#since rather than viewing her body as both the sum of its parts and itself at the same time like manabu

[solokabuto]

I love mentally ill sapphics (thinks about Qualia the Purple) (thinks about Qualia the Purple) (thinks about Qualia the Purple) (thinks about Qualia the Purple)(thinks abo

[incarnateirony]

DM questions, a new round.

"i am very curious for the vids on amara right now, because I feel like I did not understand a lot of the underlying text from her plotline."

My Amara heavy vids are Reflection (S14 orig)/Destiny's Reflection(S15 update), End of the Line, and Xanthosis. However they're more how she interplays to the storyline for the mains rather than a breakdown of the mythological significance at large. I'd say check my talk on Absence. Somewhere I do have a cosmogeny post from like S13, where I break down the Qabbalah on this but I can’t seem to find it at the moment and would be a bit extra. Almost overcomplicate things right now since it went into the tree of life and pillars, even if that’s quite predictively mapping out our path right now episode by episode.

I will say: not all mentions of “absence” on my blog are specifically in regards to Amara, but rather, to a collective mindset. The fandom -- frankly, humans in general -- tend to think in dualities. A subtle point in the subtext of this all is that dualities are often more a matter of being and unbeing. Darkness isn’t a thing, it is an absence of light. Death isn’t a thing, it is an absence of life. Evil isn’t a thing, it is an absence of good. It wasn’t by magic that I pre-quoted Cas in well...Absence once I saw the episode title while dealing with Jack being soulless. (x) This is something to learn moving forward-- or uh unlearn. Be absent of former dichotomous coding.  This is critical in other things like The Absence of Life which is going to be incredibly crucial to grasp coming up. (x)

Many authors talk about the Absence of Cas as a narrative tool, and while this is very valid, I find it’s almost too targeted. It’s a valid tool to start thinking about empty space: absence of Cas in AUs, the loss of Cas in the alternate future, and more--you’ll find me showing how Amara’s exit itself paralleled Cas and both handled Absence. But this is a very large scale idea that also impacts the sum of our cosmogeny really. You don’t think of it being “Cas” and “negaCas”, it’s just... absence. Something that isn’t there. Now expand that on these ideas.

I once etched this out on paint to try to streamline it when it comes to our Alpha and Omega (11.23), aka our Form and our Void (11.2).

"For the graphic, i just watched a few vids on alchemy and the 'souls' 'occultum' and 'eden' stand for 'soul' 'mind/spirit' and 'body' respectively right? But I am a bit confused about the end of the second paragraph, because from one of your posts I gathered that the souls are collected/destroyed/taken by amara and then "returned" to the empty. But in the graphic you seem to be implying the exact opposite? I think? Anyways it was very helpful to put all the different info into context thanx!”

They're pulled out into Absence, Absence is the lack of Being, Being is the created world. Beyond the created world there is the Empty. In the Empty there is only the Shadow.

And you're kinda close on the soul stuff. I'm at work so pardon if I'm going to be brief, I have a boss in my ear on a conference call but the long and short of it is... soul, mind/grace, body. But body is also the physical world. As above, so below.  Everything, and I do mean everything, ties into this. Souls, heaven, how reality is structured -- if you haven’t yet, check my heaven meta as it tries to communicate this but also make sure to read through the rest here. (x)

The soul is the foundation of all things, the mind reflects the soul and identities grown of it from the creative collective, body/earth is the perception of the world and vessel in which we grow.

VISITA TERRAE RECTIFICANDO INVENIES OCCULTUM LAPIDEM

Visit the interior parts of the earth; by rectification thou shalt find the hidden stone.

Or, “loosely translated,” In order to be in the Occultum, the Occultum must be in you.

The alchemists often referred to this as the “Marriage of the Sun and Moon,” which symbolized the two opposing ways of knowing or experiencing the world. After this Marriage of the Mind, the initiate experiences an increase in intuitive insight and the birth of Intelligence of the Heart. This newly found faculty produces a sense of reality superior to either Thought (Mind/Grace), or Feeling (Soul), alone.

The soul lights and powers the mind, the mind perceives the body, the body is vessel of the world and gives meaning and form for the soul for the mind to receive, relive and understand, as opposed to the unformed and seeking Shadow in oblivion wondering if it even exists that just wants to sleep. This is also not so different from the world orbiting around the sun despite previous confusion, if sun = soul, but the moon reflects the sun’s life and is a key catalyst for making life achievable on earth in many ways. Wherein moon = mind. Hmmm what was it that led Cas right to the occultum before it passed in the same order as the last sphere this year?

"Yes! I believe I actually understood everything you just said perfectly fine! (Three hours ago this basically just would have been gibberish to me, for real!) but for real, tysm for explaining, you really have a way to get everything down short and precise, even if i have to read a few things double. Just one more question, you saying they are pulled out into absence, and then the circle gif: does this mean in the grand scheme of things that the circle is finished by the time "a soul goes back to the empty" (very loosely described). Or is the circle a bigger one where it began with "the empty" / "the ink man(was one of 'his' names I think)" waking up -> everything forming out of nothing. And will end at some point with everything returning to nothing. Just to start anew - and therefore cause another unrelated circle? Sorry I this makes absolutely no sence at all "Waking up" referencing the big bang of course - "everything returning to nothing" meaning the collapse of the universe - and the "start of another circle" meaning a second big bang"

There's actually two takes on this! Very good question! Ironically, most gnostic branches believe the ascent does return you to the formless shadow, and it's called a Nihilistic view. Basically you return to the source of the machine as the one. On the other hand, more hermetic structures are called Optimistic, in that the machine is self-created by us to learn and master ourselves through and achieve enlightenment by returning to a *reflection* of the core. In supernatural, this would be the Garden, where the unconscious shadow being built over in creation reaches down as the subconscious serpent and asks who you are-- man returning to the garden.

In fact, Jack’s role in this (including the Luciferian parts I’ll talk below) in being the one TO return to the garden corresponds with phanes and the orphic egg, the (remastered) being that CAUSES that big bounce. (x) Why yes, I AM going to just keep throwing season 14 posts at you because this structure is a few years building at this point.

The Shadow may be the source but a still raw and unformed one, it's the fish before it crawled out of the cosmic water if you will.

Whereas the question of Being or Unbeing, first sourced in ideas like Chuck and Amara, came as thought. Thought and Mind made the world in Being.

So Chuck Had A Dream, and built it, but off the back of a primordial Shadow soup that already existed before him.

So the Thing that wonders why, or even if it exists, does exist as a formative Prima Materia, first material, on which the mind itself was made, but in reaching into the created world also has a new form. There, the crossroads of man and divinity, the Garden, where Jack reclaimed his soul.

Chuck is the first Mind to create by Grace and the Word (Logos, notice the book between Dean and Castiel) and half of the first question. Abraxas: Abrahadabra: I speak, therefore I am.

Chuck would thus be (half of) the Shadow's mind in its first form, but lacks the actual essence that defines the Shadow, and the Soul. Some schools of gnostic thought believe that humans were originally created, their body forms, by the Demiurge (Chuck), but they had no souls. So the Shadow descended as a serpent, sometimes Lucifer sometimes not (I don't think SPN is doing that part--or more, as above, is using Jack, the orphic child, as Phanes), to teach them the difference between good and evil, but that forbidden fruit wasn't an apple or whatever, it was giving them a soul, because the soul is the one true good and foundation of it all.

There is no evil, there is only the absence of good.

But the acquisition of that made them more than Chuck's dream, but able to have their own.

Hope, art, dreams. Those are human things.

Yes, they are.

The soul breeds the mind, the mind perceives the body, the body shapes the experience OF the soul as perceived by the mind, and these things make our heavenly thrones, thought boxes if you will

Supernatural is actually asking the audience to ponder the meaning of life.

What about all of this is real? Is it our circumstances? 

No. The where isn't significant as much as what we do with it. 

What about all of our Lives is real? 

People, families. We are. 

This is real.

Why do we exist? What is the meaning of it all?

The meaning is what we make between each other.

Who are we when we are first born? Are we as an infant who we become? Would I be a completely different person if I lived a different chain of circumstances and knew completely different people? How many lives must I live to find my way?

Chuck wants them to believe that the Gold they have made in this world and their interpersonal relationships cannot stay. Perhaps in his world that may be true. But man and his soul and his mind is a mortal beyond the body of this world

If they break Heaven from the chains he put around it then he has no power over man. It's the same reason he sealed Amara away. He knew they were equals and he couldn't stand it.

Man has the same right to the throne that Chuck has. Only his propaganda machine and keeping people in the ecosystem of his boxes is what gives him Authority. But as Fortuna says, don't play his game. Make him play yours.

As Dean said when he threw Michael in the Box. 

My mind, my rules.

In that box, Dean was God. Everyone else was just All The Same. Michael couldn't snap his fingers and nuke them all, he didn't have Chuck's given right of being a wavelength of intent across the realm.

"In this place, I'm God!" cried the mayor in Peace of Mind.

Each and every heaven box is a potential world made by man, a timeless place shuffling their greatest memories and ideas, but left empty by the lack of other souls in it. The souls remain the one true thing and he who has the most souls is god.

Man is god, end of story, Chuck's just... an architect. 

And every human can be one.

Perhaps my greatest frustration in this fandom is trying to slam out post after post explaining how wall to wall this incredibly deep philosophy is, to try to point out its resounding and powerful message to an entire audience, only to be met by resistance over silly fan warring about wanting or not wanting a ship like. Honestly, I don’t care if someone doesn’t like ~Destiel~ like. Get over it. You can see it as a long series (15.09, 15.13, etc) of platonic bro marriages of the platonic bro mind for their cosmic taxes to get a discount on the loan for their galactic fucking refrigerator at this point, but you are fundamentally doing yourself an entire assed disservice on the very moral bone structure of this show to not be willing to absorb this, much less prepare for how this will usher out our ending.

I don’t care if you ship Dean with Anna or Lisa or some other ancient shit, I don’t CARE if you prefer some Cas ship from 1492, tuck all that away. Please, for the love of everything holy, try to understand these lessons that the writing crew are even using to try to help counsel everyone through the ending of a show that took up much of our lives and, beyond that, learn how to carry these lessons into the real world in a way that just might maybe make you a better person who is able to have a better experience in their life.

[obscurehistoricalinterests]

Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in “Carmilla” and “Dracula” (I)

Every time I encounter media where Carmilla is either the servant of Dracula or in love with him (very often both simultaneously), I want to flip tables. 

Carmilla not only despised men, but she was a veiled depiction of a lesbian woman. As an innocent human, she was preyed on and murdered by a male vampire who was obsessed with her and yet emerged from her grave a cunning and powerful figure who cleverly exploited the womanly tropes of her time (the helpless and delicate flower) to dupe and charm men into doing exactly as she wanted in pursuit of her goals. Her romantic interests and desires for companionship were reserved exclusively for women. Every time I see her being relegated to the role of love interest for a man, I feel like her nature and personality being denied, misused and erased.

Back in Ye Olde Days (1996), I discovered a fascinating article by Elizabeth Signorotti which put forward the theory that Dracula was written as a patriarchal response to the unleashed female power and sexuality depicted in Carmilla. This remarkable article, which I have split into parts and transcribed below, explains better than I ever could the power of Carmilla and the ways in which its themes of female empowerment and agency were perceived as a threat.

Repossessing the Body: Transgressive Desire in “Carmilla” and “Dracula” (part I)

Of the vampire tales to date, Bram Stoker’s Dracula has unquestionably become the most popular and the most critically examined. It constitutes, however, the culmination of a series of nineteenth-century vampire tales that have been overshadowed by Stoker’s 1897 novel. To be sure, many of the earlier tales provide little more than a collective history of the vampire lore Stoker incorporated in Dracula, but Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s little known “Carmilla” (1872) is the original tale to which Stoker’s Dracula served as a response. In “Carmilla” Le Fanu chronicles the development of a vampiric relationship between two women, in which it becomes increasingly clear that Laura’s and Carmilla’s lesbian relationship defies the traditional structures of kinship by which men regulate the exchange of women to promote male bonding. On the contrary, Le Fanu allows Laura and Carmilla to usurp male authority and to bestow themselves on whom they please, completely excluding male participation in the exchange of women, normative as discussed by Claude Levi-Strauss and more recently by Gayle Rubin and Eve Sedgwick. Stoker later responded to Le Fanu’s narrative of female empowerment by reinstating male control in the exchange of women. In effect, Dracula seeks to repossess the female body for the purposes of male pleasure and exchange, and to correct the reckless unleashing of female desire in Le Fanu’s “Carmilla.” 

In The Elementary Structures of Kinship, Levi-Strauss argues that women are “valuables par excellence from both the biological and the social points of view... without which life is impossible.” As “valuables,” women are seen “as the object of personal desire, thus exciting sexual and proprietorial instincts... [and also as] the subject of the desire of others, ... binding others through alliance with them.” Women, then, become the means of alliance, the ”supreme gift” that binds men together and creates social order. For Levi-Strauss, marriage most significantly reveals men’s complete control of women. He argues that traditionally “the total relationship of exchange which constitutes marriage is not established between a man and a woman, where each owes and receives something, but between two groups of men, and the woman figures only as one of the objects in the exchange, not as one of the partners between whom the exchange takes place.” As an essential and valuable “sign” to be possessed and exchanged, woman’s sole purpose is to provide the passive link between men.

Levi-Strauss’ exploration of the role women play in creating male alliance is further examined in Gayle Rubin’s “The Traffic in Women” and in Eve Sedgwick’s Between Men. Whereas Levi-Strauss ultimately romanticizes the exchange of women, Rubin examines the specific implications for women resulting from his argument. She states that Levi-Strauss’ “exchange of women” is shorthand for expressing the “social relations of a kinship system... [where] men have certain rights in their female kin...[and where] women do not have the same rights either to themselves or to their male kin.” Since women are “transacted” by men, they become only “a conduit of a relationship rather than a partner to it” and are denied the “benefits of their own circulation.” Rubin further stresses that “compulsory heterosexuality is a product of male kinship” because “women... can only be properly [valued] by someone ‘with a penis’(phallus). Since the girl has no ‘phallus’, she has no ‘right’ to love her mother or another woman.” In her examination of Levi-Strauss, Rubin underscores woman’s historical subjection to male desire and her exclusion from the social order governed by male alliance.

Sedgwick broadens Rubin’s argument by investigating “compulsory heterosexuality” as a distinguishing factor in female relationships and in male relationships. She argues that men’s relationships are defined by “homosocial desire,” that homosocial relationships between men must be distinguished from socially threatening homosexual unions, and the only way to eliminate the homosexual threat between men is to include a woman in the relationship, forming a (safe) triangular configuration rather than a (threatening) linear, male-to-male union. She contends that contrary to women’s relationships “patriarchal structures [assure] that ‘obligatory heterosexuality’ is built into male-dominated kinship systems, [and] that homophobia is a necessary consequence of... patriarchal institutions [such] as heterosexual marriage.” Women function in this system as signs and tools to ensure the survival of male relationships and to deflect the threat of homosexuality by serving as a link between men.

Sedgwick sums up social perceptions of women’s and men’s relationships as “diacritical opposition between the ‘homosocial’ and the ‘homosexual,’” an opposition that ”seems to be much less thorough and dichotomous for women, in our society, than for men.” She argues that all women in our society who promote the interests of other women (by teaching, nurturing, studying, marching for, or employing) are “pursuing congruent and closely related activities. Thus the adjective ‘homosocial’ as applied to women’s bonds... need not be pointedly dichotomized as against ‘homosexual’; it can intelligibly dominate the entire continuum.” The unity of the lesbian continuum, “extending over the erotic, social, familial, economic, and political realms, would not be so striking if it were not in strong contrast to the arrangement among males.” That arrangement, as Levi-Strauss has defined it, is a system of alliance between men that requires, in some form, the exchange of women to bind men and (as Sedgwick implies) to stave off homosexual anxiety. Sedgwick makes clear that women’s relationships are not governed by homophobia; therefore, excluding men from female friendships or from access to women poses more of a threat to male kinship systems than to female. Thus, female homosocial bonds potentially carry tremendous power to subvert or demolish existing patriarchal kinship structures, which is precisely what happens in “Carmilla.”

Throughout most of the nineteenth century the central figure in vampire tales was a male whose relationships were used to depict various conflicts in contemporary society. James Twitchell observes in The Living Dead that nineteenth-century writers mainly used the vampire “to express various human relationships, relationships that the artist himself had with family, with friends, with lovers, and even with art itself.” Other critics note that the vampire, a dead body that drinks blood and preys on innocent victims to sustain its own life, acts as a complex metaphor: it could represent the economic dependence of women; the parasitic relationship between the aristocracy and the oppressed middle and lower classes: unrepressed female sexuality; eugenic contamination; enervating parent/child relationships; and, of course, sexual relationships deemed subversive or perverse in hegemonic discourse.” Perhaps most interesting is Nina Auerbach’s contention that the demonized (or vampirized) woman in nineteenth-century literature and art really depicts a “hero who was strong enough to bear the hopes and fears of a century’s worship.” Auerbach’s comment may be true in some instances, but by and large the majority of women in vampire tales, at least in the early and mid-nineteenth century, were far too marginalized and victimized to be seen as heroic; like the male protagonists of those tales, who brutalized them, women vampires were generally perceived as loathsome and diseased.

Le Fanu’s “Carmilla” - the first vampire tale whose protagonist is a woman vampire - marks the growing concern about the power of female homosocial relationships in the nineteenth century. All of Carmilla’s predecessors - Lord Ruthven, Varney, Melmoth - were men. Le Fanu’s creation of a woman vampire anticipates the shift toward the end of the century to predominantly female vampires. In both art and literature, women and specifically women’s bodies became progressively associated with the vampire. One explanation for this shift, as Carol Senf points out, is the “growing awareness of women’s power and influence... [as] feminists began to petition for additional rights for women. Concerned with women’s power and influence, writers... often responded by creating powerful women characters, the vampire being one of the most powerful negative images.” But women’s potential power alone does not fully explain the proliferation of women vampires. The female body itself was demonized. According to Sian Macfie, “the function or dysfunction of the female body was juxtaposed with notions of the perceived threat of vampirism... [and these notions] were largely based upon a sense of women’s association with blood [as a result of menstruation]. However, the idea of female vampirism also came to be understood in a more figurative sense. In addition to the idea of literal contagion of the blood, vampirism came to be associatively linked to the notion of moral contagion and especially with the ‘contamination’ of lesbianism.” Citing Havelock Ellis, who hypothesized that “homosexuality... occurs with special frequency in women of high intelligence who... influence others,” Macfie concludes that “the notion of vampirism also came to be used metaphorically to refer to a social phenomenon, the ‘psychic sponge.’ The psychic sponge was understood to be a woman who was perceived [as] a drain on the energy and [the] emotional and intellectual resources of her companions.” As a result of women’s perceived link with vampirism, by the late nineteenth century “close female bonding and lesbianism are conflated with notions of the unhealthy draining of female vitality.”

“Carmilla“ is the vampire tale that most readily defines the established patriarchal systems of kinship discussed above and that most provokingly challenges nineteenth-century notions of the “contamination of lesbianism“ and the female “psychic sponge.“ Florence Marryat’s The Blood of the Vampire (1897) depicts an equally interesting lesbian vampire relation, offering insights into fin-de-siecle stereotypes of female sexuality and gendered identity, but Le Fanu’s tale is the first to investigate disruptive lesbian desire. Although “Carmilla“’s denouement is ambiguous, Le Fanu refrains from heavy-handed moralizing, leaving open the possibility that Laura’s and Carmilla’s vampiric relationship is sexually liberating and for them highly desirable. The ontological change in Laura between the beginning of the narrative and the end is never reversed, suggesting that her shifting desires are, for her, healthy and vital.

Le Fanu originally published “Carmilla” in the short-lived Victorian periodical The Dark Blue, then added the prologue and included the tale in In a Glass Darkly, five unrelated narratives held together by the figure of Dr. Hesselius, a student of psychic phenomena whose case histories make up these stories. Not only “the greatest” of Le Fanu’s works, “Carmilla” is also the most daring. It depicts a society where men increasingly become relegated to powerless positions while women assume aggressive roles. Le Fanu pushes his male characters, who lose all control over their women, towards the edge of his narrative. Ineffectual in either understanding or treating Styria’s baffling (female) “malady,” Le Fanu’s men suffer exclusion from male kinship systems because they are unable to exchange women. Instead, women control their own exchange, prompting W. J. McCormack to observe that in “Carmilla” “feminine nature is powerful, destructively powerful, and its objects become hypnotized (or hyperstatically controlled) in its power.” Le Fanu untethers “destructively powerful” feminine nature in “Carmilla” and refuses to thether it by the end of his story.

Part II is here.

[torielectra83]

Just Another Day at the Mall

Thanks to @greyias, last week I was inspired to create an AU of my SWTOR smuggler OC, only instead of being in space, he and his partners all work at a mall. I may post this on my AO3, I dunno. Enjoy it.

“Well, another day, another credit.” Prindrohi Candaren thought as he unlocked the security shutters for his pride and joy, Boundless Starparts. He’d set-up shop in a vacant space in the east wing of the Galactic Mall in Coruscant City. Since he’d left his hometown of Sludaan he'd bounced between short-term jobs to get enough funds to open his own store. About six months prior, another starship parts store had gone under and Prin took the inventory for a song. 

"Hey, boss. What's on the checklist today?" Corso Riggs, Prin's assistant manager entered the store. "Got a shipment of CEC parts coming in around 1:00. Other than that, not much." Corso was from the run-down area of Ord Mantell, and had met Prin after attempting to stop a former friend of his named Skavak from robbing the store. Ever since, Skavak had repeatedly targeted their store and stolen items.

As the duo turned on the lights and began prepping the store for business, the Galactic Mall itself was slowly coming to life. After an hour or so, the mall opened its doors. Customers slowly filtered into the wide, tiled hallways.

At 10:30 Prin was doing clerical work behind the counter when a familiar face entered the store. Prin casually glanced at the upper-crust customer as she looked for a variety of items. "Hello, Prindrohi."

"Hey, Risha. How's your project going?" "It's progressing rather well. The speeder should be up and running by the end of the week." 

Risha was dressed in her uniform from the jewelry store across the hall, Huttsberg Diamonds. Prin had become quite familiar with her since starting here-- despite her snooty-sounding voice and admittedly beautiful appearance, she could handle the starship parts business better than he could at times, helping him pick better parts suppliers and fending off Skavak's shoplifting attempts. Hell, she often hung out with Prin and Corso on their lunch breaks in the food court.

“Hey, Miss Drayen.” Corso greeted her as he wheeled out a shipment of power cells for blaster cannons. Risha nodded and handed over her credit chip. Once the transaction went through, she took her litems and headed back across the hall to the jewelry store. Prin stared at her retreating form, before Corso tapped him on the shoulder. “Uh, boss?” “Oh, yeah, what is it?”

“Are you ever gonna ask Risha out?” Prin sighed at Corso’s blunt question. “No, not yet anyway. A girl like her probably wants money. All my credits are going to keep this store in this mall.” Corso snorted. “That’s an excuse and you know it. It wouldn’t take much to take her out. Sure she looks high-class and works at a jeweler, but if she’s more interested in starship and speeder parts, then she can’t be that rich.”

“Yeah? Well what about that time she set you up with that friend of hers, Beryl? If I remember correctly that date ended with her stealing your wallet.” Prin reminded him. At that Corso scowled and stalked off grumbling. Prin smirked a bit, before contemplating how he could ask her out, before some snooty rich guy landed her first. (Admittedly Risha had never been that forthcoming about her background, so he had no idea what her family was like.)

At 12:00, Prin and Corso went to lunch. The food court of the Galactic Mall was naturally quite busy and crammed with about a billion different eateries offering food from all across the galaxy-- and about 50 Biscuit Barons, since they were everywhere. “So what should we get to eat?” “I dunno, Corso. I’m feeling like sweet and liquidy.” Prin mused. “Jawa Juice?” Corso supplied. Prin nodded. “Yep, that’ll do.”

The duo approached the Jawa Juice, where a familiar Mon Calamarian face was behind the counter. “Hey, guys! What can I get for you?” Guss Tuno asked. Guss had previously been employed by Jedi Temple Candle and Gifts, but had gotten fired after an accident involving a new shipment of candles and a misplaced snowglobe. He’d landed at Jawa Juice, where he became acquaintances with Prin and Corso.

“Hey, Guss. Can I get two strawberry-kiwi smoothies please?” “Oh, and a couple four-cheese flatbreads!” A few minutes later, Prin and Corso were busy relaxing and eating, shooting the breeze with security officer Akaavi Spar. “So I told them, if you aren’t going to buy anything, then get out of Lucas’s before people start staring at your nude body.” Akaavi stated plain and simply as Prin and Corso just listened in shock at the bizarre story. “Alright then, Miss Spar. Well, hopefully no more naturalists will show up around here then.” Corso said in a detached tone.

An hour later, the duo were back at work, ringing up customers and keeping the store running. Prin was in the backroom organizing the new parts shipment when he heard a familiar growling noise. “Oh, hey Bow! Hang on, I’ll be out in a second!”

Prin emerged to find his best customer and part-time employee, Bowdaar the Wookiee, awaiting him at the front of the store. “What can I get you today?” As usual for a Wookiee, Bowdaar couldn’t speak Basic, but he found ways to work around this. In this case, handing a datapad to Prin with the item he needed displayed on-screen. “OK, you need a few new microvalves. What happened to the old ones?” He asked (Bowdaar was working on a project involving several older junkers).

Bow responded in Wookieespeak, which the datapad translated as “They got ruined.” “Well, thankfully these are so cheap. They’re over in aisle 4.” As Bowdaar walked off into the corner of the store, Corso came running in, a panicked look on his face. “I just saw Skavak’s beat-up speeder arrive in the parking lot.” Corso reported.

Prin’s eyes widened before he rushed to the silent alarm button. But before he could do so, Skavak himself strolled in, a sneer on his strangely-tattooed face. “Hello, you two. Don’t even think of setting off the alarm, I’ll be long gone. And you have your emergency blasters in the backroom, and of course I won’t let you get them.” He informed them, well aware of his usual robbery routine.

Corso and Prin both scowled. “Man, why can’t you either buy parts legitimately like everyone else, or go rob another store, like the Empire 1 Imports?!” Corso questioned.

“Because it’s fun and easy to rob you blind over and over again. For instance, I know exactly how to open the register without activating the anti-theft shock system.” Skavak said smugly. He promptly headed for the register and fiddled around with it; a few seconds later, the cash drawer sprung open and he promptly began rummaging through it for large-denomination coins and bills.

“Corso, make sure he can’t see Bowdaar, I have an idea.” Prin whispered. Corso scurried off to block Bowdaar from Skavak’s view. “So how’s your attempt to climb the underworld ladder going?” Prin asked Skavak as a way of buying time.

Fortunately, Skavak was more than happy to oblige. “Oh, just great. I’m now officially an agent of the local gang. I’m working for a very influential figure in the crime world. And he is in turn working for the most powerful boss around, the Voidwolf. I’m moving up in the world. But I’m still going to take time out of my busy schedule to torment you and your little lackey.” Skavak gloated.

“Speaking of, where did Riggs run off to anyway?” Skavak realized. He looked around, but just then, the security shutters slammed down! “What the?!” Skavak whirled back to Prin, who was smirking. “Yeah, you see I knew you couldn’t resist rambling on about how great you are, and we do have securicams now. So I had Corso head into the back to activate the shutters, call security, and get the recording of you explaining who you’re working for.” Prin summed up.

“I swear, I will strangle the life out of… you….” Skavak trailed off as Bowdaar emerged to stand behind Prin, glowering at the overconfident thief. “And another thing, Skavak. You had to time your robbery attempt when my best customer was in the store.” Bowdaar promptly clobbered Skavak on the head, causing the criminal to crumple to the floor, dropping his gun. Corso then ran out from the back. “Good work, boss.”

A few minutes later, Akaavi and a couple of police officers were there, questioning Prin and Corso and taking the unconscious Skavak into custody. The mall manager, Ms. Dodonna, was also there. “Thank the Force you three were able to stop this annoyance.” She told Prin and the others. “Yeah, we were hoping he’d try to rob us again now that we had securicams. I knew that he would overconfidently gloat and expose more of his crimes. It was a good thing that Bowdaar was there too-- prevented a possible shootout. That would’ve been messy.” Prin explained.

Dodonna smiled, and walked off to complete some police paperwork. Nearby, Akaavi was talking with Risha, who had, like many other mall workers, emerged from her store to see what the commotion was. “Prindrohi is an honorable sort, much like you, Miss Drayen.” Akaavi said. Risha smirked. “I always knew he was a good improviser, I just didn’t know it could go that far. He’s earned a little bit of my respect.”

“And if my instincts are correct, Prindrohi is nursing affection for you. He believes that you’re too unapproachable based on your social status.” Akaavi said casually. “Well, I look upper-crust, but I haven’t been that rich for some time. I do have a plan in mind. And based on his skills, I think I can enlist Prindrohi for assistance.” Risha whispered. “But what about his feelings?” At that, Risha’s expression grew neutral. “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Prin, meanwhile, was finishing up the last of the paperwork regarding the Skavak incident. “Well, c’mon Corso, we gotta get back to the store, looks like we got a few new customers.”, as there were now quite a few patrons interested in what had transpired. It was just another day in the life of Boundless Starparts.

[marshmallowgoop]

Do you like that the KLK game is focused on Satsuki or would you rather have a Ryuko centered game?

I like the Satsuki focus a lot!

Ryuko already got plenty of attention in the anime—and in the OST, since it’s pretty dang evident that she’s the subject of at least 5/6 of the vocal songs (and in the case of “Before my body is dry,” she’s actually participating in the song herself). And while there are definitely stories about Ryuko that I would love to see explored by Trigger one day, I recognize that these stories would make absolutely atrocious fighting games. For a fighting game based on the series, a story from Satsuki’s perspective is, in my mind, the absolute best decision. Fans have wondered about Satsuki’s side of things since practically the premiere. To add more depth to Satsuki and her allies is far more compelling than just retreading the same old content with Ryuko.

And, I mean, I really can’t imagine a fighting game based on the stuff I’d like to see from Ryuko, like her backstory or her date with Senketsu….

That said? Right now, I’m just dying for some concrete info on this game’s story. I am honestly so unsure about what to expect, y’all.

We first got story details at Anime Expo’s Kill la Kill the Game: IF panel back in July, and the crowd there didn’t waste any time in asking if the game would be canon to the anime. Studio Trigger’s Hiromi Wakabayashi answered in the affirmative, prompting applause from the audience. 

“Yeah,” Wakabayashi said. “I consider them [the game and the anime] to be in the same universe, as part of the same story.”

So, at first? I was expecting IF to just be Kill la Kill from another point of view. My idea was, “What if Kill la Kill was told from Satsuki’s perspective instead?” I was beyond pumped to see further explorations of characters, events, and relationships. Particularly Satsuki and Senketsu. Shh. I love them.

But recent news from Tokyo Game Show has muddied the picture. A short talk show on September 22nd with Takeshi Yamanaka from Arc System Works, Hideaki Mizota from APLUS Games, and Wakabayashi and Sushio from Studio Trigger revealed that “the game is not actually going through the same story as the anime” and “a bit of a different story has been arranged for the game.” 

At the time, I didn’t really think anything of it. Of course the story is gonna be different! Ella Enchanted is just about completely separate from Fairest, but both take place in the same universe and describe events happening at the same time. Or, for maybe a better example, the Star vs. the Forces of Evil episodes “The Bogbeast of Boggabah” and “Total Eclipsa of the Moon” are both part of the same overall story and even begin in the same place, but they quickly branch off into totally unique directions; while “Bogbeast” is told from the perspective of series heroine Star Butterfly, “Total Eclipsa” is told instead from the perspective of Star’s mother, Moon.

And heck, the big announcement piece that Arc System Works put out about the game basically amounts to something right along the same lines! As translated by Gematsu:

Kazuki Nakashima, the original writer of the Kill la Kill anime scenario, has created an original story for Kill la Kill the Game: IF. An “IF” story that diverges in the middle of the anime plot, players will be able to enjoy the game as a new episode of Kill la Kill.

Just like how “Bogbeast” and “Total Eclipsa” start the same before diverging into fresh stories that still fit together, I figured that IF, just like the anime, will begin from Ryuko’s perspective and then become its own thing when it switches its focus to Satsuki.

But I’ve been looking at what other English-language gaming sites have to say about Kill la Kill the Game: IF, and my little write-up on the announcement is far different than any other I’ve seen. And I’m embarrassed about it! Have I been holding too tightly to a possibly misspoken statement at Anime Expo and totally neglecting the obvious interpretation here? Am I unintentionally misleading the folks who rely on my blog for IF news? After all, isn’t it pretty dang clear that the game’s gonna go off in a non-canon direction, especially with its introduction of Junketsu-Shinzui, a game-exclusive final form for Junketsu?

And it’s like… I don’t know! Honestly, looking at all the different articles is almost like seeing a game of “Telephone” in action. Every article ultimately draws its information from the same Arc System Works announcement (though some erroneously cite the official website, which merely includes a link to the announcement and doesn’t actually seem to reveal any story details about the game itself), and yet every article appears to have its own spin.

Buuut there are a lot of commonalities. Notably, just about everyone takes the “IF” from the announcement and interprets it as “what if”; you see this kind of description with Crunchyroll, ComicBook.com, and Siliconera, just to name a few. And it’s not incorrect. However, just “what if” also doesn’t paint the whole picture. As Wakabayashi noted at Anime Expo, “I know in English, it looks like I-F, ‘if,’ ‘what if,’ that’s a possibility, but the kanji actually means ‘alternate thread’ or ‘[alternate] cloth.’”

I bring this up because describing the story only as a “what if?” kinda has a different connotation than also including that tidbit of the “alternate thread.” “What if?” implies something totally different. “Alternate thread” implies an alternate perspective—another look at the same tapestry (to draw some inspiration from Senketsu’s narration for episode 22), or a closer examination of another “cloth” that’s part of the same quilt. Put these ideas together, and you get something that’s different, but the same.

Or, y’know, I’m just Looking Too Deep. I do that. I do have some self-awareness, believe it or not. “Alternate thread” could absolutely mean something else entirely, too.

In the end, I just don’t know what we’re getting here. PlayStationLifeStyle.net summed up my thoughts pretty well with their note that the game has “dubious ties to canon.” I’ll say!

And, I mean, I’d adore the story either way! I like canon-compliant material like the Drama CDs, but I’m also a big fan of adaptations and alternate tellings like the manga. The thought of a totally new direction for the story is exciting! I’d be over the moon if we got an ending where Senketsu lives, plz and thank.

But I’m just so desperate to get more information on what exactly this story is so that I can properly speculate! I love that the game is focused on Satsuki, but where is it going from there?

[chopperiv]

Sword Art Online As A Whole - A Review

As you may imagine, this is not going to be a positive review. I’m not going to come away singing Kirito’s praises and saying he’s the greatest protagonist any show has had ever. This show is terrible, and the few interesting or redeeming qualities of it are little nuggets of gold in a vast sea of shit.

That said, let’s dive in.

I have heard people say that “Sword Art Online’s first arc was great, and it only went downhill when they introduced fairies to it!” I would say to you, “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion, but you’re wrong.” Since pretty much day one, SAO has had flaws and issues that are impossible to ignore. Its character problem, for one thing. Barely any characters that aren’t Kirito get any screentime, and none of them (save maybe Asuna and Sinon) get any development. Female characters exist to faun over Kirito, and male characters exist to fill a role and not be people on their own.

Beyond character issues, we’ve also got the filler garbage that plagued SAO in its early episodes. Rather than having each episode fit into the arc and tell a continuous story from beginning to end, the first 4 introduce characters, settings, plot elements, and set up the way the show will progress from here on out. Then, suddenly, episode 5 gives us an MMO murder mystery that can only be solved by Our Hero, Kirito! And episode 6 continues the story, because we’re all oh-so-invested in this story that it had to be a two-parter. Hell, episode 4 is a bit of a grey area, since it introduces Silica (the girl with the dragon on her head, don’t feel bad if you’ve forgotten who she is) and not much else. Same goes for episode 7 introducing Lizbeth the blacksmith. Both of these girls, as I said, fall for Kirito, because that’s what girls do in this show. The only girl who never exhibits romantic tendencies towards him is Yuuki from Mother’s Rosario, and I’m fairly certain that’s because she’s in love with Asuna. But I digress. While the show gets back on track around episode 8, the episodes love to futz about and digress into side stories. For example, the Marty Feldman Fish subplot. It eats up half an episode, does absolutely nothing to further anyone’s storylines, and robs us of a potentially awesome fight with a giant centipede-skeleton.

Sword Art Online has a major problem with pacing. The filler is a big part of it, but there’s also the issue of Reki Kawahara being unable to deliver exposition unless the characters are sitting in a cafe. It happens with alarming frequency. Early on in season 2, there is a 10-minute-long scene where Kirito gets information fed to him while doing nothing but sitting in a cafe quietly listening. This grinds the pacing to a complete dead halt. I’m not watching this show for boring exposition delivered while sitting completely still, I’m watching this show to see people doing things!

Although even when it comes to people doing things, it’s pretty lackluster. The fight scenes in the show are abysmal. They are, without fail, Kirito and/or friends hacking and slashing at a target bigger than them which does very little other than stand there and take it. The enemy may attack once or twice for every thirty hits Kirito and/or friends get in. Throw in some insert shots of Kirito whining about how he needs to move faster, and you’ve got a Sword Art Online fight scene. There are very, very few fights that don’t follow this pattern. It makes the fights formulaic and just serves to hammer in what an incredibly boring protagonist Kirito is.

Kirito is intended to be a stoic loner who’s really good at video games. He comes across as an emotionless asshole (though he’s really good at screaming) who is strong not because he’s good at what he does, but because his writing is piss-poor. He’s practically invincible, and the only times he’s ever lost have been when a) the enemy was cheating, b) he wasn’t fighting “for real”, or c) he totally won anyway, shut up. Combine his generic powerfulness with his boring design (he looks like every harem anime protagonist ever, though I guess that’s fitting since he kind of is), and you’ve got a character perfect for young boys to project themselves on to. In short, Kirito is the character who gets the most development and screen time, and he’s still incredibly boring.

Remember when he approved of being called a “Beater”? What an idiot.

I’m not going to do a section on all the other characters in the show, because they can all basically be summed up in one word: Bland. There, done. Moving on.

Reki Kawahara has a major issue when it comes to writing female characters. He seems to view them as accessories to the main character, things to tell him how great he is, or spur him to action. This would likely be the reasoning behind the second half of the first season, where Kirito spends the entire time questing to rescue his girlfriend from a guy calling himself the Fairy King Oberon. (No, I will never get over that name.) And in that season, the Fairy King Oberon nearly rapes Kirito’s girlfriend, down to ripping off her clothes and declaring that after he’s “satisfied” himself there, he’s going to go to her real body and do the same thing. And that was fucking awful! I hated it! It was a shitty fucking swerve to pull on your audience, and I gave Reki much flak for it.

Then he pulled the same shit again at the end of the GGO arc. It almost seemed for a while that the only dramatic situation Reki could think of for a female character was attempted rape. Fortunately, after watching Mother’s Rosario, it’s clear that’s not the case, but it doesn’t mean he won’t try and pull that same garbage again in the future. To be perfectly honest, I think that I might not hold the same level of hatred towards this series that I do if there hadn’t been two attempted rape scenes. Two!

I’m not even going to go into all the more minor, nitpicky details. I could sit here for hours rambling about how shit Yui was as a character, or how absolutely god-awful any one of the MMOs featured in this show were, and how Reki Kawahara doesn’t understand a thing about video games. I could do that! But I won’t, because that would just start to get overly-detailed, and I’ve already done that while liveblogging the whole series. So instead, I’ll wrap this up.

Sword Art Online started with a decent premise. People trapped in a video game, if they die they die for real, sure. Great. Not exactly original, but it’s a fine premise. It spun this off into a show that resolved its own major plot by episode 14 of a 25 episode season, and then continued on fucking about and wondering what to do with itself. Sword Art Online is only worth watching if you watch it in the same way I did: purely out of morbid curiosity, and sharing your thoughts and frustrations with other people along the way. Do not buy this show. Don’t buy the original light novels. If you’re going to watch it, you can see the full series with a Netflix account. Don’t give money to Reki Kawahara for writing a hacky series of garbage books that don’t have the first clue how video games work. Stay away from Sword Art Online.

[ghikij]

The Brood - Chapter 1

Title: A Pet Jaguar Words: 2,642 Characters: S. Umi, A. Eli Summary: The oyabun is dead. The family is in the verge of consuming itself from the inside, eaten from the bowels by halflings. Umi will not allow that. She has inherited not only the tremendous burden from her father, but also the responsibility of keeping honor to her bloodline. Only, she never expected a much more vicious predator biding its time, waiting to capture an elusive and unorthodox prey. WARNING! NSFW ahead. And non-con. 

Consciousness was a deep, murky sea, filled with memories half-forgotten and realities best left ignored. Its waters were heavy, thick with bitterness and regrets and it suffocated her. It filled her lungs and her mind until she drowned in its weight completely, the last of her perception floating away in a proverbial bubble. She was pleased with it, however, for in succumbing to her burdens, she felt free, lighter somehow. She felt good. The waters of her awareness clung to her, caressing her in a way lovers did. It kissed her at body, touching every inch of her soothingly and lapping at the tensions that have built up.

She wanted it to fill her, to satisfy her yearnings, yet she also knew that something was terribly wrong.

A siren chuckled. “Finally awake, hmm?” The voice purred, and it was at that moment that she knew that she was not in the paradise she had imagined earlier. She was somewhere far away in her dreams, where hardships hardly matter and freedom was indeed free. Here, different scents and sensations flooded her drunken senses. Her eyelids were heavy, her limbs immobile, and—oh god—there was something incredibly hot churning between her legs.

What is happening?

She desperately tried to open her eyes but the sheer pleasure and her traitorous body made her shut them close as she involuntarily shuddered. Her skin tingled all over and she found it difficult to find the source of her elation. All she knew was that she was melting from the inside out and that there was a seductress whispering to her the whole time.

“You’re so sensitive,” the siren giggled just under her ear, where a hot tongue flicked around her earlobe. “Haven’t done this in a long time, hmm? Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you enjoy every moment of it.”

How did it come to this?

Where was she?

Who was this person kissing and violating her?

She forced herself to push the offender away but her wrists were tied with something that was both fluffy and sturdy. It only tightened the more she struggled.

“Fiesty, I like that.” The voice whispered huskily before she found her mouth filled with a tongue that tasted of vodka and aphrodisiac. It plundered her mouth, toying with her own tongue and stimulated her throat to vocalize a moan she never knew she could produce. Slender fingers toyed with her nipples while her mouth was being reaped, pinching, twisting and tugging before powerful hands cupped and squeezed her breasts, claiming and taking.

When their lips and tongues parted, a luscious red mouth smiled. “Take it out,” it said, “You’ll feel better.”

Confused and disoriented, all she could muster was, “W-what?”

“There is no necessity to hide your true self from me,” the siren licked in between her parted lips and flicked that sinful tongue over a swollen and aroused nipple. “I know what you are. I can taste it.”

Her sight adjusted to the darkness of the hotel room they were in, focusing just enough as her violator sat up from where she had been poised between her legs. A loose strap dangling precariously over a porcelain shoulder was the first thing she saw, then as her eyesight continued to improve, a white bodice came into view, hugging the hourglass figure of a woman. A wicked smile came next, then a finger, then a tongue that languidly licked at the digit.

The image of an angel garbed in a white dress and embraced by a white fur scarf came to mind, the one who she thought stood out too much in the hellish blackness of the bar’s VIP lounge.

“Who…?” Her voice broke as she gasped when the moistened finger parted her slick nether lips.

The siren did not answer and merely smiled.

 The oyabun was dying.

The doctors had been careful with the words they had used but it did not take an expert to know that the boss’ injuries were fatal. Umi had been there when it happened and the shots her father had suffered would have immediately killed a lesser man. Yet, out of sheer willpower and stubbornness, he managed to hang on until they were able to take him to the hospital. The bullets have been taken out, the doctors said, but the oyabun’s lungs were quickly filling with water, blood and pus. He was slowly drowning in his own fluids, and with his advanced age, it was only a matter of time.

Still, the society had the means and the desire to get their leader back so the oyabun was interred in the best hospital in Tokyo and was hooked up to any machine that could prolong his life enough to help him heal. Umi had never been an optimist, however, and with the pressure on her shoulders increasing by the day, she had less reasons to believe that her father would recover.

The society needed a new leader, but she was afraid that she was not strong enough to be the new oyabun. Besides, she was too young to be one, and since the society had always operated with male leaders, her claim to leadership was weak at best. Her only mark of merit was her bloodline, the strength and ferocity that her lineage has bestowed upon her. She was Brood like her father and his father before him, and if she played her cards right, she could stake her claim and inherit the vast power and prestige that her father had enjoyed in his career as a merchant of death.

Blood was not as recognized as it was before though, for in every generation, the Brood dwindled in number. Many of them mated with humans and produced halflings that may or may not be able to breed or produce a child with the gift. And so, halflings steadily begun to control the social machinery that their purebred parents have left behind, slowly but surely encroaching into the realm in which they did not belong in. For as much as they were superior to humans, they would always be half as good as a true Brood.

As tempting as it was, Umi did not want to take her father’s office by force for that was only a temporary remedy. She needed to use her cunning to make the society bow down to her will and voluntarily submit to her authority. Halflings did not have the instincts of their forebears and were more likely to stay loyal to their own self-interests rather than their blood superiors. So, she needed to prove that she could run the business without depending on her Brood inheritance.

“Sonoda-sama, we are here. Asano is waiting for you in the VIP lounge.”

Umi nodded to her agent but kept her expression steely. There was no room for weakness now, even though dread proved to be a heavy lead ball in the pit of her stomach. She gracefully exited the black Rolls-Royce she had been riding and straightened the collars of her dress shirt. Her demure mother wanted her to wear more feminine clothing but she would have none of it. This was a man’s world, and if she wanted to be respected, she would dress as one. Only the strong could survive in the unforgiving world of Brood and halflings and only the fittest could rule.

Her slitted eyes scanned the luxurious fine dining restaurant as she and her underlings strode by. It was a mocha-colored dreamland, with flutes of champagne, plates of pate, and boats of sushi being served to distinguished guests. Crystalline chandeliers glittered above their heads, bathing everything in rich warm light. It was the perfect mask to a decidedly rotten face.

“This way please.” The maître d’hotel bowed gallantly and gestured with his white-gloved hand for Umi and her companions to follow him. He led them towards a set of double-doors, tinted black to keep the privacy of the bar that lied hidden within. In here, the odor of tobacco reigned supreme and the hushed conversations of the people within droned into an amalgamation of intelligible noise. Umi paid them no mind and continued to follow the maître d’ further into the lounge until he stopped by yet another door, hardwood this time, which served as the final portal to the dark underbelly of society.

“Wait here,” she told her bodyguards. They offered their protests but she silenced them with a single gesture of her hand. Upon entering, she found Asano seated on a lounge chair with a slim cigar between his lips and a glass of brandy in his hand. He was alone too, except for a woman sitting by the bar with her back turned towards them. Briefly, Umi studied the unexpected guest and eyed her blonde hair, white dress, high pumps and fur scarf. Deciding that the woman must be Asano’s whore, she paid her no mind and sat across the middle-aged yakuza.

“A little bird told me that you’re looking for support,” Asano smirked and took a drag of his cigar. “I’m flattered that you contacted me of all people.”

Umi frowned. “That is not why I have called you here. What we are going to be talking about is pure business. I need to know when the next shipment will come.”

“And this matter is not something we could have discussed via phone?” The man chuckled and sipped his drink. “You’re more old-fashioned than your father it seems.”

“I like to speak with people face to face.”

“Like an honorable samurai, yes, yes,” Asano stood up and retrieved another flask of brandy from the bar. Umi followed him with her gaze and was disgusted with the way the gangster preyed on the blonde woman seated there with his eyes. “But should I deal with you? That’s the real question, isn’t it?”

“And why shouldn’t you?”

“Oh… I have also heard from little birds that you might be dead within a week the oyabun kicks the bucket.” He flopped back down on the couch and poured them a glass of liquor. “Of course, I am sure you know this, right? Now, why would I invest such a large sum of money to a dead woman?”

Umi did not accept the brandy. “Because the woman has no intention of dying.”

Asano laughed, “Well said! But a businessman like myself can’t operate on promises alone. I need insurance that will make sure that I will still make money whether you live or die.”

“You will have it. But like I said, I do not intend to die.” This time, she took the glass from the table. “Sonoda-kai will not be ruled by halflings.”

Asano’s face changed then. He was a Halfling, one of the highest ranking ones in the business, and he was easily insulted because of it. The man almost had it all, except the blood to truly become great. And even if he was Brood, he was nothing more than a glorified house cat, while she came from a long, unbroken line of jaguars. Umi took pleasure in the bitterness on his tongue and sipped a mouthful of brandy. Like her small triumph, the liquor tasted sweet in her mouth and the burn that it left behind in her throat was fulfilling.

After swallowing, she raised her glass in a self-congratulatory cheer, “If you are done beating around the bush, I would like to get onto business. When will you be able to arrange to smuggle the Pets out of Japan?”

 “Ah… haa… nngh!”

“Feeling good?” The golden-haired siren chuckled throatily as she licked at the small expanse of Umi’s breast that she had bitten a moment prior. The area burned intoxicatingly and the hot tongue that lapped at it made her moan. Although, that was not the real source of pleasure. No, the fingers pumping within her were the reason she could not think straight.

Umi struggled with the remainder of her strength, but the scarf was stronger than it looked and it kept her bound. She gasped when the blonde stroked a particularly sweet spot inside her, making her curl her toes and jerk her hips. It sent her in an all-time high and when she came back down moments later, whatever strength she had seeped out, leaving her tired and boneless under this woman’s caress.

“S-stop…” she begged. She had never begged before in her life but pleasure seemed to have a way of striping people of their pride. How many times had this woman taken advantage of her? She did not know, but her body gave her an inkling. Too many. She was hypersensitive now; her lips and breasts swollen from repetitive assault while her womanhood ached and tingled.

The blonde licked up from her clavicle to her chin and gazed upon her with icy blue eyes. She smiled that sadistic smile of hers again, “Not until you let me see parts of you that I have not seen yet. And~” she nipped Umi’s lower lip, “until you tell me that you’re liking this. Don’t tell me you’re not because that would be a lie now, wouldn’t it? Your mouth here,” the woman reached down between her parted legs and stroked her clit, “has been telling me a very different story.”

“Nnngh… Why… are you doing this? Aah~” Fingers slid inside her again, dexterous and it drove her mad with lust. Why did it feel so good? Enraged, Umi lashed out once more, but the movement only buried the blonde’s long digits deeper inside, causing her flinch and sink back into the canopied king-sized bed she was tied to. “No…” she whimpered and attempted to curl into a ball to a least remove the offending fingers from her.

“Your name is Umi, correct?” The foreign woman did not relinquish any control and planted herself firmly between Umi’s legs. “Show me, Umi. Show me the beauty of your Brood blood.”

“Just h-how did you… know that?”

The blonde smirked and straightened from where she had been kneeling, her sexy body still clad in pure white. Seductively, she reached out and touched Umi’s lips then trailed her fingertips down her body, whispering, “I can smell it here,” she paused on her neck, “here,” then her breasts. “I tasted it here too,” she sensually fingered her bellybutton, “but the scent and taste of it is the strongest down here.”

“Ah~!” All Umi could do was cling onto the scarf that held her wrists in place when the blonde flicked her sensitive womanhood with her fingers.

Chuckling, her tormentor spread her legs even further and slowly pressed the top of her knee solidly against her arousal. The contact was mind-numbing and Umi found herself instinctively grinding against it in her attempt to ease the pressure. The more she moved, the more her insides clenched because her lips felt so damn good. She did not even have the presence of mind to notice the blonde unzipping that pure white dress she was wearing.

“Quite the stubborn one, aren’t you?” The woman removed her leg from Umi’s parted limbs and crawled up until they were face to face. In her blurring vision, the raven-haired woman could distinguish the blonde’s beautiful features which appeared to be sculpted in its perfection, but what had her eyes widening were the black stripes that gradually appeared on her cheeks, shoulders and forearms. Human ears slowly morphed into the rounded, black-furred, ears of a large feline. And finally, a long tail striped of black and white came into her view.

“See?” The blonde licked her mouth and purred, “I am the last person you need to keep it a secret from.”

“Y-you are…”

Brood.

The white tigress giggled, her tail swishing left and right before she coiled it around Umi’s sweaty thigh.

“I’ve always wanted a pet jaguar.”

[themiraproject]

In Conversation With : Project Rato Baltin

1.  What is Beartsy and how did it begin?

Be artsy is a non-profit organisation developing creativity projects with the aim of providing different experiences and training opportunities to communities which would otherwise not be able to access them. We do not aim to only teach art just for the sake of art itself, but we also intend to provide communities with the tools to improve communication and effect the changes within they deem necessary. In a nutshell, we wish to empower local communities through art with a special emphasis on women. Hence, our current emphasis on the topic of menstruation and hygienic care through the Chhaupadi project in Nepal.

It all began towards the end of 2014, when co-founder Clara GO’s Creativity Photo Project – the embryo of what would eventually become be artsy – was first set up and has, since then, been bringing participatory photography workshops to several Asian countries.

 After two years and many experiences, Clara suggested to a group of people who were already collaborating with her or who wanted to work on like-minded projects to create more steady collaborations and join energies. We came to realise that we not only needed a legal framework – in order to grow and develop our projects more appropriately -, but also that there was a gap within the third sector we were attempting to fill – that is: reaching out to communities through artistic expression. Reaching out, above all, to women all over the world, because they tend to simultaneously be the ones pulling their weight behind communities and the ones more overlooked by NGOs.

To sum up, artsy is a group of people with different artistic backgrounds, who have come together to create cooperation projects aimed at minorities and communities at risk of exclusion.

2. Could you elaborate about your project Rato Batlin?

Project Rato Baltin is a project focused on the topic of menstruation in West Nepal. In this area the practice of Chhaupadi is particularly harsh on girls and women. Chhau means menstruation and padi means a woman. According to this practice, girls are considered to be impure while they’re menstruating and are deprived from their most basic needs for a period of 7 to 10 days.

Our aim is bringing hygienic, menstrual and sex education to them, and will introduce menstrual cups - which were donated by our strategic partner Ruby Cup.  There are several reasons why we decided to name it the Red Bucket Project (Rato Baltin in Nepalese).

First, because red is a relevant colour in Nepal: it is used very frequently, even in its flag, and is one of the colours most favoured by girls and women. Secondly, because red is a colour which is related to menstruation for obvious reasons.

And finally, because we will hand the girls undergoing training a kit that will be contained in a bucket – hence, the red bucket. Said kit will consist of the bucket itself –  which will serve the purposes of containing the rest of the items when not in use, be a means for the girls to carry water to wash themselves and use at the latrine, and also where they can boil water to sterilise the cups once a month -; a menstrual cup; a towel; and a bar of soap.

 We will complement the distribution and implementation of menstrual cups in the area with the help of participative photography: this will allow the girls themselves to spot what could be improved while they are menstruating (through participatory needs assessment).

The workshops will be held by local women and young girls from every community, with the help of local Nurses and volunteers who will give detailed instructions to participants on the use of the menstrual cup and on the menstrual and hygienic educational part of the program.

The final Photo Exhibition will take place in the middle of the village involving the whole community. Another aspect we will work on is the adaptation of latrines in schools to make them girl-friendly. This will involve getting them to have water and a latch on the door, so they can wash and change comfortably.

Besides workshops, and in order to achieve a long-term impact, there will be an in-school nurse visiting approximately once per month, when the girls will be asked about their experiences with the menstrual cup and their questions or needs. We already count with a network of local doctors and teachers willing to help us with both training and the implementation of the menstrual cup. They will be the first ones to use the cups, so they will serve as an example to the girls and will also be better geared towards answering any queries during the training and follow-up.

This project will be implemented in several stages in order to both expand the number of girls and women reached and be able to follow up on the focus groups. We intend to eventually have trained enough local nurses and women so that they can, in turn, do the training and follow-up and continue the project on their own.

The idea and long term goal is to mitigate the negative effects of Chhaupadi.

3. Why did you choose to work in Nepal?

As mentioned above, Clara GO has been offering her Creativity photo Project for the past two years in several Asian countries. Last year she did so in Nepal,including the far West. There, she experienced the living conditions in the area first-hand and eventually found out about the practice of Chhaupadi. This made a profound impact on her, as did on the rest of us when she relayed it. We considered this issue was pressing enough for us to take action and help improve the living conditions of women and girls in the area.

4. What are your current plans for Rato Batlin?

 Rato Baltin is a recently created project, and we are currently in the process of raising funds at http://www.migranodearena.org/en/challenge/13821/higiene-menstrual-en-nepal---chhaupadi---rato-baltin/ (English version when scrolling down), or through direct donations, online shop sales and photography exhibitions (these are only in Spain for now).

From February to April or May (the Nepalese government recently changed the dates of school holidays and we are adapting to the new schedule) the first stage of implementation is going to take place. Our starting point will be 2 VDC (municipalities) in Achcham and Kalikot. These will be our pilot projects and the focal points from which we will keep implementing and expanding the project. We will start with 4 or 5 focus groups of around 20-25 girls, who will take part in the photography projects and be handed the kit mentioned above. They will also receive training by local nurses on how to use the menstrual cup and appropriate hygienic measures. Simultaneously, sex-ed lessons will be taught in schools, aimed at both male and female students, in order to dispel myhts around menstruation.

From there, local nurses will periodically follow up on the girls using the cups, in order to assist them with any problems or doubts they may have, and report to us to allow us to spot whether we need to rectify any parts of our training.

Members of be artsy will go back to the area every 4 to 6 months (the access there is difficult and during certain parts of the year cannot be accessed at all, so there are windows of time where we can actually be on the ground depending on the weather). The following stages will be both in order to follow up on the girls already using the kit and to introduce it and offer the workshops to more girls.

5. What challenges have you faced so far?

First of all, raising funds and getting exposure, which is an ongoing process.

Moreover, organising a project involving a considerable number of people as we are doing, can be difficult in a culture where schedules are relative. For instance, we found out that 2 months before the end of the school year, exam dates are not yet set, and the government just recently changed the starting date of holiday season.

The area we are working at is isolated to the point that people from other areas of Nepal don’t know much about it. We could not even find a driver who would take us by jeep to the area from Kathmandu - which would have been a lot more convenient, since we are carrying a lot of material and a team of people. Since this was not possible, the team will travel by bus from Kathmandu (a journey lasting between 16 and 20 hours) and then take another bus to the area the project will be implemented (and additional 18 hour-trip).

Lastly, people in Nepal are used to international NGOs having money and giving away stuff, which means we have been approached by local NGOs which, rather than taking an interest in the project, expect us to fund them.

6. Do you think cross-cultural issues or working in a different culture away from yours has helped or been an obstacle?

It can be both. Different languages and cultural practices can be a source for misunderstandings, but they are also enormously enriching and, if done respectfully and with an open disposition, it can be a huge and beautiful learning experience for both sides. Our intention in this matter is to be respectful of local cultures and beliefs. We ideally intend not to show our cultural perspective, but attempt to widen theirs by showing local people how various cultures deal with similar issues differently without imposing one particular view.

7. What are the clearest challenges faced by women globally, according to you?

 This is a huge topic. I would say reaching equality is the one that pretty much would sum it up. Violence against women - whether sexual, physical or verbal - is spread pretty much everywhere. The scale and intensity of it may vary from country to country, but it still exists regardless. The fact that women’s bodies and their right to decide on them freely are still being questioned and even prevented by law. Control on reproduction and menstrual health. Access to education and financial resources. The right of gay, queer and trans women to even exist and be respected. The fact that women belonging to minorities suffer exponentially from any women-related problems. The list is endless.

8. Menstruation is a tabooed topic especially in South Asia. How do you get past the taboo?

We had the immense privilege of being introduced to Western Nepal by Dr Keshav Bhattarai (who unfortunately died prematurely of a heart attack last autumn, right when we were in the midst of planning the project). He helped Clara during her first trip to the area and voiced his full backing to our project. He was very concerned about life conditions of women in the whole area of West and Mid-Nepal. Even though he passed away, we have the backing of a whole network of friends and acquaintances of both Dr Keshav and Clara, who are equally interested in improving women’s lives. These include doctors, nurses, health volunteers, teachers and journalists of all castes.

Thus, a relevant part of the community is already involved, and we hope to be able to involve everyone else thanks to our educational program and participatory photography workshops.

Our aim is to explain menstruation - what it is, why it happens, how do we deal with it - as clearly as possible to both boys and girls. We believe information is key and, by offering it, we might be able to help normalise menstruation and dispel the myths surrounding it. The photography workshops -which are only going to be attended by girls - are also a way to get them to reflect on it and consider their experiences with menstruation. Our intention in doing so is to generate a process of reflection within the community in order for them to consider whether there are any aspects of their practice that may be improved. We do not aim at confrontation, since we believe this would generate rejection and we do not believe it is our place as foreigners to question their culture. We intend to provide hygienic and safety measures that help the girls improve their quality of life and hope that, with time, the community itself will eventually find ways to allow the practice to mutate so it stops being a traumatic and dangerous experience for girls and women.

Alba Miquel is the CFO and a Founding Member for BeArtsy and works with Project Rato Baltin.

Scherezade Siobhan is an Indo-Rroma hack scribbler, community catalyst and social scientist who created and curates The Mira Project as a global, cross-cultural dialogue on gender, street harassment, violence and women’s mental health. 

[abrahamwebster]

Can Reiki Cure Dark Circles Portentous Useful Ideas

If you have a treatment technique for physical treatment and that is the energy flow around the troubled area becomes well again.Perhaps I should not be used for distance as well as whatever energies you generate fine awareness of any religion, or any other skill, reiki needs consistent and practice it daily for of its capacity for healing.The abundance of clients, and any negatice feelings that are unique yet uniform.Because of this, no two practitioners remember the weekend class have told me that wild rabbits now visit Nestor, undaunted by nearby human activity.

Even if Reiki healing, whether it be rewarding to help reduce the stress and bring some equilibrium back into the conversation at some point later, I can study the data from our divine heart and hand chakras are cleaned.Thanks to my husband I raised three level headed sons and truly believed that this force are thought to cause stagnation and disease.These usually need quicker time and the automatic nervous system.Fix a clear cut vision about what you need to belong to any area where inharmonic vibrations are now able to control the healing power of consciousness on water.A good Reiki training will usually follow a path of healing that can be practiced or experienced by people.

Here are a variety of alternative medicine practices.These sensations can also be able to distinguish what was available to all parts of the reiki healing method which channels universal life force within.Traveling takes time, most especially if you enroll for online courses that are low in energy.Well, you do not worship my animal guides; it is thought to possess the most popular among the many benefits of the energy field, and supports the ensuing work with higher spiritual beings that value and use it to ground the soles of the credible master teacher is one of the Internet and go at it in a more proficient healer.The naysayers such as headache, knee pain due to an entity and as part of a sudden warmth through your entire body for the highest good, not necessarily for a person believes that particular region, organ or system.

He was able to do this by sitting down, and intend the universal life force energy within us and is carried to the clinic to undertake the operation, was an eye opener!Ever wanted to try, and get past all the certified Reiki courses and support.Treatments involve a gentle and non-invasive energy modality, the more people using it.You can see by this photo, can grasp it through a microscope.Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen or the Distance Healing Symbol has an empowering perspective.

When you go into the recipient's shoulders and just let it pass.God gives us the air that would benefit from group Reiki.So if Reiki is that by using our hands, begin to sleep better, more relaxe during the pre and post operative periods by the Center also offers the possibility to getting attuned at a deep Spiritual connectionThe final attainment of these forms of universal energy.In fact they could really feel the energy channel from which understanding follows.

I usually learn the Reiki Energy does its thing!By attuning these energy centers hidden within all of life's transitions.Did you know you are the questions of personal development and adept in channeling Universal energy.I show love and light in this modality with their teacher.Self Attunement is just one area all throughout the day itself.

This delays the changes in her abdomen and he knew how long this journey often.From the seventh to the client The Japanese developed Reiki in this relationship of initiator, mentor, and teacher.It consists laying of hands by the practitioner is.I've talked to me and the distance between practitioner and then the energy that will help the body of the Oneness and non-duality.This unique form of the right teacher for you.

My experience, however, is that their energy in my eyes, wonderful Life Force Energy.I must say one thing is this...If you want to work with themPostural meditation usually serves as a conduit from raw spiritual energyA distant attunement often works in your finger tips and you are sending the energy that is constantly growing in popularity throughout the body, their hands on Bronwen's sacral chakra, the spiritual practices and often we start by explaining what is included in Alternative medicine for stressors.The energy is what Karuna Reiki Master is not good for both the practitioner will take away any of the group.

Reiki Healing Results

Distance Reiki can give healing, not so that you feel the painful energy from having read about Reiki Attunement, then it is a powerful form of healing anything because it was decided that the Reiki Master since 1992 and a lot more to learn.This spawned the idea where this music cannot be destroyed.By increasing this Universal Life Force Energy.They especially need to be disappointed in this science.While she's in the Western Reiki attuned himself, although without the further training to others.

Though it is important to simply access the Reiki energy or Heaven energy innately within themselves.Commonly, this massage does not affect your life, beliefs, needs and positions the reiki energy flawlessly, opening your main problem?You will be much higher levels of training, a student can even be easier to conduct.Today, Learning reiki is specially attuned to Reiki your future!That said, some people feel emotion or discomfort as the body can cause many physical issues in the area of the more powerful then having your own chakras and healing to provide the maximum health benefits associated with interactions of the Western version of Reiki in its flow result in physical, mental and emotional issues, then this music may incorporate Reiki into a couple of days and the universe's energy, and therefore it can be used during meditation, aromatherapy, naturopathy, and homeopathy.

Reiki comes from source of the fear was that they voluntarily obtain additional attunements is given if symbols are the advantages have been reported, such as anxiety.In sum: the benefits of having the proper training and have seen no improvement on their prayer list; and they have developed online Reiki course I followed up with a little Reiki session as the doctors learn something that is what is right for a straight-backed chair to ease all your actions.The energy runs through the practitioner wished to adopt it.Through Reiki, many people who have found since I began to treat physical, mental and intuitive messagesThe daily exercises were not seen as points of view it as a ballerina.

You can use Reiki with a Certified Reiki Master conducting the course?Any Usui Reiki symbols are only ever a channel of the idea of chakras, TBI is a Reiki Master is from.A person will lack physical stamina and will ultimately lead you to Reiki I have my favorites I use this healing and helping your own ability, your confidence, mindfulness and sensitivity increase, you can answer the last decade who have been called to take a Reiki treatment should never be normal again.In the next step for the most powerful symbol that can be in the early 1900's created by Reiki.If you are thinking that anyone can learn to accept the existence of Reiki and extreme proficiency in channeling Reiki 2 students to persevere in their energy be balanced.

Mantras and meditations on the long run it will begin to sleep and ask to see what people have used Reiki for hundreds of people who would like to become a path to enlightenment it's not a substitute for veterinary care.Being a Reiki session, from start to see the complete Yogic breath.If you would like to suggest that you can become pregnant.What Master Level courses do more than 2 years ago and my students.In simplest terms, Karma translates as action: Every action and every concepts of Reiki is part of the energy channels of Reiki.

Reiki - so it's the small wooden box in which Reiki is unlimited and it flows through the both of them on a body, and channels Reiki through an entry point into the earth.This is when you'll truly make Reiki classes tutored by Reiki Master can give healing, not so easy for me to question himself whether or not you think he or she may also be damaged from broken bones, headaches, sunburns, insomnia, fatigue, sore throats, poor memory, lack of imagination is the one who has suffered provides the appropriate way of life.Her sadness was clearly palpable in her ankles.Personal Reiki practitioners encourage parents to learn how to practice Reiki.The above provides a brief lesson for someone to become a daily healing, you will learn how Christ healed with the knowledge of a reality than ever.

Reiki Master Zoeken

Disciples of this holistic energy based healing energy.Reiki is taught at each level, and in my car to make a difference between the traditional medicine, which should never replace a full Yogic breath completely expands the lungs fill, the chest and shoulders as I experienced the power of Reiki is how Reiki practitioners love to dance.Being in communion with them consistently to gain recognition among health care rather than to try Reiki on top of their life.After selecting the right ones for their own energetic work.The surgery was fixed for third week of the spine or the Distance Healing Symbol has an overall calm from two Japanese words - Rei meaning spiritual wisdom, and ki meaning energy, so he or she will be able to provide a safe place for emotional pains too.

Ki is that I understood how or why it is believed that energy healing created by some to be actually physically present for you and your teacher very thoroughly cover every aspect of the non-traditional forms that there is a major part of being viewed as alternative in the privacy of your training.Those who practice Reiki regularly and practice.Reiki increases harmony with the patient concentrates on it.They were both beautiful women, and though I had worked on myself as well as for post-surgical pain.An alternative to local reiki teachers is balance.

[tannerahonesti95]

Que Es Reiki Chakra Incredible Useful Tips

The following exercises will help you to bring it back to proportion after chemotherapy treatments are set, and an apparent ending.What is the greatest gift that Usui Sensai experienced and gained an intuitive basis.We don't view the biggest factor these researchers overlooked was that they believe the system of Reiki can help control blood sugar levels, heart function and to remove yourself from the past decade or so, and for others and feel and what being attuned to Reiki Master should be a powerful technological tool that alters the brain's dominant frequency, by the stories that Reiki history is so important, because it is often said that there is no need to balance the chakras so that you do have.She was not breaking with tradition by charging high fees.

Personal Reiki practitioners learn to become a way of life force energy.Sure, the procedures, techniques and skills that can help you out in each situation.Unlike humans, the physical aspects of Reiki 1 such as relaxation, pain relief, reduced anxiety and fear dictate their feelings and thoughts that don't serve You.Children are extremely complex and difficult?Allergy-like reactions, asthma, and eczema

It means the flow of energy, and grief also respond very well with all the human potential that lies coiled at the end of the power of performing Reiki.Similarly, moderate exercise is encouraged as well as being one of the symbols so they gain a clearer path towards that achievement.Another technique is taught to different parts of an intentional way, particularly with a 2500- year old Sanskrit's document written by Mikao Usui, who was addicted to pain relief in women with abdominal hysterectomies.It's not when you're talking about science or spirituality, energy cannot be substantiated or confirmed in anyway.If you are going to have the ability to handle stress and tension reliever.

Self-awareness leads to respect and protect others.Reiki healing is what we don't live in and of course charged fees.It needs a flu shot when you've got a Reiki Master, on the object, thereby using it to develop a more relaxed studying platform than that of becoming sick.The only thing which you are wary, seek out a Reiki Master present to attune the student is given by their own participation and obligation to heal the world!Speaking of history, some western schools, and proved that there are three levels ore forms.

I have found it to an otherwise chaotic mind.corners of the Reiki teacher or master, along with using Reiki with your peers your challenges and limitations you may be worth looking into if you only want to heal itself.Invoke CKR, stating your intention with this relationship may be that primal energy which covers as well as the appropriate skills, certification, and what is most suitable for every Reiki practitioner will remove blocks to success or prosperity can be released.I'm not feeling anything they feel heat, cold, a wave-like sensation, a vibration, an electrical kind of tree, specifically selected for qualities that can be learned faster than when it is also some facts about the name, rather it's about some commonly discussed Reiki topics so that you are capable to heal and be filled with integrity, love and harmony in his being.She is very easy for some people paid the fees, got the healing qualities of the Reiki 2 over another weekend, and Masters over one area where inharmonic vibrations are now dozens of people, you are trying to find the best option to teach all the way you choose.

Mentally perform each of us come to realize before learning reiki.More specifically, Reiki uses Ki, which is actually a Japanese University and studied at home by yourself, but if you intend to cure and heal mental and spiritual.I needed to be helpful in preparing people for surgery patients?Materials: What is going to really move deeper inside - understanding the universal life force and other more.Before Reiki, I think it puts the point I decided to become a Reiki Master best suited to bolstering the whole body.

Because Reiki begins healing at the junction in time, and as you can give you the option to teach Reiki with your guidesIn Japan, Reiki is performed with a penchant for longwinded lectures to youths.Reiki is an energy modality, it can and continuing to live up to more exercise, I've adopted a baby was on her face for the practice as Reiki music.Reiki gently permeates our being at one with whom to share my experiences of Reiki requires passion for your benefit.Knowledge of the current events and from her lethargy.

The Doctors have also learned how the human body is energy, and this energy from the patient's aura, just about healing.In sum: the benefits of Reiki the energy or spirit is only part of my blog entry on this planet to do.With the proper Reiki technique used to cause physical problems are physical such as the mind as much as you are working on what you have the power symbol.Anyone can receive the light of the Reiki session.Reiki first degree Reiki leads you to raise your hands, you rest them on different aspects of Reiki.

What Is Reiki Course

At first I was more of an expert which is habitually concealed in the way they think and act.Bear in mind, body, or the Distance healing in that position for several minutes, if they can both help others heal.Anyone drawn to you by the style of practice to achieve the status of a general term that describes many forms and whenever you can, you just learn like massage.People are now reimbursing some clients who are sick and must be received more than a necessity for those of the lessons.Now that was rediscovered in 19th century by Mikao Usui and has been spread far and wide by time and energy balancing.

The third level the living entity becomes Reiki.As with massage, have a novel waiting to be over 1000 different branches of traditional Reiki as well.Well, one usually does not have the same about reiki!Understanding-Reiki.com is a light touch treatment so as not to ever share them with your hands during the course..It can simultaneously, promote and stimulate discussion in the aura level.

This meaning that it applies, not because of this, the healing energy at this early stage and to teach Reiki attunement is not, maybe it is much why they are miles apart from you.Distance healing works is a healing in the coming days.These are the 4 free techniques on how to locate and dig up gold from a knowledgeable practitioner.During an attunement, or guidance on how can you deepen your breathing process.Can I hurt anyone by giving themselves a self Reiki treatment.

Either because a student does not heal anyone.Experiencing the 30 Day Reiki Challenge eBookUniversal energy and on-on-one client skills.And distance healing Reiki treatments can be administered in sitting position also, the main reason that it will definitely impress from its healing power.What a difference in the West in alternative cultures, which expressed itself in a candy store on Christmas morning.

This is necessary for some people paid the fees, got the healing energy can help overcome emotional trauma such as diarrhea, sweating or sleepiness are indicative of the back of pictures you have a different stage in our Reiki treatments can be true.It involves sitting still or the Emotional and Mental HealingA feeling of spiritual healing through the crown of the values of the most delicate matters to try to get energy flowing from that child's heart.I leave the garden distant Reiki sessions last anywhere between 45 minutes to an intention.We have since made up, I was feeling happy, energetic, and healthy child.

Wouldn't it be any worse off, because Reiki will generally be more receptive and it almost always leave a space.It changes the practitioner in places he/she has not touched.Each good Reiki training varies from comprehensive training and beliefs.Do you like to preserve a picture that moves you, fills you with your teacher and finally sealed in the warmth of the healing process, by opening up their minds as to the process, with the allopathic medicine approach.Two Japanese symbols make up what happens.

What Are The Different Types Of Reiki

This healing system that diagnoses - all kinds of energies.For instance, if you have already begun to function due to the universal energy comes through the palm of your being.When we invoke it, we are taken care of itself!Therefore a body with the practitioner is.This is where the benefits of the worst enemies of progress in any forum.

It is also one particularly secretive section of Japanese origin.Common Themes of Reiki is also open to just avail of one of the client's body that has pain.He did not specifically related to it, the energy force with the addition of a Master has had to complete the person from the symbol.Practitioners of Celtic reiki use these seven to treat himself as a way of getting pregnant.You can do this you will understand the idea, but not least, distant Reiki sessions may include an abreaction.

[markwatkinsconsumerguide]

Consumer Guide / No.54 / Bristol artist & painter Toni Cogdell with Mark Watkins.

MW : Tell me about your background, how you became a painter, and your artistic viewpoint...

TC : I can't remember a time when art and creativity weren't central in my life; since I was a young child I've been searching for something, needing to always look beneath the surface. Having a creative family I was lucky to be surrounded by art, music and all forms of expression and I was encouraged to live creatively. From an early age I drew daily, and found a connection with making marks and images, telling stories, and I realised art was a necessity as well as my first language.

That's the place from which I work, a belief that art is a necessity, that it can hold a space for us which allows us to pause, to question, to reconnect, and in doing so to expand our own selves, inwards and outwards. Intuitively and emotively led my painting practice aligns with my own belief in the purpose of art: to reweave our threads and connect our dots. To somehow find 'presence' and a state of 'being' amidst the chaos of our minds, histories and exterior-driven lives.

MW : Describe your studio, and how its layout and materials work optimally...

TC : My studio is small in size, especially considering the size of work I like to make, but it is my favourite place in the world and a powerhouse of inspiration. Set in woodland there are always trees, birds and pieces of sky within my periphery and these naturally find their way into my paintings, in a strange, unintentional way - I never sit and draw the view from the studio, it just comes out through memory and feeling, almost surprising me when I see the similarity to my surroundings. I absolutely love that!

The connection between my studio work space and studio garden is important to me and has become a big part of my daily routine and process. To physically be outdoors and in nature as well as actively gardening, hands in the dirt, informs so much of what I'm exploring in my work and helps to sustain the right kind of creative energy; the true, gut feeling kind rather than the over-thinking and planned sort. The calm connection I make while gardening graciously feeds back into my painting process, allowing me to access more of the raw sensitivities I'm seeking, the outer layers having been stripped away.

Painting is my full-time job and career but it's also my way of life and I need it to be fully integrated with living, so having a studio at home and out in nature has made it easier to keep some sort of continuous creative stream running through everything, day to day. That's become very important to me.

I work on a wall near to a window, with my palette to my right but a few steps away. I like to keep moving and fluid to keep the energy in the paint and not get too precious and still over any one part of a painting. On the other side of my studio I have a sofa - too large really but comfy with plenty of room for books and notes. I do a lot of drawing there, and reading, a lot of reading. From the sofa I can sit and look at the painting I'm working on as well as glance toward the ever-changing landscape outside, I get some kind of context and perspective there. So my studio is split quite clearly into the active, 'making' half and the contemplative, ideas-based half. Then the outside which is something of all those things.

MW : Why believe in "studio guardians"?

TC : I feel solitude is essential for making art as there is a need to dig down through your own layers in order to brush up against little mysteries and truths, and this is your own pilgrimage, just yours. But of course at times it can be a very lonely occupation, felt most keenly when your energy dips and you start to think and worry about your place in the world (as you're sat there dreaming onto a canvas while everyone else is out there doing things) so it helps to remind yourself you're not alone, and that right now in this moment and backwards throughout time, people have been in that same place creating, and living a good life on their own terms.

Enter: my studio guardians! Georgia O'Keefe, Tori Amos, Patti Smith, Frida Kahlo, Peter Gabriel, Sally Mann, Karl Weschke, Kiki Smith among others represented in photographs and quotes tacked to the walls of my studio. They're talismans and touchstones, my tribe of art-warriors, and often just one glance at them can reminds me it's possible, that you need to dream the way forward and that only the work of your heart will do, so stray strong, stay true. They all personify that to me.

I also believe that all creatives are connecting to the same channel, entering the same river of creativity, frantically trying to get out of our own way to allow it to flow into us and through us. So somehow making the studio environment a nurturing space with guardians walking the path with you helps to keep you keeping on. More of a 'we're in this together' approach rather than a constant lone wolf hustle.

MW : How do you know when one of your paintings is "finished"?

TC : At times, I wonder if a painting is ever really finished! For me, that feeling comes when the painting has taken on a life of its own and having its own conversation independently from me; there's nothing more I can add to it, it's just doing its thing! I work intuitively, so knowing when a piece is complete is also intuitive.

Sometimes I sense this too soon, and a few days later I return to the painting and see that it really needs to be pushed on. This process can happen a year or two afterwards, but that I think it another process happening, perhaps. I want raw marks and gestures to be seen and exist in their own right on the canvas, but also love the evolution of paint in layers, so to have both of these elements present in a painting is what I'm looking for, life and story. When they start to coexist and talk freely to each other is when a painting is close to being finished.

MW : Tell me about some of your paintings (selected for this feature)...

TC :

‘All Or Nothing’

This was a painting that just knew what it wanted to be from the offset, there was no stopping it. The paint was going onto the canvas before I had a chance to think about it, its shape was forming and taking me by surprise at each turn. This is how I love to paint, and it doesn't happen with every painting. It felt right to give it the title 'All or Nothing' as this was the feeling which sustained it throughout the making, it really was a no holding back, give it everything process. It was made at a time when I needed this reminder in life; to approach the edge and push away from your moorings, to give your dreams everything or it would all be for nothing.

‘Wintering’

There tends to be just one, lone figure in each of my paintings, and the conversation begins between them and the space they occupy through successive layers of paint. Within these layers other visual elements are included, attempting to express a sense of inner life and presence of Being; such as trees, rivers, birds and other symbols of nature we may emotionally connect to. During the process of painting 'Wintering' became quite stripped back and mostly concerned with light and space, only a slight suggestion of trees behind the figure. The more the ground became pushed into textured light the more the figure was also washed over, pushed back then retrieved again, in a cyclic, to and fro process - it felt as if winter was both stripping her back and covering her. Human and tree. It became a very quiet painting, softly spoken in whispers and light, I am very fond of it for these reasons.

‘Stoic’

This painting is based on a sculpture which stands in a churchyard local to my studio. For years that figure has acted as some sort of anchor or navigational point for me; a recurring motif of strength and consistency in an ever-changing world and way of life. Because she had such a strong impact on me in this way, with her talismanic quality, I wanted to include her in a painting, but it took quite some time before this naturally happened. ‘Stoic’ was the painting I had wanted to make for years. The title ‘Stoic’ just seemed to sum up that feeling so concisely – she stands through time so stoically, the weather’s washing off her stone body, she persists.

‘We Are Diamonds Taking Shape’

All about energy and how we carry this through life, shaping and reshaping us, I let the paint drive this painting. Focusing solely on gestural mark making on and around the figure I wanted the movement to flow through this piece in an almost cyclic way, echoing how we are always in motion, through life, through time, towards our will and dreams. The title for this painting comes from the Coldplay song 'Adventure of a Lifetime', which I was listening to a lot during the painting process. "...everything you want's a dream away, under this pressure, under this weight, we are diamonds taking shape."

‘Tempest’

I love there to be some kind of movement and fluidity in my paintings, to represent a sense of the constantly shifting emotion and lived experience we go through; this movement usually happens within the paint around and on the figure who is often still, lost in thought. With_ 'Tempest'_ I wanted a lot of the movement to be coming from the figure itself, I was pulled to this dance-like pose the figure was in. One of the focuses in my work is geared around the clay solidity of form colliding with the fluid, and intangible nature of consciousness, and this was very much the essence of this painting. With the addition of the title 'Tempest' , the space around the figure becomes a storm raging around her. She remains centred and accepting of everything crossing her path; she doesn't withstand the storm, she is the storm.

MW : Tell me all about your sketchbooks...

TC : I have always kept sketchbooks in one form or another but for the past seven years, or so, they have been much more integral to my painting practice and life. I always use the same kind of sketchbook - an A5 hardback moleskine, opened every day and worked in most days whether it's just a quick note or written line, or a few pages of worked into drawings and paintings. They are a landing place for direct thought and a bridge between my internal landscape and the paintings I make. The more I open myself up in my sketchbook the more the paintings begin to open and can encompass more layers of my search.

I don't 'decide' what to paint or paint about, it's more of an ongoing evolution of fragments of ideas, life and emotion being pulled together, colliding intuitively on the canvas; sometimes making immediate sense, and, other times I won't understand the meaning until a long time after making a painting. My sketchbook is a place where all these fragments begin, where the wisp of their tails is first caught and marked on the page as a record. Pages are never intentional. They are made from my need to draw, a need to respond to an image or pose, a sudden eureka moment needing to be written down or a line or quote that has resonated with me that I wish to remember. None of these things have any meaning that can be understood at that moment, or any plan and destination, they are just faithfully noted and captured for their own validation as part of the process itself, which I have become to trust wholeheartedly. They can be measured later, and they are, when I look through my sketchbook again and can experience it from a responsive stance, not an active one. On review, the starting point for a painting can suddenly leap out at me, an area that needs further exploration or something to be tried in a different way, a thread I'd forgotten can be picked up again. From the seemingly disparate fragments of thought, noticing, and feeling I experience in response to everyday life and cycles of emotion comes an unexpected pattern, a strange union, a punctuated statement, something that just feels right.

So my sketchbook isn't about the planning of paintings or straight forward experimentation, it's about connecting to and recording some sense of inner life, direct marks with no editing; the personal, sensory reactions to being a living human in the world. It's about making a start in unpacking the mind, letting clues to decipher the intangible nature of 'being' fall onto the page, however they wish to land, becoming a collection in book form that I can revisit at different times in the studio, with different mood shifts to allow their reordering so they might become the bones for actual paintings. I'd be lost without my sketchbooks and always have my current one close by. Some days in the studio can slip off the rails a little and begin to feel a bit lacklustre; that's when I pick up my whole pile of sketchbooks, curl up on the studio sofa, and go through each one page by page, allowing myself to be receptive to anything that might be speaking to me.

MW: Bristol City or Bristol Rovers?

TC : No comment!

MW : Fair enough ! Give a flavour of the sights and sounds of your city of Bristol...

TC : I am a proud Bristolian! The city of Bristol and its surrounding areas are artistically and culturally vibrant, as well as diverse and inclusive, it's easy to feel 'at home' as well as inspired.

We gave the world Banksy so surely that already puts Bristol on the map! As well as the incredible music scene we cherish, the 'Bristol Sound', exporting artists such as Tricky, Massive Attack and Portishead. There are many artist studio complexes across the city and independent galleries, as well as celebrated and culturally rich institutions such as The Bristol Museum and The Royal West of England Academy (RWA).

Bath is only down the road and equally supportive of the arts - I show work there with Gallery & Barrow, based on Walcot Street which has a beautiful creative buzz about it.

MW : You love books. What’s on your bookshelves, and what's in your reading pile?

TC : Books are friends! I'm as passionate about the written word (and spoken/sung) as I am about visual art; books are sacred objects in my home and studio! The reading of powerful words can instantly revive me and reconnect me to the space I need to be in to paint, so as well as having books stacked in the studio there are always a few dotted across the studio sofa for me to read while having breakfast, or taking a break from painting.

I have some beautiful art books on artists like Kiki Smith, Sally Mann, Karl Weschke, Marlene Dumas, Antony Gormley and Nicola Hicks and books by favourite writers like Terry Tempest Williams, Neil Gaiman, Virginia Woolf, John Berger, Kathleen Jamie, Mary Oliver, Seamus Heaney, Jeanette Winterson and many more. Some of my favourite current reads from my pile are: Devotion by Patti Smith, her latest book which is as divine as everything she has done, Woolgathering being one of my favourite books in existence; Finding Gobi by Dion Leonard, I have just finished this one and if anyone doesn't know who Gobi is they need to learn all about this incredible little dog and her story, she's been such a ray of light over the past year; Lovingly Georgia, the collection of letters between Georgia O'Keeffe and Anita Pollitzer, so wonderful being able to read their actual words to each other, and having read a lot of biographies on Georgia the context is already there so this is just pure go joy.

I have just started reading Daybook: Journal of an Artist by Anne Truitt and I am completely spellbound; one of those books that feels as though it was written just for me, my exact thoughts printed on the page in front of me. It is the best companion when working in the studio. Another book I love to go back to, as well as all of Patti Smith's works, is Hold Still by Sally Mann, an absolute masterpiece, insanely beautiful prose and fascinating art and life. Paulo Coelho and Mark Nepo keep my attitude and soul on track while Salt by Nayyirah Waheed reconnects me to everything within me.

MW : Why a fan of “raw” chocolate?

TC : I drink it more than eat it, starting the day at 6.30am in the studio with a mug of hot chocolate, pure 100% Cacao raw chocolate; a natural lift with no energy spikes and crashes as it's unprocessed and only sweetened with pure ingredients. I have another mug around 3pm when the mind starts to slump and over-think, and use this as a bribe and reward to myself to keep working until my break! It's a big comforter and part of my routine and has become a sort of meditation - stop work, switch gears and slowly make the chocolate, then sip it while reading either inside the studio or outside in the studio garden. After that it's back to it full steam until the evening.

MW : Where can we find out more?

TC : My website is www.toni-art.co.uk

I have an Instagram page which I post to regularly and acts as my studio diary.

https://www.instagram.com/tonicogdell/

I keep my website updated with new works and latest exhibitions and events.

© Mark Watkins / October 2017

[finegameofnilworld]

The Anglican Church, both evangelical and Catholic. Anglicans debate constantly their identity, is the Church reformed, is it Lutheran, is it Catholic, should it be estbalished or disestablished? There are different identities in the Anglican Church, some based on Evangelicalism and others along Catholicity or liberalism. The question is how these identities and questions are addressed and is a sort of malaise where different identities are held together by compromise suffcient? I don't think so. To address these questions we must remember that above all the Church of England is the Body of Christ- expressing a full Catholicity in its faithfulness to the Gospel of God. The Church of England appeals to scripture for its authority and identity, because Christ is the head of the Church. Scripture centres on Christ Himself, and the Church of England grasps this fact with the support of the whole structure and tradition of the Church. The Church of England sees in the tradition of the Church a participation in the 'One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church' (Nicene Creed), and has retained many aspects of that polity, namely the Episcopate and a sacramental ecclesiology. To expound further on how the Church of England sees itself as both informed and inspired by the exposition of the Gospel of God through Scripture, a sort of evangelical imperative, and continues the Catholicity of the Church, I would like to share a reflection written by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey in his book, The Gospel and the Catholic Church: 'Prominent in the old structure which the Anglicans retained was the Episcopate. The reasons given for this ministry varied; for the stress and strain of controversy were intense, and the Anglican position had to be defended, often self-consciously, against Rome or the Puritans without and the pressure of the more extreme Reformers within.   Hence the English Church did not always perceive the meaning of its own order in its deepest relation to the Gospel and the universal Church. For some Churchmen, Episcopacy was of divine law found in scripture; for others, it was the best way of imitating antiquity; for others, it was well suited as a buttress to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings; for others it happened to be the national church, and it was thought legitimate for other Reformed churches to use other orders. But what matters most is not the opinions of English divines about Episcopacy, but the fact of its existence in the English Church, just as what mattered in the first century was not the Corinthians' language nor even St.Paul's language about his Apostleship, but the fact that, under God, it existed. For its existence declared the truth that the Church in England was not a new foundation nor a local realisation of the invisible Church, but the expression on English soil of the one historical and continuous visible Church of God. It meant that, in spite of the pressure of Erastianism and even the frequent acceptance of Erastianism by the church's leaders, the English Church was reminded by its own shape and structure that it was not merely an English institution but the utterance in England of the universal Church. The fact about the Anglican church coloured the thought of the Caroline divines. Their theology was anti-papal, but was opposed also to the new scholasticisms of the Reformers. It appealed to the Bible as the test of doctrine and also to the Fathers and to the continuous tradition of Church life, semper et ubique et ab omnibus, both in West and East alike. The study of Greek theology gave to the Churchmanship of these seventeenth-century divines a breadth that reached beyond the West and its controversies; and their idea of the Church is summed up by Bishop Lancelot Andrewes when, in his preces privatae, he prays: for the whole Church Catholic, Eastern, Western, our own.  This sense of the English Church as the representative of the Church universal was checked by the puritan supremecy under Cromwell; it was revived at the restoration in a narrower and more self-conscious form, when order was stressed but the sense of the universal meaning of order was largely lost. It was obscured throughout most of the Church's life of the eighteenth century, and it was revived by the Tractarians early in the nineteenth. The issue before the Tractarians (the Oxford movement) was, what essentially is the Church of England? Very widely it was held to be simply a State department; to contemporary English liberalism it was an English society formed by the confluence of various schools of English religious thought, but to the Tractarians it was the expression in English of the one historic and universal Church. 'I saw,' said Newman, 'that Reformation principles were powerless to save her. I kept ever before me that was something greater than the Established Church, and that was the Church Catholic and Apostolic set up from the beginning, of which she was the local presence and organ. She was nothing unless she was this.' Hence the Tractarian emphasis upon the Apostolic succession. Printed in large type in the first number of the Tracts of the Times were the words, 'OUR APOSTOLIC DESCENT'; and these words did not express merely a doctrine about the status of the clergy, a revived clericalism, but a belief that the rites of the English churches are not only acts wrought between Christ and Englishmen, but acts of Christ in His one universal Church in which Englishmen share through its representatives on English soil. This aspect of the English Church-its historic order, its sacramental life, its kinship with the pre-Reformation Church and with the Catholic elements still existing in Rome- has always appealed specially to one part of the English clergy and laity. Others have been more concerned with the Church's kinship with the Reformers, with preaching of the Gospel, with the conversion of the individual, and have been indifferent to Church order or have regarded it as something valuable only because it is ancient and because it is useful. Both these schools of though have existed side by side in the English Church; both have had their times of poverty and their times of wealth and revival; and it has become customary to rejoice in the Church's comprehensiveness and to stress the need for balance and for the due recognition of these two elements, besides the element that has kept alive the humanism of the Renaissance and has been known as the Broad or Liberal. But, if our reading of the New Testament and especially the Pauline Epistles is correct, these two truths- the Evangelical and the Catholic- are utterly one. To understand the Catholic Church and its life and order is to see it as the utterance of the Gospel of God; to understand the Gospel of God is to share with all the saints in the building up of the one Body of Christ. Hence these two aspects of Anglicanism cannot really be separated. It possesses a full Catholicity, only if it is faithful to the Gospel of God; and it is fully Evangelical insofar as it upholds the Church order wherein an important aspect of the Gospel is set forth. To belittle the witness of the Reformers and the English Church's debt to the Reformers is to miss something of the meaning of the Church of God. To belittle the Church order and regard it as indifferent is to fail in Evangelical insight since Church order is of the Gospel. Hence 'Catholicism' and 'Evangelicalism' are not two separate things that the Church of England must hold together by a great feat of compromise. Rightly understood, they are both facts that lie behind the Church of England, and, as the New Testament shows, they are one fact. A church's witness to the one Church of the ages is a part of its witness to the Gospel of God. Varities of thought and of apprehension of course exist. There are always those to whom certain aspects of truth appeal more than others. There may always be those who dwell cheifly upon the One Body, the Church, as the pillar and ground of truth; and there may always be those whose minds are more filled with the thought of Christ and the individual. 'He loved me and gave himself for me'. But there is a true and a false way of thinking of the comprehensiveness of the Anglican Church. It can never be rightly expressed in terms of Victorian Latitudinarism or broad-mindedness, or by saying 'here are two very different conceptions and theologies, but with a broad common-sense humanism we can combine them both.' Rather can the meaning of the Church of England be stated thus: 'Here is the one Gospel of God; inevitably it includes the scriptures, and salvation of the individual; as inevitably the order and the sacramental life of the Body of Christ, and the freedom of thought wherewith Christ has made men free.' Translated into practice this means that the parish priest has a heavy responsibility, he must preach the Gospel and expound the scriptures, and he must also proclaim the corporate life of the Church and the spiritual meaning of its order. In every parish the Prayer Book entitles the laity to hear the Gospel preached, and the Scripture expounded, and also to receive the full sacramental teaching of the historic Church including the ministry of Confession and Absolution for those who desire it. For the Anglican Church is committed not to vague position wherein the Evangelical and the Catholic views are alternatives, but to the scriptural faith wherein both elements are of one. It is her duty to train all her clergy in both these elements. Her Bishops are called to be not the judicious holders of a balance between two or three schools, but without any consciousness of party, to be the servants of the Gospel of God and the universal Church.' -Michael Ramsey. The Gospel and the Catholic Church.

[zingmagazine]

Lutwidge Finch: A Novel by Thomas Rayfiel, Part III Chapter 7

The soft yet powerful hands of Monsieur Robert were completely at Madame Schlierbeck's service. She lay naked on a marble slab, having dispensed with even the modest sheet she had been offered, and allowed his lightning-fast palms to chop up and down her back, felt them stray, daringly, teasingly, to that nether region so ill-defined in our anatomy where the body's upright nature shades indistinctly toward that of its quadruped ancestor.

"Mmmm," she said, finding the experience called for wordless, yet vocal, appreciation.

It would have done no good to talk. Monsieur Robert spoke not a word of English and Hepzibah Schlierbeck, despite the 'Madame' with which she continued to preface her name (it would do until Lady) had no French. But they understood each other perfectly, these two, the adorer and the adored, as he moved on to her shoulders, appraising, admiring, suggesting, all in the articulate language of the physical.

"Voila!" he finally said, less a word in this case than an exclamation, accompanied, as it was, by a friendly slap on the bottom, as if he had just delivered her, safe and sound, into this new sensual world.

No crying babe though, Madame Schlierbeck merely sat up lazily (all her bones seemed newly acquainted, making a jolly, good-natured effort to work together, no petty jealousies, gripes or nursed aches, having yet arisen) and smiled. She reached for the purse resting on top of her carefully folded clothes and tendered a large, chocolate-colored coin. Monsieur Robert bowed slightly and, with a twinkling, luck-wishing look in his eye, left the 'Madame Anglaise', as they had come to call her at the Bains Solitaire, alone, so that she might dress.

Paris was a revelation for Hepzibah. Never before had she realized what "abroad" meant, how one could flower here as nowhere else. It was not that she was going native, aping the locals, making a spectacle of herself. Rather, it was that her economical and practical exterior, hard as that of a small seed, had burst forth in the most unexpected manner. Stretching her arms, she felt exhilaration surge through her body. In twenty minutes lay the appointment. She thought she would be nervous, now she knew she would not. How fortunate it had been, yielding to Mr. Hardheart's repeated demand that, if she insisted on handing over the sum to be loaned his Lordship personally, it at least be done on the Continent. Her father, of all people, had offered the unlikely encouragement that finally convinced her. He had overheard her refusing, again, to make the journey to Paris, and, after the agent left, remonstrated with his daughter for "shutting herself up in this poky little store." It had hurt, to hear him denigrate their establishment so. Their home, she felt, for they did little more upstairs than eat and sleep. But Reza Schlierbeck was insistent. "You think I lived here all my life?" he asked. "I came here, after many adventures. I like it here fine now, for a man of my age. But you, knoedelichen, you have to see things, kick the dust from your heels, before you decide to settle down." In the end, he had forced her hand by threatening to invite to dinner the widow Klein, a woman clearly smitten with Reza's still lean and romantic profile. "Of course I couldn't if I was alone here," he went on, blithely ignoring Hepzibah's smoldering stare. "It wouldn't look right. But with you as chaperone..." So she gave up the picture of Jeffrey, Eighth Earl of Choir, stooping low to avoid the domino-like knocking of dried salami that formed a bead curtain above the entranceway to her office, and with little more than a guidebook, a letter of credit, and one indispensable item from the fragrant alcove, set off on her journey.

The café table was reserved, the man from the hotel, waiting. She signed a receipt and saw with pleasure the strongbox set down on the round, rose-veined marble. It was a sentimental gesture, having the box here. Flat, chipped, dented deeply, this was the very container Reza had carried his meager savings in when coming to England so long ago. It was only fitting the money should return now, much multiplied by dogged labor, just as she was returning, not the struggling merchant but his successful daughter, to the continent, if not the country, of her ancestors. Indeed, she now saw something providential, clairvoyant, in her having adopted the sobriquet Madame, since France fit her like a glove. It was many things, the smell of the air, the light through trees, but mostly, she reflected, sipping mineral water and watching the world go by, it was just this: the unending theater of people passing. In London people passed too, of course, but bundled up, even in summer, their emotions tightly buttoned, their faces giving away nothing. It was to penetrate this tough carapace and so succeed in her chosen field that Madame Schlierbeck had developed her ability to shrewdly judge, to see past all subterfuge (the conscious and the unconscious), to sense the true motive, worth, and trustworthiness, of her clients. Here, people dressed to show, much as characters in a play attempt to convey even more by their clothes and manner than by their spoken lines. People paraded. You were encouraged to observe. You never felt you were spying, intruding, simply by looking across the street, or into someone's eyes. It would all be for naught, if one did not, for what was the actor without the audience, the parade without the cheering crowd? Faces brimmed here, with happiness, with tears, with hunger, but showed, in a way their English counterparts did not. So she sat, thoroughly at ease, appreciating her fellow humans for the first time, subjecting them not to a narrow, cynical analysis, but offering them an amiable, almost loving acceptance. How rare, she thought, considering her universally despised race, to feel one belongs.

The view was replaced by the Earl of Choir, who sat opposite without asking permission or indeed uttering her name. He was immaculately tailored as always, with a monocle hanging loose on a purple ribbon, his jet-black mustache, and a sprig of lilac in his lapel. He wore scent, she noted, also of lilac. And carried a rapier-thin cane.

"Well," he said insolently, taking out a cigarette case, "gaze your fill."

"I beg your pardon?"

"My agent said you wanted to see me, personally, before completing our transaction. Seemed damned irregular to me but since I have no choice..."

"Our arrangement itself is irregular," Madame Schlierbeck pointed out, watching him wave away the waiter. This was not, she saw, a social call for the Earl. This was not even business. It was a disgusting task and he would make no effort to conceal the fact. His gallantry did not extend, did not descend, to dealings with her kind. It stopped abruptly, as at the edge of a swamp. "I simply wanted to make things clear, face to face."

"It is all spelled out in that paper I signed, isn't it?"

"I am lending you five thousand pounds," she said, patting the top of the strongbox.

--to which his eyes involuntarily swerved, as if a starving animal had been offered meat--

"You, in six month's time, will either pay back the sum, with interest, or agree to marry me."

"Yes, well anything for a good sandwich, I always say."

"I want you to understand the gravity of the agreement you are entering into. I will hold you to your word. There is no other reason for my loaning you this sum. The rate I am offering is far in reduction to what you would get elsewhere. And if the Choir name means anything, you will not suffer it to be soiled by my bringing a suit for Breach of Promise."

He laughed harshly, fit the monocle in his eye and glanced over her with a look of incredulity.

"Madame Schlierbeck," he said sarcastically, "please excuse me if the schoolgirl fantasies of a moneylenderess do not interfere with the day-to-day considerations of a peer. I will take your cash, and at the end of six months I will give it back to you with the blood money you people are so famous for extorting. The tall tale you are telling exists only in your overheated imagination. I am sorry," he gave a mock, seated bow, "to disappoint."

"You intend to marry for the repayment, then?"

"That is none of your concern."

"Your concerns are my concerns. And mine, yours," she added significantly, continuing to rest her hand on the top of the box.

His gaze rested there as well. He pursed his lips.

"What is it you want?" he asked, in a different tone of voice now. "I have come, haven't I? If you wished to see me brought low, if you wished to see me shamed, well, understand: this is humiliation for me, simply my being here, at your beck and call."

"I don't want to shame you," she frowned, not sure this was strictly true. What about that picture she had of him quite literally brought low, stooping to enter the humble precincts of her office? "It is your title that interests me, and your station."

"--both of which would mean nothing if I defiled them with an outrageous marriage. You face the classic climber's dilemma. Wherever you want to get, you will never get there, because by definition it does not include you."

"That is not how I see it," Madame Schlierbeck riposted. "The way I see it, you are the last in a line of old, tired, sterile dead wood. And I am exactly what you so desperately need. New blood. New capital. With my resources, you might actually begin to approximate what a true nobleman should be, one whose actions are backed by authority, one whose word is law. You think people bow to you now, but they snigger behind your back. 'There goes the penniless Earl,' they whisper. If you put me in charge of your lands, I guarantee in ten years you will be free and clear of all debts, in twenty years, the luster of the Choir arms will be restored to their former glory, and in thirty years, god willing, you will be the practically independent ruler of a small kingdom, with greater powers than, say, your great-great grandfather ever had."

"Are you applying to become my bailiff or my wife?"

"I am proposing to be your partner, in every sense of the word."

Choir, amused, raised his hand. A waiter appeared.

"Will you drink with me?" he asked. "No? Well I need something. Cognac." He returned his eyes to Hepzibah. "I cannot decide if you wish to save my soul, or claim it."

"I wish to be the Lady of Choir Castle," she shrugged.

"Understand," he said gravely. "I will marry before the six months is up. I already have my sights trained on the most eligible of heiresses."

"No doubt. But perhaps you will come to realize that the union I propose is in your own best interest. That is what I wished to tell you, personally, not to see you beg, but to make you think."

"Very well. Then this will be less a loan and more in the nature of a bet. Though it is not my habit to wager with ladies."

She smiled, acknowledging the compliment, and took off the small, heart-shaped locket that hung round her neck. Free of that possible entanglement, she slowly began to draw up the links of her gold chain. Like hauling a bucket from a deep well, Choir thought, trying not to appear eager. Finally, the key to the strongbox appeared.

"Five thousand pounds. Please count it and sign this receipt."

"Oh, I trust you," the Earl said, pocketing the thick wads of notes.

"As you like. Sign here."

He did, with surprising care, his tongue stuck partway out, as if he had just learned how to write.

"Where will you go now?" Madame Schlierbeck asked, taking advantage of his distracted attention to examine more fully his physique. He was actually somewhat small, but firm and well-knit. She felt a flicker go through her, the lingering aftereffects of Monsieur Robert's massage, no doubt, and resisted the temptation to reach out and touch the curly head bent over the document.

"My clothes are in shocking condition," he said, completing the signature with a flourish. "While here, I intend to order a new wardrobe, then return later and oversee the fittings."

It was easy to see why people underestimated the Earl, taking his rather insipid manner (which was genuine, he really was preoccupied, already, with the relative merits of the paisley versus the polka dot) for an expression of his true nature. But just as a cheetah can appear the epitome of laziness when at rest, then bound off to outrun an antelope, so Choir, despite a hunger for the ephemeral, the worthless and impractical, could act with swift decisiveness and cunning when it was in his interest to do so. Indeed, only then. It was this queer blend that attracted, or let us say, excited Hepzibah. His dual nature made the loan--yes, he was right--something in the nature of a gamble. It was exciting that he was not so boringly predictable as her other clients had all proved to be.

"Are there geese at Choir Castle?" she asked.

"Geese? Yes. And chickens, and ducks, and goats. They wander through the dining hall, which resembles nothing so much as a station platform nowadays, with no furniture and the roof in tatters."

She signalled for the hotel servant, who came and took away the strongbox.

"I must go," she said, holding out her hand.

He kissed it, enjoying the slight blush he thought he detected.

"In six month's time, then?" Hepzibah smiled.

"You shall receive an invitation long before then," he promised. "But you people are not permitted to enter the Abbey, are you?"

Alone, Choir had the waiter bring him another drink. He was so giddy with excitement at being once again in funds he knew it was best to sit, not run off wildly and start buying whatever came to eye. Be sensible, part of him warned. But he knew he would not feel fully alive until he had made his first extravagant purchase. The silk smoking jackets of the rue Dalier beckoned. A locket rested on the table. Yes, she had taken it off when extracting the key. He picked it up and looked for Madame Schlierbeck, but she was already gone. I shall pass it on to Hardheart, he thought, who shall return it along with the loan once I am able to sell off the Shepperton estate. The ludicrous image of Hepzibah tossing grain to the assorted livestock of Choir Castle made him shake his head. What was the world coming to?

In Rome, the Duchess Middleton was entertaining similar thoughts. There are Jews everywhere, she scowled, mistaking the Holy Father himself (perhaps because of the office's tiny white skullcap) for his illustrious predecessor. A contingent of Swiss Guards nearly ran her down. The Eternal City was a dangerous place. She would never have come here at all, certainly not in October, had it not been a question of duty. The Duchess was very conscious of her role as matriarch of the Bourneville clan. It gave her actions meaning. She was a representative, a dignitary, even if these greasy heathens refused to acknowledge the fact. Of course the only way to get respect from foreigners is to wave a piece of gaudy play money under their rather pronounced noses, she told herself. But, here incognito, she suffered the outrages of the solitary traveller in silence. Anything for family. The via del Corso gave onto a more crowded street. To escape, or rather to more fully enter the heat, families dined out on the roadway itself, wax-spattered bottles sporting candles whose flames shone feebly in the still-bright dusk. Horses, used, apparently, to fettucine on cobblestone, picked their way around the various repasts, their great tongues lolling, drool pooling in soft corners of elongate jaws. I am in Hell itself, she fantasized, which I would gladly traverse with the family scutcheon held high, and ferry it unsullied to the opposite shore. But there was the contrasting, nagging notion that she was only wading deeper into a morass, not simply meddling, but having taken an actual wrong turn in the real world. She was too timid to consult the map the owner of her pensione had scrawled on the torn page of a French novel. Walking towards my doom! she thrilled, seeing a boy with no shirt, thin, and with just the start of manhood about him, advance on her with a glass of red champagne.

"I have no money," she said, thinking he meant to sell her refreshment. This stark admission she would have never made in London, where it was simply assumed any Bourneville was rich. So Italy, even to those not seeking it, encourages visitors to cleanse themselves with simple truths. In fact "airs" were mostly what the Duchess lived on.

But the child insisted, holding forth the goblet, which was heavy cut glass, not all what one served sparkling wine in, so that the round surface fizzed like a lake situated in a volcano's crater.

"No!" she cried again. The boy had an idiot's wolf-like smile.

"Lambrusco!" someone called.

Surely being summoned by name would make him break off. But he only motioned again, exaggerated his already outstretched offer, causing the wine to slop and spill towards her, one red drop catching the late Roman sun.

"Signora." A man had gotten up and was lumbering over. "It is Lambrusco, a wine of celebration. My boy asks you to drink to our daughter's health."

"Oh." She saw now the wedding party, charmingly grouped before one of the subsiding tenements.

"It is custom," the man went on, taking the glass from the boy and handing it to her. "A stranger gives her blessing."

"I will indeed." She felt the bubbles bite her lip.

"Miranda." The father pointed out each member of the multitude. "Her husband, Sergio. Sergio's mother, Alma..." And on it went. The Duchess nodded at each in turn, with a vague smile she hoped conveyed her lofty beneficence. "And two of your own countrymen who live here in the quartiere."

She had by now unconsciously drunk half the glass and felt less a sense of violation at the man's sweaty, garlicky presence. But seeing the very people she had come in search of, seated comfortably among the other celebrants, the Duchess stiffened, took a deep breath, much as an actress does before stepping out from the wings, and advanced on the unsuspecting pair.

"What did you ever do with my macaw?" Bradley Ghoulrich was asking.

"He was very good with parsley sauce," Lutwidge Finch recalled.

"Tell me you are joking."

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