. It was about 6 years ago when the cat adopted them.

~

"Rae!"  Beast Boy shouted, "The landlord didn’t mention this!"

Raven came out to the balcony of their new apartment. To find her fiancé sitting on the cement floor an orange kitten in his lap. He looked up at her.  "Free cat!" he said with a smile almost too big for his face.

"Garfield, where did that come from?"  She asked as she started messaging one of her temples.

"Well Rae, when a Mama cat and a Daddy cat love each other ver-"

"You know what I mean!" Raven snapped. It had been a long day already. The furniture they had ordered hadn’t shown up. Their living room was just a mountain of boxes. She was hungry, tired, sweaty, and just knew the boxes with her clean clothes were probably buried under all their other belongings.

Beast Boy got up cradling the cat in his arms. The animal barely reacted like all of this happened every day.  Before she knew it, he had closed the distance between them, and she was holding a purring orange ball of fluff. The cat started rubbing his head against her chin, his motor running on overdrive.

"Gar," Her hands of their own volition started petting the cat. "We really can’t have a pet right now. WE! don't even have a place to sleep tonight." The cat was doing its best to charm her "Besides I already have you. "

"Ha. Ha." He said as his hands joined hers in the cat’s fur. "Well don’t think of him as a pet, he can be our training kid!" That remark was enough to bring Raven to her senses and she pushed the cat back into Beast Boy's arms.

"OH No!" she said sternly "He can stay tonight but is going to a shelter in the morning! We don't need a training kid, we are renting an apartment together, we are engaged, do not get ahead of yourself!" Raven stormed back inside to rip apart boxes.

That was six years ago, and the cat later named Sweet Potato for his color had decided to become Raven's near constant companion. Whatever room Raven went in, a small orange puffball followed. The cat didn’t demand attention often, he was content to take up watch from the bookshelves as Raven meditated, or to supervise her from the top of the fridge when she made her tea. Despite being able to sleep just about anywhere most nights he preferred the small valley between Raven's feet.

Despite the cat's comfort, Raven started to get up to check on the baby. She stopped when she realized that the little one was closer than she thought. Four-month-old Luke was asleep on her husband's chest. The little boy was quite content with Garfield's hand on his back holding him protectively. Luke was facing her, his face scrunched up in sleep.  He was wearing that blue onesie that said, “I am a baby not an Engineer” That his father put him in at almost every chance he got.

~

"Raven he is beautiful" That’s the first words he heard as the medication started to wear off. Garfield was sitting in a chair next to her hospital bed. He held a blanketed bundle to his chest.  

It was over a full month before Raven was due. The last thing she was expecting was her little boy to show up that night. Beast Boy knew it would be months before they could have some time to themselves, so he surprised her with a night on the town.

It was a pleasant evening in early November. The air was just starting to chill giving her husband another reason to hold her close as they walked down the street. They had gotten a table at a nice café in town and just when the soup arrived Raven's contractions started. The next thing they knew plates were flying with black energy and she was loaded into an ambulance.

"Are you alright?" Raven asked from her hospital bed.

"I am not the one that had the emergency C-Section, how are you?" Beast Boy took Raven's hand.  

“I am wonderful, but that might just be the painkillers." She craned her neck to look at the small face hidden between blankets and her husband's chest. “Luke Logan" she said.

"He looks just like you Rae."

Raven didn’t see it.  Luke had his father’s green skin and pointed ears; his head had whips of fine hair that looked almost black.  Just like their daughter Luke had gotten his fathers more prominent features.

“He must take after you though, showing up 5 weeks early.”  

"He is amazing Rae. I can't believe that we get to keep him." Beast Boy stood up bringing the baby closer to Raven. "I can't stop looking at him."

"You were the same way with Leia, Gar have you slept?" She asked gingerly sitting up. The sun was a shade of orange coming through the windows. It had to be just past dawn. Raven really didn’t have to ask. Her husband's eyes were red and had some bags under them. The button-down shirt he was wearing for their date was an untucked wrinkled mess, and his hair was all over the place.

"I couldn’t, I mean every noise he made I kept checking on him. " The baby started to fuss a bit. "Here is Mama." Beast Boy laid their son into his mother's arms.  "You going to be good for visitors? Robin said he can't really hold back both Star and Leia for much longer. "

Thunder clashed and the little girl stirred. Leia had climbed into their bed again. She lay on her side between her mother and father holding onto Raven's leg like a teddy bear. She was in her white feety pajamas with the green monkeys on them.  Raven ran her fingers through her daughter’s dark hair. Just her brother Leia's skin was green like her father’s, but her hair was like her mothers. Raven knew that her daughter was a bit jealous of her baby brother.

~

"Rae are you alright?" Beast Boy pounded on the bathroom door. His wife had been there for nearly half an hour. Sweet Potato was attempting access by sticking his paw under the crack of the door.

"Raven I am coming in!" He quickly looked down at the cat. “Cover me” he said before shifting into a banana snake and slipping easily under the door.  As soon as he was in, he shifted back to his normal form. sink, toilet, bathtub, no Raven? He was ready to bolt out thinking that he had been pounding on the wrong door the last 20 minutes till his nose told him different. Raven’s scent was still strong here, it was tainted with stress.

Beast Boy pulled back the shower curtain and found his wife laying in the empty bathtub. She was clutching something to her chest with both her hands. He wasn't sure but she looked paler than usual and her eyes were puffy and a bit red.  He sat on the edge of the tub not sure what to make of this. "Rae you’re scaring the cat." He said quietly Raven was silent.

"Okay…Now you're scaring your husband" He reached out to her hands and Raven recoiled turning herself into the wall of the tub.  Beast Boy was not going to let her hide from him. So, he climbed into the tub with her. It was a tight fit his chest to her back.  "Rae I am not leaving.” He gently rubbed up and down her arm. “Talk to me whatever this is, we are in this together"

Beast Boy's mind ran the gamut, Trigon was returning, She saw the end of the word, green tea was declared a controlled substance, she was dying, Starfire was dying, He was dying, he jumped from one worst case scenario to the next. Then with shaking fingers she passed a white plastic object over her shoulder to her husband.

He took the white plastic stick with the small window that has a dark blue + sign in it.  Beast Boy had never seen one before but knew exactly what it was.

"Raven…this is amazing! I didn't think we could…I mean oh god! I hope she is just like you!" He said burying his face into her shoulder giggling like an idiot.

"Don't you get it I ruined our lives!" she said into the porcelain. "We can't do this we can't be parents and Titans and..,and" That’s when the tears came.

Beast Boy pulled her tight to him.  "So, we stop being Titans, or I stop and stay with the kid or I get a job or open an ice cream shop whatever it takes, whatever you and the baby need."

"You’re really happy about this." shock was coming though the sobs.

"Happy, scared, excited, petrified it's like that rush when the roller coaster goes over the first hill times like a billion."  

They held each other in that empty bathtub for nearly an hour. It was the start of what Beast Boy's called a 9-month roller coaster. Anyone that says you can be ready to be a parent they are lying. But he was there for every diaper, sleepless night and doctors appointment. He cried more then baby Leia did when she got vaccinated.

The windows flashed with lighting and the boom was so loud, the strike had to be right outside. Raven's hand found her husbands, brushing the bracelet around his wrist before giving his fingers a gentle squeeze.

"Rae?"

Raven looked up into her husband’s barely opened eyes.  "You ok?" He asked.

Raven just nodded slightly. Beast Boy pulled his wife's hand to his lips and pressed a kiss into her palm. Then settled back into his pillow, his hand rubbing Luke’s back before coming to a rest.  

~

Beast Boy didn't know what to think. Things were going so well or he thought.  He had been dating Raven for nearly a year and somehow, he didn’t screw it up. Oh, he had made mistakes, still upset her from time to time but things were good.  At least he thought they were good till this week.

He woke up one day and it was like the last 12 months never happened. Raven would barely talk to him. She would leave the room whenever he walked in. Raven even cut her hair short again, she had been growing it out and it was just past her shoulders. But now it was as short as the day they met. The last three nights he had got to her room knowing she was behind the door trying to apologize. Beast Boy had no idea what he did wrong. But he would cop to global warming, the Lex Luthor presidency, and Hawaiian Pizza if his girlfriend would just talk to him. But the door would not open.  Leaving Beast Boy to shift into a terrier to sleep at her door.

On the 4th day, his phone chimed.  Raven had sent a text. “Please come to my room tonight, at 8:43pm sharp.”  

That was it. A simple grammatically correct text message to let him know that they were done.  He knew it was coming. After all she was amazing, he was a freak. She was lovely, he was a green gremlin.  He should have known that Raven would want better, she deserved better. All that was left to do was show up at the time Raven requested, take it like a man, then go back to his room bawl like a baby in private.

For the first time in days Raven's door opened for him when he knocked.  Raven stood in the doorway wearing a white flowing robe that went all the way to the ground.  A small smile on her face. She put out her hand "Come with me please." Beast Boy dumbfounded took her hand and let her lead him into the darkened room.

In the center of the room in front of the bed was a low small table. On the table was a black cast iron bowl full of green flame.  It was the only light in the room, the fire gave no scent or smoke. Raven led him over to the table, holding his hand the whole time. They knelled across the table from each other. That’s when Beast Boy noticed a purple braid next to the iron bowl. He recognized it right away as Raven's hair, the length she had cut and now interweaved. This was getting stranger by the second.

"Raven what is going on?" He asked finally remembering how to talk.

"Garfield do you love me?"  She asked, looking into his eyes.

Beast Boy could feel his heart in his throat "Yes"

"Do you trust me?"

"Yes" he said, and he meant it. Despite the last few days he would still walk through hell for her if she asked.

Raven with her free hand took the braid of hair.  "To you, I offer myself, my love, my wish to walk the path with you." She wrapped the bracelet around his wrist. "Will you accept me?"

Beast boy's eyes were as wide as saucers.  He had no idea what was going on, just a tingle down his back. His mouth had gone dry and if you asked, if he would be able to remember his name, it would be Bob. But on instinct alone he breathed out "Yes, please." As if he was just offered a cold drink which he could have used at the time.

Then in one motion Raven passed their hands over the bowl of fire. The bracelet caught the flame and was instantly engulfed. Beast Boy jerked his hand back in panic, but Raven held fast. The flame had no heat and only lasted a moment. When he looked at his wrist the braid of hair was gone. What remained was a bracelet, a braided chain made of a silver colored metal with a slight purple tint.  

It took Beast Boy a few moments to process this. "Rae, what did we just do here, did we just get married?"  He said wide eyed "Because it feels like we just got married."

"This is an Azarathan betrothal ceremony"

“So were engaged?"

"Yes, is that not acceptable?" she said quietly.

"Yes! I mean No! I mean I always thought I would ask you, and this last week I thought that you didn’t want to be with me anymore.” The words came out in a rush. Beast boy went from feeling like the weight world was across his shoulders to being in free fall.

"I am sorry Gar" She offered and took both his hands. She stood and pulled him to his feet. "It was all part of the tradition." A moment later the room was lit by dozens of candles that were scattered about. "On Azerath the woman chooses a suitor. When she does, she lets her hair grow out. If the relationship does not work, she cuts her hair short until she meets someone else.” Raven fingered the bracelet on Beast Boy’s wrist. “However, if the relationship does work when the hair is long enough the woman will cut her hair and fashion this bracelet. During which she cuts herself off from her suitor to see how he reacts. Trust me this was just as hard on me as it was on you. "  

"Would it still be okay if I still got you a ring?"  he said timidly.

"Of course,"

Beast boy kept looking at the chain that now wrapped his wrist.  "Um Rae, there is no clasp on this."

"Of course there isn't, you are mine now." She kissed him deeply, removing whatever sense he had left.

"We’re getting married." He stated. He needed to say it, he needed to hear it, to make sure that this was real.  

"Yes, but that comes later” She said walking over to the bed. She turned to face him, “there is one final part of the ritual." with one motion she undid a clasp at her throat and the white robe fell from her shoulders and pooled at her feet. All that she was wearing at that point was the flickering candle light.

Raven let her head ease back onto the pillow she closed her eyes and tried to focus on the sound of the rain. Trying to let the rhythm soothe her.  For years she thought that she would be alone. Who would accept a demon? Who could love a monster? She truly expected to fall asleep alone with her nightmares for the rest of her life.  But thanks to a scrawny, green, pointed eared, boy that couldn’t resist a pun. She was not alone. No matter what her father conjured in her dreams she would wake up next to the man she loved and the family they built.

Still in the morning, Raven was going to talk to her husband about getting a bigger bed.

This was a work created for another project that do to unforeseen circumstances did not happen. You will also find it on A03. https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019136   It was a shame cause I got to work with some really creative people.  

[rgr-pop]

I need an ENTIRE afternoon wall of noise. 4/3 music library on shuffle until I hit a killdozer song.

the thermals - “god and country” reset - "double cross" nirvana - "polly" (1986-88 home recording) nirvana - "radio friendly unit shifter" (2013 mix) peterbuilt - "sateliteyes" the dickies - "got it at the store" apocalypse hoboken - "box of pills" fiona apple - "slow like honey" tex & the horseheads - "big boss man" everclear - "the drama king" anti-flag - "america got it right" neil young - "tonight's the night, pt. ii" everclear - "brown-eyed girl" noooooooooo oh my god no please millencolin - “israelites" listen you know that i'm p tolerant when it comes to this subject but why specifically did you boys do this. specifically you useless id - "note" never accuse me of pop punk nationalism again! that's three of global pop punk the selecter - "selling out your future" built to spill - "some things last a long time" holidays - "proof" let's wrestle - "bad mammaries" radhos - "one breath" ween - "boing" bracket - "g-vibe" local h - "'cha!' said the kitty" sublime - "40oz to freedom" failure - "saturday saviour" blink-182 - "don't leave me" (tmtts live take) why did they make this live album, they were so bad live shrimp boat - "melon song" interpol - "not even jail" the ataris - "angry nerd rock" 50 million - "superhero" skankin pickle - "violent love" the breeders - "put on a side" all - "honey peeps" the commandos (suicide commandos) - "weekend warrior" suicide machines - "friends are hard to find" the eclectics - "laura" good ska block! love this band pansy division - "jack u off" rocket from the tombs - "ain't it fun" dynamite boy - "devoted" young pioneers - "downtown tragedy" the breeders - "so sad about us" fenix tx - "jean claude trans am" fuck i love this song nofx - "bob" hickey - "happily ever after" bob dylan - "tangled up in blue" (bootlegs vol. 2) gas huffer - "king of hubcaps" tullycraft - "crush this town" atom and his package - "goalie" faith no more - "the real thing" carly rae jepsen - "tell me" bis - "listen up" one direction - "still the one" mtx - "she's no rocket scientist" eugene chadbourne - "roger miller medley" grouvie ghoulies - "carly simon" white town - "thursday at the blue note" gas huffer - "moon mission" rx bandits - "sleepy tyme" everclear - "rocket for the girl" failure - "kindred" blood on the saddle - "johnny's at the fair" the distillers - "red carpet and rebellion" cruiserweight - "dearest drew" stp - "plush" everclear - "wonderful" (live, from the closure ep) (don't hate it) new found glory - "sonny" everclear - "otis redding" (impure white evil demo) (BEST song) stp - "adhesive" incubus - "have you ever" cub - "tell me now" everclear - "short blonde hair" i simply do not hate it letters to cleo - "happy ever after" amazing transparent man - “the ocean is a fuck of a long way to swim” nerf herder - “(stand by your) manatee” kitty kitty - “ab tokeless” osker - “the mistakes you made” perfume genius - “hood” radhos - “shut up & deal” (welcome to the jungle take) osker - “the body”  gas huffer - “the sin of sloth” the fall - “bombast” excuse 17 - “code red” mad season - “lifeless dead” unwritten law - “differences” hanson - “two tears” the eyeliners - “anywhere but here” moby grape - “lazy me” brian wilson - “wonderful” 88 fingers louie - “something i don’t know” sicko - “wisdom tooth weekend” the replacements - “love you till friday” suicide machines - “green world” midtown - “another boy” hickey - “cool kids attacked by flying monkeys” the roman invasion suite - “carnations” the beat - “tears of a clown” local h - “24 hour break up session” okay i’m awake i want to end this now toots & the maytals - “funky kingston” local h - “strict-9″ his name is alive - “her eyes were huge things” nirvana - “frances farmer will have her revenge on seattle” slapstick - “almost punk enough” urge overkill - “bionic revolution” janet jackson - “you want this” piebald - “long nights” small brown bike - “now i’m a shadow” the story so far - “left unsaid” crj - “more than a memory” tracy + the plastics - “my friends end parties” liz phair - “6′1″“ fastbacks - “555, pt. 1″ this mix is feminist now swindle - “one track” shockabilly - “burma shave” temple of the dog - “say hello to heaven” amazing transparent man - “shove” cool soul asylum cover from dekalb illinois :)) the vindictives “eating me alive” midwests only!! the judys - “radiation squirm” gulfs only!! frogpond - “sleep” flipp - “rock-n-roll star” throwing muses - “red shoes” everclear - “santa monica” throwing muses on summerland??? mekons - “atone & forsaken” holidays - “take me home country roads” this is a good tone to lead up to killdozer... true believers - “all mixed up again” prince - “adore” beulah - “queen of the populists” eveclear - “rocky mountain high” (99x live acoustic--I don’t have a date for this actually) of montreal - “dustin hoffman thinks about eating the soap” heatmiser - “stray” rickie lee jones - “woody and dutch on the slow train to peking” tar - “viaduct removal” common rider - “carry on” the frogs - “u bastards” mudhoney - “this gift” hammerbox - “outside” fuck my mom would have loved this song if it had gotten the airplay it deserved in 1993... hammerbox on summerland!!!! letters to cleo - “little rosa” kay hanley on summerland!! nine pound hammer “wrongside of the road” hanson - “with you in your dreams” (3cg demo) hamson on summerland!!! fastbacks - “555, pt. 1″ again... fastbacks on summerland!!! face to face - “sensible” soul asylum - “happy” soul asylum on summerland!!!! television - “see no evil” pinq - “careful not to mention the obvious” the dickies - “nights in white satin” tar - “mel’s” truly - “chlorine” babes in toyland - “deep song” hole - “berry” hellbender - “half driven” hammerhead  - “new york? ...alone?” everclear - “malevolent” guzzard - “last”  archers of loaf - “tatyana” hum - “stars” hum on summerland die kreuzen - “don’t say please” this is not fair joanna newsom - “sadie” down by law - “peace, love and understanding” nirvana - “aneurysm” (1990 demo) hovercraft - “endoradiosonde” modest mouse - “cowboy dan” rage against the machine - “born of a broken man” skatalites - “scandal ska” pylon - “driving school” the vindictives - “babysitter” jimmy eat world - “ten” the get up kids - “lowercase west thomas” oh we’re doing this now? hot rod circuit - “knees” fine triple fast action - “the rescue” FINE  full disclosure i do skip emo diaries tracks at my discretion the amps - “bragging party” everclear - “am radio” this is not fair mxpx - “middlename” MXPX ON SUMMERLAND chokebore - “your let down” bob dylan - “you’re a big girl now” helmet - “primitive” pond - “filterless” blink-182 - “all the small things” local h - “ralph” tar - “over and out” pearl jam - “black” the gits - “sniveling little rat faced git” local h - “eddie vedder” >:) tar - “flow plow” i always misremember this as a subpop single so i’m like “i’m not amphetamine reptile biased?” but it was an a/r release, lol. brad wood produced it. lake michigan as hell  unicorns - “jellybones” this song makes me sad ever since i didn’t get to adopt the jellybones cat oblivion - “clark” desmond dekker - “jeserene” veruca salt - “one last time” veruca salt on summerland!!!! dead moon - “dead moon night” extremely dead moon on summerland fishbone - “i like to hide behind my glasses” dead moon - “on my own” paw - “sleeping bag” tar - “goethe” doc dart - “casket with flowers” smashing pumpkins - “zero” i don’t want billy corgan on summerland and i am sorry for that kicking giant - “&” kicking giant on summerland lmao shockabilly - “pile up all architecture” ween - “sorry charlie” sublime - “april 29, 1992 (miami)” heatmiser - “blackout” the clash - “pressure drop” hellbender - “pissant’s retrospective” the queers - “i won’t be” the vindictives - “circles” the beat farmers - “selfish heart” screaming trees - “end of the universe” 7 year bitch - “second hand” bourgeois filth - “above” nirvana - “scoff” the breeders - “cannonball” saturday looks good to me - “save my life” cara beth satalino - “good ones” communique - “dagger version” soul asylum - “sometime to return” sublime - “jailhouse” tullycraft - “twee” nuns - “wild” beyonce - “countdown” the replacements - “sixteen blue” living colour - “what’s your favorite color” britney - “why should i be sad” mdc - “church and state” alice in chains - “junkhead” rage against the machine - “mic check” everclear - “nervous and weird” soundgarden - “fresh tendrils” helmet - “army of me” the gits - “it all dies anyway” pansy division - “smells like queer spirit” mtx - “i’d do anything for you” 5 year sentence - “just a punk” pennywise - “nothing” mudhoney - “thirteenth floor opening” yesterday’s kids - “eighteen” mxpx - “punk rawk show” small brown bike - “zerosum” incubus - “trouble in 421″ hanson - “speechless” incubus - “circles” dead moon - “my time has come” (!!!!) first of all is this killdozer blink-182 - “here’s your letter” everclear - “electra made me blind” (nervous & weird take) saves the day - “through being cool” groovie ghoulies - “don’t go out into the rain (you’re gonna melt)” babes in toyland - “never” husker du - “target” guzzard - “biro” fairweather - “next day flight” mcr - “house of wolves” broadcast - “until then” liz phair - “never said” the dicks - “rich daddy” quasi - “the iron worm” mustard plug - “not again” janitor joe - “boyfriend” snapcase - “new academy” neil young - “someday” blindsided - “spaceman” placebo - “without you i’m nothing” the creeps - “lakeside cabin” solomon grundy - “time is not your own” the clash - “the card cheat” silversun pickups - “common reactor” lagwagon - “leave the light on” denali - “where i landed” system of a down - “highway song” sprinkler - “personality doll” the vindictives - “structure and function” unplugged” the queers - “ursula finally has tits” we’re entering no repeats territory  buffalo springfield - “expecting to fly” hit squad - “pictures of matchstick men” cows - “almost a god” hop along - “young and happy” pixies - “i’ve been tired” the fall - “spoilt victorian child” camper van chadbourne - “knock on the door” queens of the stone age - “tension head” choking victim - “war story” cool that we have gotten to drop by the greatest song ever recorded :) guttermount - “happy loving couples” audio karate - “nintendo 89″ tad - “pork chop” the kelley deal 6000 - “where did the home team go” colorfinger - “hateful” :} man or astroman - “evil plans of planet spectra” pere ubu - “arabian nights” accepting repeats for  new found glory - “my friends over you” cool moving on american steel - “optimist” tom petty & the heartbreakers - “even the losers” meat puppets - “another moon” black cat music - “wine in a box” wallside - “ready” crucifucks - “pig in a blanket” the bananas - “my charmed life”

KILLDOZER - “EARL SCHEIB,” UNCOMPROMISING WAR ON ART UNDER THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT, 1994. KILLDOZER ON SUMMERLAND

[fivepercentgodsandearths]

9 Reaches To Decode Black Panther **SPOILERS ALERT**   After seeing the Black Panther film I knew I had to pen a think piece to share what I saw. Not to debate the pros or cons of seeing it but to share with those who did see it some deeper insight into the symbolism, folklore and science throughout the film. Even though Black Panther is a 1966 comic developed by a couple of Jewish guys, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, when Christopher Priest, a black man, began writing the Black Panther comic in 1998, this character served as the inspiration behind the Marvel Studios film Black Panther. The story is about T'Challa, heir to a mythical NE African throne in the land of Wakanda; an isolated society comprised of 18 tribes who for centuries has possessed an alien element called vibranium that they acquired from a fallen meteor. Nearly indestructible and one of the most powerful substances on the planet, vibranium is used to create wealth and the highest technological advances known to humans. It is also the element that was used to forge Captain America's shield. Wisely hidden away from the outside world, the Black Panther and his council of tribal of elders known as the Taifa Ngao, have primarily kept Wakanda safe and free from outside influence for the majority of their existence. Like the Five Percent as in Wakandan culture, education or knowledge is viewed as a fundamental building block of its nation. As all things change, Wakandan culture is eventually discovered and the 10% [world’s powers] plot to pillage their vibranium. T’Challa’s father T'Chaka, the current Black Panther and King of Wakanda, is assassinated at the UN thus forcing T’Challa to step up and lead his people as the next Black Panther. The film covers his transition into that role and the challenges, literally, that come along with it. Before I get into the symbolism, folklore and science throughout the film, I think I need to give some context into why Black Panther Ain't Nuthing Ta F' Wit. First and foremost he is wealthier than any superhero in the DC or Marvel Universes. In other words, he's got more paper than Bruce Wayne, Tony Starks and Floyd Mayweather combined, and he has actual superpowers. Black Panther has super strength, psychic abilities, invisibility, super stamina, clairvoyance, master acrobat, healing factors, necromancy and other powers. If you, and especially the youth around you, have never really checked out the Black Panther comic I would encourage you to. If it's not you, what other fictional or nonfictional images of power are youth exposed to? If you cannot think of any, don't complain; either create them or support those who are creating them. Alright, here are some things I peeped in the Black Panther film that I think are worthy of sharing with you: 1. For my Yonians, central to the Wakandan culture was the worship of the Neteru Bast. Bast, in her ancient Kemetic zoomorphic form, is the symbol of the cat; what some people, particularly men, call a p*ssy. Partly symbolizing a protectress, Bast is the reasoning behind the powerful woman-led Dora Milaje warriors. This is also why present day f*ckboys seek to shack up with Bast women and take advantage of her Okoye loyalty. The heart-shaped sacred herb, a symbol of Bast's transferred power that enhances a person's strength, mobility, stamina, endurance and instincts, resembled a yoni and was cultivated in the subterranean regions of Wakanda... 2. A 'Monger' is a dealer or trader. 'Erik' is a Norse or Proto-Germanic name which means eternal ruler. Thus Erik Killmonger means "an eternal ruler who deals death." As a sexual innuendo of his toxic masculinity, his notches  for "bodies" [body counts] went well beyond his belt and covered his entire upper body. He clearly had no love for women as shown by the non-relationship with his mother, shooting his Bonnie & Clyde companion in the head, choking out a elder caretaker of the heart-shaped herb and demanding that she burn its sacred garden, slitting the throat of one of the Dora Milaje, slicing Nakia across her leg and almost murdering Shuri. This is what he did, yet many women have still shown sympathy for Killmonger's actions. "I understand what he was trying to do" I've heard many women say, "to fight for oppressed people" -even though there was no tangible evidence of him working with oppressed people, which includes women. This helped me better understand why some women, not all women, rationalize staying in abusive relationships, keep dudes around because the sex is Killmonger and follow conscious community miscreants; Stockholm syndrome. Some of us love words and potential yet fail to acknowledge what folks are actually doing. I've seen the argument that Killmonger is the result of being left in America, disconnected from his people, and it's not his fault. I agree that abandonment was not his fault and Killmonger's feelings about that family dysfunction were understandable; many black people in the wilderness of North America can relate and feel the same way. Yet his resolve with those feelings, as an eternal ruler who deals death, was not wise nor did it make him a hero. From his own mouth he prided himself on his assimilation into "the white man's" society, via his military experience, and he brought those colonialist ways to Wakanda. King T'Chaka was wrong for abandoning Killmonger as a child in America and Killmonger was wrong for how he handled that disappointment, as an adult, with his family and people. We need warriors with the aggression and passion of a Killmonger, especially as a Border tribesman, but not sitting on no throne. His inconsideration for other men and insensitivity to women, children and the society at large were qualities of a self appointed tyrant who rules by fear, not the qualities of a just and true King. Killmonger's "Bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from ships, cause they knew death was better than bondage" quote and other revolutionary words were noble but I didn't see one act that demonstrated his capacity to be a loving Husband [King], a Father raising children [successors to the throne] with integrity and a Man of his people wisely working with his counsel of elders. 3. The burial ritual to connect with Wakandan ancestors and inherit the Bastian power of the Black Panther is similar to the Recapitulation technique some warriors in indigenous tribes use to also connect with their ancestral past and gain clarity of their life purpose. In Freemasonic lore it's also symbolic to the shallow grave the Master Architect Hiram Abiff was buried in before he was raised with a lion's paw grip. After you select an appropriate burial spot, usually among trees and in an isolated area beyond human disruption, a shallow grave is dug East [head] to West [feet] about 2 feet deep that's a little longer and wider than ones body. Next layer the bottom with a blanket. After that search the area for sticks and large leaves to cover the tomb that stops the soil from filtering through. You start covering the grave from the bottom to the top and once it's almost complete you climb in and finish covering it as you lay inside leaving a small hole for air. Fasting is important before you do it and the length of time you remain varies. I've done it for 24 hours and the best time to leave the grave is sunrise or sunset. The whole idea is to meditate on our demise as a form of detachment from the world. An earthen self-deprivation chamber, this is literally a place to reflect upon the past and present life and what they can do in the future. 4. M'Baku, King of the Jabari Tribe, in the comic he is the leader of the White Gorilla Cult because he gained his superhuman powers by killing a white gorilla, bathing in its blood, eating its flesh, and then he took on the name Man-Ape. The M'Baku line, "If you say one more word, I'll feed you to my children! I'm kidding. We're vegetarians" in the film was a play on that comic book backstory. Although the mountain ranges M'Baku and his tribe inhabit is nowhere near the Caucasus Mountains, I found it interesting that pre-Farrakhanian Nation of Islam members under the Honorable Elijah Muhammad [THEM] openly taught that white people [devils] that were exiled from our homeland and living in the caves tried to graft themselves back into the original black man. In the process some became [white] gorillas. In fact, he taught that the entire monkey family are from the 2,000 year history of the white race living in the Caucasus Mountains. Although M'Baku carried a shillelagh, THEM also taught that the guards of these mountain boarders kept weapons [flaming swords] to stop these humanoids from coming back among the original people. The above image is from the first page of the 1998 Black Panther comic by Christopher Priest where Agent Ross remarks that, "ZURI was into his THIRD re-telling of how the great god T’Chaka ran the evil white devils out from their ancient homeland." Naw I don't think Stan Lee, Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole drew these parallels and wrote that. Christopher Priest obviously had knowledge of this and I could see the parallels. 5. After Get Out Chris Washington got WOKE, changed his gubment name to W'Kabi and started a rhinoceros farm on the fringes of Wakanda as leader of the Boarder tribe. After Rose 'Beckyed' him it's obvious he ain't been right since.   6. Tobias Whale is Killmonger's uncle; Killmonger's mother's brother. Whale developed a hatred for Black Lightning because N'Jobu reminded him of the Wakandans and the metahuman Black Panther who exiled albinos to the lands where they were hunted, killed and their bones ground up as a power potion, as Lady Eve reminded him. Green Light is a synthetic form of vibranium and when Quentin caught wind of what Killmonger was doing he came back to the Chi to re-stake his claim as a Frank Lucas-like vibranium plug for the 100. Lastly, Kevin was around at the end of the film asking T'Challa questions about his ship because he was with his family in Cali who happened to stay in the hood Killmonger grew up in. Kevin was out there laying low after shooting Ronnie. 7. When it comes to even just conceptualizing a Wakandian society, one of the downfalls of many men is trying to f*ck the Nakia's, Okoye's, Ayo's, Shuri's and Xoliswa's on their team instead of working with them. One of the downfalls of many women is allowing them to. 8. I loved seeing all of the Wakanda inspired regalia at the Black Panther movie premieres around the country. I haven't seen it since Kwanzaa and I look forward to seeing it again during Juneteenth. 9. Black Panther had the fifth biggest opening of all time and broke box office records during its opening weekend. It's the largest opening for a black Director, the second biggest opening for a Marvel Studios film and currently the #1 RATED FILM OF ALL TIME via Rotten Tomatoes. Not only does this demonstrate the earning potential of films told from our perspective but this, along with Get Out, is reshaping the false narrative that black themed films not doing box office numbers domestically and internationally. While some may see this as production houses and film companies becoming more open to our pitched ideas and potential larger pay dates, I see it as a watershed moment of self reliance and cooperative economics. Many of us already know our buying power as a black community, but willfully this galvanizes us to do more, culturally and artistically. Some felt as though nothing could top the response of Get Out, but here we have it, and this film won't be the last. Peace, Saladin Black Panther stars Chadwick Boseman, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong'o, Danai Gurira, Martin Freeman, Daniel Kaluuya, Letitia Wright and Winston Duke, with Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Andy Serkis. The film is directed by Ryan Coogler and produced by Kevin Feige with Louis D’Esposito, Victoria Alonso, Nate Moore, Jeffrey Chernov and Stan Lee serving as executive producers. Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole wrote the screenplay.

http://atlantisschool.blogspot.com/2018/02/9-reaches-to-decode-black-panther.html

[cgpsimpromptu-blog]

Psychick (Pt. 1)

By Ben Togut

Snow sugarcoated the towering evergreens. The man lay sprawled on the cool pavement, his limbs twisted beyond recognition, forming an ironic snow angel in the dusted fluff, a pained expression on his ghostly face. The Shell gas station sign flickered above the words “never forget” spelled out in a gasoline rainbow semicircle around the body.

I never expected him to come. I never expected the friendly creaking of the bright orange door to awaken me from my morning daze. I thought I’d sit on a coy, oak stool near the window, my pale face pressed against the frozen glass, the dark clouds forming an eerie halo over the sleeping city. I had just started unpacking after returning from my three month tour of India, teaching ESL and making underprivileged children feel like they’re worth something. A wispy voice whispers my name Vera in my ear like a distant lullaby I had once known. I spin around but no one is there. Must be the wind, I think. Must be the soft welcoming of the tiger we call morning, purring, inviting you into that indigo crescent of silence known as peace. I continue nibbling at my bland, lumpy oatmeal, unperturbed. Hughes, an Abyssinian cat I’d adopted from Chennai, purrs, curling his velvety body against my bare leg. I haven’t taken the poison in ten days. I’m ready. I pace to the bathroom, and flinging open my medicine cabinet, slam down the remaining three bottles of Zyprexa onto the countertop. Opening the lid to the toilet, I waterfall the pills into the bowl, each falling with a soft thunking sound. “Bye bye,” I wave as the toilet swallows my last remaining chance at sanity.  I grab the wrinkled note off of the coffee table and find Hughes�� favorite blue-tinged magenta pashmina underneath the expensive meerkat rug in the living room, wrapping it around his shivering skin. I can feel his walnut sized heart beat through the thin fabric as I walk out the door, leaving Hughes ensconced in his little nook where the wall meets the forest green Steinway piano before tapering into the claret walls of the hallway.

I live in the beating heart of Seattle, where the brisk ocean breezes fuse with musky pine cones, making a mélange of salty, wasted tears that fall in the unrelenting torrents of mid-October rain. Leaves of many colors, crimson, pumpkin, purple, casually coast to the ground, making a crunch squeak crunch against my beige UGGs as I clumsily fumble with my oversized velvet purse for the heck of it. Something my psychiatrist suggested was to keep myself occupied. Then again, my psychiatrist is a bald, oval headed man named Carl who always wears hideous maroon sweaters from the Gap. He thinks that “kick-ass brunette, schizophrenic, aspiring playwright, ” is an “unwise and detrimental personal description on your résumé,” but I disagree. I think it’s brilliant.

The rusted brick building is hugged by dead ribs of ivy and moss. Above the rotting rainbow wood door hangs an askew, pipe-cleaner sign that reads Saving Yourself from Yourself. I stare at the man who calls himself Devon, with the misshapen, closely cropped cherry mohawk. He leads me into the mismatched corridor of aubergine and peach and into the room of bleached concrete. People of varying degrees of chaos sit on dark bean bag chairs, sipping steaming beverages out of styrofoam cups. The calm one, Orion, sits in the center, raven hair elegantly framing his piercing emerald eyes.

“Welcome, welcome,” Orion projects.  He then goes into a recap of last week, hands whirling around each other, a clumsy windmill. “Janice,” gesturing to a wrinkled women with dirty, blond hair, “overcame her fear of… Goldfish?”

“No, no, NO ya silly!  Trail mix,” she screams; “TRAIL MIX!” she shrieks with more intensity, a witch burning at the stake.

“Chill out,” Orion responds, placing a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“Chill out…? Chill out…! Ok, ok. I’ll chill out when you stop patronizing me. You’re not my dad. I run the show, mister! I don’t need some teddy bear to cuddle…” With a crazed but collected look in her deep, sea blue eyes she jerks her head to the left, a glass doll with a broken neck, and begins talking as if to a small child. “I don’t need some low-class, wannabe therapist to tell me how to live my life. My psychosis is a beautiful thing, and who do you think you are, in your right mind, to try to take that away from me. Huh? HUH?!” Janice clutches a fistful of his shirt, squeezing with such intensity her inflamed knuckles turn a ghastly shade of white. With the other hand, she traces the outline of Orion’s olive features, gliding in circles around his prominent jawbone, where the hints of dark stubble have begun to creep along his face like a spider.

Orion maintains a serene expression, and staring straight into her poisonous glare, retorts, “Take your paws off of me and get out.”

“Fine. FINE!  Henry,” she shouts into space, “you can come out now. It’s time to go.” A prickly silence envelops the room.

“Leave now.”

“I’m looking for my son. I’m looking for my son. I’M LOOKING FOR MY SON!”

“Well, keep looking. The door is that way.”

Janice briskly strides across the room in four paces before whipping her head around from behind the door. She opens her mouth, but is silent. The look of a puzzled monkey comes across her face and she deftly shapes her fingers into small circles over her eyes, before ducking out of the room.

Silence is a funny thing. Not the absence of noise, but the stillness of being: when thought thins out into a fine layer of steam, reducing to the nervous grinding of gears, before ceasing to exist. Silence haunts you, a specter caressing your face with the back of its hand, invisible, but you almost shiver from its presence. Not me. Never. Silence is my soul mate, as I drape myself across my white-feathered ottoman, holding my hand as I stare at the peeling navy paint of my ceiling. A leak in one of its corners has caused a single drop of water to continuously drip, turning the carpet soggy. Its constant, pendulous motion almost hypnotizes me. Drip. Drop. Drip. My eyes become heavy and start to flutter.

Flashes of black and white blur before me, rapid at first, animated cartoonish legs pinwheeling across a blinding surface, slowing down to the clicking of a film reel in an antique projector. Click. Click. Vera. The voice  nears me, encroaching on the most distant corners of my mind. I try to move away from this devil, this monster, but my legs are suspending in time, swimming in syrup. My eyelids soar open, eyes transfixed on my rusting red alarm clock, registering 4:15 , before locking shut. Vera. Open. 4:28. Shut. Vera. Open. 5:00. Shut. Vera. Click click click. Open. Shut. Open. Shut. Click click click click click. My body is paralyzed in an awkward fetal position, only my fingers in motion skittering across the couch, whose once soft fabric pricks my skin. A cool sweat breaks out across my body. I jerk my head against the solid arm of the couch, pain blossoming from my head as I feel it smack into a substance with the metallic consistency of monkey bars. Finally, after what feels like centuries, I wake up. The alarm clock reads 9:00. Shit, I’m already an hour late for work.

I’ve worked at Dripping Hand Candles for six months now, named after our logo, a hand holding a candle with wax that drips down from the bottom and envelopes the hand. Approaching the store, I can already spot the manager, Phil, a man with faded paper white skin and stringy blond hair, glaring at me. The bell fixed to the top of the door jingles as I enter. Phil sets down a dark blue candle before coming towards me.

“Vera-”

“Chuck, I’m sorry-”

“It’s Phil.”

“Right, Phil, I’m sorry. This won’t happen again. I think my alarm clock is broken or something-”

“Vera, I am tired of you making excuses. It’s the third time this week that you’re more than an hour late.”

“I-”

“Sorry won’t cut it. Go in the back and help Regine with the candle puns.”

I step out of the aromatic store and into the brisk night air, my light, maroon sweater doing nothing to shelter me from the wind-chill. Vera. I turn around, but nobody is there. I keep walking, thinking my mind is just playing tricks on me like it always does. Vera, you know I’m here. Don’t deny it. I start walking faster, covering my ears with the palms of my hands to stop the noise. Vera. Don’t be silly. You know you can’t shut me up. I start screaming, screaming for him to stop talking, but he won’t, he never will. I frantically take my boots off, leaving them on the ground, and barefoot, I start to run. I don’t know where I’m going, and I don’t care, as long as it’s away from him. I run from bright yellow taxis and angry mobs that don’t exist. I run from dirty old men and beech trees and shrieking babies and black cats, but it’s no use. You can’t run away from me.  My head smacks into a black telephone pole, and my body violently jerks backward towards the ground.

[hellofriendsandneighbors]

Going To Rehab During A Global Pandemic

The first time I went to rehab, which from here on out will be called habcamp, my sister drove me. It was about an hour and a half drive to the old monastery where it was housed. The day was cool and shadow-less, the monastery pretty much the same, and as we drove up the hill my sister commented on the t-shirt dress I was wearing, my denim jacket, something about how stylish I looked heading into what appeared to be an insane asylum.

The third time I went to habcamp, I’m pretty sure my sister drove me, but I can’t recall what I wore or if we spoke because by this time I had switched from wine to vodka and all I remember is singing Dance Monkey in my head, and possibly aloud. After two previous stays at habcamp and all those detoxes in between, after all those meetings and all those coins and congratulations, my shame had grown, as did suspicion surrounding me to fail again, so my small, pony bottles of wine were too big to swindle in to my room past my the watchful eyes of my mother and my sister and I started in with the shooters. In an emergency and the proper sports bra I could hide one in my cleavage.

I could hide 3 in my jeans at the small of my back, 1, sometimes 2, in each cotton arm warmer, 2 behind my knees with that one pair of jeans. Had it been winter my knit cap would have held 3, maybe 4. The coin pouch in my wallet just barely zipped up one for the morning.

And I’d need one in the morning, which is how bad it got again, and why I went to habcamp again.  I couldn’t keep up. I was running on a rolling log, balancing lies, avoiding withdrawals, constantly thinking about my morning ‘medicine.’

First thing I’d do is shoot that down so that my heart would beat normally, my cold sweat would evaporate, and I’d no longer dry heave when I considered toothpaste. But most importantly, and really the only thing I could not just suffer through, was that the physical agitation, the anxiety, the feeling of electrical fires in my spine, would immediately cool off. I can still imagine that feeling, 9 months free from it--like the removal of a metal claw that was dug into my spine, dragging along the nerves. Like what the word quench feels like when you’re really suffering thirst.

As had been the case in all the many cases before, I hadn’t been drinking to get drunk. I had been drinking simply to quench. Quench anxiety. Quench self doubt. Quench loneliness. Quench fear. Quench being in my forties, quench being single, still floundering in my career. Quench being a cat mom and only a cat mom, and maybe only wanting to be a cat mom but quenching the fact that perimenopause is here. Quenching what really got me so fucking thirsty in the first place and that is the fact that in all of my life I never spent the time with myself--for myself and dedicated to myself-- to get to know exactly who I am.

So that is what is bringing me here to this blog. I’m learning so much on my new journey being alcohol-free. The first and most important thing that I have learned--I heard it before, I understood it intellectually but i never really understood it viscerally like i do now--is that becoming sober from alcohol is so very much more than just putting down the bottle. I am going to share some of what I have learned here. I’ll tell stories of some of the funny and wonderful things that happened at hapcamp, like about the woman I met who could hide a full half-dozen shooters in her cleavage, along with a small bag of fries. Or about the man who got the A wing mixed up with the B and bolted into my room as I napped and just exploded into my toilet, thinking it was his own, grunt-sighing with relief. Had it not been during a global pandemic where the disease is airborne, his mistake would have been funnier, but alas, the custodians suited up like they were a swat team defusing a bomb.

I’ll also write about some more serious things that I learned about through living them, such as PAWS--Post Acute Withdrawel Syndrome, and let you know what has helped and not helped me. And I will be all over the place with my emotions and my styles because, as I mentioned, I am going through The Change, and that’s full of surprises, oh boy. I will be honest about the difficulties and the low times, and I will completely dork out on the joys! One thing I can say for certain is about Joy: When it visits me now that I am sober, Joy’s visit is a palpable one!

If you would like to join me, I would love the company.  -Peace

[nedsecondline]

Every Heroine Needs A Side-Kick. In Night-Time Bangalore, Mine Is My Dog

By Bhanu Sridharan

Photo courtesy Roger Price via graffiticreator.org

Tube was a semi-street dog when he followed us home. It was 2012. My friends and I had just graduated with a masters in wildlife biology. There were six of us, four women and two men—including my boyfriend—and we were renting two flats in a small building in an obscure area called Sir MV Layout in North Bangalore. My poor parents were just getting over the fact that I didn’t move back home after two years in a hostel, and that I was sharing a house with both men and women when I had to explain the presence of a dog in the house.

We were walking home after a party (in er… high spirits) and at some point noticed this dog walking back with us. Tube slept on our verandah that night but over the next few weeks, he moved into the house one room at a time, until somehow he was sleeping on my bed and kicking me off it. We were both just entering adulthood and neither of us wanted to get our own food, but as you can imagine only one of us won that battle. While the humans learnt to cook, pay bills and be biologists, Tube learnt to bark and sharpen his teeth on our footwear and debit cards. Eventually, he found himself a huge cow bone. He was fiercely protective of that bovine remain—nobody else could touch it. That’s when I realised that we may never agree on politics.

Other than that, Tube was an easy dog to live with. He slept all day on a sofa in the living room and at night after dinner, joined his pack of friends outside. He would usually be gone from 10 in the night to 4 or 5 in the morning. He would knock on the door (with his paw, in case you were wondering) in the wee hours of the morning and cry outside my bedroom window until I let him in. This went on for four years.

As must happen, my friends moved out one by one. I married my boyfriend and he promptly left the country to pursue a PhD, while I decided to write about wildlife rather than study them. As soon as I had made this decision, I decided to procrastinate by focusing on other things, like moving houses. So I shifted to a new place, a whole two km away, in an area called Sahakarnagar. After four years of living with an assortment of friends and my husband, suddenly it was just woman and dog. We turned up on this beautiful street with a jackfruit tree, a pongamia tree and two huge raintrees. Tube wasn’t impressed.

I could see his point—dogs aren’t monkeys. He felt marooned in this new place; he had lost his territory and pack. And somehow I had chosen the only street in Bangalore with no other dogs. Actually there was one dog; an elderly one-eyed dog who did not like Tube. In fact most dogs didn’t like Tube. So he couldn’t just go out freely. That’s when it dawned on me that I would now have to take him out for walks every day. Something I had never done before.

On our first day out for a walk, Tube tried to mark my neighbours’ car and he has never given up. You can forget about having friendly neighbours after that. So we walked around looking for suitable car-free, dog-friendly streets where he could roam freely. It was during these explorations that I discovered a lively living neighbourhood. Sahakarnagar and its surrounding areas are relatively new suburbs that have exploded in value thanks to Bangalore airport. A surprising number of trees soften the huge houses that have sprung up here. I would drag my dog through these streets every morning, evening and night. Unlike old Bangalore neighbourhoods such as Basavanagudi or Rajajinagar, the streets are not filled with gulmohars, tabubias and copperpods. The most common trees here are pongamia, Singapore cherry and a mix of raintrees, bahunias and coconut trees. Occasionally, a jackfruit or mango tree would pop up.

A red whiskered bulbul. Photo courtesy Bhanu Sridharan

Most people would walk their dog on a wide road parallel to a railway tack. This railway track runs from north Bangalore to the Yeshwanthpur railway station in the west. For those who say walking your dog is great exercise, pardon me while I scoff at you. Tube sees no point in running, unless we are chasing or being chased by a dog. Walking him involved a lot of standing around, while he sniffed every single pile of dog poop and rubbish. Because I didn’t want to look down at what caught his attention, I started looking up, at the Singapore cherry trees lining this road. These trees were constantly flowering and filled with fruits and birds. In the morning, purple-rumped sunbirds drank nectar from the flowers with their long bills. Pale-billed flowerpeckers, tiny enough to fit in the palm of my hand, would eat the fruits, sharing space with squirrels. In the evenings, rose-ringed parakeets, barbets, jungle crows and jungle mynas would settle on the trees, loudly announcing their presence.

But Tube was soon bored of this bourgeois life, of orderly walking and sharing defecation spots with large pedigree dogs. These quiet streets held no appeal for him. I think he also found me inadequate. I could never walk as fast as him, slow down at the right bush or clear off when a friendly dog approached. We were also frequently disagreeing about which tree to stop next to—Tube had no time for my bird-watching. I realised that these outings would be most fun if we could both do our own thing. That’s when we crossed the railway track.

Tube eating lantana. Photo courtesy Bhanu Sridharan

The railway track is a long gash, separating the affluent neighbourhoods of Sahakarnagar from the empty spaces that will soon be affluent neighbourhoods in Rajiv Gandhi Nagar. Across the railway track we discovered a land divided into 30×40 sites. Some of them were being turned into huge houses, but there were plenty of empty plots filled with bushes of castor, calotropes and lantana. Grasses and reeds almost made the area feel like a grassland. Early mornings here were filled with migrant labourers defecating in the open, before building massive bathrooms for the area’s future residents. But Tube loved these parts—here he could walk free of the leash. He sniffed and marked bushes, sand piles laid out for construction, and garbage strewn on the side of the road. Occasionally, he would flush out an ashy prinia hiding in the lantana. Parakeets, jungle mynas, wagtails and black drongos would pass us by. Satisfied with our spot, we came here every morning and evening. But at night I stuck to the railway track road, close to my house.

It’s not because I felt unsafe. But thanks to his past life, Tube became alert and excited after 9 pm. He would want to join every howling dog and investigate every passing pack. Sometimes, he would just sit on a pavement and watch the empty street. It is a huge conflict of interest, because I wanted to sleep at night and wake up in the morning. By sticking to the boring street, I tried to convince him that there wasn’t much happening at night.

Others did worry for my safety at that hour. One of my neighbours (who attempted to lecture me about having boys in my house at 11 in the night) tried to dissuade me from walking Tube after 9 in the night. When I refused to take his advice, he offered to wait up for me to come back into the building every night. He gave up when his wife reminded him that he had to wake up early and take his children to school. Passing policemen have asked me why I’m out so late. There are criminal elements at night they tell me. Sometimes, I tell them to catch the criminals and leave me alone; on more peaceful nights though, I just shrug and point to the dog, who will move things along by growling. Elderly men occasionally warned me that there are snakes about at this time. So I try to tell them that I am a trained wildlife biologist and know what to do, only to realise that I had better leave because my dog is peeing on their car.

Women rarely show concern for my safety at night. Admittedly, there aren’t too many around at night, but occasionally they will turn out in groups of two and three enjoying the night air or taking in a brisk after-dinner walk. They never look surprised or worried by the sight of me roaming alone. Occasionally, people catch me staring at an electric pole, with my mouth hanging open and Tube desperately tugging at the leash. I would be watching a pair of spotted owlets or a beautiful barn owl. Of course by the time I could show them the birds, they would have flown away, leaving me pointing at nothing. People always walk away quickly when this happens.

Winter is my favourite season as a birdwatcher. Birds escaping the harsh cold weather of the Himalayas and Europe come down to peninsular India. Warblers, flycatchers, eagles and other birds of prey make the long journey down to warmer parts, where I imagine them settling down, relaxing and fattening up. There are certain birds that mark the arrival of winter. Down south, I think it must be the Blyth’s reed warbler. By October, I began hearing a familiar chak chak from the lantana bushes. It is a small dull-looking brown bird—but here all the way from places like Kazakhstan and Mongolia to spend winter amidst garbage and rubble and Tube’s ungainly scrambling. By late December, other visitors had come down. Hundreds of rosy starlings occupied every inch of an electric transformer, wires, bushes, trees and the ground. They are really pretty birds with a pale pink body and a jet black head and wings. A flock of starlings are called a murmuration. I understood why when I saw about 300 of them arrive together, weaving through the sky in synchrony one evening. By the next morning, they had split up into smaller groups of about 30 to 60. Up close, they are a crude noisy bunch, squawking loudly and surely quarrelling with their cousins, the mynas.

Photo courtesy Ron Knight via Wikimedia Commons

Further up, near some new apartments is a huge fig tree. Most trees don’t fruit in winter, but figs do. A fruiting fig tree will provide for almost everybody. Barbets, parakeets, rosy starlings, spotted doves, mynas, crows and pigeons flock to these trees. A golden oriole, another winter visitor, has settled down here. This area is right next to the GKVK campus, a huge agricultural research space. GKVK has a mix of agricultural fields, orchards and tiny patches of the original scrub forest from which Bangalore has been carved out. Birds passing by this area on their way into the campus were a frequent sight. A common kestrel (a small falcon), a rufous treepie (a member of the crow family) and grey hornbills occasionally pass by.

Beside the fig tree is a plot of land fenced by a huge concrete wall—we both always peek in there. Tube has to climb a pile of rocks and jump onto the wall to look, but he makes the effort. I don’t think he think he finds this exercise particularly rewarding, but we would find three green bee-eaters sitting in there, waiting for the sun to come up, so they could snatch up little insects that flew about then. Occasionally, a startled Indian robin would rush past us. This is usually the end of the walk. We would never go beyond this spot because there was a sweet dog that Tube hated. I wasn’t allowed to be friendly with any dogs he didn’t like. It’s oppressive, but I kept a stiff upper lip and turned back

Towards the end of February, tragedy struck. Tube was badly hurt on one of our walks and we were house-bound for three weeks. We only ventured out for him to pee and shit or visit the vet. The rest of the time was spent cleaning his injuries and finding new ways to feed him his medicines. During his worst days, he spent all day in my bathroom, maybe because it was cool and dark. I would sit with him there, trying to comfort him while he whimpered continuously in pain. I spent hours there: reading, watching movies and American comedy shows mocking Donald Trump, on my laptop. I love my dog, but I felt my sanity ebbing during those times. After about 10 days, he started leaving the bathroom for short periods and sitting under the dining table. So I set up my laptop there and tried to start working on that writing thing. It was then that I was really grateful for the trees in my neighbourhood. From my second floor window, adjacent the dining table, I had lovely views of the canopy of a kadamba tree, a coconut tree and a jumble of bahunia, gulmohar and badam behind my house. From the kitchen, I could look into the canopy of the raintree that stands in the front. I had forgotten until then, that a pair of black kites had a nest in there. I had seen the female sitting in the nest for almost two months, but I was never very interested.

A black kite and it’s nest. Photo courtesy Bhanu Sridharan.

Black kites are basically one of the most common birds you will see in Bangalore and in most Indian cities. The female was standing in the nest and looking down at something. I grabbed my binoculars and looked through the metal grille surrounding my kitchen utility. A furry chick stood uncertainly in the nest, staring at the mother. Its eyes and head looked huge on its tiny body, while the curved beak typical of a bird of prey looked almost comical—nothing remotely threatening about its appearance. Soon, through my binoculars, I spot another smaller chick. Watching them every day became a ritual. Sometimes mid-morning, the female would leave them alone for a bit and the larger older chick would peek out over the rim of the nest looking forlorn. In the afternoon, the mother would feed the hungry chicks, while they screamed for more. A black kite sounds like a horse whinnying; the chicks sound exactly the same but higher-pitched. Black kites will often nest on water tanks on top of tall buildings. But watching them on a tree like that, reminded me that they did have some wilderness in them.

As March rolled by, things started looking up. Tube slowly started doing much better. He left the bathroom much more, he didn’t cry as much and let me clean his wounds. We were walking as far as the railway track road again; he even tried to cross the track a couple of times. As the weather turned warmer, other birds started breeding or at least courting. Birds were pairing up and males were calling all around, marking territory and advertising to females. Male pied bushchats—small black birds common in dry open areas of peninsular India—were singing loudly from their perches on electric wires.

At the kadamba tree outside my dining table office, tailorbirds were calling loudly and a pair of jungle crows had built a nest. Crows are aggressively protective of their nest. While the female cawed loudly from the nest each day, the male would chase away every bird, big or small. Black kites, bulbuls, pigeons and barbets would suddenly find themselves being unceremoniously escorted off the tree by a large (or depending on the size of the victim, small) black figure. But they reserved a special anger for the koels, and understandably so. Koels are brood parasites. They lay eggs in the nests of other birds like crows, who then raise the koel chicks mistaking them for their own. Outside my window, a male koel would call out loudly from a nearby pongamia tree, in what seemed to be a move to distract, while the female sneaked up on the nest in the adjacent kadamaba tree. It never seemed to work. The crows would always find the female skulking on their tree and chase her and the male for good measure. This happened every day and then one afternoon I noticed both the crows left the nest unattended. Right on cue, a female koel flew onto the lower-most branch of the tree. Taking a circuitous route, she hopped cautiously to the nest right at the top and peeked in. She then looked around, jumped in and was out within a minute. I excitedly called my husband, who is much better with the birds. He confirmed that it was enough time for a koel to lay an egg. Eventually, the poor unsuspecting crows returned to their nest. In about two more weeks, I hope to find out if there is a little koel chick being fed by these jungle crows.

Blyth’s reed warbler. Photo courtesy Shankar70 via Wikimedia Commons

Today, Tube decides he has had enough of these short stints on the boring railway track road. He drags me towards the railway crossing, looking defiant. I relent and we cross. For the first time in days, he looks truly happy. He is not off the leash; I don’t have the courage to do that. But he marks every lantana bush and looks longingly at garbage piles, while I try to explain the risk of infection. I am not looking forward to birdwatching though. It is getting hot and I expect all the winter migrants would have left. I feel a pang thinking that I didn’t see them off. But then I hear the familiar chak chak. The Blyth’s reed warbler is still here, enjoying the warm but not too hot sun. And at the fig tree, the fruits have gone but a few rosy starlings are still there. They are diminished in number but the ones that remain are in good spirits, looking happy to be here. Just like my silly dog.

The post Every Heroine Needs A Side-Kick. In Night-Time Bangalore, Mine Is My Dog appeared first on The Ladies Finger.