#or works of art that illicit an emotion or memory that i can write something off of or include in a spread as a visual reminder

[ast3ri]

Btw if you are an artist and I like your art, I'll probably most likely print it out and glue your work in my journal if I cant buy a physical copy.

Because I like to take art I like with me, and have a permanent remnant of it, as my journals go into a locked safe when they are full.

If your handle or signature isn't on the art in some way, I edit it digitally to include either your name (if you have it on your blog) or your url/@ username. Dw though! I'll let you know if I can!

Your art will live on with me, touching my heart and inspiring me to keep painting for as long as my journals survive along with all my sentimental keepsakes.

[rynndotcom]

We Are Okay - Book Review

warning: spoilers

 We Are Okay is the kind of book that will shatter you. Nothing I can say about it will ever do it justice. Nina LaCour has poured a profound understanding of grief and young love and loss into every page, and the sense of intimacy is so potent that there were times when I felt that it had been written just for me.

Here’s a brief summary:

After the traumatic death of her grandfather, her only living relative, Marin runs away to school in New York without telling anyone where she’s going. She leaves behind her best friend Mabel, who had become something more than a friend during the summer after their high school graduation. We enter the story during Christmas time when Mabel shows up in New York to try to convince Marin to come back to California with her.

The book is written in first person and moves fluidly between Marin’s introspection, her memories of her life in California, and the present where Marin and Mable spend Christmas time alone on the college campus. As the story progresses, we learn that Marin’s mother died when Marin was very young, that Gramps obsessively wrote letters to himself in the voice of his dead daughter, that Mabel and Marin were happy and in love in California.

(Before I talk about the writing, I want to point out the design of We Are Okay. This book makes a good first impression. I highly recommend checking out Adams Carvalho, the artist who did the cover art. His Instagram is filled with the same kind of minimalist illustrations in striking color palettes.)

Complex Relationships

We Are Okay focuses on two major themes with its central relationships – Marin’s relationship with Gramps and her relationship with Mabel.

Marin and Mabel’s relationship highlights the undefined line between friendship and romance. I was really happy with how this was portrayed because we get to see them happy, we see them break, and then we see them trying to figure out who they are after. It’s such a painfully real relationship. They can’t go back to who they were when they were best friends or when they were in love, so instead they have to renegotiate. LaCour depicts the awkwardness and regret and hope perfectly.

The book also explores grief and the different ways we handle it. Marin doesn’t have memories of her mother, and whenever she brings her up to Gramps he deflects. So when Marin learns that Gramps has what basically amounts to a shrine dedicated to her mother hidden away in his room, she feels betrayed. While he was mourning the dead in solitude, he was also denying Marin the chance to know her own mother. It’s a secret so world-altering that she feels the need to pick up and run. The discovery raises lots of hard questions for Marin, but the most important seems to be whether Gramps loved her or just saw her as a remnant of her mother.

LaCour does an exceptional job of balancing all these emotions. They never feel untrue or overexaggerated, and as a reader you experience what Marin is feeling throughout the whole book.

Plausibility vs. Believability

Two things stood out to me that would have been questionable had the rest of the book not been immaculate.

At the end of the story, Mabel’s parents adopt Marin. There’s something really weird about your ex-girlfriend’s parents legally adopting you, but I actually found it to be believable. Marin and Mabel’s relationship is defined by negative space and gray areas and a lack of labels, but Ana and Javier have always been Marin’s family. The girls weren’t just girlfriends, they were best friends, and everyone who’s been lucky enough to have that kind of deep friendship knows that sharing families is just part of the deal.

Then there’s Gramps. We know right from the beginning that he had some horrible secret, but the way the book sets it up made me think it was going to be something illegal or illicit like drug trafficking or a relationship with an underage girl. The secretive letters, the old-timey dress that was supposedly a gift from Birdie – I read them all as big red flags. So when it’s revealed that he was writing letters to himself as if her were Marin’s mother, it had the potential to be underwhelming. But the heavy buildup worked for me because Marin feels that Gramps’ secret was that bad. And that’s the difference between plausibility and believability. It doesn’t matter whether a situation makes sense in our reality if the author can make us believe that it fits in their reality, and LaCour does that hands down.

We Are Okay is not a happy book. It will break your heart, and it will pick at the broken pieces you forgot were already there. I had to put it down every once in a while, and I cried lots of times. But then. But then. It hands you this big, swooping sense of hope and love and something that comes after the pain. It’s beautiful, and I want everyone to read it.

[hyperesthesias]

6 Points for 6 Rooms -- A Review of No-End House

OKAY -- so I finished Channel Zero: No-End House last night. I have some...feelings so I decided to write a review because I needed to get it out of my head. There are spoilers in this review, if you haven’t seen it, but I’ll put them under a cut.

Generally, the plot took an idea that has been a fairly common theme in the horror genre for a while. Nonetheless, it is a concept that has a lot of wiggle room and has a lot of opportunity for creative development and liberty. That being said, they missed a lot of those opportunities, which left me, as both a viewer and a writer, feeling somewhat disappointed and unsatisfied. With just six episodes, this show had the potential to be so much more than it was, but it felt they were playing it safe. 

When I started watching, I was under the impression I’d be immersed in something much different. I’m familiar with CreepyPasta, (I used to be a big fan, six or seven years ago) and knew that Channel Zero was based on various CreepyPasta stories, so there was a part of me that was expecting the traditional CreepyPasta horror-fest stereotype. However, there was little about this show that qualified as ‘horror’ (which might be a little more manageable for those who don’t particularly like horror). That being said, the general vibe of this show could be summed up in two words: indecisively unsettling. Rather than horror, it seemed the writers wanted to give people the impression of ‘creepy’. However, it seemed the writers wanted to incorporate as many ‘creepy’ archetypes into this six episode mini-series as they could possibly manage, while somehow leaving the viewer unsure how to take it all.

Just as a general disclaimer: I want people to know I actually liked this show, but there were so many things that could have been easily refined to make this experience that much better, that I couldn’t keep quiet. So, just keep in mind I did like what I saw, I’m just a critical jackass. :)

1.  The Creep Factor:

Between the strange videos that they receive on their phones, laptops, and TVs regarding The House; the music composition containing voices playing backwards; the man in the mask; the pedo guy behind the mirror; zombie dad; and the Harbinger Stranger** from the bar (who we won’t find out about until later) -- this show has a distinct vibe it knows it wants. Its main goal is to creep the audience, not so much divulge them into horror. It wants to make us curious and draw us in, a great tactic for an idea that has been done several times before. It knows it wants to be set apart. The problem lies in the execution. 

The music composition stood out the most to me, as a musician. From the opening sequence, the music wants to tell you a story. It wants to tell you the emotional connection between our Protagonist and her Father, and eventually how that emotional connection is then shared with The House. Throughout the series, the music is trying to tell the viewer that these characters are trapped inside The House, along with everyone else -- that The House has actually consumed these people -- by way of the backward vocal recordings. That was mindblowing, I loved it. However, the placement of beats and downbeats were too far off. They didn’t make a sea-sick beat that gave off an unsettling vibe, it didn’t make lyrical sense. It felt distracting rather than adding to an element. There was a distinct pattern that followed the characters through their journey of The House: Enter, scare, pause, move on, repeat. But the music does not match this pattern, thus making the plot feel a little off-centered.

The House feeds on memories, sucking them dry until the victim remains an empty shell, which the viewer doesn’t know until later. The viewer is told The House is ‘psychological’, that it ‘gets in your head’, but for all the exposition, there is no explanation as to why. There is never given a reason or an origin to The House, the characters and thus the viewers are meant to accept The House as it is. The idea is to obscure as much as possible to build on the ‘creepy’ elements, and the mystery and curiosity behind its novelty: no one knows what The House is, who built, who manages is, neither how it works. But The Creep Factor doesn’t work for this scenario. The House is supposed to be ‘haunted’, a haunted art project that scares its occupants, lures them in with the appeal of the unknown. But haunted houses only work with the guarantee that you’ll be scared. Haunted houses feed off of Fear, and fear only stems from Doubt and Uncertainty. We are shown no uncertainty besides an urban legend told around a bar table, and that legend is promptly laughed at. Verbal exposition is not enough to sell it, you need something more: Have the people who have exited or escaped The House them spoken out? Are they still looking for the people who were lost inside? Are they scarred for life? Surely, they’ve recounted something about what they saw inside. We later see Jules on a Forum about The House, so we know these people are out there, but why aren’t they being used as the backbone for this legend? Surely, there had to be more people looking for their spouses, their friends, their families. Their fear would make others curious, and attempt to take up the challenge in their weakness.

One other thing is the unnecessary addition of the Orb. No one really knows what it is, it doesn’t even seem like Seth knows, and he lives there. Jules has a family, and it’s presumed they live in the same neighbourhood since she referred to it as “home”. So why didn’t The House create a home for her? She and Seth find an empty house to sleep in, (sidenote: we never really know where Seth actually lives -- later, he lives with Margot**), and she doesn’t have anywhere to go or fit in. However, the Orb continually follows her, but its origins are never explained, even though its purpose is clear: it shares the same goal as the other Manifestations, to consume memories. 

A lot of details in this show, like the Orb, the man in the mask, and pedo mirror guy, felt like the writers wanted it all. They just wanted every creepy thing they could think of, every creepy trope, instead of sticking with one or two to make it better digestible. (No pun intended.)

You can’t solely rely on the creep factor in this kind of genre -- even if it isn’t explicit horror, even if it’s supposed to be ‘psychological’. Fear is one of the most powerful psychological tools. Use it. Which is why the rooms consisting of the man in the mask, the zombie dad, and the pedo mirror guy fell kind of...flat. No one was as afraid as they should have been. Humans are reactional creatures -- we feed off of each others’ emotions. The people exiting The House throwing up never once said: “Don’t go in there! Please!! I’m begging you!”, Margot seemed stunned when the man in the mask called her “Martian”, but she never once went “WTF how TF do you know what my dead dad called me?!”; and while she was scared of the man behind the mirror, there still wasn’t the critical reaction of: “how the hell did this place know what I dreamt all those years ago?”** The House is accepted for what it is, and it does not illicit the reaction it could have.

2.  JT:

Sigh. This is a prime example of “We want to incorporate what we can from the original story, but we’re not sure how, so we’re going to completely waste this opportunity of creativity.” I did not read the original CreepyPasta for No-End House before I watched the show because I wanted an untainted perspective. Therefore, I was left utterly confused as to why the hell JT was the only character to encounter himself, and why his House Self killed his Real Self. Honestly...I’m still a little on the fence. I can make psychological assumptions: JT was always more in his head than he was present, he was introverted when he wanted to be extroverted, he was awkward, uncertain of himself, and liked to think of himself as “cooler” or “better” than he was; thus, his House Self, feeding off of his internal energy, was more powerful than his Real Self. But this still leaves gaping holes and questions.

In the original CreepyPasta, the Protagonist encounters a version of himself, and this version of himself is actually the door to the next room. He has to cut this version of himself open in order to access the next room. They fight and wrestle for control, until Protagonist manages to knife him and open him up. 

None of this happened in the show. None of it, except for JT meeting another version of himself that wanted to escape The House and go to the real world. But we were never told why -- yeah, he wanted “real world experiences” such as eating ice cream, but there was no real connection. This goes in hand with “The Creep Factor”. It felt that this was done just to weird the audience out, with no real merit to the story. JT dies two episodes in, and Fake JT dies halfway through the story, adding really...nothing to the plot. JT told them about The House, sure, but if Seth was actually the one who brought people to The House, why was JT even needed? 

The impact of JT seeing himself could have been used so much more wisely. If they didn’t want to dip into the element of gore (which really didn’t seem to be too much of a problem, considering the embodiment of memories), stabbing the Fake version of himself in Room 5 could have been what he’d seen, as he never really explained what it was he saw there, besides acknowledging he’d seen a frightening image of himself. This would have freed up his character for the duration of the series, and if they still wanted to kill him off, he could have still died outside the cornfield, but at least we would have had a complete picture of what mostly everyone** had seen in Room 5. And whenever you can, show! Don’t tell!

3.  Dylan & Lacey:

This was your chance!!! This was your chance to show, not tell!! You nearly missed it! We were shown that Lacey recalled nothing of Dylan, that she’d built a life for herself without the recollection of the outside world. Their story was heartbreaking, but somehow also mildly forgettable. It all goes back to the fact that there are a lot of unanswered questions and misuse of screentime. What’s up with Dylan? Why didn’t we see more of him? Just when we were starting to, he was killed. We were told he’s been looking for The House, and he seems pissed. Has it only been a year? Has it been more? What about Lacey? Is there nothing that she remembers? Not even a smidge? Did she actually remember the necklace, or was she faking it? Their story could have gone longer, or at least more in depth if they couldn’t juggle screentime -- but this screentime was wasted primarily on him trying to overpower her and subdue her. However, their deaths did have some impact, in that they showed how powerful the Maniestations’ hunger is, and how ruthless Margot’s ‘Dad’ could be, and why she should be so afraid of him.

4. Memory Munchies:

Obviously, in the CreepyPasta there was no mention of The House actually consuming its occupants’ memories, this was creative liberty, or some kind of story addition worked out with the original author. And it is an awesome idea. I love it so much. It’s so rich and full, just like memories themselves. It has the potential for fear -- like with Jules and Margot -- and it has the potential for comfort -- like with Seth**. My only nitpick with this was it was a little confusing. Not only in how it was eventually revealed, (which is forgiveable, because we’re seeing all this from the Protagonists’ point of view, and no one has any idea what the hell is going on) but in a single thought: why weren’t the Protagonists more outnumbered? 

There’s a great scene where they’re running through the school, hiding from her Father, who has been chasing Margot because he’s famished. But why isn’t more than just him? It was four of them against one of him (with some sorely convenient timing by “JT” and Seth). Was there a rule that Manifestations of The House could only consume the memories of their prospective relations, or the people they’re supposed to live with or be connected to? If that’s the case, why was Lacey being fed off of by a husband of her own creation, but Jules was fed off of by the Orb? But then what about the Cornfield? After a certain point of hunger, do the rules just not apply any more, or are they breaking the rules of The House, and that’s why they’re cordoned off to the Cornfield?  It seemed they could leave the Cornfield, so what was stopping them from searching for them outside of the Cornfield? (sidenote: Jules said she remembered the Cornfield from when Margots’ Dad took them, so were the starving Manifestations always there, and that area was disguising itself as a Cornfield? Or did the Manifestations find the Cornfield because it was one of her memories, hoping for a snack? This entire plot sequence would have made more sense if the area had been generic, rather than connecting it to something from her past.) 

This was a more mild missed opportunity: There were Manifestations that followed them to the edge of the neighbourhood, but what made them stop? They had no reason to stop, we were never told they couldn’t go beyond a certain point, and that’s proven by the starving Manifestations in the Cornfield. If they were as hungry as was shown, they would have needed them to stay. So why did this happen? There was the potential for a lot of fear and action here, where they could be chased through the forest and fields, possibly making “JT”’s, and Dylan’s and Lacey’s deaths a lot more interesting or at least intense.

5.  The Ending: 

Okay, another massive plot hole for me was the ending. There was no real resolution. Margot and Jules escaped The House, (and can we just acknowledge how badass Jules was?) but there was no resolution. There was just the denouement, and barely one at that. We’re explained about Seth and his involvement with bringing people into The House**, and he’s promptly consumed by these Manifestations, and we’re left to assume he becomes another hollowed out addition to The House. But there was continual talk throughout the final episode that they wanted to destroy The House, however we never see Margot or Jules go through with any kind of plan to do so. So, the viewer is also left to assume The House is still standing and will continue to consume more occupants every year. This was a rather unsatisfying ending, not only because The House was left standing, but because of the final point below:

6.  **Seth:

YOU BLEW IT!! You freakin’ blew it!! The best male character on the show, and they totally veered his character left, and ran him into a ditch! I was absolutely incredulous. I’m still so mad this character was WASTED. 

From the end of episode two and the beginning of episode three, I was rooting for Seth to actually BE The House! Doing so would have tied everything together, even Seth coming out of The House to find Margot’s Dad to (in this theory) make sure the Manifesation didn’t compromise the integrity of his secret, of himself, The House. Seth lured people to The House, he barely said a word about what he saw in Room 5, he admired its workings, and nothing ever seemed to touch him. Plus, just something I noticed: everything Margot told him about herself was reflected inside it. 

It would have made a lot more sense to have The House be an actual, emotional entity, rather than just an “organism”. Especially since Seth hadn’t “anticipated on liking Margot so much”. It would have explained how she managed to be somewhat unscathed, and why she was allowed to leave the first time, because The House cared about her. It would have added a much needed layer of relateability to an unrelateable structure, and it could have been so easily explainable, especially with how he repeatedly mentioned his background and its connection to The House. 

To show, or even tell this story would not have taken up a lot of time. It was one that could be recounted, rather than shown, if screentime was an issue: That he was a foster child, who’d been frightened, and hurt, and had been through hardship and presumable abuse -- that all of this had riled in him a supernatural link. A link that he used to protect himself when in his next home, by hiding in the house, by pretending he was in a place that was better. That this house protected him from his current family, until one day he found that he had this special connection to this house, that it responded to his will, by creating other rooms, or other interiors. And eventually, he made for himself an alternate reality, where he caged his foster family so they could never harm him again. But even after all of this, he’s still hurting because he still wants the family he seeks, so he goes from city to city year after year searching for that family, searching for good memories to fill the gaps in his own. Until one day, he meets a girl who feels like as lost as he is, who feels just as abandoned and angry and depressed. Someone with whom he feels a connection, one he’s never felt before, and he realises he doesn’t want anything to hurt her, that he wants her to stay. 

This would have kept the integrities of both the character of Seth, and The House. Neither The House, nor Seth were evil entities, and combined, he would have been a much more relateable substance. The House gave people the chance to turn back, by way of the exit doors, and Room 6 was a well known secret: no one ever came back. The House in the series is more like an amoeba than anything else: it doesn’t have a will, it doesn’t have a personhood. But to make it truly frightening, combining it with the raw energy of this hurting person, that The House could do anything at his beck and call, would have changed the game for the better. It would have made the exits make more sense. Because in the series, it doesn’t follow why The House would ever let people go, it’s indiscriminate in who it ‘eats’. But as a person, it would not be. It would show mercy. Seth, knowing the pain of having no one, could then create a reality for each person, whatever they wanted, so they wouldn’t be in pain while they were fed off of, essentially. That shows mercy, something a house, by itself, couldn’t do.

But no. Unfortunately, none of that happened. Instead, Seth was regaled to a jackass boyfriend with commitment issues stemming from abandonment. 

A glaring opportunity wasted. Absolutely, utterly so. 

The worst part, is that it directly could have affected way the story ended: if they somehow found a way to defeat Seth, who was The House, The House would never have harmed anyone again, thus closing the plot point they missed. 

All in all, I enjoyed it. I liked that there was no gratuitous gore or violence, especially no sexual violence. I adored how they made the consumption of memories, it was unique and colorful. Every actor played their part to a T, and I felt for their characters. I could understand where they were coming from. But they could have been given a better story to work with, and that’s the downfall of this show. It keeps with the CreepyPasta feel and theme, which is unfortunately immature and underexposed writing that leaves one wanting for something more. 

[pepplemint]

Hey there! Do you have any fanfic recs? I read the vampire!Lance one you made art for (beautiful, btw, like all of your work) and I was wondering what other works you enjoyed

Hey, sorry for the late answer! That fic was a part of the Big Bang but I DID make a fic rec post over here! Here is some more Klance fics though (Only finished) because there is so. dang. many. I can’t keep up no matter how much I’d try

————————————————- All things infinite by MemeKonVLD “I didn’t know Lance was…”“Bi?” Hunk supplied.“Ready to jump anyone sentient and willing?” Pidge offered.“Yeah, let’s go with bi,” Hunk says.(Or: the one where Lance is a Bisexual Intergalactic Flirt, and Keith discovers he has feelings about this.)———-I just really like people having to really sort through their own feelings I guess because it won’t stop showing up in these lists haha. It’s written well from the perspective of someone that is frustrated over their own incapability to understand/control their feelings. WHAT CAN IT POSSIBLY BE.————————————————- Making the Most of the Night by saezutteHaving sex with Keith in order to secure an alliance with an alien species wasn’t how Lance expected to lose his virginity, but it wasn’t the worst way for it to go.(Until afterwards, of course, when it all goes wrong and Keith won’t speak to him. Not that Lance has any idea why. Or why it bothers him so much.)———-This is probably recc:ed pretty often and honestly it’s very well written and for a “ALIENS MADE THEM DO IT” storyline they do manage to sell it pretty well. The positive Lance-voice is refreshing. Warning: Explicit Sexual Themes (obviously)————————————————- A Kiss is a Kiss (But it’s never like this) by GibbousLunation“How does this keep happening to us, every time.” Lance grumbled.“You’d think they’d stop sending us on away missions,” he agreed. Honestly, between the poisonous plants of their last planet, and Lance’s tendency to always end up on the business end of every blaster or pointy ended stick, Allura was just being inefficient at this point.Or, five times Keith kissed Lance but the situation was less than ideal, and one time Lance finally kissed him back.———-Lance keeps pulling dumb self sacrificial stunts and smiling through it, damn it Lance, giving Keith a heart attack. There is a really subtle kind of world building mixed into the emotions of the characters that I like, like the true description from inside the mind of the character that have more important things to focus on than looking at the scenery, but will notice it when it literally or figuratively slaps them in the face.————————————————- so calm, so cool (no lover’s fool) by keithlvnce Here’s how it starts: Lance says “we are a good team,” grinning, and Keith’s heart skips a beat. But he chalks it off to adrenaline and brushes it off, places it away in his head as something to be looked at later, removed and observed like a specimen on a scientist’s lab table.Here’s where it is right now: Lance’s hand is on Keith’s knee, his thigh, his shoulder, moving as he does, as they drink illicit alien hooch that Allura had sworn upon from back when - before Zarkon and the death of a civilization - and Shiro is having a night alone (because he needed quiet, sometimes, when everything became too loud, too much, too overwhelming) and Allura and Coran are off (they found a calendar: in Altea it’d be a festival day, but Altea is dead and survived by a princess and her soldier).———-Keith pines so hard and the embarrassing first crush-racing heart and flushing cheeks is so well written that it puts you there too.————————————————- the electric synthesized pop ballad of why keith can’t have nice things by kay_cricketedKeith can’t have nice things. That’s it. That’s the story.(Or, in which Keith slowly learns that sometimes the best family is the one you make, Pidge has strong feelings about peanuts, Lance has a secret but would’ve spoken up sooner if he’d known it would break Keith’s brain, Hunk is the actual best, and Shiro is just relieved he didn’t have to give anyone the Talk.)———-Ok so this is  an a/b/o fic which I didn’t realise when I started reading it and soon I was very confused, haha, because it honestly isn’t very obvious and just very very well written. This is 100% nonsexual and cute and just a really sweet story about understanding ones feelings. Can be seen as mostly platonic I think.————————————————-  ALTERNATIVE UNIVERSESit’s quite bizarre, and will remain this way by mayerwienFROM THE DESK OF ALLURA ALTEADirectorThe Rex Alfor Memorial Space MuseumDear Mr. Coran, I am writing to entrust to you the care and supervision of the young man who will be working with our custodial team starting this coming Tuesday. The young man’s name, as I’m sure you already know, is Keith.As you also have been made aware, the incident that occurred two weeks ago was his first criminal offense, and thus I have elected not to press charges against him, in the hope that a little community service and a few kind words will go a long way.Please see to it that our new volunteer gets a basic but thorough introduction as to what it is we do here at RAMSM. Unless any more untoward situations arise, there is no need to report to me further. I trust your good judgment, as I always have.(Additionally, I would like to commend you for successfully managing to keep this story out of the press. Your service to the museum over the years has gone above and beyond your job description. We will have to talk about this very soon. When are you free for coffee?)———-SO this storyline is kind of slice of life for a couple of teens working in a space museum, but with a deeper background story woven into it? It’s Very Nice.Warning: Character Death Mentioned————————————————- tropical drink melting in your hand; we’ll be falling in love by jojotxtKeith just wanted a summer job to help pay for college. He didn’t expect to be coworkers with a complete asshole who hated his guts. He didn’t expect to fall for him, either.———-Everyone is working at the beach. Lots of late summer night nostalgia. Warning for alcohol use I guess?————————————————- we have only one story. by disarminglyKeith works at a kickboxing gym and Lance is that asshole on the subway who won’t wear his headphones when he listens to music.———-Story about that strange relationship you have with people on the public transport that always ride the same train as you and you kind of notice and recognize all the time but never actually talk to.Honestly that is exactly the kind of summary that pulls me in I don’t even know what I could possibly say to make it better.————————————————-

[castlepinesmusic]

Proletariat Punk Rock

Punk Rock Proletariat

A Modern Music Manifesto

We use it everyday,  consciously or not, you are absorbing it like air in a restaurant or coffee shop.    In our times of grieving and drinking ourselves to sleep it is there. When we wake up and rub the boogers from our eyelids we use it with a cup of coffee to invigorate us. 

We use it when we have dinner, when we have sex, when we attend sporting events, when we graduate from high school, when we learn to drive, when we kiss our first time, when we are withered and gray and draw a final, shallow breath it is there. Film and movies, all the things we use to distract us from the realities of life would not be the same without it.  

It is music. 

Music is a conundrum for me to think about.  It is one of the greatest joys of my life (apart from my wife) and music is also one of the greatest so-called thorns or banes in my side.  Why?

To jump into its creation is to wade into the deep.  It is dauntingly massive and too much collective knowledge to understand every facet in one life time. 

To record it, to make it a tangible thing with 0’s and 1’s in the digital realm and to share the product of hours of anxious creation to the world is another difficult task. Thats why we are here.  To create and leave a legacy. But why I am currently writing this is another matter entirely.  

We as consumers, western or non-western, affluent or poor, need a better understanding of the model of music consumption that we presently face.  For an artisanal craft, usually passed down from sage to student throughout its course of history, Music has been devalued, defaced and devoid of any commercial value or integrity for more than 99% of those that create it.  We bastardized  one of the most beautiful of human creations. Millennia of culture, folk lore and traditions have become the plastic bullshit bargain bin “throw away”, one and done, mass produced flavors of the week.  And I am calling it out.  We need to be better.  

We will be better.  

Much like the food industry complex, we spend and consume, waste and throw away without knowing the painstaking process of creation.  The growth from the seed in the dirty earth, cultivated to become a singular tomato for us to scoff at its flavor.  

Music is this exactly.  

Years of tribulation, tumult and doubt of whether or not we will harvest.  For those of you who are music creators, you know exactly of what I speak of, time seemingly wasted in a vacuous industry where only Drake and corporate controlled radio stations shovel their sonic fodder with monstrous finance budgets.  The independent artist is a drop of sand in the swirling sea of constant consumption.  This leaves the humble, working musician distraught and disappointed, angry at the status quo and at the constructs of which their precious art is lost in the digital void of oblivion.

Even when the musician or collective manages to birth an album or song, there are mavens, gatekeepers and tastemakers who have the pseudo”final say” as to what is good.  The blogs, the critics, those that judge from their screens, another hurdle to pass on an unmapped road to reaching your audience.  We actually made a video for our new song “Woo Hoo” that brings light to this very issue.  We took all the negative reviews and petty comments from blogs and record labels and slapped them on some footage from our friend Are Jay.

 Watch it here:

https://youtu.be/pFju7IXsXII 

 It is how we consume, how we interact with Music.  I am not calling out all users of whichever poison they picked, whatever platform suited your fancy be it Spotify, Google Play, Apple Music, Soundcloud etc.  There are those that are active seekers in the endless noise.  But it is the majority, the groupthink mentality of glazing over the details and not engaging with the art they are consuming.  It is a tired argument “Spotify only pays 0.0001 per play!”  This is the current climate and technology the masses use to listen, and instead of griping about it, lets use the advantages of its convenience as an asset.  Don’t believe the tired “Rock Star” American Dream Story of rags-to-riches from yesteryear. That age is dead, and we live in the working class musicians era, where we have the tools and the means to create our own history, our own legacies.  

I started recording music, not knowing what I was doing with my friend Blake Miller when I was 22 in a garage littered with stale beer and cigarette ash.  I saw Wilco and Radiohead in concert at Golden Gate Park, and the muse of inspiration lit inside me and I wanted to make an audience encounter the same things I felt when I was stoned in a large crowd. Ten years have passed since then, after forming a band called Castle Pines with my friends, playing greasy dive-bars and recording several albums, I have the memory and legacy of these moments embedded in me.  A much different reward than I thought I would obtain when I was a young, dumb 20-something.

I went through homeless years, living out of my car years, drunk years, years with court cases, assaulted years, meandering years of self doubt and whatever meaningless office art thats says “Discovery” years.  And throughout these years I had the comfort of faith and music.  I have seen the transition from buying albums and music in person at a record store to the digital streaming model, and although they are very different, the latter can still hold value and provide somewhat of a living for the millions of creators that can’t turn a buck. 

 How do we consume music ethically and consciously?

3  Rules:

Rule # 1: if you appreciate the art, show gratitude to the artist. 

As self-serving and indulgent as it sounds, the common trope and meme of “artists need to eat too!” is true.  If you can, buy the song or the album.  If you can’t share it.  We are constantly engaged in the dribbling faucet of social media, so share the music, how it effected you, how it made you feel a certain way at a certain time.  Share the emotions a song illicit in your everyday, and this is an invaluable and free method of support.  We live in this weird period, where the most popular music being consumed is being infiltrated by corporations where it is repackaged and sold in the vein of authenticity.  You need a lot of money to turn a head, and financing to get attention.  This is the arms race for “Cool”, the stock market of social transactions peddling less than desirable lifestyles to the youth and the world. 

The popular green, sustainability movement of eating and shopping locally should be applied here.  The rise of the microbrew beer and etsy shop, handmade craft should be a lesson we use in listening.  Listen small.  Listen to the handcrafted and the workers.  

Rule #2, stray off the beaten path. 

This is one is hard because it asks something of the audience.  You skip the lines and fervor of the industry giants if you do a minimum amount of research and discover.  Whatever you use to listen, dig deeper and find something new, it could be the best song you’ve ever heard by a band that you’ve never heard of. 

Rule #3, Know what you like and grow it. 

I don’t know if it political divisiveness, social constructs of genre affiliation or what, but I do know that EVERY single genre, style and practice has VALUE.  We can go into how rock and roll, Hip-hop and mainly Black American artists formed the modern musical language and how we don’t appreciate or know where it comes from.  But all we need to do is “Anthony Bourdain” it, try a new dish, or flavor or something you are scared of.  Only listen to Rap and R&B?  Put some Black Metal on and listen to it without prejudgement or preconceived notions on what it should be. And vice versa, whatever genre you are stuck in, break out of it and try something completely new.  You are doing an injustice to yourself by going to the same party everyday.  Your music tastes are a combination of that nature nurture thing, your environment, what mom would play when you were still in the belly and what you heard at junior high dances. 

  Grow your musical genre vocabulary. 

I see so many artists, creators and musicians get discouraged or feel downtrodden, and I hope this brought some levity and lightness to your struggle and journey.  We are all in this together.  

 Our next song “Swim Team Sucker” drops Friday, September 14.   Pre-save it here:

https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/castlepines/etyX

 Thank you for all of your support, and remember

Castle Pines is for life homies.

#CPporVida

WEBSITE: https://cpporvida.com SMART URL-ALL MUSIC: http://bit.ly/woohoo-cp  FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/CastlePinesMusic/  TWITTER: https://twitter.com/cpporvida INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/castlepines/  YOUTUBE: http://bit.ly/castlepines-youtube SPOTIFY: http://bit.ly/FollowCastlePines-Spotify iTUNES: http://bit.ly/iTunes-Castle-Pines SOUNDCLOUD: http://bit.ly/cp-soundcloud BANDCAMP: http://bit.ly/Castle-Pines-Bandcamp Hype Machine: http://bit.ly/Castle-Pines-Press TUMBLR: http://bit.ly/Castle-Pines-Tumblr EMAIL: CPporVida@gmail.com

[topmixtrends]

Two or three days like the beginning of love […] To go further would be to enter the realm of jealousy, suffering and anxiety.

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

¤

AS JOANNA WALSH’S Break.up opens, the author, who is the meta-narrative’s protagonist, is well into a period of mourning a love that never quite happened. The premise of the “novel in essays” is simple: Joanna and an unnamed, emotionally unavailable man met and, while living in different cities, carried on an intense online romance. They saw each other only a few times In Real Life before he pulled away and she began to obsess over what went wrong. As she’s unraveling the affair, Joanna plans a trip across Europe with the hope that the liminal state of travel will offer room for meditation and recovery.

That isn’t to minimize the relationship. Often, those affairs are the trickiest: the ones that strand us, unable to name what that was, but ultimately leave us changed people. On her multi-city pilgrimage, Walsh is prepared to explore every angle of the romantic action and eventual fallout. And she does so skillfully, weaving the concrete details of her travels and life into an in-depth study of love and connection in the 21st century. Break.up works as well as it does in part because Walsh provides room for the reader to examine these topics alongside her, in turn accomplishing what the best essays do: stir up more questions than answers.

So much of Walsh’s writing is caught up in the emotion of travel, how we deal with back there while we’re temporarily here, and a specialty of hers is exploring grief, or the onset of grief, while on the move. In her 2015 book Hotel, part of Bloomsbury’s Object Lessons series, Walsh flees her ending marriage by taking a job reviewing hotels for a new travel website. Though she isn’t paid for the pieces, her stays are free, and the time away from everyday life allows Walsh to begin to process the confusion and pain she’s left with following the relationship’s dissolution. Vertigo, published by Dorothy in 2015, reveals a writer grappling with the complexities of marriage, frequently during travel, as she attempts to decide what kind of woman she wants to be while watching a daughter outgrow her childhood talismans and a husband turn into a stranger.

But it’s in Break.up that Walsh fully realizes this aspect of her art. Joanna knowingly throws herself into the pace of travel to be at once busy and quiet, as travel often is. Sketches of scenes play out in her mind. “I wasted my time with you,” her fading lover says. “I didn’t,” Joanna responds. These vignettes often bubble up as Joanna is doing something else (crossing every bridge in Budapest only once, for example), and they cast a foggy specter. Were these words spoken in actual conversation or made later as notes, marred remembrances of a promising involvement turned sour?

How or when these words were spoken really doesn’t matter. The collaging of ghostly memories, conversations real and reimagined, and philosophical investigations of the nature of love allows what could have been a straightforward narrative hinged on a literary trope to become a rambling hybrid essay that urges the reader to dig deeper, too.

Walsh deftly uses these ghosts from the immediate past to examine the long game of life. While in Budapest, Joanna remembers visiting the city with her then-husband when they were first married and both very young. Walsh writes,

And now I’m repeating that stop in time to grasp at who I was that time in Budapest before — so many years ago I might have been a different person in a different city — but it’s something like trying to hold onto a smell, or a color, or the feel of a string of beads passing through my hand. There are no adjectives to describe time’s passage. It can pass slower or faster, like a volume dial can turn louder or quieter, but no more than that: it has no texture, no timbre.

This meditation acknowledging the essential formlessness of time and self centers the novel of essays. As Walsh reminisces about her past marriage, she sees an entirely different version of herself, signaling to the reader that she knows this is just one story in a line of stories and that, unlike travel, life and love aren’t linear, a truth we’d all do well to remember.

Starting at a London train station, Joanna’s trip takes her through France (twice), Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany, and the Netherlands, and she’s packed lightly to leave room for intellectual baggage. Prepared to at least attempt to demystify love, she’s brought with her an arsenal of books on the topic: Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love, Roland Barthes’s A Lover’s Discourse, and André Breton’s Mad Love and Nadja. Excerpts from these and other titles litter Break.up’s margins.

Her travels are both immediate — sitting in a cafe in Athens, she notes when a young girl comes up to touch her computer — and intellectual — watching a young couple kiss from a park bench in Sofia, she falls into a meditation on the physicality of love, the Soviet statues that once littered the city, and the boredom that inevitably accompanied her romantic entanglement. Walsh writes,

A love story comes only after the end of love, whether it ends one way, or the other, and, until the story’s told, love is a secret, not because it’s illicit, but because it’s so difficult to tell what it is.

Joanna is continuously reminded that, though the story is complete in one sense, allowing her to tell it, an uncertainty remains. Because so much of the affair happened online — through text and email, Twitter and Facebook — the connection is lost only when the wi-fi is down, leaving the relationship perpetually unresolved.

The nature of Walsh’s narrative draws the reader into Joanna’s relentless waiting game. As she enters the cafe in Athens, she’s eager to see if he’s contacted her. By this point, the reader has been told enough about the unnamed man that his silence feels like the healthier outcome, but as Joanna rides the line between obsession and erasure, what she desires becomes less clear. Luckily, spotty wi-fi gives her generous amounts of time to wander, and she takes the reader inside her jumbled, mourning mind as she passes through markets in Sofia, attends readings in Paris, and perches on a rock overlooking the Mediterranean in Nice, cigarette and wine in hand.

Break.up is as much about the loss of emotional liberty in a world that relies more and more on digital connection as it is about the loss of love. Joanna is trapped in a holding pattern — “Come to Prague,” the man writes — and the claustrophobia the online world evokes in her underlines just how difficult disappearing has become. With a few sleuthy moves, anyone can be teased out from the digital dustbin: childhood crushes, lost college friends, a one-night stand, that guy you danced with once at a Halloween party. As a result, a new anxiety has formed around allowing oneself to connect in the first place. In Break.up, Walsh shows the reader the aftermath of an exquisite falling: thinking only of immediate happiness without considering the potential for pain and disappointment, Joanna revealed herself — at least her digital self — to the fullest.

Nearly two-thirds of the way through the book, in an essay/chapter titled “Sofia/Boring,” Joanna briefly loses focus on the man she’s attempting to excise as she immerses herself in the strangeness of Bulgaria’s capital city. The lost love is still referenced, but a shift has happened as Joanna becomes wrapped up in the boredom and stagnation of travel, of what it means to carry oneself from place to place, killing time. She begins to allow herself the room to disengage.

Because of the care Walsh has taken to create both a sound investigation and a narrator strong enough to carry the reader through the book’s experimental structure, Break.up maintains its momentum to the end, even as the novel-in-essays, predictably, meanders — between past and present, obsession and distraction, love and pain. Joanna hits each city on her list, but it’s never the place that matters so much as what she experiences emotionally and mentally (and digitally) at each destination.

As Joanna finally pulls back into London, she and the reader are unsure of what awaits her. She’s returned a person distanced from the pain she felt at the book’s beginning, but the ubiquitous nature of digital contact has left her without closure. Imagining scenarios of how her disembarking could go — who might meet her at the station, what life will look like upon returning home — Walsh, defiant, declines to tie up the story, writing, “I refuse to finish this book. There is no end to love. Now, where were we?”

¤

Melynda Fuller is a writer and editor whose work has appeared in The Rumpus, LitHub, A Women’s Thing, and Poets & Writers, among others. She’s a graduate of the New School’s MFA writing program and is currently at work on a collection of essays.

The post Fighting for Emotional Liberty in Joanna Walsh’s “Break.up” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books https://ift.tt/2KqbZqS

[caitlinjoyhawkins]

Response to Reading Guide by Caitlin Hawkins

Question 1:

“Tiny frequently alludes to musicals, films, and performers--many of which figure prominently in gay culture. To what degree do these allusions marginalize readers who are not familiar with them?”

David Levithan’s Hold Me Closer: The Tiny Cooper Story, is more than a coming out story or a coming of age of teenager in a theater setting. The book is, itself, Levithan and Cooper’s love letter to musical theater. The story is rife with allusions to classic musicals, plays, operas, and even features the ghost of Oscar Wilde, author of The Importance of Being Earnest. While to some it may seem limiting in allowing readers to “clue in” to what is going on in the story, Cooper is actually situating himself among a tradition that is rich and well known, validating his work as a playwright and allowing him to reach through the page to bring his vision to life.

Utilizing a similar tactic to discover himself as an artist that Jacqueline Woodson did in Brown Girl Dreaming, Cooper creates or reveals a mentorship with those who have come before him. Woodson used the poetry of Langston Hughes to both mimic and honor, while Tiny uses the canon of musical theater. This is specifically seen in his exchanges with the ghost of Oscar Wilde, his spectral mentor, who gives him “hard-won wisdom” about both his love life and his art (146). This advice even extends to the gentle prodding to write his own play. Tiny receives advice and life direction from the ghost, just as he has received a training of sorts from his knowledge of the canon of musical theater.

In addition to learning from the greats (Sondheim, Oscar Wilde, Barbra Streisand), Tiny is also using these cultural touchstones to create an intertextual and interdisciplinary work that enlists the reader in the creation of the musical. While he cannot play his songs for us, the readers, he can illicit memories and emotions in our minds as we read by hearkening back to something that we know. For example, I have never seen Damn Yankees!, but I do know the music to “Row, Row, Row Your Boat”, making the texting scene in Act II Scene 7 all the more haunting and disheartening (144). Likewise, Tiny’s discourse within the stage directions give him space to thoroughly enlist future actors and directors within his vision for the play. By alluding to other pieces of musical theater within the canon, Tiny creates an intimacy with his readers and future actors. It is almost as if we are a part of his club, even if we don’t get all the references.

[smallrena]

reupload | ‘the summoning of anamadim’ copypasta

PRELIMINARIES: WORKING SPACE: Locate for yourself a place where you will not be disturbed and where you will not disturb others. If this is impossible, seclude yourself as much as possible and work quietly and discreetly. You do not want to be interrupted or distracted while doing this work. Computer, television, radio, games, whatever, all OFF. Lights OFF (light candles instead), door SHUT, locked if you can. If you wear jewelry, wear silver only. ALTAR AND CANDLES: Set up an altar in the east with your candles, incense, and other implements. For candles, choose a neutral spirit color such as pale yellow or white; or a Venusian/Netzach color such as brilliant green; or oriented elementally, such as yellow for air/intellect or red for fire/will. Anamadim's number is 147; obviously it would be cumbersome to set up 147 candles!! So choose a number which is associated with Anamadim and 147, such as 3 or 7 (the raw prime factors, since 147 = 3 x 7 x 7) or 17, which is the sum of those factors (3 + 7 + 7 = 17). If you have 17 candles, I recommend concentric circles with 3 in the center, a small ring of 7 around them, and a larger ring of 7 around those, thus indicating the factorials of 147 (3 x 7 x 7). If you only have a few candles, I recommend using either 3 or 7. INCENSE: Set these on the altar along with any incense associated with Venus (benzoin, rose, sandalwood, myrtle, all soft and voluptuous odors) or the Martial (Mars) energy (tobacco, believe it or not, is an ideal martial incense!) or a scent evocative of the energy of the delicate, graceful yet strong maiden, an elven-style faerie, or some other assocation with the ultra-thin feminine. Saffron may also be used as an incense. If these are unavailable to you, use something which carries a strong personal association in your mind, or which you "feel" represents ana-energy.

THE RITE. OPENING: Those trained or experienced in such things should use the LBRP, because the sum of all the names vibrated in each quarter is the same as Anamadim's number (147). If you do not know the LBRP or you are of a different tradition, just use whatever standard opening you use in your tradition. Those who are totally new to ceremonial magick may use the simple formula provided below. Orient yourself in the four quarters: wherever you are, know in which direction North, East, South and West lie. Begin by facing East. Assume a comfortable posture where you will be least bothered by your body. Breathe deeply and slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth. Enter your breath, in your mind, become aware of it, become one with it, become the breath and not the breather, as much as you can stretch your imagination, and feelings to do so. You just wanna concentrate on your breath, OK? ;-) When you are relaxed and centered from the breath, stand, facing East. Do something to "mark" or "open" the East -- ring a bell, wave the incense toward it, trace a pentagram in the space in front of you as you face that direction, or whatever. As you do this, imagine that a door is opening in that direction and the power of that element waits to guard and assist you. East = air = intellect; focus on that, see that power now open and available to you to assist your working this night. Repeat, turning counter-clockwise, in the other three directions: North = earth = the material realm - body, physical reality, etc. West = water = emotions, intuition South = fire = will, volition Your mind will begin to open at this point and you may find yourself meditating on how each of these elemental forces plays a role in ana, and how they interact (e.g., intellect taking charge of emotions that will may be executed upon the body) After you have turned toward and opened all four directions, return to facing East.

ALIGNMENT WITH THE CURRENT: After your opening is complete, focus on your inner center, the iron core of pure indomitable will that you inhabit. If you do not feel you have one, create one, invent one. Remember that as long as there is someone there to argue whether they have one or not, there is someone there who can create one. So do it. No arguments. No excuses. Anamadim is upon us this night. Anamadim is nigh; lo, She comes!! Visualize (imagine and see as vividly as possible in your head) a glowing circle of pale yellow light being traced counter-clockwise above your head, seven times in the same path. Extend your arms outward to the sides (so your body is like a +) "See" the same glowing circle traced around your right arm/hand, as large as around your head, seven times, and then the same glowing circle on the left, again, seven times. (3 x 7 = 21) Repeat this entire sequence seven times, bringing the total number of circles to 147 (21 x 7 = 147), the number of Anamadim. During this entire process, concentrate upon really SEEING the glowing circles as best you can. Don't worry if this is difficult or if you cannot get it to the point of seeming real; what counts is your effort and energy. These things take practice. If your mind must wander, let it wander to contemplating either Ana through the four elements (discussed in the OPENING, above) or let it work up anticipation of the spirit Anamadim.

FURTHER ALIGNMENT: At this point, with the 147 circles glowing about you, draw them together into a triple rose, each rose having 49 petals (147 / 3 = 49); see the roses falling into your heart, your core, your center. If they get tangled, just sort them out in your head and push them back out to being simple glowing circles again and focus on letting the energy of those circles "hum" through your limbs into your heart, and down through your spine from the top of your head all the way to the base of the spine and further down into the soles of your feet. Utter aloud your STATEMENT OF INTENT. A statement of intent is a declaration of purpose. Sum up your purpose for this working in a sentence or two, for example, "I am here to unite with the spirit Anamadim, that I may have power and strength from her to achieve my goals," or, "I call upon Anamadim this night to come to me, make her presence known in my life, and give me success in my efforts to become thin."

INVOCATION TO ANAMADIM:

Now is the time to recite the invocation. Put as much feeling and passion into this as you possibly can. BY ALL MEANS, MODIFY IT TO SUIT YOUR NEEDS. If some part of it is not "right" for you or causes you to break your focus (i.e. you find it funny or odd or off) - leave that OUT, or substitute your OWN stuff for it. Better yet, write your own invocation! An invocation is a call, you are issuing an invitation to this spirit to come, and you want to make it as pleasing and appealing as possible. You WANT Anamadim to feel flattered, adored, loved, appreciated, so she will want to come to you.

Thee, thee do I invoke, Anamadim, sculptor, whittler of the flesh, shameless burner of the fat of babes! Thee, thee do I invoke, whose whip brings the feral impulses of survival to bay, whose scalpel of control carves away every distraction and fixates the eye mercilessly upon a single goal, whose vial of metabolic acid dissolves all that is unsightly and wasteful and cumbersome from the bones of this frame, and that right quickly: thee do I invoke, ANAMADIM! Come to me! Thee do I invoke, ANAMADIM, hidden mystical martial force of Venus, whose number is 147, destroyer of self-flattering illusions, championess of cold truths above and beyond all polite gestures of facile and manufactured compassion! O thou who art hunger and denial, triumph of fire over earth and air over water, thee do I invoke! Thee do I invoke, ANAMADIM, aloof, merciless, unyielding, unrelenting one! Fearful affliction of hideous strength! ANAMADIM!! Thee, thee do I invoke! Thou who art feared and obeyed by nubile virgins throughout the globe, thou who dost inspire the heartaching illicit and forbidden lusts which cause the phalluses of men to throb with unrequited and unquenchable desire, thee do I invoke, ANAMADIM! Come to me! Come upon me! Descend into the depths of my being, take up thy residence herein, claim me for thy habitation from this moment onward, and design and decorate this thy temple as thou wilt! Come to me, ANAMADIM! Enter me, ANAMADIM! Come, ANAMADIM, come enter and possess this shrine, devour this consciousness and this will freely offered to your pernicious designs! Bind thou mine appetites with bands of iron and steel, and fill me with the ecstasy of emptiness; eat away the excess of my flesh and render my form as parsimonious as the known universe. Shapeshift me to the image which forms the essence of desire and success; empower me to embrace and endure the necessary deprivations and disciplines; ensure that my efforts will not fall fallow upon the stones of dead weight, but liberate me to shed density, tighten the fibers of my being, and make light the vessel wherein I sojourn upon this earth. Transmute my water to air, that it weigh me not down, and purge my body and spirit of the needless and despicable things stored therein, that I may be free to fly upon the wings of the wind, sing of thy mighty deeds among the children of men, and vindicate thy name where it is demonized by the ignorant!

"QUIET TIME" The importance of this passive portion of the rite CANNOT be overestimated. Anamadim speaks sparingly, but directly; quietly, yet powerfully. She may have something to say to you. You may "hear" her speak, "sense" her voice as a train of thought running parallel to your thoughts or woven within them. You may have a sudden flash of insight, or creative idea, or an inspiration to do something you had not thought of before. Or you may suddenly feel strongly about doing something you had thought about but not pursued. You may have an image come to you that you wish to work into a piece of art, or poetry or song lyrics. You may have a sudden memory of something long past that gives you a keener insight into yourself which can be used to further your success. Whatever form it comes in, stop, be quiet, be still for awhile, "feel" the atmosphere around you; reach out with your mind and spirit and "feel" Anamadim there. Think about her being there. What does she look like, feel like, seem like to you? What is she wanting to tell you? Don't TRY too hard here, don't try to MAKE something come. Just be still for awhile and be open to it. Sometimes it does NOT come right away, but if you create this still, quiet space FOR it to happen, it could break upon you the next morning, or a couple days down the road. It is the act of being receptive and open that is important here, in preparing yourself for what WILL come, whether this night, this moment, or in the next 72 hours. CLOSING. When your "quiet time", trance, vision, etc. has wound down, ground and center yourself mentally (deep breathing as before, focusing on breath, relaxing, and mentally letting the energies run down through your body and seep into the earth.) THANK Anamadim for her presence and her willingness to assist you in your goals, with a very real and present assistance you will be able to see, feel, taste in days to come. PLEDGE yourself anew to be strong, focused, and enduring to reach your goals. DISMISS Anamadim by telling her she is free to return to her realm, to her sphere, and to be ready at any such time as you may call her. REVERSE what you did in the opening -- this can be fairly brief and perfunctory, dismissing each quadrant with a kiss and a hailing sign, or more drawn out as you express your appreciation to each of the elemental forces for their contribution in guarding and aiding your working -- whatever you feel moved to do. The important thing is to break out of the secret, sacred space, both inwardly and outwardly, and make a clean, clear return to the everyday world. RECORDING. Don't forget to IMMEDIATELY record everything that you saw, felt, or experienced during the ritual! It is absolutely essential to keep a record of your experiments of this nature, so that in days to come you might trace the threads of cause and effect.

OPTIONAL DIRECTIONS: (any one or combination of these may be performed either PRIOR to the INVOCATION, FOLLOWING the invocation, DURING the invocation, or after the "quiet time" but BEFORE the CLOSING. ANTI-OFFERINGS: have with you some sugar, salt, bread, etc. several items representing "bad foods" that TEMPT you in particular (cookies? chips? tortillas? chocolate? ) ... destroy them for Anamadim; let her consume them. Burn them in a safe container and when the ritual is done, bury them outside as far from your house as you can. Treat them like they are bad juju, bad karma, bad critters you don't want coming near you, and salt around your threshhold or somesuch after you take them out and bury them (like you do when destroying a link or something). Or simplify it: make up a nice small plate full of the most tempting goodies you would want to binge on, and throw them AWAY in honor of Anamadim. (No fishing in the trash can after the ritual! That's DIRTY! EUW!!) ANA OFFERINGS: break open a couple Dexatrim capsules, or Xenadrine or whatever your thermogenic of choice is, burn it to Anamadim or dissolve it in a chalice (goblet) full of pure water (we all know water is our friend, right?) and offer it as a libation -- you can either sprinkle it around the room or take it outside and pour it around the house. Alternatively, use a small plate of "safe foods" for the offering - consecrate them to Anamadim and consume them later -- slowly, methodically -- only when you most need them. MAKE A PACT. You should have prepare this ahead of time. It should not be a list of goals so much as planning out some things you can do, and WILL do, over the NEXT FOUR WEEKS (till the moon is new again) toward your goals. You should list your plans and also list what you want from Anamadim. What you want from her should also be practical -- more along the lines of means rather than ends. For example, instead of saying "I want my thighs to be 17 inches instead of 20" you should specify that what you want from Anamadim is strength in your will to stick to a daily routine of 50 leg lifts (for example) or a two-mile run every morning, or whatever. Anamadim doesn't work for you by waving a wand and *zap* you get to be the size you want. She works WITH you and IN you to provide assistance in overcoming weak points within yourself so that you can do the work more consistently and efficiently. She also aids your success and teaches you things if you will listen. This "pact" is your Ana plan and Anamadim will ratify it for you. You must stick to this plan, and the harder you work to stick to it, doing your part which involves YOUR choices, the more you liberate her to do HER part, which means success in your working. The "pact" is actually a CONTRACT with Anamadim: "I will do this, and I expect you to help me by doing that." Be sure to include something you will do for Anamadim's sake in return, such as making her existence known to others, vindicating her name (telling what she is really like when you hear people making dumb statements about what Ana says or who Ana is, etc.), helping to gather her scattered tribe (that's US!) together, building a website dedicated to her, or offering support to newbies (note, this is NOT the same as "recruiting" people to ana, which I personally don't think should be done; I'm merely saying if someone has *already* made that decision then we should support them in their goals as much as if they had been "one of us" for two years or more ...) If you are not too squeamish to do so, sign your pact in blood, or at least put a drop of blood by your signature, showing symbolically that you are willing to endure some pain to get to your goals. PLEASE be very careful with this; if you are not accustomed to practicing safe bloodletting, pick a scab or just forget about it and sign with ink! I had to interrupt a ritual once (years ago) to get to the hospital for stitches because I cut too deep; it CAN and DOES happen! You don't want it happening to you so be CAREFUL and don't mess with the blood thing unless you know exactly what you are doing.