#normality is death. wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

[kabutone]

so i was wondering why people suddenly don’t care about covid anymore despite the fact that not much has changed since 2020 and what HAS changed has been changing for the worst. pretty much the ONLY better thing is that if you’re vaccinated you’re less likely to straight up Die or have severe symptoms, which is good! don’t get me wrong that’s good! but that ALONE doesn’t do much cause the new variants are still just as likely to cause LC except they’re MORE contagious this time! and even if you’re vaccinated you can still get infected and you can still suffer from LC AND you can still spread it if you’re sick. so, we have not improved by much since 2020.

and i realized that 1. maybe most people are simply bad people and they don’t have the capacity to care for other human lives for very long. perhaps myself, and my beloved friends and family that still mask, were blessed with a superhuman empathy and incredibly smart brain, and we are leagues above everyone else or something /s. and 2. when people say “new normal” they don’t mean “we care for each other more now” they mean “we’re going to settle for death and not take any steps to prevent it.” cause here’s the thing, when alex jones called the sandy hook shooting a conspiracy theory, everyone was horrified right? and rightly so, large scale child death is nothing pleasant. but nobody is saying “school shootings are just normal now! don’t live in fear, children are just going to get shot in their classrooms now, and we should all just accept it! if your kid dies, sucks!” cause that’s insane right.

like maybe there are SOME people that are saying that. im sure there’s some insane people that are shooting advocates out there. but all us normal people would agree that it’s bad right? a lot of these people that are minimizing covid are otherwise sensible, smart, reasonable people. they would never advocate for school shootings. and now i know that gun violence is NOT being properly addressed in america, but for the most part, the majority of people are against it. even the conservatives that are scared of gun restrictions, im sure it’s not because they want to shoot up a school, it’s for some other reason like hunting or a sense of self defense. like i’m fairly positive they’re not fighting for their right to shoot up a school like i hope to god im right but they ALSO want shootings to stop, right? they just don’t want it the means of getting there to be stricter gun laws?

so anyway. what if the gov was like “when you get mad, you can take some deep breaths. you can listen to music. or you can go to a crowded area and just start shooting. you do you ❤️” and we would be against that right. like yes, a shooting happens every few days in the US now because that’s how bad things have gotten. but imagine how outraged most people would be if the government was like “we are no longer going to take steps to stop shootings. do whatever you want with your gun we don’t care” that would be completely irresponsible right? anyway. i can adjust to a new normal where masks, sanitation, and caring for your community become commonplace. i cannot adjust to a new normal where mass death becomes the norm and human life is worthless

[gatheringbones]

["Southern humor, especially I think, plays with irony, with several levels of truth and lies. That's because truth, like justice, has been pretty besmirched by white Southern culture, a culture built on a great lie: that Native Americans and Africans were less than human and therefore could be killed or enslaved. A complimentary lie is the lie of normalcy (taught so well in Southern Sunday schools and churches): Jesus (fairskinned and blond) loves me, so I am normal and good (white, straight, Christian), better than those deviants from the norm (Blacks, queers, Jews, for instance). This notion of normalcy is really quite unnatural— a lie— since everyone is a bit peculiar. People lie to protect each other and themselves from what is falsely established as truth. The habit of white lies is the heart of Southern manners and civility and the great gentleness that exists, along with great violence, in Southern People.

Again, let me illustrate. Last year I called my parents in my Alabama home town town to wish my father happy Father's Day. My sister, who was visiting, answered and gave me the big news: "Mayab, Mayab, something TERRIBLE just happened. They caught the Methodist preacher shoplifting at the Revco drugstore!" When my father got on the phone, I said, somewhat amused, "Happy Father's Day— I heard they caught the preacher shoplifting" (haha). His woebegone tone let me know immediately that mine had been all wrong. My father: "Yes, I just got back from the jail" (his voice here slow and sad). Me: "Do you think he did it?" (trying not to be too inquisitive.) Him: "Well, he said to me, he said, 'John Fletcher, I got caught doing something I shouldn't have done.'" And my father said, "Mayab, I wish he hadn't told me that. I wish he hadn't told me."

So here you have a situation where an entire town expects a man to be— or pretend to be— abnormally perfect, as the preachers in small towns must be; and when he cannot live up to it, the whole situation is potentially tragic. He and his family can be destroyed by people who might sorrow to do it, but who cannot conceive of challenging the community's world view. Given this situation, the best thing to do is, as my mother says, "Lie like a dog."

Another example of this instinct to lie out of kindness shows in the story of Lisabeth, a woman who lived with her two sisters in the house behind mine all her life, until she died this year at the age of eighty-three. Now I knew in my bones that Lisabeth was a lesbian, as well as I know that I'm one. She always encouraged me in my dykiest attitudes. She saw them rightly as the strongest, clearest parts of my personality. When my mother called this year to tell me that Lisabeth was dead, she explained that Lisabeth was buried in her best brown pants and t-shirt— and that she, my mother, had worn slacks to the funeral because "Lisabeth never did like me in a dress." My mother said, through our tears, "She was a sweet, strange little thing." Strange. Eccentric. But NOT lesbian. My mother resisted that interpretation. On a visit home the fall before she died, I had suggested to my mother, quite discreetly, that Lisabeth and I had things in common. My mother did not answer then. She did manage to inject gratuitously into an entirely different conversation the next day: "You know, Lisabeth REALLY DOES like men," her main evidence for this being that Lisabeth would terrify my sixty-five year old father every night when he brought over her supper by asking him to get in bed with her— which she must have known by that time was like crawling in bed with Death. My mother interpreted as sexual interest in men what was clearly to me revenge. And she resisted my naming Lisabeth lesbian out of protection for her, a protection the entire town had extended most of her life, protecting her from the truth of her life, which they thought could not be uttered because they knew if it had been, they might have had to destroy her, rather than to reject the communal world view (which, itself, could not be changed, ordained as it was by God and Robert E. Lee).

Lying, then, is built into white Southern life. As Southern mothers tell their Southern daughters, "If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything." And great silences loom around the supper table. The diary of Mary Boykin Chestnut suggests the historic dimension of this need to deny the truth. She is visiting Mrs. Jefferson Davis in 1861, at a time when the war wasn't going so well for the Confederacy: "Went to pay my respects to Mrs. Jefferson Davis. She met me with open arms. We did not allude to anything by which we are surrounded."

And in my white Southern Family, much got swept under the rug— dust, arms, feet, skeletons, dead squirrels, whole bodies."]

Mab Segrest, My Mama's Dead Squirrel: Lesbian Essays on Southern Culture, Firebrand Books, 1985

[siberlius-moving]

i know i said no essay bUT HERE’S A LONG ONE

- spoilers for beast au ahead -

BEAST: On being human and alive

What does it mean to be human? What does it mean to be living? 

The characters here refer to Beast AU’s characters, but I will specify when I am referring to the main universe’s respective characters.

Dazai and Akutagawa: what is a beast? who is the beast?

Dazai in the Beast AU, having glimpsed into the alternate universes, had concocted an elaborate plan to ‘save’ an universe where Odasaku got to write his novel. I would like to think, that this Dazai saw the lives of other Dazais who had left the Port Mafia and lived a purposeful life where he could genuinely be a good person and help others, surrounded by people he cares about and who also genuinely care for him (thus, in spite of all the suicide jokes, Dazai in main universe is actually clinging onto life pretty tightly). But Dazai in the Port Mafia was still a person who hadn’t learnt to appreciate human life as being something more than the act of moving and breathing. As smart as he was, he hadn’t had the maturity to understand empathy, sympathy, and the value of having connection with others. Main universe’s Dazai, in fact, is still learning to do so. He has a long way to go, but you realise that it is his connections with people like Oda, Atsushi and the ADA that give him purpose to live another day, and help him be so much more successful in pulling off his schemes since people actually trust and open up to him. You can argue that he would still have been successful being his old Port Mafia self, except with a lot more deaths and violence. But, he would have lived a very short life. Which, was what happened in the Beast AU. 

Beast AU’s Dazai, latching onto the regret of main universe’s Dazai, and encouraged by his own lack of will to live in his present life, decided that this universe didn’t matter (since he technically had already ‘lived’ in other timelines) and set on a path to help Oda finish writing a novel. It is incredibly selfish, because for everyone else, this was the only life they ever had, would ever lived. By the end of the book, Dazai realised this. He got called out by Oda for it. In their one and only meeting, Oda noted that Dazai was almost childlike in the way he tried to recreate a friendship that never existed. When Oda told Dazai that they were not friends and that he would do everything in his power to get Akutagawa back, Dazai understood. At the last stage of his grand plan, where he was to die, it had seemed like he got what he wanted - Oda had his book written and had led a nice life after all. But was it really what Dazai wanted? Was he not just slave to the main universe’s Dazai’s wishes? 

Akutagawa in Beast AU isn’t very much different from Akutagawa in the main universe, at least until Dazai came about and changed everything. Dazai in the Beast AU, had become the Port Mafia boss at a really young age. All the immaturity and issues mentioned above get ramped up here. He controlled the port mafia with an iron fist. I would think it was harder for him, because at least for Mori, he had years to build his way up. The rumours that Dazai killed Mori to usurp his position made it harder for Dazai to consolidate his power. He knew that he needed multiple figures of fear to rule. In the main universe, Dazai was an executive who didn’t know the existence of Atsushi. Akutagawa was the only one he could mould into a similar role he was looking for. Thus, Beast AU’s Dazai went to Akutagawa first. 

But in the main universe, Dazai realised too late that Akutagawa was too 'wild’. He was a blunt kind of mass weapon of destruction, too much of a wild card. In any case, Dazai was just an executive then, and Akutagawa served his purpose most of the time, and Mori had a good range of competent supporters he could use. Chuuya actually respected and was extremely loyal to Mori. In the Beast AU, Dazai didn’t have that kind of support. But he needed one, controllable weapon from the shin soukoku for his future plans. He tested Akutagawa by letting him kill all the gang members (in the main universe, Dazai had them killed as a ‘gift’ to Akutagawa to entice him to join Port Mafia). Akutagawa killed them extremely brutally, almost animalistically. Too wild for Dazai’s needs. That was okay, because Atsushi was perfect, and Dazai knew of Atsushi’s existence. Atsushi had a moral compass and knew right from wrong. He was only uncontrollable when influenced by his ability and he turned into a tiger, but this can be managed by a brutal spiked choker around his neck. His conscience, along with his fragile mentality, allowed Dazai to perfectly control his actions by using said conscience against Atsushi, without the unpredictable risks that Akutagawa posed.

Here’s the important thing: Dazai thought that Akutagawa was a ‘beast’. A beast is a thing controlled by its nature. It cannot be controlled by anything else besides a severe master. It is dangerous, it is wild, it is irrational, but it is innocent. After all, it is only doing what its instincts call for it to do. How can one be guilty, when it does not know what it is doing is wrong? If it is evil, then all it knows is evil deeds. Nothing one does can change it. After all, Akutagawa was inclined towards destruction, and he was talented in it. He tends towards irrational destruction with utter disregard for his or others’ lives. Gin was injured while saving Akutagawa during the massacre, and he abandoned her for mindless, hopeless revenge. This fact was used against Akutagawa - Dazai rejected him over it and took Gin away. Dazai told Gin that Akutagawa had abandoned her for violence and would abandon her again because when it came down to it, he was a destructive beast who cannot ignore his nature and he cannot love the way normal humans do. Akutagawa proved Dazai’s point when he attacked Atsushi for calling him out on this, even though Atsushi was leading him to Gin. Gin, out of resentment and love, left Akutagawa so that Akutagawa could live on, like he was a wolf that belonged to the forest.

But Dazai was wrong. Akutagawa had lived in environments that had shaped him to be extremely reactive, violent and constantly on survival mode. He would react to threats with immediate violence. But that did not make him inherently a beast. Even he had nothing, he acted as a protector for the children, and led them as much as he could. After Oda found him, offered him food and shelter and gave him a chance to live a life beyond constant survival, he flourished. He bonded with Tanizaki over the love of their sisters. He agreed to ADA’s conditions for helping him find his sister even though he could have simply attacked them for answers. When Kenji showed him the rice plains he was enraptured by the sight. He learnt to plant rice with Kenji and had continued to help him with farming even when he had no reason to help him. He sucked at paperwork but was really good at keeping with Kunikida’s schedules and helping him track and catch criminals (and without killing them!). He helped Oda babysit 15 kids by making playgrounds, showing up for their PTAs and helping them be more confident in school. When he had the opportunity, he could choose to be kind. When he had the patient guidance of a loving community, he could learn from them and change. (Minor scene at the start of the novel: When Akutagawa gets hot tea spilt onto him, Tanizaki and Kunikida sensed instinctive bloodlust on him. But what he really did, was to catch the tea cups and the serving tray swiftly with Rashomon and hand it back to the waitress.)

Oda pointed it out rightly - Akutagawa was an emotional person and he cared too much. When things he cared about were hurt, these emotions took control of him and he would lash out in rather violent ways. And he would feel guilty over it. But, how can a beast feel guilty? It is interesting that in the Beast AU, Atsushi was hardly ever referred to as a beast, even when he was famous for being unable to recognise friend from foe when he was in a tiger state. One of the more obvious parallels is then when Akutagawa noted that Atsushi was driven mad by guilt. And Akutagawa slowly saw it in himself. They were similar that way - both were hounded by the guilt of a irreversible mistake that destroyed/changed their lives. Akutagawa never forgave himself for leaving Gin alone that night when Dazai took her away, to the point that he wanted to die. He only wanted to find and kill two people. One was Dazai. The second was himself. He was afraid of this uncontrollable beast he felt was inside him. 

Oda told him not to chase the beast for a good reason - Akutagawa was not a beast. But he could choose to be one, if he followed that path of no return. Kunikida at the crucial fight point, when urging Akutagawa to stand up and continue fighting said it too: that Akutagawa was not an evil person, but he could choose to be a good person if he chose to become a detective with the ADA. And Akutagawa chose. He allowed Atsushi to live, and told him to keep on fighting and living. He continued working with ADA, trying to solve cases and save people, so that he could prove to himself that he was not a beast, and that one day, Gin could see that he was better and came back to him. I think, even in the main universe, Dazai knows he is wrong about Akutagawa - he may have given up in trying to teach non-terrorising skills in Akutagawa when he was still in the Port Mafia, but he has since tried to amend his mistakes through Atsushi.

Being able to make choices is what makes you human. Choosing to do things beyond our instincts, our nature. We are good, because of the choices that we have made. Likewise, we are bad, because of what we have done. Akutagawa was born to have traits of a rabid hellhound, but he didn’t become one. No one tamed him. What happened, was that he had met with kindness. He had friends. He shared his thoughts and his past and his feelings to the members of the ADA, and they had connected with him and helped him out as much as they could, even when he had yet to fulfil the ‘spirit’ part of the exam. Kenji and Akutagawa had an interesting conversation in the fields. Kenji pointed out that while his companions had died, he had continued to live well. Akutagawa then wondered if it was because his companions have given him the best parts of themselves for him to live on. It is the connection with others that make life worthy of living, that make life mean something. To be human, is to make choices. To be judged on our worth as a human, is to be judged by our very actions. This is inherent in what it means to be alive: living is only worthy when we can share our lives with others. 

Now contrast this with Dazai. Did he really have a choice? If he did, he made some dreadfully selfish ones that destroyed and traumatised the people around him. The Dazai in this world had his own experiences that made him a separate person from the other Dazais after all - his actions and the consequences were his and his own to bear. Who was he to have something that the other Dazais had worked to achieve? The Dazais in other universes may have lost Oda, but Oda was a friend, who shared memories and time with him, who understood and seen him. The loss was devastating, but main universe’s Dazai didn’t truly lose Oda. Oda was still alive, in his mind, giving him the motivation to live on, reminding him to reach out to others and telling him that he was not alone. Dazai in the Beast AU was truly alone. He might have thought that he could replicate a connection in this universe, but his actions had made them nonexistent. As much as Oda was kind and empathetic and perceptive in every universe, it was just impossible. And Oda’s life involved people he cared deeply about, people who Dazai had hurt. Dazai, in the Lupin bar that he had never been in this universe, may have been in denial to tide over the years of waiting for Oda to finish writing and for shin soukoku to develop the best they can be, but once he spoke to Oda, the illusion shattered. Even with all his knowledge of the world, it was never going to recreate a purpose to live. No matter his good intentions, Dazai would never receive the acknowledgement he badly wanted from Oda. Oda would never give him the relief of forgiveness Dazai wanted for the terrible deeds he had done. And Dazai would die, in misery, fulfilling a wish that didn’t truly belong to him.

If Dazai truly didn’t have a choice, then, he was compelled by forces that created this condition within him - he was then, the only beast of this universe. 

[cannabisrefugee-esq]

If A Disease Is Untreatable, Incurable and Progressive, Is It A "Medical" Condition at All?

December 2, 2018

I have seen it pointed out elsewhere that some “conditions” for which the medical establishment offers consumerist goods and services are not actually bona fide medical conditions at all and are in fact money-making schemes advanced by wealthy investors and others who stand to make a fortune off of anyone stupid, naive or deranged enough to accept them.  The conversation I am most familiar with pertains to the medicalized transgender movement where people are persuaded that they can achieve the impossible through medicalized interventions, in that case, that “transgender” individuals can change their biological sex through consuming expensive and dangerous cross-sex hormones, puberty blocking drugs, and surgeries including castration, so-called “facial feminization” surgeries and others.

Whether anyone accepts the psychological or physical transgenderism of individuals or not, the issue remains that there are billions of dollars to be made globally on this phenomenon and thinking people are prone to thinking about such things.  “Follow the money” is a familiar admonition and politically-minded people understand what that means.   They generally accept the reality that where there is money to be made, there will be corruption and wealthy people and entities working in the shadows to further their own interests.  In the above-linked article by Jennifer Bilek entitled “Who Are the Rich, White Men Institutionalizing Transgender Ideology?” she asks and answers that question and names names.  She concludes that it is “Exceedingly rich, white men (and women) who invest in biomedical companies [who] are funding myriad transgender organizations whose agenda will make them gobs of money” including billionaire businessmen George Soros, “Jennifer” Pritzker and others. And it’s difficult to argue with that conclusion which is demonstrably true.  But let’s go further.

Whether the potential or actual opportunity to make “gobs” of money under a capitalist patriarchy renders a potentially legitimate project illegitimate on its face is a discussion for another day.  However, in the case of the legitimacy of medicalizing transgenderism Bilek identifies a specific social discourse that “institutionalizes and normalizes” transgenderism in a way that convinces people that consuming medicalized goods and services literally for life — the entire life of the patient throughout and following medicalized transition — is in the interests of both the patient and society at large.  According to her, it does this by manufacturing a medical condition which arguably does not even exist, and then by encasing the created medical and consumerist issue within a civil rights framework. In the case of transgender, the intended and actual result is to socialize all people (aka “consumers” whether they themselves are transgender or not) to believe both that there is something physically wrong with so-called transgender people which medical goods and services can fix, and that it is those people’s unalienable human right to have the condition corrected no matter the cost to themselves or to society. She concludes that:

It behooves us all to look at what the real investment is in prioritizing a lifetime of anti-body medical treatments for a miniscule part of the population, building an infrastructure for them, and institutionalizing the way we perceive ourselves as human beings, before being human becomes a quaint concept of the past.

As her argument is narrow and addresses only the issue of transgenderism, I cannot fault her for coming up with such a narrow conclusion.  She does not broadly criticize Big Medicine in general, favoring specificity to make her point which appears to be that medicine does not behave this way in any other area besides transgenderism and that the (alleged) difference should be parsed.  In making that point, she necessarily implies that medical overreach is a small-scale problem affecting only a miniscule part of the population (and that medical consumerism is not inherently problematic and that we needn’t follow they money except in the case of transgender); that “building” social and medical infrastructure to accommodate these new patients is worse than absorbing new patients into the existing infrastructure, or expanding the existing infrastructure to include people it shouldn’t; and that Big Medicine is not fundamentally about “institutionalizing the way we perceive ourselves as human beings” already, and is not generally intended and used as a tool of social control.

And although she rightly characterizes transgender as a problematic “lifestyle” issue, she misses the opportunity to discuss the apparent fact that medicalized goods and services are not effective in treating the (alleged, self-reported) mental and physical pain and symptoms of transgenderism, which analysis would only support her skepticism that transgender is a legitimate diagnosis of a medical disease/illness at all.*

But what if the problems she identifies with the medicalization and normalization of transgenderism are actually a feature and not a bug of Big Medicine and Big Pharma when it comes to defining — if not outright inventing — what constitutes both illness and treatment and engaging consumers long-term or for life?  Feminists have long known and noted that patriarchal medicine “invents” both illnesses and treatment for women as a part of our oppression — hysteria and its dubious treatments being perhaps the most obvious example but there are others. But the evidence suggests that invented treatments aren’t “just” for invented illnesses: Big Pharma and Big Medicine actually invent “treatments” for untreatable (yet objectively verifiable) disease, for example, in the case of Crohn’s disease which notoriously does not respond to conventional care.

And this has everything to do, in fact, with “institutionalizing the way we perceive ourselves as human beings.”  Doesn’t it?  We have to engage with Big Medicine because that’s what human beings do, it’s one thing that separates us from animals, it separates the sick from the well, even when the medicine itself does nothing but make us worse it is the willingness to engage that’s important.  In cultures that extoll Big Pharma and Big Medicine we seem not to include untreatable disease as part of the human condition and “the way we perceive ourselves” despite all evidence that it is and has always been part of the human experience (and untreatable illness such as autoimmune disease has only become more prevalent over time).  Think about that for a minute.  It is striking.

And if transgender patients can rightly be seen as “lifestylists” making medicalized consumer choices in the absence of therapeutic benefits, and I think they can, what could be said about chronically ill people whose lives revolve around medical interventions which are not therapeutic and which therefore must be something else?  This is a serious question that, I think, deserves serious “treatment” but is a sticky wicket; as far as I can tell it is rarely if ever discussed.  Our alleged “civil right” to medical treatment seals the deal where perhaps Americans in particular will die a million billion deaths before they will fail to exercise a perceived or actual “right,” even if the alleged right has no basis in natural law, and even where the fight and even the prize will likely kill us, and that includes women and feminist women.

They will die on the hill of “rights” again and again and again and again and again, but in the case of the alleged right to medical treatment of chronic illness no one will ever question why and how a condition for which Big Medicine offers no effective treatment and no cure has been “medicalized” in the first place and what that actually means, for one, that a health condition equals a medical condition (meaning that health and medicine are the same thing).  That our alleged “right” to medical care is not a right at all, but an obligation and that we are therefore coerced into engaging with Big Medicine and Big Pharma.  That “the way we perceive ourselves as human beings” in a medical/medicalized context has been institutionalized (meaning, dictated and normalized) by lying, scheming and powerful men. That untreatable illness has been written out of the human experience, and that “human history” is therefore fiction.  It’s fiction, as is our human present and our future.  It probably means other things too, but it definitely means that.

And don’t even get me started on the goddamned “disability advocates” who aim to protect sick (and transgender) people’s “civil rights” to a lifetime of painful, dangerous and ineffective medical treatments, but notably do not advocate for anyone’s right to refuse unwanted medical care, even in the United States where that right of refusal is protected by the Constitution, and where so-called disability advocates would universally remove euthanasia from the table for mentally competent yet seriously, incurably and even terminally ill patients because the disability advocates say so. And thus spake capitalism and patriarchy: (alleged) positive rights yay!  Negative rights, meaning, the right to do nothing, the right to abstain, the right to be left the hell alone, the right to cease to exist at all, especially when it comes to women (and where women are particularly vulnerable to developing untreatable chronic disease) (crickets).

*Note: until very recently there was an excellent online resource providing citations from the medical literature indicating that medical transition is not a reliable treatment or cure for the (alleged, self-reported) distressing symptoms of transgenderism but that site no longer exists, having been deleted by WordPress for speaking ugly truths about the transgender movement that Bilek does not address and which are beyond the scope of this post.

[the-magnus-archives-archiver]

Vampire Killer

Case: 0100710

Name: Trevor Herber Subject: His life as a self-proclaimed vampire hunter Date: July 10th, 2010 Recorded by: Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London

Right then. Been almost 50 years I’ve been meaning to pay you people a visit and get this down on paper, but I finally got here. So where to start? My name is Trevor Herbert, like I put at the top of your form there, and I’ve been homeless for most of my life. In fact if you lived in Manchester there’s a good chance you’d have heard of me. They call me “Trevor the Tramp”. I mean, I’m not exactly easy to miss am I, and I’ve been living there in public view for so long I guess I’ve become kind of an institution. Helps that I’ve always had a kind of uncanny knack for guessing people’s ages. People will come up to me on the street and ask me to guess their age, and I’ll tell them and most of the time they’ll be shocked when I get it right. It’s fun. So everyone around Manchester knows about Trevor the Tramp, sure. I hear someone even made me a page on the Internet and it got a few thousand likes. I don’t know exactly what that means but it sounds nice. Obviously that’s not why I’m here, though, is it? No, I’m here because I have also dedicated my life to finding and killing vampires.

I have killed five people that I know for sure as vampires, and there are two more that may or may not have been. There is one man I have killed, unfortunately, who I am now sure was human, but I also know he was a violent criminal so I try not to feel too badly about that. I’m sure it’s hard to accept for anyone, even an organisation such as yourselves, but I do not have proof to give you except for the vampire teeth that I will leave with this statement. Do not feel bad about reporting me to the police for the murders, as I am sure you must, since I have recently received a diagnosis of late-stage lung cancer and it is doubtful I will be living much longer anyway. That is the main reason for finally putting down on paper the details of the mission I have been secretly undertaking for the last half a century.

I killed my first vampire in 1959. At that point I was still living a mostly normal life, save perhaps for the abuse my family was subject to from my father. He was a vile man who ended up killing my mother in ’56. It was a clear-cut case of drunken murder but the courts ruled it as an accident and my father stayed out of jail. Luckily, myself and my brother only had to endure four months of unpleasantness from him before he finally finished drinking himself to death. I was thirteen when he finally died and my brother was fifteen. Following his death, there were several attempts to rehome us as orphans but they always split us up, and we couldn’t be doing with that, so we’d generally run away. After a while it became so we were happier finding our way on the streets than in another stranger’s home.

It was in autumn of 1959 that we were taken in by Sylvia McDonald. It wasn’t any sort of official fostering agreement, but it was getting to be quite cold at the end of October and it just saw us shivering in a side street next to the Kings Arms Hotel, as it was back then, on Tipping Street before the ring road took it over. Looking back I believe it to have been visiting the pub for the purposes of locating down and outs for use as victims and in my brother and myself, I must say, it successfully found some. It looked like an older woman, a widow I assumed, from the way it dressed in black and had a strange manner, which I now know to be the mark of the vampire, but back then I paid no attention to it. Many of the older folks had lived through both wars and it was not uncommon for them to be somewhat strange. I thought this was the case with Sylvia McDonald and after a small amount of discussion my brother and I agreed to the offer of food and shelter.

Let me say a little bit about the vampire’s manner, because once I taught myself to read I read as much on the subject as I could and it isn’t covered often or clearly in those books I have found. You see, from my own observations I believe a vampire to be more like an animal than a man. That is not to be taken as merely a turn of phrase but more to do with how they work. I do not believe vampires are human in anything more than their appearance, nor have I ever seen evidence that they create more of their kind through feeding. One thing that should be noted is that they do not speak. In fact they are in my experience totally silent, having no need for air and no room in their throats for a windpipe. They are able to make themselves understood, however, with absolute clarity, though the manner through which they do so has never been clear to me. When Sylvia McDonald came to us in the alleyway that day, we understood that was the name it gave itself and that we were being offered a meal and a bed, even though it never uttered a single sound. More than that, I do not recall the fact that it never said a word as striking either of us as strange in the slightest. I have never fully understood how they are able to do this, and I doubt that I ever shall, but I can only assume it to be some instinctive form of hypnosis or mind control.

Another misconception I have always faced when trying to discuss vampires is that people think they cannot go out during the day. They can. While I have witnessed them avoid direct sunlight if possible and wear generally more covering clothes when moving around during the daytime, they seem to have no significant problem doing so. I would describe them as weaker during the day, but whether this is scientifically due to the sunlight or simply because evil has less power in the daylight hours is unclear to me. Sylvia McDonald came to us on an overcast afternoon and enough of its pale flesh was uncovered that, were sunlight to truly harm a vampire, then it would likely have been destroyed.

On that afternoon my brother Nigel and I agreed to go back to the house of Sylvia McDonald in the hopes of a roof over our heads for a little while. She lived on Loom Street, which is still there, though the house itself was torn down long ago and there’s just a bit of scrubland now where it used to be. I sometimes go there to pay my respects, since my brother has no burial or grave I can visit. The house was old, even when I went there in 1959, and entering it I was hit by a stale, coppery smell that I did not recognise as old blood at the time, since I was barely 16 and did not have then the experience I have now. The furniture and wallpaper had clearly not been changed in many decades and a thick layer of dust covered everything. Even the floor was pale with dust except for a stark line where Sylvia McDonald moved, the train of its dress dragging behind it. I remember wondering whether Sylvia McDonald walked exactly the same route through the house always, as I saw other clear lines of passage in the rooms we passed through. None of the furniture looked used and when I picked up a book from one of the shelves the pages were solid with damp and mould. I began to feel very uneasy at this point, but whatever powers of persuasion the vampire had calmed me enough to continue following it with my brother.

We went up the stairs and I was led to a small room with a bed in it. I was made to understand that this would be my room and was left there as Sylvia McDonald led my brother away to the room next to it. When it returned it brought a bowl of fruit and offered it to me. The fruit was clearly a few weeks old and in various stages of rotting, but just to appease the thing I found an apple and a couple of grapes that seemed edible and I ate them. It watched me silently the whole time and then turned and walked out towards Nigel’s room. By this time whatever the creature had done to make me compliant seemed to be starting to wear off, and I was realising just how wrong everything was. I was also realising that it didn’t look like there was any easy escape from the house. All the windows I had seen were barred, and I recalled Sylvia McDonald had locked the sturdy-looking front door behind it after we had all entered. So instead I just laid down in the old musty bed and I waited.

Couldn’t rightly say what I was waiting for, but soon enough it got dark and I assumed Sylvia McDonald had gone to sleep, not yet realising the manner of being that I was dealing with. I wanted some light to comfort me but the old house seemed to have no electricity at all, so I used my cigarette lighter on a candle I found next to the bed and crept towards the door. It wasn’t locked, thankfully, and I left the room assigned to me and walked over to where I believed my brother was. I went in and found him lying in his own bed, pretending to sleep. After a bit of talk it became clear that Nigel was no happier with our situation than I was and we both resolved that another night on the cold streets was better than staying with this strange woman. As we talked through possible ways to escape, however, we heard a rustling sound outside the door, and the handle began to turn. Not wanting to anger our strange host, I crawled under the bed to hide, while Nigel returned to pretending to sleep.

From my vantage point under the bed, I could see the door open and the skirt of Sylvia McDonald enter and move towards the bed. I simply laid there and tried not to make a sound. I am not proud of this and sometimes have a certainty that my inaction led directly to my brother’s death, but most of the time I accept that if I had alerted the vampire to my presence then I would also have died. Either way, the fact of the matter is that I did nothing as I heard the sounds of a struggle overhead and Nigel’s strangled cry. The creature turned quickly and hurled him down, something fell to the floor in front of me, but I didn’t look at it, my eyes locked on Sylvia McDonald as it pounced upon my brother. It opened its mouth for what I then realised was the first time since we met it, and I could see nothing inside save for a dozen long, thick, pointed teeth like a shark. In one fluid movement it plunged those teeth into my brother’s neck and tore out a great chunk of flesh. Blood started to spurt from Nigel’s spasming body, as Sylvia McDonald’s throat began to twitch. Its jaw detached and a long tubular tongue about the thickness of my forearm snaked out of its throat and clamped onto the gushing wound. There was an awful slurping sound, the first noise I’d ever really heard the creature make, as the tongue sucked the blood from my brother’s throat. I just lay there watching as its stomach began to distend and swell, the now bulbous belly straining against the black dress it wore. After the longest ten minutes of my life, the vampire finished. Its tongue retracted back into its throat, still dripping blood onto the now-pale corpse of my brother, and it lay back upon the floor, apparently contented.

As this had been happening all my energy had gone towards not screaming or giving away my presence. But as the vampire lay satiated on the floor, I turned my attention to what had fallen from Nigel’s hand when he had been dragged out of the bed. It was his pocket knife. I had no idea what a small knife like that would do against a creature that seemed far stronger and faster than me, but I didn’t see any option other than to try. I moved so slowly as I reached for the knife that at times it seemed like I wasn’t moving at all. I was worried that the creature would spot me and strike as it had with Nigel, although I now know that smell is in fact the vampire’s major sense and, with all the blood around, there was little chance of it detecting my scent. Grasping the knife in my hands, I crept over towards the creature as it placidly digested my brother’s life, until I stood over it. I felt a sudden surge of rage and adrenaline come over me and with a speed and strength I never knew I had, I plunged the knife into Sylvia McDonald’s blood-bloated stomach.

It burst like a sick balloon, and blood began to pour out. The creature’s eyes shot open and it clutched at the wound desperately. Its throat was not capable of uttering a scream but its face displayed a silent pain and anger as it flailed on the floor. Stumbling back, trying to wipe the blood from my eyes, I felt an unexpected burning in my hand. I realised I’d touched the still-lit candle on the bedside table. I don’t know what I expected to happen when I grabbed the candle and pressed it to the dry part of Sylvia McDonald’s dress. I was just trying to find anything else I could do to harm it before it could recover from its split belly, but I certainly didn’t expect it to catch like dry tinder. The fire spread quickly over its repulsive form, though it did slow somewhat where the clothing or flesh was still moist with blood. It struck me that the vampire must be a very dry creature when not fresh-fed and engorged. Perhaps I had struck before the liquid could spread throughout its body.

Whatever the reason, Sylvia McDonald was alight, and to such a degree that the rest of the room was starting to catch fire as well. I was distraught at the idea of leaving this house without my brother, but he was clearly dead and I needed to escape. I recalled the vampire had been carrying a handbag when we first met it, and had used a key from it to lock the front door. It did not have the handbag with it now, though, so I began to desperately search the other rooms of the house, trying to find it. I did find it in the end, in what I assume to be the vampire’s bedroom. I’ll not describe it in detail, except to say that it appears to be where the creature took most of its meals. Hopefully that makes the picture clear enough for you. I found the key, though, and escaped that house before the fire did me any serious damage. I was terrified of the police coming and thinking I was a murderer, so I didn’t stick around. I just fled into the night.

It was almost a decade before I encountered another vampire. I’d been living on the streets all that time, occasionally in and out of various institutions, and had just about managed to convince myself that Sylvia McDonald had just been a bad reaction to the stress of watching my brother’s murder. It was in the late 60s that I learned different. It was 1968, I remember because that was the year United won the European Cup, and I did quite well out of it – people being generous to begging when they’re happy over a sports win. On a Friday night I would generally spend my time around the Oasis Club in Lloyd Street and hit up for change anyone who was slightly the worse for drink. Well, this night in particular I was doing quite well, as it was a warm June evening not too long after the Cup Final, and everyone was in a good mood.

Now about half eleven that night I spied a stranger all turned out for dancing, making his way from the club with a lady friend. I reckoned they might be good for a tanner, so made my approach. I gave them the spiel and waited. The man looked at me and I understood he wouldn’t be giving me any money, and I stepped away. It was as he turned to leave I realised that he hadn’t opened his mouth, and memories of Sylvia McDonald came rushing back to me in a flash. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I followed behind them at a distance. I didn’t try to hide or disguise myself, as I had long since learned, and it’s true now as it was back then, that no-one pays any real attention to a tramp. As I watched, I saw the clearly drunken woman asking this stranger questions and each time he’d just look at her and she’d smile as though he’d given some reassuring answer and stumble on behind him. All the while he never once opened his mouth.

I didn’t rightly know what to do about this. I had no weapon save my brother’s old pocket knife which I had kept sharp all these years, and while I was pretty sure of what I was seeing, I was still hesitant to attack with no provocation and no plan. As we walked, I kept an eye out for any discarded wood or timber and, sure enough, noticed a broken wooden palette partially sticking out of a bin. I grabbed a long shard and used my knife to quickly hack it to a point, ignoring the splinters. While I had not, at that time, done much research into the creatures I faced, believing as I did my experience as a youth to be the product of a disturbed mental state, I was still aware of their supposed weakness to wooden stakes. I had now followed the vampire, who I would later find out called itself Robert Arden, and its victim back to the building where it apparently lived. It let itself in the front door and the woman followed. I wasn’t fast enough to get in before the front door closed and obviously didn’t have a key, so I went round the windows and, luckily, it seemed the vampire lived on the ground floor.

I watched through the window as it led its victim into a sparsely furnished living room. I couldn’t see any obvious signs of previous slaughter, but I remembered how cleanly Sylvia McDonald had sucked up all the blood from my brother, so this did not strike me as odd. I gently tried the window and found it locked, so searched the garden for the heaviest stone I could find and watched what was happening inside. I had to be sure. Soon enough Robert Arden moved smoothly behind its now-seated prey, and finally opened its mouth to reveal those rows of shark-like teeth I knew would be there. I hurled the rock I held through the window, showering the room with broken glass and causing the woman to scream in shock. Robert Arden raised its head in surprise and for one moment our eyes locked and I knew I had made a terrible mistake. The woman looked at her monstrous companion and, seeing his now open mouth, screamed her terror even louder. In a single movement, far quicker than I expected, Robert Arden was through the window and on me. I struggled and fought, but it was far stronger than I was, and I could barely keep its jagged teeth from finding my throat. It was the first and last time I ever touched a vampire’s skin with my own. The flesh was cold and spongy, like the inside of a bruised apple, and I felt bile rise in my throat even as I fought for my life.

Finally, its teeth bit into my neck. Not enough to kill me outright but with enough force to cause the blood to flow. At that moment I saw a sort of frenzy enter the eyes of Robert Arden and with a spasm its leech’s tongue surged from its throat and I felt it attach to my neck. I do not know if you’ve ever felt your blood being sucked out of you, but I would not recommend it.

Now it is at this point I have something of an admission to make. For the three years preceding this event, as well as on and off through the years since, I have had a relationship with the drug heroin. I tried it for the first time shortly after Nigel’s death and since then I have periodically relapsed. I have always tried to keep this a secret, as I am aware that I have a certain reputation to uphold and I would not want it to be damaged with the revealing of my addiction. But it is important to this account, as I believe it was whatever heroin still remained in my system that night that caused the vampire Robert Arden to remove its tongue from my neck and start to shake, as though having a violent choking fit.

I lay there, trying to compose myself enough to fight back, when I became aware of the screaming. The woman, who had been brought in as a victim, was standing over the flailing Robert Arden, stabbing it repeatedly with a kitchen knife. Strong and quick as it was, the vampire didn’t seem to be able to cope with the sudden onslaught of violence and was on the ground. This gave me the precious seconds I needed to get to my feet and locate my improvised wooden stake. I took aim and plunged it into where I believed the thing’s heart should be. It was easier than I thought it would be – the chest was soft and yielding and there didn’t seem to be any ribcage to stop the blow. Robert Arden went rigid and froze, apparently unable to move its body, though I saw its eyes darting around wildly.

It was at that point the woman whose name I never discovered, dropped the knife and ran. I never saw her again, but she had already saved my life. I took out my cigarette lighter and set Robert Arden alight. Like Sylvia McDonald before it, it caught fire in a matter of seconds and, by the time the police arrived, there was nothing left but a small patch of scorched tarmac. I was lucky that night, and nobody saw anything or called the police before I was finished and had made my way from the scene but I was always more careful after that.

Following that night, though, I was never again worried that I might have been wrong about the existence of vampires. I always kept my eyes open for them, although sometimes I was too eager, as was the case of Alard Dupont who I killed in 1982 and later discovered was a human. It is my belief that they are very rare and feed only infrequently, as all evidence I have seen points to their feeding being fatal. If there were many vampires or if they ate often, the number of disappearances would quickly become noticeable to the rest of society. I do not know what they do with the bodies of their victims and this has always perplexed me, as they do not have any mechanism for eating solid food and I do not believe there are many, if any, cases of murder where the body is found completely without blood. I certainly do not think they rise as vampires themselves, as the vampire population seems far too small for this to be a possibility.

Archivist Notes: 

According to Martin, who was here when they took this statement, it was at this point in writing that Mr. Herbert announced he needed some sleep before continuing. He was shown to the break room where he went to sleep on the couch. He did not awaken; unfortunately succumbing to the lung cancer right there. Martin says the staff had been aware of how serious Mr. Herbert’s condition was and had advised him to seek medical aid prior to giving his statement, but were told rather bluntly by the old man that he would not wait another second to state his case. I can’t decide whether this lends more or less credibility to his tale.

Regardless, there is substantial evidence to support the version of events told by Mr. Herbert in all aspects except the vampirism. There is a news report of a 1959 fire that consumed a house on Loom Street and apparently claimed the life of an 18-year-old boy, although no mention is made of the homeowner, and a police report from 1968 confirms the disappearance of Robert Arden in Manchester amid circumstances of violence, including a broken window and signs of a fire, though no human remains were found. There is also a murder report concerning one Alard Dupont, whose partially burned corpse was found in his home on August 2nd 1982. Unfortunately Mr. Herbert was never able to give details of others, so we cannot corroborate further.

There was, however, a small bag left on top of this statement, which appears to contain six shark teeth of varying sizes. According to correspondence with the Zoology Department at King’s College, they didn’t match any currently known species.

Personally, I don’t know what to think. I certainly don’t believe in wild tales of vampirism, but I can’t help but notice that the statement above appears to be a photocopy of a photocopy, and can’t find these supposed vampire teeth anywhere in the Archives or the Secure Containment Room. I don’t know where the originals are but the file number is listed among multiple information requests from the Institute’s government and law enforcement contracts. It may be that they take Mr. Herbert’s statement far more seriously than I do.

Source: Official Transcript and Podcast (MAG 10 Vampire Hunter)

[sending-the-message]

My synesthetic Korean friend tried the elevator game [PART 1] by igottagat

Hi all, I’m Angus, and it’s my first time posting on Reddit. Hope I'm doing it right. I have a crazy story to tell and I feel nosleep is the best place for it.

This isn't actually something that happened to me. I have this friend over in Korea who I met through- of all things- the comments on an article on lifehacking. He’s called Kim Sijin and he’s got a pretty voracious mind as well as incredible English, plus he’s synesthetic which makes him...fun...to talk to. Do you know synaesthesia? No worries if you don’t.

I live in Shanghai and Sijin is a bit of a low-key Sinophile, so generally the idea is I share bizarre China stories in exchange for updates on his exploits in Seoul.

We like to keep our messages long and infrequent, and a little stilted. Kind of in the Victorian tradition, you know.

What’s coming below is amalgamation of several very emotional messages Sijin sent me following the loss of his closest friend, Han-Jae. I merged some messages and fixed up his typos. As you’ll see while reading, I kind of just took a backseat as he broke open his proverbial dam and unloaded. A wise choice, I think.

Sijin gave me full permission to share this story. By the end you will see why.

It's not a short tale, so I will follow this first post up with a Part 2 and so on.

Make of it all what you will.

SIJIN

I like to spy on people.

ANGUS

That’s new to me.

SIJIN

Yeah, I didn’t tell you? I peer through their webcams. Actually it’s not even about the people. It’s about the places. So many of these windows into the world exist, and it’s very easy to open them.

Modern webcams have IP addresses. That’s why they are called webcams. They are connected to the internet, which is a public, open network before you strap logins and paywalls onto it. Most webcams, however, are intended for private use, usually as CCTV. They only use the internet as a convenient networking mechanism. So, as they ought to, webcam manufacturers fit their network cameras with username and password logins, to keep out strangers. All well and good. But many of those manufacturers fit their cameras with default logins, and default passwords. This brings out a human flaw in the system, because when it comes to certain parts of their lives, even the most hardworking people are very lazy.

The branch manager of a budget hotel franchise. The security officer of a countryside engineering college. The granny in charge of a noodle shop for grannies. An uptight father who wants household ‘security’. All of these will usually not think or bother to alter the default username and password of their cameras. And so, someone like me- or you, Angus- can get in. The ‘hack’ involves dropping keywords into Google that turn up the camera control panels. Click the link, enter a default factory login, and presto, you have opened a gateway to another place on earth.

What you can see through the gateways is mostly very dull, but the scope of it all is incredible. All these portals puncturing the mundane. And the mundane is, I think, quite otherworldly. You realise quickly that most of the human world is made of empty spaces. Restaurants. Swimming pools. Offices. Lobbies. Cupboards. Car parks. Long, well lit hallways. While you are huddled with your friends, family, or co-workers on the bus, at home, or at the computer, you forget that all the other places where you spend your life are queer abandoned zones which turn pitch black at night, unless someone is there to switch on the lights.

The videos can only really hold your interest if you are watching life in motion. Anglican Church services in England. Family barbeques in France. City centres in Africa rammed with cars. Silent pet shops in rural America. Up close you see a lot of conversations but you don’t hear the words. Even my synaesthesia isn’t much help here.

ANGUS

Don’t you feel very detached when you’re watching? And then eventually, just, bored?

SIJIN

Yes, but. Sometimes no.

There was one vision early on that stuck with me. I saw a granny in Hokkaido, not so far across the sea, staring into a mirror with a bitter red frame and a shelf that was decorated with pictures and jewels. She was dressed for the cold and her hair was short and boyish. I was looking straight down on her. There was no obvious emotion on her face, but she seemed at peace. I wanted to know what she was thinking about. I wanted to know who she was and if she would sit there all day, and why there was a CCTV camera in her living room.

ANGUS

Shouldn’t that have been the point where you stopped?

SIJIN

Han-Jae said the same. Maybe because that last description is so intimate. ‘Intimate’ turns into ‘wrong’ so quickly, don’t you think? I spoke about that granny with affection she never asked for, nor even knew about. There’s something intuitively wrong about imposing your feelings onto strangers in such a way. Han-Jae pointed this out, quite rightly. I said yes, I would stop, but only after I saw something awful. Eventually, of course, I did.

Other friends and even family have said I pay too much heed to Han-Jae. They say I should take care not to appear to be involved in some kind of boy love thing with him. Well to them I’d say they only cry ‘boy love’ because they do not understand our friendship, because our friendship is not normal, or traditional. I’ve never claimed to be a normal Korean boy, nor do I ever wish to be. Han-Jae feels the same, though he would never say as much.

That’s one reason I like sharing all this with you. You’re outside this society. You don’t judge.

Han-Jae and I are both synaesthesiacs. (That’s the wrong word in English but I happen to like it.) We don’t fit. Actually, no. He has always fit. I am the real freak.

Even my synaesthesia runs counter to Korean thinking. Everything ‘good’ is to my eyes, red. Red for we Koreans is not exactly a death colour, but it means nothing good. For me, death is signified by the smell of copper, and red is everything beautiful. Like chocolate bars: dark chocolate bars are a solid block of rich crimson. Milk chocolate is lovely traffic light red. White chocolate is pastel red, like you’d find in a kindergarten. When I talk about the red things I see Han-Jae talks back at me using the name ‘Jinshi’, which is what my given name ‘Sijin’ sounds like when you render it in Chinese. Did I mention that before?

ANGUS

No. But that’s fascinating. Is that Jin like ‘gold’? 金?

SIJIN

Yeah, I think so. But I’m not a Chinese master. Most Koreans these days don’t know much about it.

Han-Jae went to the effort of converting the name because the Chinese have the same ideas about red, of course. They think red is good. I think red is good. So I must be Chinese. So I must be Chinese Jinshi, not Korean Sijin. Han-Jae’s sense of humour. Don’t let the formidable grades and the sharp mind fool you– deep down, he’s a pretty simple-minded guy.

ANGUS

Oh no, haha. I’d noticed that. 厉害.

SIJIN

What?

ANGUS

‘Awesome’. Just testing.

SIJIN

Oh. Anyway, I’m not done talking about myself.

Computer code doesn’t have a colour. But, most coding interfaces colour different tags, commands and formats in specific colours in order to help we programmers interpret the huge walls of text that code presents to us. This is kind of an artificial synaesthesia. As you can probably guess, I need no such aid. Every block of code I see is a separation of the spectrum. Dozens of shades burst out at me, and for each one there is a specific meaning that comes to me immediately. I never had to deliberately create this system or memorise how it works. The connection between each colour and each command is just as obvious to me as the fact that water is wet to you.

Now on to Han-Jae. You may find his ‘power’ a little less boring than mine.

Really, he is an asshole. His synaesthesia reflects the problems in his personality. If something is boring to him, or too easy, or just difficult in the sense of being beyond his skillset, then it will seem further away. To understand how his vision is organised, you really have to understand his own internal logic. I do. I am one of few.

Han-Jae tells me that his favourite movies have a lot of extra depth and tone. Shitty movies will look muddy and flat regardless of their original colour palette, so under his discerning gaze you really cannot polish a turd. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is a good example. From a technical standpoint, it’s a movie with visual depth, a wide tonal range, and a painfully vibrant colour palette. But from a critical perspective, Han-Jae and I agree the movie is a fucking disaster. Therefore, to Han-Jae, the film’s visual frantic energy literally vanishes– he says it looks a ‘greasy sepia Western, recorded on rotten, wobbly film paper’.

If you play music to Han-Jae, the notes float past his face. If you feed him waffles and a BLT, he will see the heat, texture, and flavour of the food flash around the room. He has a calendar and abacus that he can generate any time he likes, and then use to outthink you using only his eyeballs. He once correctly measured the speed of a friend’s electric bicycle down to one decimal point just by watching it pass him by. He sees the colour of people’s emotions, flushed around their face, and he uses this to charm girls. What I am trying to say is that Han-Jae is a real bastard.

ANGUS

Hahahaha!

SIJIN

I don’t get many dates. Han-Jae does. Blah blah blah. You’ve heard all this moaning before.

So anyway my point is that with Han-Jae I do things beyond the usual juvenile playtime. You remember the time Han-Jae and I went looking for ‘ghosts’? I never quite said we were really looking for ‘holes’. Localised instances where the logic of the world- physics maybe- is no longer consistent. If you ever exploited a bug in a video game for fun or to cheat, you can grasp this. Think of any time you had déjà vu. You deeply, deeply felt you were reliving a moment you have not yet lived. In other words it is some form of time travel. Whether the form is true or simulated, and whether déjà vu occurs in the mind or somewhere else...these are beside the point. The point is that déjà vu breaks the rules of everyday existence.

Imagine the introducing the concept of saving to disk and digital rewriting to, say, an Imperial Japanese typist working in Seoul during the occupation period. In fact, imagine you told a medieval European typist that you could duplicate a hundred copies of his Bible in the blink of an eye. To each typist it would seem that you have broken some rule of the universe and opened up an exploit.

ANGUS

Hacking.

SIJIN

Of a kind.

Synaesthesia is arguably one such ‘hole’. Look at how easily Han-Jae and I breezed through the Korean education system. We process text, figures, and diagrams faster than normal people. We can read novels, music, and the emotions on an immediately deeper level than anyone bar the experts. We are incredibly well organised, and as such have extra time and energy to spend chasing after world-hacks.

Maybe you recall some of our attempts. The first thing we tried was to hack our own vision by instigating voluntary hallucinations. This proved a total failure. Next we tried the occult. As in, summoning demons. Remember that? Total failure again. Next we tried local legends. I never told you this part. It’s cool. There’s supposed to be a restless fox girl who swims underwater in a canal just a few kilometres from our residential district. There’s a rather convoluted backstory: it involves UN soldiers, a Communist cell, a nuclear waste barrel, and an old medicine man. You can imagine. It was a good excuse to explore the streets at least, and I liked getting a feel for the local history (Han-Jae didn’t– he’s smart as hell but there isn’t an intellectual bone in his body), but of course we saw no canal ghost.

Han-Jae and I talked pretty seriously about whether to give up or whether to press on. We decided, mostly thanks to my line of argument, that we would press ahead, but with a narrower focus. We had to hone in on real exploits. No more kids’ games. Together we once researched something really interesting: in a country called Scotland there is a place called the Electric Brae. It distorts perspective so that objects appear to roll uphill when left to rest. That sort of thing would be our target. Glitches that call the world’s fabric into question.

I warned that this might require travel, but Han-Jae believed quite firmly that if any country could provide, it would be South Korea. When I chided him for this warped version of patriotism he conceded that Japan might also be a candidate. I had to agree. It’s a pretty weird place. The strange thing is...Han-Jae was right. After a few wasted days of searching the Korean-language internet, we found something on a dead forum. I'll paste in an English translation. It is the instructions for something called The Elevator Game. Brace yourself...

[hazelgfan]

Game of Thrones and Shipping

I’m not a die-hard romantic, but I’ve always – in one way or another – shipped a couple on almost any TV show or book that I’ve read. Game of Thrones is probably the only show where I’ve never shipped anyone with each other (the notable exception being Jaime and Brienne but I never truly believed they would happen, so for me they don’t really count).

So, it came as somewhat of a surprise, when, somewhere during season 7, I picked up on the fact that there are people who are zealous Jon and Dany shippers. Of course, people are allowed to ship what they want (no question there), but it made me think on why I never shipped them, as they are somewhat of an obvious choice. It was very curious to me that I never saw these two together. Like, here you have two heroes who try to make the world a better place – together they’d be “difficult to defeat” as everyone’s little darling Littlefinger put it.

The thing is, even though I started unconsciously shipping Jon with Sansa since season 6, I NEVER intended to ship anyone on this show. This isn’t a show where you can easily ship two people. Almost all the romances portrayed either served the story progression in some way, ended up tragically and/or simply didn’t fit the normal expectations for romance of a modern audience.

I will try to illustrate my point with three prominent couples on the show/in the books who ended tragically, but who either served the plot and character development or didn’t portray a typical romance story.

Tyrion/Shae: Let’s be upfront about this – this relationship was way more romanticised in the shows than in the books. George R.R. Martin seems much more gritty, much more realistic if you will. This isn’t “Pretty Woman”, where the rich man falls in love with the whore and they live happily ever after. As such, them obviously caring so deeply for each other on the show was a little bit of an idealization but I for one didn’t mind. After all people of very different backgrounds fall in love and care for each other deeply all the time. However, even though their relationship was romanticised, the real problems connected with it never disappeared. Tyrion wanted Shae as his mistress since he couldn’t marry her and wouldn’t run away with her as she proposed several times. When she didn’t relent he tried to send her away, ultimately ending their relationship in betrayal and death. I repeat: These people loved each other yet still betrayed one other. Here is a prime example of a tragical love story.

Robb/Talisa: I really loved this couple. I loved watching them fall in love and get married, loved their interactions and their chemistry. I liked Talisa’s backstory and how they each made the other so much happier than before. I didn’t ship them though, I just enjoyed their romance and relationship unfold on screen. But even with that going on, as a viewer you always had the feeling that their relationship would cause problems down the line because the viewers knew of Robb’s promise to Walder Frey before he ever met Talisa. So their romance was not a romance in the sense you get in romantic comedies: It served the purpose of showing that actions have consequences. It was a major point of character development for Robb who chose love over duty (some would say honor) and ultimately paid the price for it. In a happier world you could expect that him rejecting the Frey girl for his one true love would end in happily ever after. Not on this show though, not in George R.R. Martin’s books. And as much as I still grieve for Robb and Talisa and Catelyn, I was also really ‘satisfied’ with how that story was resolved. It showed that your actions have consequences and sometimes even marrying for love can be a bad decision. Their relationship was doomed from the beginning (I’m just glad they had some happy days before they died). Their relationship ultimately served a purpose for the narrative, which changed its course because with Robb’s death, the war of the five kings was effectually over.

Ned/Catelyn: Talk about pragmatism. Engaged to marry Ned’s older brother Brandon since age twelve, Catelyn must marry Ned shortly after Brandon dies. She has never seen him before (I looked this up on Wiki so not sure about the veracity of it). The fact remains, however, that Catelyn had to change her ‘allegiance’ quite quickly. She knew Brandon, knew she was going to be his wife, she probably had developed feelings for the handsome older Stark. And then her whole world is turned upside down and she has to marry the shy, younger brother, someone she doesn’t know at all. It must have been difficult for Ned too, to be a sort of replacement for his more handsome brother. In fact, there is still a bit of bitterness and maybe a little bit of envy in Ned in the books when he talks to Catelyn about his brother. Ned and Catelyn were not a romantic couple – they weren’t in love, the just did what was expected of them. And yet, theirs is the only successful relationship in the books and on the show (I may be overlooking other couples but I’m focused on the “big ones” so bear with me here). Isn’t this telling? The only non-romantic couple, actually starts to care for each other deeply to the point where the other becomes everything for them, even though their relationship was initially not based on love. This beautiful relationship is torn apart tragically with Ned’s death.

(I actually wanted to write something about Jaime/Cersei/Brienne and Gilly/Sam – as well as maybe about Lyanna/Rhaegar – but this is already getting too long, so I may do that at another time).

With these examples, can it really surprise me that I never really wanted to ship anyone on this show? Game of Thrones isn’t about romance and if there is romance, the romance always serves a purpose. Enter Dany and Jon. I never shipped them for several reasons and this was before I knew they were related:

1. It is very cliché to have the hero and heroine (I believe Dany is more of tragical hero and others have written very convincing metas about this) get together and if Game of Thrones/ASOIAF is anything, then not cliché.

2. Dany falling in love/marrying Jon and maybe having a child with him really retracts from her character. She is ‘Mhysa’, the mother of the common people and of dragons (of course the Mhysa thing has been rightly criticized as well), she is a saviour to them, she is a conqueror, and she is going down a dark route (seriously this started way back in season 2, although I didn’t notice it at the time, when Dany threatens the Quarteen with destroying them and all who have wronged her just because they refuse her to enter their city).

3. Jon’s story arc, I feel, would be “swallowed” by Dany if they truly start a romance. Dany is larger than life. I don’t see her ever accepting anyone as truly equal. That’s Dany’s tragedy in a way. She is all alone because she won’t let anyone share the pedestal she has put herself on.

4. After the reveal: (And this has nothing to do with the narrative but is solely personal so doesn’t really count): They are Aunt and Nephew. It’s weird and icky.

 Now, the show clearly has gone down that road, as exemplified by boatbang. But the more interesting question here is: Where will they go from now on? (sidenote: The “Where will we go?” quote from Jon is the most romantic thing I’ve ever heard and he says it to Sansa – that’s very telling!).

Based on what I’ve outline before – namely that romance always serves a purpose in the narrative and/or ends tragically – can anyone truly believe that Jon and Dany’s relationship will end happily? If they would, then the narrative wouldn’t have set up Jon as the ‘true’ heir to the Iron Throne. This revelation is going to plunge both Jon and Dany into serious despair. Dany, who has done everything for her goal to be Queen of Westeros, who justifies her war only through her claim, is up for a serious downfall. Jon, whose whole story arc is about identity, will go down a darker route too (his story after the revelation is a little bit harder to foretell, though). And all of this will happen against the backdrop of a WW invasion. With all of this going on, their relationship is doomed, as was Robb and Talisa’s, as was Tyrion and Shae’s. I can see the need for them to have sex before all is revealed because it makes the stakes so much higher. That doesn’t mean I like it. If I had my way, they would have found out who they are and Dany would have found the family she’s craving with Jon and the Starks – I would not have them be attracted to each other. But, alas, that would make a more boring story, so of course, that’s not going to happen on Game of Thrones.

The way the Jon/Dany thing was written in season 7 didn’t struck me as particularly romantic. They still ended up in bed together, but we have to ask ourselves: What is the purpose here? Anyone who has seen their sex scene with Bran’s voice narrating Jon’s true parentage playing in the background cannot expect their relationship to end on a happy note. This is buildup for tragedy if I’ve ever seen one, particularly for Dany. Why would the writers decide to do that, other than to push her over the edge? Personally, I don’t mind Dany going down the dark route. I think it makes for very interesting television and I believe she will turn around at the end. Maybe then she can become the true saviour that she always wanted to be.

[alli-howard]

What Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Might Say About These Riots

I said something I regretted this morning. After a night of watching peaceful protests turn into riots all over the world and five miles from my home, I fell asleep to the sound of distant sirens and woke up with a lingering sense of fear. My boyfriend and I have talked for a while about someday living in a somewhat remote part of San Diego County called Bonita. Knowing that the protests were only five miles away from my current home, I joked, “Bonita doesn’t sound so bad right about now.” He challenged my statement by saying, “This is the way the world is right now. Hiding from it doesn’t do any good.” Initially, his comment caused me to get defensive and want to justify myself, but I chose to be introspective instead.

In that process, I realized a few things. First, fear causes people to do things they would not normally do. To protect ourselves, we are often prone to retreat or lash out- fight or flight, if you will. I am one who flees danger, even, apparently when there is no imminent threat to myself.

When I think about George Floyd’s death, I am grieved, but I am not afraid. No part of me reacts as though this could happen to me. No part of me is inclined to fight or flee. But what if I was? What if throughout my life, I had seen people who look like me killed and deprived of justice? Where would I flee, or who would I fight? Who do you call when the police are killing someone? How do you react when you fear that you could be next?

I often write with a white, Christian audience in mind, because that is how I identify. I have seen many white Christians invoke Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on social media to urge nonviolent protests. You should know that Dr. Martin Luther King said, “I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. In the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard… Large segments of white society are more concerned with tranquility and the status quo more than justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.”

I am concerned that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is right about us when he said that the white moderate is more devoted to “order” than to justice, and that we prefer “a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” I fear that he’s also right about us when he imagines white society saying, “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action.” I think it’s important that we don’t make the mistake of quoting Dr. Martin Luther King to silence hurting people, when his words would condemn our silence and complicity in the face of injustice. Additionally, while we now venerate him, he was one of the most hated people in the country during his time and despite his insistence on nonviolence, he was killed.

I want to be clear: I think looting and rioting is wrong, but I understand where it comes from. If you do not, please allow me to explain.

For many white people, this can seem like a fairly recent issue. We have been hearing about police brutality or black people being killed unjustly for the last few years. You may have seen a few posts on the news or from your black friends on social media. The response is often, “wait until all the facts come out.” There are times when the facts confirm that a police officer was justified in using deadly force. There are times when the facts do not reflect that. Often there is little or no punishment either way.

You may or may not know about Rodney King. In 1991 (please take a moment to calculate how old you were when this occurred, and how much time has passed since then), Los Angeles police officers violently beat Rodney King during his arrest. Someone happened to film the incident from their balcony and he sent it to the local news station. The footage showed an unarmed black man on the ground being beaten and the unveiling of the video caused public outrage. While this was not the first incident of police brutality, this was the first recorded incident that the nation had access to. Many Americans of all races were horrified, though I have to assume that black Americans were not surprised. Because there was a video there was hope that justice would be served.

Despite witnessing the atrocity on video, collectively, people waited for the facts to come out. The public was assured that the fourteen officers involved would be disciplined and eventually four were tried on criminal charges. Badly beaten and from a wheelchair, Rodney King explained that he had knelt down, spread out his hands, and tried to move slowly as a precaution. Despite his efforts, he was hit across the face with a billy club and shocked. When a verdict was reached, three officers were acquitted and the jury failed to reach a verdict on the fourth. Within hours, the 1992 Los Angeles riots started – not simply because of the verdict but because it was a reminder that an unarmed black man can be beaten violently, on video, and the violence could still be met with no repercussions. Imagine the terror that would cause a person to feel. When your body can be beaten or your life can be taken by an authority figure and no one is held accountable, who do you call? What do you do?

George Floyd’s murder evokes many parallels to Rodney King’s beating. Maybe because many of us are staying at home, an incredible number of people had access to and watched that tragic video. We were rightly horrified, but then our horror diverted to anger and/or frustration as protests turned to looting and violence. Years ago, author Toni Morrison was asked if she was surprised that black people rioted after the Rodney King verdict. She said she wasn’t surprised that people rioted – she was surprised that they had waited so long. They waited for justice, and finally took to the streets when they did not receive it. Now, twenty-nine years later, many black Americans are tired of waiting for justice they may not receive. They just want people to stop killing them, and I can’t blame them for that.

I know that it is possible to feel heartbroken about George Floyd’s murder and to be angered by looting and rioting. It is not a one-or-the-other thing, but there was a cause-and-effect. I hope that we will, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, condemn the conditions that continue to exist for black Americans as vigorously as we condemn the riots. I also hope that as anger and fear arise when you watch the news, you would put yourself in the shoes of someone who experiences life differently. Ask yourself, what anger and fear are they experiencing? What life experiences or historical realities cause those emotions?

Last but not least, if you are a white American who is shocked by all of this, I hope this will shatter your innocence. I hope you will read black authors, learn black history, and grapple with the reality that while crosses burned many white Christians did and said nothing. We may have been able to feign ignorance in the past but that time is long gone. We all saw the video and our silence is deafening. We need to use our voices to say that black lives matter. Lives depend on it.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.” –Desmond Tutu

[omgcuthestuff]

The Greatest Obstacle to Enlightenment

Enlightenment - what is that? A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. 

One day a stranger walked by. "Spare some change?" mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. "I have nothing to give you," said the stranger. 

Then he asked: "What's that you are sitting on?" "Nothing," replied the beggar. "Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember." "Ever looked inside?" asked the stranger. "No," said the beggar. "What's the point? There's nothing in there." "Have a look inside," insisted the stranger. 

The beggar managed to pry(mở, cạy lên) open the lid (nắp)

With astonishment (ngạc nhiên), disbelief (k tin vào mắt mình), and elation (sung sướng), he saw that the box was filled with gold.

I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. 

Not inside any box, as in the parable (ngụ ngôn), but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.

"But I am not a beggar," I can hear you say.

Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy (niềm vui rực rỡ) of Being and the deep, unshakable peace (sự thanh thản k thể lay chuyển) that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth (giàu sang vật chất)

They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure (khoảnh khắc lạc thú) or fulfillment, for validation (sự công nhận giá trị), security (sự an toàn), or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater (lớn lao vô hạn) than anything the world can offer.

The word enlightenment conjures up (gợi lên) the idea of some super-human accomplishment (sự thành công), and the ego likes to keep it that way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness with Being. 

It is a state of connectedness (sự kết nối) with something immeasurable( vô lượng, vô biên)  and indestructible (không thể phá hủy), something that, almost paradoxically (trái ngược), is essentially you and yet is much greater than you. 

It is finding your true nature beyond name and form.

The inability( tình trạng không thể) to feel this connectedness gives rise (nảy sinh) to the illusion of separation (ảo tưởng phân biệt, tách biệt), from yourself and from the world around you. 

You then perceive yourself, consciously or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. 

Fear arises, and conflict within and without becomes the norm.

I love the Buddha's simple definition of enlightenment as "the end of suffering."

There is nothing superhuman in that, is there? Of course, as a definition, it is incomplete. 

It only tells you what enlightenment is not: no suffering.

But what's left when there is no more suffering? 

The Buddha is silent on that (giữ im lặng về điều đó), and his silence implies that you'll have to find out for yourself. 

He uses a negative definition so that the mind cannot make it into something to believe in or into a superhuman accomplishment (một thành tựu siêu nhiên), a goal that is impossible for you to attain (đạt được). 

Despite this precaution (phòng ngừa), the majority (đại đa số, số đông) of Buddhists still believe that enlightenment is for the Buddha, not for them, at least not in this lifetime.

You used the word Being. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Being is the eternal (vĩnh hằng), ever-present (luôn hiện tiền) One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. 

However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible (sâu thẳm, vô hình) and indestructible essence (bất khả hủy diệt). 

This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. 

But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. 

You can know it only when the mind is still. 

When you are present (lưu trú trong hiện tiền) when your attention is fully and intensely (mạnh mẽ) in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. 

To regain (tái ngộ) awareness of Being and to abide (lưu trú) in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.

When you say Being, are you talking about God? If you are, then why don't you say it?

The word God has become empty of meaning (vô nghĩa) through thousands of years of misuse (lạm dụng). 

I use it sometimes, but I do so sparingly(một cách dè dặt). 

By misuse, I mean that people who have never even glimpsed the realm of the sacred, the infinite vastness (thoáng thấy lãnh vực thiêng liêng, bao la không ngần) behind that word, use it with great conviction (quả quyết), as if they knew what they are talking about. 

Or they argue against it, as if they knew what it is that they are denying. 

This misuse gives rise (nảy sinh) to absurd beliefs (xác tín - niềm tin vô lý), assertions (quả quyết), and egoic delusions (ảo tưởng vị ngã), such as "My or our God is the only true God, and your God is false," or Nietzsche's famous statement "God is dead."

The word God has become a closed concept (khái niệm đóng kín). 

The moment the word is uttered (khoảnh khắc từ ngữ được thốt ra), a mental image is created, no longer, perhaps, of an old man with a white beard, but still a mental representation of someone or something outside you, and, yes, almost inevitably a male someone or something.

Neither God nor Being nor any other word can define or explain the ineffable reality ( cái thực k thể nghĩ bàn) behind the word, so the only important question is whether the word is a help or a hindrance (một sự trở ngại) in enabling you to experience 

That toward which it points. 

Does it point beyond itself to that transcendental reality, or does it lend itself too easily to becoming no more than an idea in your head that you believe in, a mental idol?

The word Being explains nothing, but nor does God. Being, however, has the advantage that it is an open concept khái niệm còn bỏ ngỏ/ KN mở). 

It does not reduce the infinite invisible (cái không hình tướng vô hạn vô biên) to a finite entity (một thực thể hữu hạn). 

It is impossible to form a mental image of it. 

Nobody can claim exclusive possession of Being (tuyên bố độc quyền sở hữu bản thể hiện tiền). 

It is your very essence, and it is immediately accessible (có thể tiếp cận) to you as the feeling of your own presence, the realization I am that is prior to (Adj + phó từ: trước khi) I am this or I am that. 

So it is only a small step from the word Being to the experience of Being.

What is the greatest obstacle to experiencing this reality?

Identification (sự đồng hóa) with your mind, which causes thought to become

compulsive (cưỡng bách)

Not to be able to stop thinking is a dreadful affliction (1 thảm trạng khủng khiếp), but we don't realize this because almost everybody is suffering from it, so it is considered normal. 

This incessant mental noise (sự huyên náo k ngơi nghỉ của tâm trí) prevents you from finding that realm of inner stillness that is inseparable from Being. 

It also creates a false mind-made self (cái tôi giả tạo) that casts (phóng ra) a shadow of fear and suffering. 

We will look at all that in more detail later.

The philosopher Descartes believed that he had found the most fundamental truth when he made his famous statement: "I think, therefore I am." 

He had, in fact, given expression to the most basic error: to equate (đánh đồng) thinking with Being and identity with thinking. 

The compulsive thinker, which means almost everyone, lives in a state of apparent separateness (1 trạng thái của sự cách biệt rõ rệt), in an insanely complex world (1 thế giới phức tạp và không lành mạnh)  of continuous problems and conflict, a world that reflects the ever-increasing fragmentation of the mind (phản ánh tình trạng manh mún ngày càng tăng của tâm trí).

Enlightenment is a state of wholeness (1 trạng thái trọn vẹn), of being "at one" and therefore at peace. 

At one with life in its manifested aspect (khía cạnh thị hiện của nó), the world, as well as with your deepest self and life unmanifested (bất thị hiệ của cuộc sống) - at one with Being. 

Enlightenment is not only the end of suffering and of continuous conflict within and without, but also the end of the dreadful enslavement to incessant thinking (suy nghĩ miên man, k ngừng). 

What an incredible liberation (sự giải phóng) this is!

Identification with your mind creates an opaque screen of (1 tấm màn che mờ ảo của) concepts, labels, images, words, judgments, and definitions that blocks (ngăn chặn) all true relationship. 

It comes between you and yourself, between you and your fellow man and woman (người bạn đời/ ng phối ngẫu), between you and nature, between you and God. 

It is this screen of thought that creates the illusion of separateness (ảo tưởng về sự cách biệt), the illusion that there is you and a totally separate "other."

You then forget the essential fact (sự kiện cốt yếu) that, underneath the level of physical appearances (ngoại hình vật chất) and separate forms (sắc tướng cách biệt nhau), you are one with all that is. 

By "forget (nói “quên đi”)," I mean that you can no longer feel this oneness as self-evident reality (thực tại hiển nhiên). 

You may believe it to be true, but you no longer know it to be true. 

A belief may be comforting (thấy dễ chịu, thấy dc an ủi). 

Only through your own experience, however, does it become liberating (giải thoát, giải phóng).

Thinking has become a disease. Disease happens when things get out of balance.

For example, there is nothing wrong with cells dividing and multiplying (phân chia và nhân bản) in the body, but when this process continues in disregard (trong sự k hòa hợp với) of the total organism, cells proliferate (sinh sôi nảy nở quá nhiều) and we have disease.

Note: The mind is a superb instrument (1 công cụ tuyệt vời) if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive (tính hủy hoại, hủy diệt). To put it more accurately, it is not so much that you use your mind wrongly - you usually don't use it at all. It uses you. This is the disease.

You believe that you are your mind. This is the delusion (sự ảo tưởng, lừa gạt). The instrument has taken you over (thống trị).

I don't quite agree. It is true that I do a lot of aimless thinking ( suy nghĩ k mục đích, vẩn vơ), like most people, but I can still choose to use my mind to get and accomplish things, and I do that all the time.

Just because you can solve a crossword puzzle (1 trờ chơi ô chữ) or build an atom bomb (1 quả bom ngtu) doesn't mean that you use your mind. 

Just as dogs love to chew (nhai, gặm) bones, the mind loves to get its teeth into problems (tạo ra vde để nghiền ngẫm). (get one’s teeth into something: tạo ra nvu, hoạt động để suy nghĩ, nghiền ngẫm)

That's why it does crossword puzzles and builds atom bombs.

You have no interest (không có lợi] in either. 

Let me ask you this: can you be free of your mind whenever you want to? Have you found the "off" button?

You mean stop thinking altogether? No, I can't, except maybe for a moment or two.

Then the mind is using you. You are unconsciously identified with it, so you don't even know that you are its slave.

It's almost as if you were possessed (bị chiếm hữu, bị khống chế) without knowing it, and so you take the possessing entity (thực thế khống chế) to be yourself. 

The beginning of freedom is the realization that you are not the possessing entity - the thinker.

Knowing this enables you to observe (quan sát) the entity. 

The moment you start watching the thinker, a higher level of consciousness becomes activated. 

You then (lúc đó) begin to realize that there is a vast realm of intelligence (1 lãnh vực thông minh bao la) beyond thought, that thought is only a tiny aspect of that intelligence. 

You also realize that all the things that truly matter - beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace - arise from beyond the mind. You begin to awaken.

[amitsinhavidhi]

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIVIL DEFAMATION AND CRIMINAL DEFAMATION

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CIVIL DEFAMATION AND CRIMINAL DEFAMATION.

Next to life, man cares most for his reputation. Sometimes, we find an individual giving it the foremost place, preferring death rather than living a life of ignominy and disgrace. Reputation is thus in fact a great internal force in the mind of every man, impelling him to do great things. On a careful analysis of the human mind, one will find this element of longing for name and reputation as the basic motive of most actions.

Rightly, law gives protection to a man’s reputation, as it gives protection to his property and life. Before we go deep into this topic, let us first concentrate on the topic of defamation and what it is.

WHAT IS DEFAMATION?

Defamation is actually the injury to the reputation of a person. If any person injures the reputation of another, he does so at his own risk, as it is in the case of an interference with the property. If defamation occurs in spoken words or gestures (or other such transitory form) then it is termed as slander and the same if in written or printed form (of a permanent nature) is libel. In India, defamation is both a civil and a criminal offence. In Civil Law, defamation mostly falls under the Law of Torts, which imposes punishment in the form of damages awarded to the claimant (person filing the claim). Under Criminal Law, Defamation is bailable, non-cognizable and compoundable offence. Therefore, the police cannot start investigation of defamation without a warrant from a magistrate (a FIR cannot be filed). The accused also has a right to seek bail. Later, the charges can be dropped if the victim and the accused enter into a compromise to that effect (even without the permission of the court). Defamation as a criminal offence is stated under section 499 of the Indian Penal Code

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIBEL AND SLANDER.

English Law - Mainly because of historical reasons, English law divides defamation into two: -

* Libel - Libel is the representation made in some permanent form, e.g., writing, printing, picture etc.

*  Slander - Slander is the publication of a statement in a transient form. examples of it may be spoken words or gestures.

Under English law, the distinction between libel and slander material for two reasons:

1. Under Criminal law, only libel has been recognized as an offence. Slander is not an offence.

2. Under the law of torts, slander is actionable only on proof of special damage. Libel is always actionable.

Indian Law: It has been noted above that under English criminal law, a distinction is made between libel and slander. There, Libel is a crime but slander is not. Slander is just a civil wrong in England. Criminal law in India does not make any such distinction between Libel and Slander. Both Libel and Slander are criminal offences under section 499, I.P.C. It has been noted above that though Libel and Slander both are considered as civil wrongs, but there is a distinction between the two under English Law. Libel is actionable per se, but in case of slander, except in certain cases, proof of special damage is required to be proved.

IN INDIA DEFAMATION IS BOTH A CIVIL AND CRIMINAL OFFENCE.

The remedy for civil defamation is stated under the Law of Torts. In a civil defamation case, the person who is defamed can move either to the High Court or subordinate courts and seek damages in the form of monetary compensation from the accused. Also, under sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code, a person guilty of criminal defamation can be sent to jail for two years.

DEFAMATION UNDER CIVIL LAW

Under civil law, defamation is the publication of a statement which tends to lower a person in the estimation of the right-thinking members of the society. To constitute a defamation under civil law, few conditions has to be satisfied:

1. The statement made must be defamatory- Defamatory statement is one which tends to injure the reputation of the plaintiff. An imputation which exposes one to disgrace and humiliation, ridicule or contempt is defamatory.

2. The said statement must be referred to the plaintiff. It is immaterial that the defendant did not really intend to defame the plaintiff. If the person to whom the statement was published could infer that the statement referred to the plaintiff, the defendant is liable.

3. The statement must be published - Publication actually means making the defamatory matter known to some person other than the person defamed, and unless and until that is done, no civil action for defamation lies.

DEFENCES

The defence to an action for defamation are :

1. JUSTIFICATION OR TRUTH - In a civil action for defamation, truth of the defamatory matter is complete defence. Under criminal law, just proving that the statement was true is no defence. The exception under criminal law states the statement besides being true the imputation must be shown to have been made for public good.

2. FAIR COMMENT - Making fair comment on matters of public interest is a defence to an action for defamation. For this defence to be available, the following essentials are required:

a. It must be a comment.

b. The comment must be fair.

c. The matter commented upon must be a matter of public interest.

The person defamed can move either to the high court or trial court and seek damages in the form of monetary compensation from the accused. The remedy sought is covered under the Law of Torts, a rare and slow course of relief witnessed in India.

The law defines defamatory content as one “calculated to injure the reputation of another by exposing him to hatred, contempt or ridicule.” This is the very first condition required to be fulfilled under the civil remedy.

Second, the claimant must be identified in the defamatory statement. It must address a particular person and no as such broad-based classification is acceptable.

And lastly there must be publication of the defamatory statement in oral or written form. A civil defamation law would be applied once these conditions are attained. The defendant will then have to plead his defense.

CIVIL CASES UNDER THE LAW OF DEFAMATION

In D.P. Choudhury v. Manjulata, the plaintiff - respondent, Manjulata about 17 years of age, belonged to a distinguished educated family of Jodhpur. She was a student of B.A. There was publication of a news item in a local daily, Dainik Navjyoti, dated 18.12.77, that the last night 11 p.m. Manjulata had run away with a boy named Kamlesh, after she went out of her house on the pretext of attending night classes in her college. The news item was untrue and was negligently published. It was held that all defamatory words are actionable per se and in such a case general damages will be presumed.

DEFAMATION UNDER CRIMINAL LAW

SEC 499 OF THE INDIAN PENAL CODE, 1860

DEFAMATION -

Whoever, by words either spoken or by signs or by visible representations, makes or publishes any imputation concerning any person intending to harm, or knowing or having reason to believe that such imputation will harm, the reputation of such person, is said to defame that person.

On the other hand, the Indian Penal Code gives an opportunity to the defamed individual to also move a criminal court, asking the latter to take cognizance of his complaint. It’s a bailable, non-cognizable and compoundable offence, which means no police can register a case and start investigation without the court’s permission.

Under sections 499 and 500 of the Indian Penal Code, a person found guilty can be sent to jail for two years. The Supreme Court has reserved its verdict on a clutch of petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the two penal provisions.

In a criminal suit, the complainant should be able to prove that the accused intended to defame him. In the absence of intention, it has to be be established that the alleged offender had knowledge that the publication was likely to defame the person. Normal stand of proof in criminal cases, which is to prove the offence beyond reasonable doubt, must also be placed before the court.

Since the law is compoundable, a criminal court can drop the charges if the victim and the accused enter into a compromise to that effect (even without the permission of the court).  Content Reference from Legal Blog

[avelera]

Women Pretending to be John and Sherlock

.... or why the women who try to seduce John and Sherlock consistently fail or succeed. 

Picking up on my conversation with @mostlyanything19​ - there have been several instances of women providing mirrors for John and Sherlock, effectively cosplaying them within the series. This has provided varying degrees of success with seducing the other, on a subconscious level. However, many of them have also been wrong. My thesis statement is, in essence, that women who present as “Sherlock” tend to magnetize John, who can’t fail to see their charms, but tend to repel Sherlock. Women who present as John tend to be people John can’t wholly get into, but who Sherlock adores. For the record, both John and Sherlock have not met every woman who masquerades as them, but here’s a quick non-spoilery instance before I get into Season 4 examples:

Jeanette

Tall (taller than John in heels), dark haired, wears a coat. John was clearly superficially attracted to her, as they did date, but she was no match for the real thing and he abandoned her for Sherlock as soon as it came up. Sherlock disliked her instantly and wanted her out.

(Goes a bit into spoiler territory next + gets a bit long and image heavy so putting under a cut)

Mary

When we first met Mary it seemed obvious to me that she was a John parallel. She is a former killer (literally a soldier, just like him) who meets him working in the doctor’s clinic. She’s blond, middle-aged, and trying desperately to have a normal life. Clearly she modeled her new self on some level after John, and what she thought John would like. But by the end, John states that he doesn’t like Mary very much. Coincidentally this coincides with John admitting he no longer likes himself very much, as a result of his attempted affair. The problem with Mary isn’t that she was a killer precisely, but rather that John wanted to be normal and by ending up with another non-normal person, and one so similar to him, he has to admit that he’s not normal and never will be. Joh likes her a great deal, but not enough to be only with her forever, just as he likes himself alright, but not enough to be alone forever (and he sees romantic relationships as fulfilling the missing piece).

You know who unabashedly adores Mary, no matter what she does?

Sherlock. 

Irene

Clearly cosplaying as Sherlock here. Interestingly, the episode makes frequent reference to disguises revealing who we truly are. Interesting that Sherlock cannot read Irene, but he also cannot read himself. She is his mirror here, intentionally so as to avoid being read. She even admits it at the end with SHERlocked. She never said she loved Sherlock, she only said that she was him. If she was trying to seduce him, however, she failed. She confronted him with a sexual version of himself, which made him uncomfortable, but Sherlock never admitted to returning her attraction. 

The reason Irene was wrong to choose this guise with which to seduce Sherlock (if that was her intention) is because Sherlock doesn’t particularly like himself. His arrogance is a mask for his feelings of inadequacy. 

John, on the other hand, is immediately attracted to Irene, begging her to put her clothes back on, her nudity being something that doesn’t phase Sherlock very much at all, because he has no sexual feeling toward her (arguably, no more than he would for his own reflection in the mirror). 

John at the end of The Lying Detective is urging Sherlock to call Irene. Though John doesn’t love her, he completely understands why someone would love Irene, despite her being dangerous, a criminal, a sociopath (a word Sherlock used to describe himself the first day he and John met). John sees Irene as dangerous but amazing. How could Sherlock fail to love someone like that? He states that Sherlock shouldn’t let this chance slip away. John is absolutely projecting how easy it is for him to love Sherlock by commanding Sherlock to make advances towards Irene. Throughout the scene, Sherlock is visibly perplexed by the notion and admits over and over he has no feelings for her, something incomprehensible to John.

The Reporter

Far less expert than Irene, the reporter also tried to seduce Sherlock in a way and make him like her enough to open up to her by masquerading as him. I’m not convinced Irene was trying to seduce Sherlock, rather she was trying to hide her intentions from him and therefore quite rightly chose to disguise herself as Sherlock to hide from him. But the reporter was trying to seduce Sherlock, albeit much more clumsily. She made the mistake of thinking that Sherlock is an egomaniac who would fall for his own image reflected back at him. She could not have been more wrong, because again, Sherlock does not like himself. His words to a woman pretending to be him? 

“You repel me.”

Which finally brings us to the mastermind, the very first person who ever figured out how to successfully seduce both John and Sherlock, by masquerading as each of them to the other. 

Eurus

How Eurus seduced John:

“This girl just smiled at me. That's all it was, it was a smile. We texted, constantly.”

Let’s not even get into the fact that the woman who only needed to smile at John to get him to contemplate infidelity to his wife and mother of his child was a Holmes. She knew how to get him. She didn’t need a disguise as such, she just needed to be a Holmes and let that shine through. Furthermore, John has always had a knack for finding danger that lurks below the surface, and she is very dangerous. She got him immediately, hook line and sinker. 

The reason she was successful in gaining him when Mary was losing him is because Mary also assumed that John liked himself (arguably because Mary, like Sherlock, likes John a great deal and can’t imagine him not loving himself too. I’m not personally anti John/Mary, but I argue also that Mary is not anti John/Sherlock). Eurus recognized that the missing piece for John was Sherlock Holmes, at a time when being only with himself or someone who was trying to be like him (rather than like Sherlock) was becoming bland and distasteful to him, literally as bad as being alone.

How Eurus seduced Sherlock:

Nowhere else to go (Stanford offered John his last chance to live in London, without London it’s very likely John’s mental state would have deteriorated even further). A cane. A limp. Being amazed by his deductions but also willing to poke fun at them and not be threatened (”Amazing.” “I know.” “No, the chips.”). Willing to walk around town with him solving crimes. Eurus recreated Sherlock’s first night with John, thus thoroughly charming him. Interesting too that she wore red, when the first episode was A Study in Pink, based on Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet. 

Eurus is a Holmes and therefore granted a level of insight above that of most “normal” characters in the show. For years, women have been trying to get closer to John and Sherlock by imitating them to themselves and to each other. Eurus is the final step in this progress, knowingly masquerading (unlike Jeanette who was accidental via being picked by John, or Irene, who was arguably hiding not seducing) as them in order to gain their confidence, find their vulnerabilities, and break them. 

Eurus attacked John on the one place where he felt safe: his morality. His image of himself. He may not be as smart as Sherlock, but he could be the moral compass and she broke that down. Ironically, in a way that allowed him to eventually forgive himself, Mary, and Sherlock for not being the super human paragons that he demanded of himself, and the people he cares for. 

Eurus attacked Sherlock’s deduction, bringing him to the point of a mental breakdown in a very short period of time by making him question reality and wonder if the people he was seeing were delusions. Ironically, putting him in  situation where he was humiliated in front of John, his intellect and sanity called into question. Ever since the Fall, John has been afraid of Sherlock’s intellect now that it’s been used against him to such devastating effect (literally ruining his life) with Sherlock’s “death”. Seeing Sherlock vulnerable when his deduction apparently failed was what allowed John to see Sherlock as human again, allowed him to help Sherlock on cases again, and ultimately rescue Sherlock without fear that the need for rescue was another of Sherlock’s tricks.

True to her name, Eurus is a dangerous force, but a cleansing one. She brings destruction, but in the wake of the catastrophe (the eucatastrophe to steal a word from Tolkien) we have catharsis and renewal. 

“There's an east wind coming all the same, such a wind as never blew on England yet. It will be cold and bitter, Watson, and a good many of us may wither before its blast. But it's God's own wind none the less and a cleaner, better stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared.” 

- Arthur Conan Doyle

[rosecorcoranwrites]

Why it’s not okay to be okay with punching Nazis: PART 3 – Free Speech

This is the last part I promise XD Then it’s off to fun happy book things :D

3) Free speech, or, “ideas cannot hurt you”

So I’ve already discussed the idea of mob mentality taking over and the idea that what constitutes a "unacceptable” ideology might very well include those ideas we hold as normal today, so normalizing the idea of harming people for having unpopular opinions is dangerous, but what if we could guarantee that only Nazis will be punched, not people mistaken for being Nazis, not people with other ideas. What is we could 100% guarantee that Nazis, and only Nazis, were the ones being punched.

You still shouldn’t hurt people for the ideas, because their ideas are not actually hurting you.

“But Nazism was responsible for not only 11 million people in the Holocaust, but also arguably, all the other fatalities of WWII, at least in the European Theater,” I here you say, and that is true. But to be perfectly fair, one could make the same arguments, with much higher death tolls, about Communism/Marxism. I even think that because of its subtlety and its basis in solving real economic problems, Communism/Marxism is actually more pernicious than the in-your-face Nazism, but you don’t see me jumping up to punch Marxists. Why? Because a single person holding an idea, no matter how dangerous of an idea, is not harming anyone.

I’m of the school of thought, the one currently in vogue in American law, by the by, that one should only harm another person in self-defense/defense of others, and only when the threat is imminent. If a Nazi is about to hurt an actual, real, live person, you bet I would support punching them. I’d do it myself! If I know that he’s planning some sort of violence, I’ll do the smart thing and call the police. And if a Nazi says something like, “I’m glad the Holocaust happened,” I’ll be repulsed and call him on it, but I wouldn’t punch him.

Because as ugly as his words are, as hideous as his ideas are, as much as I hate them and think that they are 100% wrong, they are still just ideas, which are oddly powerful, while at the same time, powerless. This idea, I think, fits in with how we interpret the First Amendment to the US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Why are those the first few rights we talk about? Surely rights that prevent bodily distress, like being free from cruel and unusual punishment or search and seizure are more important, right? Well, I think it’s because you can’t really have a free society without freedom of the speech and religion. In fact, you can’t have a free person without free speech and religion. “Religion” or beliefs and philosophies are essentially the inner-most thoughts of a person, how they view the metaphysical/spiritual world, and their place in it, while “speech” is how they express those thoughts. To curtail that is not just to try and control a person’s action, but a person’s very being. A person’s beliefs affect every aspect of their life, from how they vote to what they eat to what they consider right and wrong. The government should never be allowed to tell you what you can and cannot think, and cannot prevent you from speaking about those beliefs. Furthermore, no one ought to live in fear of violence for holding a certain view.

And yet, as important as the First Amendment is, I would say it is probably the most hotly contested today, because people say they believe in free speech and religion… but only as far as they agree with those beliefs.

Let’s take religion, and then bring it around to speech. In recent years, there has been massive government, business, and social pressure on various religious groups and individuals to in one way or another violate their beliefs. From trying to force Catholic nurses to aid in abortions to forcing Jehovah’s Witness kids to say to pledge to denying Muslims the right to wear the veil or pray in public, our society, both in America and Europe, has a real interest in policing the lives of religious people. When these infringements upon religious rights happen, rational people rightly point out, respectively, that you wouldn’t force a Muslim to eat pork, wouldn’t force a Christian kid to pray to a pagan god, and wouldn’t deny a Jewish person the right to wear a yarmulka, so you don’t have a right to infringe on this other group’s similar religious beliefs. Generally, we can all agree on that, more or less.

But what about unpopular religions, like Satanism? People often get upset when Satanists perform rituals or construct displays, but the thing is, if we curtail their rights, then we ought to curtail the rights of all religious groups. Now I personally find Satanists rather silly, largely because most of them will admit that they don’t actually worship Satan, but like the ideas he represents, like rejection of authority and organized religion. Why that translates into a three-edgy-five-me Unitarianesque diabolism and not, say, sleeping in on Sunday mornings, is anyone’s guess. But I digress: most Satanists seem to be in it for purely aesthetic purposes, like “Catholics” who don’t agree with anything the Church teaches, but Love the RitualTM. But let’s say that there are certain real diabolists out there who do worship Satan and do dark rituals to summon his power. M’kay. I actually believe in demonic powers, and do believe such people are putting their own souls at risk, but I can’t stop them from believing that Satan is the bee’s knees. As long as they aren’t hurting people, sacrificing pets, or stealing consecrated Hosts, then they have every right to their practice of religion. Again, if they could actually curse you, yeah, we would have a bone to pick, legally, with such a religion. But we all know they can’t, and they aren’t hurting anyone by constructing goat statues or placing pentagrams next to crèches during Advent. They have as much right to their belief system as any Christian, atheist, Muslim, pagan, etc.

The same is true of speech. Even if the ideas are dangerous—like selling your soul to Satan or thinking your race is superior—so long as the person isn’t acting on those ideas in such a way as to actually harm someone, they have a right to speak freely without fear of violent repercussions. If they start stealing property from churches for their rituals, or destroy Jewish storefronts, or burn crosses on people’s lawns, then you can get the law involved and sue the freaking pants off them or throw them in jail. Again, if they physically attack you or someone near you, you are obviously in your rights to fight back, the same as you would against anyone who is attacking you for any reason. If you know they are plotting to harm a group of people, again, call the cops. In the grand scheme of things, though, punching Nazis because they’re Nazis really isn’t going to solve anything. It’s not gonna make them suddenly not be Nazis anymore. All it does is make you into the sort of person who thinks that it’s okay to assault certain people for their beliefs and the things they say, which… is actually really dangerous, as I hope I’ve shown in Parts 1 and 2 of this post.

Knowing that a Nazi is walking the streets, free and unpunched, probably isn’t going to make you feel very good. It might make you angry, or even scared. But the same could be said of having sex-offenders out on parole. Knowing they live in your neighborhood would make you justifiably angry and scared, but last I checked, it’s still illegal to assault a sex-offender who isn’t committing a crime. That person’s actions scarred someone irreparably, just like how the Nazi’s ideology was responsible for millions of deaths. But at the moment, all they are doing is existing and believing things. What gives you a right to stop them from doing that? What gives you a right to police the thoughts and ideas of others? Nazism is truly a dangerous thing, but other equally-dangerous ideologies have come and gone and come again, and many of those begin with the idea that all speech should be protected, but some should be protected more than others.

I don’t think it’s okay to punch Nazis. And I don’t think it’s okay for people to be okay with punching Nazis. I think it’s giving in to a mentality that can lead to more and more acts of violence against a larger and larger group of other-ed “thems”: Nazis, Trump supports, people who kinda seem to be Nazis or Trump supports, people who we can write off as irrational instead of trying to reason with. I don’t think that this sort of violence-espousing mentality will lead to anything good. But for now it’s just an idea, and I hope in these three little essays that I might have changed someone’s mind.

Part 1: Mob Mentality

Part 2: Unpopular Ideologies

[dracox-serdriel]

Lament of the Asphodels - Chapter 29: The Thread of Moirai

Lament of the Asphodels

Title: The Thread of Moirai Author: Dracox Serdriel Artist: @liamjcnes Artwork: Post 1 | Post 2 Word count: 4,800 Rating: NC-17/Explicit (except on FF) Warnings: Graphic descriptions of violence, Graphic sexual content, Declaration/threats of sexual violence, Minor character death, Social stigmatization/abuse, Detailed descriptions of hopelessness/depression/inner turmoil, Descriptions of the effects of extreme phobias/social anxiety, including anthropophobia, thalassophobia/hydrophobia, and hylophobia/dendrophobia, Descriptions of shipwrecks and storms at sea

Read Lament of the Asphodels on FF, AO3, LJ, or start at the beginning on Tumblr. Written as part of @captainswanbigbang.

Chapter 29: The Thread of Moirai

The Stablehand paced outside the stall door, her mind churning and her heart reeling. She had lived as a secondhand helper in the town for what felt like forever, working as an assistant to the Blacksmith when horses need shoeing or as a Secondary Groom when need arose. She subsisted in the best of circumstances, relying on handouts from the nearest church to fill her belly or for a safe place to sleep. At one point many years ago, when the harvest turned particularly poor and even those on high-hilled manors felt the ire of the soil, she settled in a large village, for it had comestibles and shelter that extended to a world-weary stranger.

The people of the village, which was more rightly a town by its size and structure, were reluctant to accept her. Back then, she was one of those people who drifted from place to place for work, her title and thus her allegiances changing like the wind. Had it not been for the Pastor, a woman of rigid moral standards who refused to bend the rules to fit the mood of the village, the Stablehand would've been cast into the woods. The Pastor insisted that compassion and aid to the needy were tenants of her faith, so neither she nor her village could turn the Stablehand away. She had done no wrong, and therefore no wrong was due to her.

Unfortunately, no one else shared this view. Poverty like hers was a rarity, and those afflicted with it were blamed and ridiculed, as if they had chosen its punishing course for their own. All things being equal, blood ties ensured that every person within ten villages had some family that might take them in, but the Stablehand had been born an orphan, both her parents dead before she had a chance to draw breath. The orphanage that raised her found no family to take her in, and once she was old enough to work, she left, taking jobs where she could, hoping that fate would conspire to bring her to a proper partner, someone she could love and wed.

But that never happened. She remained alone in this world, until one day she saw a woman that reminded her that she had a name, though it had been so long since she'd heard it that she'd nearly forgotten. Her name was Tamara.

And that began the long, twisted road to where she stood now. For so long, she had assumed whatever powers that were had cast her into this horrid realm as punishment for her crimes, forcing her to live with the one thing she hated above all others: magic. Her pact with the Mayor - no, Cora - was just another part of her penance, but she had hoped, foolishly perhaps, that some reprieve was due to her after all she had suffered, that she would have the one thing she yearned for the many years of drudgery she had somehow survived alone.

Greg is here, in Northedge, she reminded herself.

The Mayor - no, Cora - had insisted that the man she sought remained stranded in the Midlands, where he was buried deep in obligation and a fog of false life, and she knew that spell only too well, as it had eaten years of her life and even now embedded doubt in her. Oh, Cora could retrieve him at considerable expense and in due time, but she required years of service to afford such a feat.

Tamara had served the witch four times what was due, but she kept conjuring reasons to put off collecting Greg from the Midlands. She had been assured that handling the pirate's informal incarceration would be her last payment, her last labors, and then Cora would free her of her duties and reward her for her steadfast fidelity. All she had to do was keep the pirate alive and in chains until Cora returned, whether it was a day from now or three months hence.

You can't trust her.

The niggling thought snuck up on her and struck every time she decided to stay her current course. Cora not only used magic, but she had a history of breaking her word, though Tamara was the only one who had survived her companionship long enough to know she had done it in this realm as much as the last. She had watched as Cora wed one wealthy man after the next, only for him to wither and die months after their marriage. One time she even poisoned her husband the day after their nuptials, and somehow the blame fell on the husband's son and heir, who became stripped of his titles and lands and sent to jail, that he might evermore be forgotten for his sins. No one ever questioned it, and no one seemed to remember the dozen or so husbands that wed the Mayor before their untimely demise.

She can't be trusted.

Captain Hook was a wretched pirate whose villainy had inspired fairy stories for generations, yet he shared one very important thing with Tamara: a hatred of magic. His centuries of enmity with the Dark One had only sharpened his abhorrence, which made him a far more natural ally than the likes of Cora, but it hardly equated to him being trustworthy.

Bang, bang, BANG!

She rolled her eyes. He must've gotten a leg free of the shackles. She threw the stall door open and found him battling the restraints, the snarl on his face and the malice in his eye countering any comedy she might've found in his helplessness, which was underscored by the oddly pathetic affect his bare feet had on his visage.

"Stop moving," she ordered.

He glowered at her as best he could, given the gag blocked much of his face, but his body stilled all the same.

"Let's say I believe you that Greg is near," she said. "And that I don't trust the May - I mean, Cora. Last I checked, you and me have more than a little unfinished business. A little bad blood over how things ended in Storybrooke. Wouldn't you agree?"

His expression changed, and she lifted her hand in warning. She shackled the leg that he'd pried free and pulled the restraints over his arms tight before she loosened one side of the gag just enough for it to slip down his chin. He spat it out as she put distance between them, not trusting the chains to protect her from his wrath.

"Perhaps," he said, his voice somewhat raw thanks to the gag. "But I'm willing to let bygones be bygones, owing to the circumstances."

"Those being?"

"Cora has Emma," he replied. "I'm doubting that Cora's plans will leave her in good health."

"That's your plan? You get your love, I get mine?" Tamara asked incredulously.

Killian adjusted himself, waiting to reply until he was sitting upright and could look her in the eye. He normally had no issue escaping chains or ropes, as many people had little experience restraining someone with one hand, but Tamara had proven herself more than up to the task.

"No," he replied. "It's entirely possible that Greg was slain with the Stormbringer."

"You expect me to help you after you tell me that?"

"Aye," he replied. "Because Cora, talented though she may be, cannot raise the dead, so what do you think she will do to ensure your silence on her past crimes?"

"She'll kill me," Tamara replied. "But all that tells me is that I might have to run. Not that I should take you with me."

"The people who disposed of the Stormbringer were all heroes," he said quickly, as if he expected her to abandon him this very second. "I doubt they would've condemned him to death without trial, especially because the law might not punish him so harshly."

"That's it? You expect me to ditch Cora because, chances are, Greg is rotting in a work camp?" she asked. "If you're lying to me, you're robbing me of my one chance to get him back."

"If I was lying to you, I would've told you a happier tale," he retorted. "About how he's some jolly Dockhand whistling sea chanties. Wouldn't I?"

Tamara nodded her head, yes, but her fury prevented her from anything more than perfunctory agreement.

"Do you know what Cora plans to do with Emma?" he asked, his voice cracking.

"No," she said. "But whatever it is, it must be big, because she left the stables. She hasn't done that in decades. People come to her. Always."

Killian fought the urge to lash out at Tamara, for he could see her pain and sorrow just under the skin, pulling her in every direction possible. He knew that particular battle all too well, which meant he could exploit it, turn it against her to his advantage.

Except, that wasn't the man he was supposed to be anymore. He wasn't the dreaded pirate Captain Hook, and if he transmuted back to that old version of himself in his darkest hour, he'd never be properly rid of it.

"I can prove it," he said. "You need look no further than the Northmost Harbor. One of the heroes attending the Strombringer was sure to stay behind, or if not, then the Lawmaster will certainly know."

"All I would have to do is leave you here unattended, hike a day through the woods, travel at least another by the roads, and then hope I can find someone to talk to," she said. "Then two more days for a return journey. All the while, I'll have no way to know if Cora had returned."

"This is a stable," Killian pointed out. "Surely a steed could cut the journey's length to a day."

"The steeds here could cut the journey to a quarter of that," she said. "But she took all four of them to draw the carriage."

"You've only four horses?" he asked. "What of the noises I've heard day and night?"

Tamara pursed her lips. Every steed here had some kind of magic, and the four that Cora took were no exception. They were quick as lightning and their great size intimidated all who dared look upon them. It was said that, in their past lives, the four had belonged to man up until they devoured his flesh. While Tamara liked horses, she always kept a safe distance from the four prized beasts in this stable, and as for the fifth, well, it was a freak of nature like no other, though it at least seemed more horse than monster.

"Time is a factor," Killian persisted.

"I think you'll find that the horse isn't exactly friendly," she said.

"Have you never tried to ride him?"

"He was brought here for studding," she said. Then she added, "He was brought against his will, with chains and whips. All the noise you've been hearing... he's been here a month and hasn't had a drop of water nor eaten an oat."

"How is he yet living?" Killian asked.

"Tell me, pirate," she said, changing the topic. "What do you think will happen to me if Greg is dead? Cora will want revenge, and I doubt your girlfriend will protect me."

"She would. She's a hero."

"I kidnapped her son," Tamara countered. "Even heroes have their limits."

"Aye, perhaps," he said. "There are others more powerful than Cora in this land."

"Like who?"

Without thinking, Killian blurted out the first name that came to mind, "Hippolyta."

"The Queen of the Amazons?" Tamara asked. "How can you know that?"

"She's the reason Emma and I came this far," he replied. "She took the Unending Flame from the lighthouse. We came to the mainland to look for her and take it back. She would have no place for me, but you are a woman and a warrior."

"But I am not an Amazon," Tamara said.

"Then the Lawmaster of the Northmost Harbor," he suggested. "She can protect you. Or find you a castle or fort of particular safety."

She made up her mind. She couldn't trust anyone in this life, but a one-handed pirate was a better option than the vengeful witch. She drew her machete and made a quick show of it to Killian, and though it was clear he remained unafraid of her, the tension in his face increased.

"If you make any move to harm me, escape, or betray me - "

"I won't," he interrupted. "You have my word."

She quickly retrieved his hook, socks, and boots, which she had tied outside the stall door, and dropped them at his feet. She untied the restraints and let them fall loosely to the floor, leaving him upright and tangled as she waited outside the stall. When he appeared, rumpled and gleefully donning his hook, she didn't hesitate to go straight to the only other occupied stall.

Killian followed her warily, for though she seemed amenable to their accord, he had no reason to suspect she would remain so agreeable, particularly if Greg had died with the Stormbringer. At the very least, he wasn't gaged and shoeless any longer.

"The steed you requested," she said, waving her hand.

The stall door was twice as large as his had been, but then again, his had been designed for a normal horse of a normal size. This stall, like the ones near it, was crafted for a beast so enormous it dwarfed, of all things, horses. After having lived with nothing more than the sound of the creature's outbursts, he hadn't guessed its size, and now that he had an idea of it, he wasn't certain he wanted to face it.

It's the only way to rescue Emma, he thought to himself.

That steeled his blood, and he nodded curtly to Tamara, who unbolted all three of the locks and threw the door open, taking care to duck out of any line of sight, leaving him alone in front of whatever monster awaited. He fought the desire to cower, though admittedly for his pride alone. There was no reason to suspect that it wouldn't trample over him on its value for freedom.

Time deceitfully passed in slow ebbs, for it felt like he stood vulnerable for eons. Yet nothing stirred, so he stepped close enough to see rightfully inside the enclosure while Tamara moved even farther from him.

What he saw took his breath away, for it was no beast at all but a pale and terrible stallion whose hue was somehow both a blinding white and a shining gold. The most splendid thing, however, was its glorious wings with a breadth no one could measure, filled with feathers so fine his eyes could barely discern them.

"Pegasus," he whispered.

Dread churned up in the back of his throat as he remembered the sail that once graced The Jewel of the Realm, the one which had the power to transcend realms and brought them to Neverland. Did not his own brother tell him that it had been woven from the last feathers of the legendary horse that could fly. What would the creature think if he knew how his remains were put to use? Surely the steed would have a low opinion of the man who not only abused those remnants only to burn them unceremoniously moments later.

Then Pegasus was upon him, his great nose nudging his shoulder and his eyes filled with curiosity. Though his size made him intimidating, he appeared to be more of a gentle giant than otherworldly beast.

"I bet you're hungry, Old Boy," he whispered, patting him on his nose.

Tamara was surprised that he hadn't been trampled immediately, and she was even more astonished when Killian talked of lore about Pegasus, specifically stories that spoke to the creature's eating habits. The stallion was never meant for a stable, and while he would eat from the hands of the deities atop Mount Olympus, he would never take anything served from the unworthy. In this realm, he only ever grazed the open grass and natural foods.

So they loosed him in the pasture that went straight to the tree line, and he ate his fill before watering himself at the river, returning with a healthy glow about him, a shimmer that could not be explained by the high afternoon sun.

Tamara attempted to saddle him, for he was roughly the size of the other steeds and she presumed one of their saddles would fit. Unfortunately, between his wings and wild nature, she only proved no saddle nor bridle could stay on Pegasus more than a few seconds.

"I suppose we'll be riding without a saddle," Killian said.

"You really think I'm getting on that thing without a bridle?" she asked.

"Have you ever flown a horse before?" he asked.

"Of course not!"

"Then perhaps he is the better judge of direction and speed," he suggested.

"So, what, we tell him where to go and hope for the best?" she asked.

"Aye, I suspect he understands us," he replied. "He did fly to Mount Olympus at the behest of his rider."

Pegasus allowed Killian to mount without difficulty, though Tamara took a bit more effort. Apparently she wasn't the only one unhappy with this arrangement.

"Easy, Old Boy," he said quietly to Pegasus. "She's only looking for an escape, just the same as you and me."

His words calmed the horse enough to secure Tamara behind him. She gripped tightly to Killian's chest, and he became acutely aware her arms were wrapped around his torso. Knowing she couldn't see him, he glowered at her closeness. It should be Emma behind him, not some old enemy-turned-friend who he begrudgingly accepted.

"We're off to the Northmost Harbor," he said.

The hair on Pegasus's back shifted, and Killian did his best to mirror the movements. His knees bent so his legs tailed along the side of Pegasus, and he leaned forward until his belly nearly touched the steed's back. The position was awkward for anyone, let alone an experienced rider. Tamara's presence didn't help matters. Still, no matter how uncomfortable, it kept their legs clear of the wing joint, and the hair acted as firmly as a fitted leather saddle.

He had hardly a moment to think on it, for as soon as they were in place, Pegasus exploded forward, galloping through the pasture with enormous strides. The wind stung his eyes so hard that they watered, and he instinctively shut them, as did Tamara. So they felt rather than saw the uplift from the ground. Thus, both were blissfully unaware of the four steeds cascading through the forest path into the pasture, returning with neither Coachman nor passengers.

Like any man, Killian had imagined what it would be liked to fly, and his experiences with The Jolly Roger in flight had augmented his whimsy, wherein pure, unadulterated freedom always held a foothold. Reality, however, contained nothing of his fantasy; no, it was unbidden, endless terror that froze in the veins. It countered the heat of Pegasus's body and the warmth of the unnaturally close sun.

It seemed as if no time at all transpired before they touched down softly on the beaches outside the harbor. Tamara dismounted immediately, but he hesitated. He knew that they would be parting ways, and he didn't want to rush their goodbye.

"Thanks for the ride, Old Boy," Killian said as he patted the stallion's neck.  "I won't forget it."

He knew that once he jumped off, the steed would surely embrace his newfound freedom, for Pegasus, too, had just escaped a prison. And Killian doubted he would ever see his like again, so he slid from his back with a twinge of regret. He stroked the stallion's neck one last time, and the finest of his hairs became stuck between his fingers as he pulled away. Then he stood aside and watched Pegasus rise into the sky.

As the Keeper of Stagrock Light, Killian could not risk any interaction with those at the harbor, lest his presence raise inquiries on lighthouse falling dark. As his youth had been whiled away around docks, it was easy enough for him to hide, but Tamara was displeased with the circumstances and did not conceal her suspicions that he was attempting to renege on their agreement. It made the hours considerably more tense.

Countless heroes had been released from the subjugation of the Stormbringer, and no less than five took posts in and around the Northmost Harbor. After three short hours, Tamara discovered two people who corroborated Killian's story of the Chamberlain, but as photographs were a rarity in this realm, she could not confirm his identity beyond a basic descriptive match. Rumor had it, however, that the Lawmaster retained custody of the Chamberlain, who awaited his trial with plans to pronounce himself guilty to forgo all the legal formalities.

That was how Killian found himself planning a jailbreak with Tamara, who was dead set on freeing Greg that very night. He resisted the idea, insisting that it hadn't been part of their arrangement, but she wouldn't relent until the Chamberlain's identity was confirmed without doubt. Lacking visitation rights, her only recourses were illicit in nature, and seeing her determination, Killian gave up the debate and plowed ahead with assistance.

While he hadn't been to the harbor in a very long time, he had known the area very well during his time as the Recluse, namely the tunnels and short cuts that he once traversed to avoid prying eyes. He was able to map out her journey to the prison, but the extraction proved more difficult. For a successful venture, they would have to divide and conquer, one of them extricating the Chamberlain and the other providing a pilfered vessel that could swiftly remove them from sight of the shoreline.

It had been his suggestion, though frankly it was one borne of selfishness, for every second he lingered at the docks was one second more he left Emma at in Cora's merciless hands. Though he knew not where such knowledge came from, something deep within him asserted that returning to the lighthouse was the next step in rescuing Emma. Securing a seaworthy craft that would enable their escape brought him closer to his own ends.

He doubted the likes of Tamara and Greg would prevail against Cora, which meant his best chance involved acquiring two boats so they could part company. Elsewise, he would have to abandon them on Cellar Island to avoid any acts of betrayal.

Thus, when the cover of darkness was complete, Tamara left with a variety of borrowed items, and Killian scrounged for vessels. Fortune was kind to him, for he found a single-man paddler as well as a short rowboat that suited his needs. Being a man of good form, he stole the transport for Tamara and Greg first and moved it to the rendezvous point, ensuring his end of the bargain was upheld. He tied a fisherman's hook to a post not far from the obscured boat to mark the way, and that would have to be enough. There was no reason for him to wait for the treacherous toads nor assist them any further, for surely one of them could row.

He could push off where he discovered the paddler and leave for the lighthouse. His mind resolved, he made his way back to the second vessel.

He nearly reached his destination, but as it transpired, he was not the only one moving about under the cover of darkness to obfuscate unlawful deeds. Before his last turn, someone with terrible strength set upon him, grappling him to the ground. Despite his will and his hook, his assailant overpowered him and robbed him of his breath, clamping down over his mouth and nose.

He struggled, and the weighted dread of all mortals settled over his soul as he gasped for air. He had wrongfully assumed that the terror would grant him a burst of strength, but without inhalation, all he felt was a pervasive weakness pass over him as he flailed uselessly. Soon he crumpled under the attacker's weight as blackness overtook him.

Killian woke to a searing headache, and his heart pounded hard as he recalled the events that led him here. From the silence around him, he was far from the harbor and the sea, but the stars above made it clear that there were many hours before dawn.

Had Greg and Tamara caught up to him? No, whoever attacked him was stronger than any human, and there had been only one assailant, of that much he was certain. His mind was still foggy, but the veracity of the attack ruled out most of the criminal elements that subsisted at the docks. And surely Cora would've relied on magic to do her bidding, not brute force.

Then who the bloody hell abducted him?

Fury joined the throbbing pain, for any delay on his part put Emma in mortal peril. He clambered to his feet, ready to race to shore, however far off it might be. It was a foolish notion, but it gave him the potency, the vigor he required.

"Going somewhere?" a woman asked.

The speaker was an imposing woman who appeared larger than life, much like the Stormbringer, but in her case, it was something of an optical illusion, as her proportions were entirely human upon second glance. Her hair burnt umber, neither orange nor brown, with the finest streaks of silver-gold that light up against her olive skin when the moonlight hit it at just the right angle. Her eyes seemed blue, but a deeper look proved they were silver and purple.

"Aye, I've important things to see to," he replied.

"It will have to wait."

"Upon whose demand?" he asked.

"Queen Hippolyta," she replied. "Surely even the likes of a lowly Keeper would know a queen when he sees one."

"Forgive me if I don't kneel," he said. "Given you ambushed me in the street."

"You have something I want."

"Interesting, because I have it on good authority that you have something I need," he said.

"The Unending Flame?" she asked.

"Aye."

"Had I known you had the treasure you possessed now, I need not have wasted my time with such a trinket."

She held up a cube of amber light.

"It's far from a trinket," Killian countered.

"I'll be more than happy to give this back to you, Keeper of Stagrock Light," Hippolyta said. "In exchange, I want the golden thread wrapped on your hook."

"Why would you want it?" he asked.

"I've been looking for it for a very, very long time," she said. "I could scarcely believe it when I felt its presence in this realm again."

"So you found me by sensing this thread?" he asked.

"No, I found you because you rode here on Pegasus," she said. "You have something of his nearby."

Killian remember the fine hairs that stuck to his hand as he patted the mythic horse goodbye. He had absentmindedly tucked them into his coat pocket, the fine strands weaving together into a splendid and unexpected knot.

"You abducted me for a thread?" he asked. "Why not just take it from me while I was unconscious?"

"I did try, but I couldn't pry it away," she said. "I believe it will only move should you choose to relinquish it."

"And you would happily give me the Unending Flame in exchange?" he asked. "And let me walk away?"

She handed over the amber cube, which was small enough to fit in his coat pocket. He could tell by the heat and the light that it was the flame from the lighthouse, but somehow magic contained it completely. He tucked it away as soon as he confirmed its nature, and Hippolyta made no more to protest.

"Does that mean that we have an accord?" Hippolyta asked, her hand outstretched.

Killian glanced at the golden thread. He worried that the Orb Emma held would no longer work if he surrendered this thread, but he doubted the Queen of the Amazons would take no for an answer. So he tugged at the strand, and this time, it shifted easily off the base of his hook. When he pulled it off entirely, it seemed like little more than golden thread, about four inches long.

Hippolyta reached out for it and gently took it, cradling it in her hands as if it were the most prized possession in all the world.

"Thank you, Killian Jones," Hippolyta said with a wicked smile on her face.

The thread glowed a blinding gold, and in the next instant, Hippolyta vanished, leaving Killian in the middle of nowhere at the dead of night with no means but his own feet to make it back to the shore.

"Emma," he whispered. "I will find you, love. I will always find you."

End-of-chapter notes: In Greek mythology, the Moirai were the embodiments of destiny, often referred to as the Fates. They controlled the thread of life of every mortal, from birth to death, and each Fate had her own unique appointment as part of destiny. Clotho, the Fate who spun the thread of life; Lachesis, the Fate who measured that thread to allot each person with time; and Atropos, the Fate who cut the thread and selected the manner of death.

For next and previous chapters, proceed to the Lament of the Asphodels main Tumblr page.

[jonigirard3]

Attention! This Is Why You Can't Sleep | Bronwyn Milkins | TEDxUWA

Attention! This Is Why You Can't Sleep | Bronwyn Milkins | TEDxUWA

In today's, busy world and lack of sleep is one as a badge of honor pulling an all-nighter is a testament to our self self sacrifice to work and 13-hour days simply show that were dedicated to success. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaAydEAKglw But this is not the narrative which should be glorifying. Sleep is a basic and necessary process that demands to be satisfied just like our need for food and drink. Yet on any night up to 40 % of us have insufficient sleep. Even minor, sleep disturbances increase our risk for heart disease, depression and early death. Despite decades of science telling us that sleep is the foundation from which everything else flows, creativity, performance, health and sanity, sleep is not getting the attention it so rightly deserves. This is why my PhD research comes in for the past five years of being asleep researcher, I've, been looking at how attention to negativity, affects our sleep and developing a new approach to improve our sleep. Today I'll, be telling you about what we found and what it means for you. I've, always been a self-confessed sleep enthusiast. I love sleep, our child, my parents never had to worry by age 4. I put myself to bed drift off into a restful slumber and wake up raring to go. My teens were much the same. That was until one day I arrived at work for the morning shift only to realize that I was already out of energy. This happened time and time again I went to the doctor, but all the tests that I fine I wasn't. Fine, though sleep was affecting my life and I didn't know what to do. I was frustrated, so I went back to the doctor again this time we talked about how I felt I was exhausted, constantly on edge with a hair-trigger temper and my usual bright personality had turned into a dollop of flatness. The doctor said that lack of sleep was affecting every single aspect of my life and it was causing me to slip into a severe depression with proper support, mostly gradually returned to normal. I felt better than ever, and I was so relieved, but I was also so desperate to avoid slipping back to where I was before. I knew that I had to understand why poor sleep patterns and find solutions. While there are many biological causes of poor sleep, sometimes the biggest causes are psychological processes that happen outside of our awareness. Each day we have bombarded by thousands of pieces of information, but our brains do not have the resources to pay attention to everything. One type of information - the brain is particularly hard way to pay attention to is negative information. A phenomenon called attentional bias, negativity in our caveman days being alert. The negativity helped us keep safe from predators today. Thinking about all the things that could go wrong in an upcoming exam could give us the extra push needed to stay in that little bit extra. However, attentional bias for negativity can also work against us by producing worry that really causes us not to sleep to demonstrate how this works. I need you to think about a big event in your food. It could be a deadline and interview, or even a beep pressure public talk. Now it's the night before and you're in bed. Most of you will fall asleep in a time just when it takes to boil an egg. Others won't, be so lucky and will find it difficult to wire down. Instead, they'll lay awake, while their brain reminds them of all the ways that they going to stuff up tomorrow. The next day, you're, a bit groggy, but everything goes fine and off without a hitch. Those people who found it difficult to wire down the night before will go straight back into their normal sleep routine, but about 2 in 10 white. They'll, find that their attention is still captured by negativity and they & # 39. Ll lie awake worrying about anything and everything over time. Their attention book unconsciously shift to worry exclusively about flair. This is what happened to one person in my research. Paul Paul was putting in long hours at work to meet a deadline and he wasn't getting much sleep for the process. He met the deadline and he felt much more relaxed afterwards, but he still thought he couldn't get back into his normal sleep routine. He said to me: I tried everything I try so hard to sleep. Everybody else makes it so easy. Why is it just made? What Paul may have believed that his focus on steak was helpful? It was like they have an exact opposite effect, causing more stress and a vicious cycle of sleeplessness. I've conducted research with hundreds of people just like Paul investigating the potential benefits of a new approach. Success disrupt the back row sleeplessness before even has a chance to start. This approach is called attentional bias modification, unlike traditional 1430 attention about notifications, doesn't require an unconscionable operation of thinking and behavior. Instead in above shifting our attention away from negativity using simple computer tasks that you can complete in your own time. The way it works is like this two words flat upon a strength, one that is negative, like the word fatigue and one that is neutral, like the word chair, a split second later they disappear and it replaced by two dots behind the neutral word. People respond as to whether the neutral are two dots arranged horizontally or vertically over 700 trials. The aim is to get people looking at the ritual work and it's, not their attention away from the negative work conditioning the brain to pay less attention to negativity. I wanted to know, could modify people's attention in the moment. Stuff before they go to sleep, actually improve their sleep. In the first study, we asked university students to complete vacation paths before their and it's like Diaries for six days. What they didn't know is that on every second up, instead of completing the training tasks, they completed a task that didn't train their attention. We found that on my second page of the training task, they had less boring and fell asleep up to thirty minutes faster compared to those nights, and they did not complete the task. Easter thought far exceeded our expectations, so we conducted the same study again just to say whether this mother flew once again people who completed the training tasks that they have less work and fell asleep after these results suggest up the multiplying our lives from negativity, modify the Worry that we experience death before bed and he was not and helps us achieve a much-needed rest. My vision with other world, where everyone has the opportunity for Buddhist sleep. Our first represent a crucial first step towards achieving, is paving the way for non intervention at Horsley. That can get results and change lives within only a few minutes. Kick it amazing. You can apply for now the principles of attentional bias, modification to your boss and a few different wax first avoid looking at social media or a mountain lion. If you find it stressful, dent Frank's, relaxing my time ritual, like listening to music and when you're in bed, they made up that rhetoric awakening Chief Information Network in today's busy bro. We need more than ever to think, of course, like most about your honor, but I like that. I cannot forsake frontin sense. I can give it the attention into. Does that. I would not be here today doing the things that made me happy and healthy after recovering from depression, sleepy amazing, and I myself [ Applause, ] Source : Youtube

https://www.yourvibration.com/sleep/101 Sleep Rescue, Sleep Remedy, Sleep Aid

[woodworkingpastor]

Palm Sunday, April 5, 2020 Bound to God Matthew 26:36-46; Philippians 2:5-11

Call to Worship, Matthew 21:1-11

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them,

“Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me.  If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.  And he will send them immediately.”

This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying,

“Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

The disciples went and did as Jesus had directed them; they brought the donkey and the colt, and put their cloaks on them, and he sat on them. A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, and others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. The crowds that went ahead of him and that followed were shouting,

“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”

When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, “Who is this?” The crowds were saying,

“This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee.”

Hymn, What Wondrous Love is This, # 530

Bound to God,  Matthew 26:36-46; Philippians 2:5-11

One way that television show writers construct an hour-long episode is to pick a theme, and then have the characters interact with that theme through an “A” story and a “B” story.  The “A” story is the main drama of the episode and receives about 2/3 of the airtime. The ���B” story allows other characters to work with the same theme for the remaining 1/3 of the episode, but often in a more personal way.  

I mention this because when I began studying the account of Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane in these moments prior to his arrest, I realized that this A and B storytelling technique really works here, and might be a way of helping us wrestle with this text and its application for our lives.

In Matthew 26:36-46, the A story involves Jesus’ wrestling with his fast approaching crucifixion and death. The theme of the story is relinquishing. Jesus has relinquished his position in heaven to come to earth to do this very thing.  At the end of this passage Jesus tells the disciples, “See, the hour is at hand.” Will Jesus be obedient all the way through the cross and the grave? This is what Jesus is wrestling with in prayer as he measures the cost of this battle with sin.

The B story involves the disciples’ inability to stay awake. Do they have any sense of what is coming so they are prepared to relinquish their own desires so that their lives can resemble what God’s has in store for us all?

Jesus’ prayer of relinquishment

As our imaginary camera zooms in on Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, we realize that Jesus knows what is ahead. And if this were an episode portrayed on television, it might be that the writers would have begun the episode with a “flash-forward.”  We might have been shown seen clips of something that hadn’t happened yet: the crucifixion. In our humanness, we probably think that Jesus’ prayer is focused on the brutality of the crucifixion.  

But with Jesus, the issue is more complicated that than. Jesus had relinquished is position in heaven to be born. Because of this, there always the possibility of his taking back what rightly belonged to him at the wrong time.  In one sense the temptation Jesus faced is the same as what we face: to take the easy way out. Jesus’ ministry is filled with temptations to take the short cut and get the position God wanted for him by some other method.

Jesus will be tempted to seize back his position in heaven without enduring the cross.  That temptation comes just a few verses after today’s text: When Jesus is arrested, Peter pulls out his sword to defend Jesus.  But Jesus rebukes Peter with an appeal to Scripture, saying, “Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?” (Matthew 26:53-54).

Later on the cross, Jesus will also be tempted: “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross” (Matthew 27:40). It can be so hard to keep silent in the face of a false or embarrassing allegation like this. The temptation to prove right then and there in a spectacular fashion that Jesus is the Son of God must have been tremendous.  But Jesus knows that the short-cuts are really dead ends. His commitment to his Father is also a commitment to Scripture. There was no shortcut to the problem of human sin and our need to be brought into right relation with God.  Jesus’ path must go through the cross, which means it must go through the anguish of separation from God.

All of this was possible because of a prior decision Jesus made: to relinquish his will to the Father’s will.  This is why the hymn from Philippians 2 is important; where the Gospels tell us the story of the cross, the Epistles tell us the meaning of the cross.

Philippians 2:5-11 gives us insight into the mind of Christ. We’ve all looked at the decisions people made and said, “I wonder what they were thinking?” When it comes to the cross, with Jesus, we know!  What was on his mind? Relinquishing what was his so that all of creation can be reconciled to God.  Philippians 2:7 says that Jesus “emptied himself.”  It means “to deprive something of its proper place and use.” Jesus’ proper place is at the Father’s right hand.  But on Thursday evening of Holy Week, Jesus isn’t at the Father’s right hand—he’s in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying before his arrest.  All of time and space is converging on Good Friday. Everything from the creation of Genesis 1 to the New Creation of Revelation 22 will pivot on the cross. Jesus was present at creation, because he is Lord!  Jesus will be present at the New Creation, because he is Lord!  But here, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane, heading to the cross.

Jesus had relinquished his position of equality with God.  He chose to deny himself the benefits of that position so that he could be born in human likeness. Jesus humbled himself to death on a cross, where he experienced the fullness of that relinquishment—separation from God, as seen in his cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.”

But here in the garden there were things Jesus could grasp. Jesus could grasp his position in heaven and side-step the struggle, the pain, the separation from God, and the grave. The “A story” of Matthew 26:36-46 shows us the full meaning of Jesus’s work, relinquishing that which was his so that eternal life would be more than Jesus’ possession, it would be something all of us could enjoy with him.  

The need to stay awake

The “B” story of our Scripture involves the disciples’ inability to stay awake and pray for the spiritual strengthening they would need to endure what was coming. As the story reveals, they were not prepared.  When the moment came, their “fight or flight” mechanism kicked in, and they did both.  They did not reveal a transformation that offered another way of interacting with the situation that presented itself.

In the coming and going of our lives, how are we relinquishing our will, rejecting the shortcuts to our own heart’s desires, and allowing the commitment we made to Christ and the church at our baptism play out in our lives?

Rick Wolfe recently gave me a copy of Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning.  Of the many fascinating and challenging things Frankl has to say, he observes the following: “To the European, it is characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to, ‘be happy.’ But happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.”

I think our current circumstances are revealing our inability to manufacture happiness, as we’re being forced to relinquish so many of the things—spiritual and social—that had defined our lives. I’m realizing this week that our stay-at-home order might cost us 13 weeks of congregational life: a full quarter!

There’s certainly a temptation to rush in with grand pronouncements over how God might use this time.  Such temptations should be avoided at all costs.  But I do wonder if imagining ourselves in the garden with Jesus can help us understand ourselves a bit better.  We’ve been forced to relinquish a lot these days.  But some kind of normal will eventually return. And when it does, what will we choose to relinquish then? What attitudes will need to be laid down? Will we spend our time and money differently?  Will we learn to be more patient with others? More generous toward the stranger and the enemy? How are we preparing ourselves now, for whatever is to come?

Like Jesus, we have made a prior commitment; ours is to Christ and the church through our baptism.  And so, dear church, on this most strange Palm Sunday, the word I have for you—and the word I hope you have for me—is simply this: “Stay awake and pray.”

[live4thelord]

Crisis At Christmas – A Homily for the 4th Sunday of Advent

Today’s Gospel gives us some background for the Christmas feast that we need to take to heart. It speaks to us of a crisis at Christmas.

We tend to sentimentalize the Christmas story as we think of the baby Jesus in the manger. It is not absolutely wrong to be sentimental, but we must also be prayerfully sober about how difficult that first Christmas was, and about the heroic virtue required of Mary and Joseph in order to cooperate with God in making it come to pass.

Let’s look at this Gospel in three stages: distress, direction, and decision.

DISTRESS – This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the Holy Spirit. Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.

The marriage is off. When we read that Mary was found to be with child before she and Joseph were together, we need to understand how devastating and dangerous this situation was. Pregnancy prior to marriage brought forth a real crisis for both families involved in Joseph and Mary’s marriage plans. Quite simply, it put all plans for the marriage permanently off.

Why is this? We read that Joseph was a “righteous man.” To our ears this like saying that he was a “good man.” Most of the Fathers of the Church interpreted “righteous” here to refer to Joseph’s gracious character and virtue. And we surely suppose all this of him. More recent biblical scholarship includes the idea that it meant Joseph was also an “observer of the Law.” He would thus do what the Law prescribed. This explains his decision to divorce Mary because of her apparent lack of virginity prior to the marriage. Here is an example of the Mosaic Law in reference to such a matter:

But if the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has wrought folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you (Deut 22:20-21).

While this seems quite extreme to us, we can also recognize how far we have gone in the other direction in modern times, making light of promiscuity. I doubt that anyone would argue that we should stone such a woman today, and rightly so, but this was the landscape in Joseph’s time.

What about stoning? It would seem that Jews of the first century had varying interpretations about whether stoning was required or whether it was simply permitted. As a virtuous and patient man, Joseph looks for and senses some freedom in not “exposing” Mary to the full effects of the Law (stoning). But it does not seem he can find a way that he can take her into his home. Thus, as a “righteous man” (i.e., follower of the Law) he decides that divorce is required even if stoning is not.

This leads us to two important reflections, one about Mary and one about Joseph.

Mary – We can see into what a difficult and dangerous position her yes (her fiat) to the angel placed her. She risked her very life by being found with child outside the normal marital act with her husband. We know that it is by the Holy Spirit she conceives, but her family and Joseph and his family do not yet, or at least cannot verify it. And even if Mary explained exactly how she conceived, do you think you would accept such a story? Mary’s fiat placed her in real danger. It is a great testimony to her faith and trust in God that she said yes to His plans.

Joseph – We can also see the kind of pressure he would be under to do what the Law and custom required. There is no mention of Joseph’s feelings at this point, but we can assume that when Mary was found to be with child prior to their being together in marriage, the social pressure on him to be legally freed from Mary were strong, regardless of his feeling or plans.

DIRECTION – Such was his intention [to divorce] when, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Be not afraid. The principal exhortation of the angel was that Joseph “not be afraid” to take Mary as his wife. This exhortation is powerful because fear was a very big factor. Joseph had much to fear in taking Mary. Some of the Fathers of the Church believed that what the angel meant was that Joseph should not fear God’s wrath, since he would not actually be taking an adulterer or fornicator into his home. Others think that the angel meant that Joseph should not fear taking God’s chosen instrument (Mary) as his wife.

One can also imagine some other fears that needed to be allayed by the angel. For example, Joseph could easily be rejected by his family for taking Mary in. The community could likewise shun him, and as a businessman, Joseph needed a good reputation to be able to ply his trade. All of these threats loom if Joseph “brings evil” into his house rather than purging the (apparent) evil from the midst of his house. But the angel directs him not to fear; this will take courageous faith.

The angel’s explanation is unusual to say the least. What does it mean to conceive by the Holy Spirit? It’s not exactly a common occurrence! Would his family buy such an explanation? What about the others in the small town of Nazareth? Yes, people were more spiritual in those days, but it all seems so unusual!

Further, Joseph hears all this in a dream. We all know what dreams can be like. They can seem so real at the time, but when we are fully awake we wonder if what we experienced was real at all. Joseph has to trust that what he was told is real, and that he should not be afraid because God has given him direction. As is often the case with things spiritual, we have to carefully discern and walk by faith, not by fleshly sight and certitude. Joseph has a decision to make.

DECISION – When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took his wife into his home.

We can see the strong faith of Joseph and the kind of trust he had to put in God. He had been told not to be afraid, to rebuke fear. Manfully, Joseph does this. He makes the decision to obey God whatever the cost. We are given no information about how his family and others in the town reacted. However, the fact that the Holy family later settles back in Nazareth indicates that God did come through on His promise that Joseph need not be afraid.

Heroes of Faith! Recognize the crisis of that first Christmas and the powerful faith of Joseph and Mary. Their reputations were on the line, if not their very lives. They had great sacrifices to make in the wondrous incarnation of our Lord. Quite simply, Mary and Joseph are great heroes of the faith. For neither of them was their “yes” easy. It is often hard to obey God rather than men. Praise God that they made their decision and obeyed.

Mary and Joseph’s difficulties were not yet over. There was a badly timed census, which required a journey to Bethlehem in the ninth month of Mary’s pregnancy. Imagine walking 70 miles through mountainous terrain in such a condition! There may or may not have been a donkey, but I doubt that riding a donkey in the ninth month of pregnancy is all that comfortable either. And then there was no room in the inn; Jesus had to be born in a smelly stable. Shortly thereafter they had to flee through the desert to Egypt because Herod sought to kill Jesus.

Jesus is found in a real Christmas, not a “Hallmark” one. The crisis of the first Christmas prefigures the passion. This where Jesus is found: in the crisis of the first Christmas. You may wish for the perfect Christmas, but there is no perfect Christmas. Jesus will find you where you are, in real life, in the imperfect Christmas, where loved ones have passed away and there is grief, where a job has been lost and there is anxiety, where health is poor and there is stress, where families are experiencing strife. That’s where Jesus will be found, in your real Christmas. A Christmas of joy, yes, but also of imperfections, even crises. He is there waiting for you to find Him, in the real Christmas of your life.