#sometimes bad things just happen. that's life. and now i own a book called motherless daughters. and now im standing with the countless

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[gadgetgirl71]

Top Ten Tuesday 16 March 2021

Welcome to this weeks Top Ten Tuesday. Originally created by The Broke & The Bookish, which is now hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl. Each week it features a book or literary themed category. This weeks prompt is:

Books On My Spring 2021 TBR

Girl in the Walls (ARC)

Synopsis: Girl in the Walls is a story of overcoming grief, of unconventional friendships and learning that we shouldn’t always fear what we don’t understand. It is about understanding the difference between a house and a home and what it means to lose both. She doesn’t exist. She can’t exist. Elise knows every inch of the house. She knows which boards will creak. She knows where the gaps are in the walls. She knows which parts can take her in, hide her away. It’s home, after all. The home her parents made for her. And home is where you stay, no matter what. Eddie is a teenager now, almost a grown-up. He must no longer believe in the girl he sometimes sees our of the corner of his eye. He needs her to disappear. But when his fierce older brother senses her, too, they are faced with the question of how to get rid of someone they aren’t sure even exists. And, if they cast her out, what other threats might they invite into their home?

Pages: 323, Publication Date: 18 March 2021

The Best Things (ARC)

Synopsis: Warm, funny, life-affirming and true, The Best Things is the joyous debut novel from much-loved comedian, writer, actor and presenter Mel Giedroyc.

It’s the story of a family who lose everything, only to find themselves, and each other, along the way.

Sally and Frank Parker have it all.

Then one day, because of Frank, they don’t.

As the bailiffs move in and the money runs out, Sally realises that she and her children don’t have a clue about how to survive.

Or do they?

The Parkers are about to discover that the best things in life aren’t things at all.

Pages: 432, Publication Date: 1 April 2021

The Dictionary of Lost Words (ARC)

Synopsis: In 1901, the word ‘Bondmaid’ was discovered missing from the Oxford English Dictionary. This is the story of the girl who stole it.

Esme is born into a world of words. Motherless and irrepressibly curious, she spends her childhood in the ‘Scriptorium’, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of dedicated lexicographers are collecting words for the very first Oxford English Dictionary. Esme’s place is beneath the sorting table, unseen and unheard. One day a slip of paper containing the word ‘bondmaid’ flutters to the floor. Esme rescues the slip and stashes it in an old wooden case that belongs to her friend, Lizzie, a young servant in the big house. Esme begins to collect other words from the Scriptorium that are misplaced, discarded or have been neglected by the dictionary men. They help her make sense of the world.

Over time, Esme realises that some words are considered more important than others, and that words and meanings relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. While she dedicates her life to the Oxford English Dictionary, secretly, she begins to collect words for another dictionary: The Dictionary of Lost Words.

Set when the women’s suffrage movement was at its height and the Great War loomed, The Dictionary of Lost Words reveals a lost narrative, hidden between the lines of a history written by men. It’s a delightful, lyrical and deeply thought-provoking celebration of words, and the power of language to shape the world and our experience of it.

Pages: 384, Publication Date: 8 April 2021

The Summer Job (ARC)

Synopsis: Have you ever imagined running away from your life?

Well Birdy Finch didn’t just imagine it. She did it. Which might’ve been an error. And the life she’s run into? Her best friend, Heather’s.

The only problem is, she hasn’t told Heather. Actually there are a few other problems…

Can Birdy carry off a summer at a luxury Scottish hotel pretending to be her best friend (who incidentally is a world-class wine expert)?

And can she stop herself from falling for the first man she’s ever actually liked (but who thinks she’s someone else)?

A snort-out-loud romcom for fans of The Flatshare.

Pages: 352, Publication Date: 15 April 2021

Cunning Woman (ARC)

Synopsis: Lee is a magnetic new voice in historical fiction and CUNNING WOMEN is sure to be loved by fans of The Essex Serpent and The Mercies.

Spring of 1620 in a Lancashire fishing community and the memory of the slaughter at Pendle is tight around the neck of Sarah Haworth. A birthmark reveals that Sarah, like her mother, is a witch. Torn between yearning for an ordinary life and desire to discover what dark power she might possess, Sarah’s one hope is that her young sister Annie will be spared this fate.

The Haworth family eke out a meagre existence in the old plague village adjoining a God-fearing community presided over by a seedy magistrate. A society built upon looking the other way, the villagers’ godliness is merely a veneer. But the Haworth women, with their salves and poultices, are judged the real threat to morality.

When Sarah meets lonely farmer’s son Daniel, she begins to dream of a better future. Daniel is in thrall to the wild girl with storms in her eyes, but their bond is tested when a zealous new magistrate vows to root out sins and sinners. In a frenzy of fear and fury, the community begins to turn on one another, and it’s not long before they direct their gaze towards the old plague village … and does Daniel trust that the power Sarah wields over him is truly love, or could it be mere sorcery?

Pages: 332, Publication Date: 22 April 2021

Lost Property (ARC)

Synopsis: Dot Watson has lost her way. Twelve years ago her life veered off course, and the guilt over what happened still haunts her. Before then she was living in Paris, forging an exciting career; now her time is spent visiting her mother’s care home, fielding interfering calls from her sister and working at the London Transport Lost Property office, diligently cataloguing items as misplaced as herself. But when elderly Mr Appleby arrives in search of his late wife’s purse, his grief stirs something in Dot. Determined to help, she sets off on a mission – one that could start to heal Dot’s own loss and let her find where she belongs once more…

The Perfect Life (ARC)

Synopsis: HAVE YOU EVER WANTED TO BE SOMEONE ELSE? Vanessa has always found it easy to pretend to be somebody different, somebody better. When things get tough in her real life, all she has to do is throw on some nicer clothes, adopt a new accent and she can escape. That’s how it started: looking round houses she couldn’t possibly afford. Harmless fun really. Until it wasn’t. Because a man who lived in one of those houses is dead. And everyone thinks Vanessa killed him…

Pages: 400, Publication Date: 5 August 2021

The Summer Villa (ARC)

Synopsis: Three women. One summer reunion. Secrets will be revealed…

Villa Dolce Vita, a rambling stone house on the Amalfi Coast, sits high above the Gulf of Naples amid dappled lemon groves and fragrant, tumbling bougainvillea. Kim, Colette and Annie all came to the villa in need of escape and in the process forged an unlikely friendship.

Now, years later, Kim has transformed the crumbling house into a luxury retreat and has invited her friends back for the summer to celebrate.

But as friendships are rekindled under the Italian sun, secrets buried in the past will come to light, and not everyone is happy that the three friends are reuniting… Each woman will have things to face up to if they are all to find true happiness and fully embrace the sweet life.

Pages: 384, Publication Date: 8 August 2019

Trusting Taylor (Silverstone #2)

Synopsis: Former military man turned government assassin Kellan “Eagle” Trowbridge isn’t looking for love. He’d rather keep his head down at his cover job as an employee of Silverstone Towing. That all changes, however, when he meets Taylor Cardin.

Beautiful, smart, and witty Taylor instantly falls for the mysterious tow truck driver, who comforts her both in the aftermath of the car crash she sees firsthand and when the police dismiss her as a credible witness because of her prosopagnosia, or face blindness. Eagle, on the other hand, can remember every person he’s ever met—and the two counterparts forge an immediate connection. But someone else is just as intrigued by Taylor’s unique condition as Eagle is…and his intentions are downright deadly.

Soon, Eagle and Taylor are too caught up in each other to see the danger that’s approaching. But as time runs out, they’ll discover their love isn’t the only thing fighting to survive.

Pages: 278, Publication Date: 2 March 2021

Ransom (Laurel Springs Emergency Response Team)

Synopsis: A new series from the author of the Moonshine Task Force Series! Laurel Springs, AL is about to be hotter than a mid-August thunderstorm. When the Moonshine Task Force is absorbed into a new entity, Laurel Springs Emergency Response Team (LSERT) new faces come to town, new love is born, old love is found again, and there’s a plethora of drama and romance happening all over the tri-county area. LSERT puts police, firefighters, nurses, doctors, K-9 handlers, and EMT’s all in harm’s way as they work to keep the area safe from any threat. Emotions run high, passions ignite. Come with me, back to Laurel Springs, in what’s sure to be a wild ride! Ransom Thompson For years I’ve wanted two things – to be a member of the Moonshine Task Force and to be the man Stella Kepler can’t live without. One out of two isn’t bad, or so I tell myself. Being the only K-9 handler for The MTF presents its own share of obstacles, but me and Rambo? We make it work. Life is status quo, until I’m called in to help with what appears to be a hostage situation and Stella is right in the middle of it. This is my one chance, and I’m not going to blow it. Stella Kepler When I’m stuck in an examination room holding a hurt woman and a man with a gun, I do the only thing I can. I sneak out, call 911 and hope help comes quickly. It does. In the form of Ransom Thompson. He and I have known each other since we were babies. Our mother’s are friends, our dad’s work together, and we’ve always been friends. Only, the last few months I’ve started to notice things. How mature he is, how alpha he can be, the chiseled six-pack, and the abundance of ink spreading across his body. When I offer to cook him dinner for saving me, neither one of us know how that one moment will change the course of the rest of our lives.

Pages: 227, Publication Date: 5 January 2019

Until next week.

[blahsome]

March 18 2020, yet another big milestone. 25 years. A quarter of a century. Is it a big deal or are numbers arbitrary and it’s the same amount of a deal as it ever has been? I can’t publish everything I’ve written down for this year without feeling guilty, but I also can’t step on no toes all the time. And now, I will also feel guilty posting this when there's a pandemic occurring, but, I am trapped at home with little to do other than edit and re-edit this writing to be suitable enough for the public. I started writing this on April 9, 2019, too early to start my 25th anniversary writing? I’ll guess not. So here it is, my yearly open letter to my mother with intermittent ramblings and poems about my experience moving though life as the person I am and my perceptions as a flawed but resilient female. It’s like if I put it out there, maybe I’ll somehow reach her and she will somehow let me know. Highs and lows, as usual. Just after 2 years off the sauce I had a bigger ‘aha moment’ than putting down any bottles, though one wouldn’t have happened without the other. I realized drinking wasn’t my real problem to begin with. It was people, and my desperate need for their acceptance and approval. My need to be recognized and valued instead of coddled and unconsciously kept in a box. My need to control the outcome of situations and stepping on toes in the process. After so long being alcohol free I came to see that I had to start living for me. In early June 2019 a dear friend turned me on to a book called CoDependent No More. In maybe a week’s time I absorbed every word, the narcissist in me was almost convinced that I’d written it myself, it resonated so deeply. The following week I started attending CoDA meetings. Now that so many of my grievances and ailments make sense, I only wish I’d known sooner that it was okay to live life with me as my number one priority. I didn’t know before that I didn’t have to feel responsible for other people’s actions or inactions, but my self worth had been dependent on it. I’m 95% sure my mother was CoDependent, and with that consideration, I’m able to understand her life choices better and therefore navigate my own with slightly better foresight. Wikipedia says “Codependency is a behavioral condition in a relationship where one person enables another person's addiction, poor mental health, immaturity, irresponsibility, or under-achievement. Among the core characteristics of codependency is an excessive reliance on other people for approval and a sense of identity.” Now, that’s just one definition. There are many charastics to pick and choose from, and let me tell you, us codependents (I can only speak for myself) can be picky and choosy. Some people define codependency as a disease because if it goes untreated it only gets worse. I’m trying to break a lifetime of habits. Hi, My name is Blossom and I’m CoDependent. Every Monday night I go to a meeting where a group of women gather and we all try to work on ourselves to let go of whatever unmanageable ailments are keeping us shackled. It’s humbling and it fills me with hope. It empowers me to continuously seek change and clarity. Codependency is a tough one to recover from, as you can’t quit people. Once I had a name for this problem, every love song sounded different and every frustration made sense. I became able to recognize crazy making and slow down and see that I didn’t have control and things had become unmanageable. In doing so, I was able to step back and make better decisions for myself and my life and that’s how this whole last year unfolded more in my favor than any year previous. I worked on detaching and I started living for myself. March is a hard month for me. I sometimes feel so undeserving of a skin to be settled in. I writhe around in my persistent and annual grief. I start getting anxious in February wondering how it will appear this year. This March is particularly hard. I moved into a house with strangers and rarely stay there. I’ve got no place of my own to grieve, and with COVID-19 amongst us, I don’t want to take up any more emotional space while the world is feeling its current devestations and fears. My hopes for 2019 were to have more highs than lows, make my amends and reconciliations, and to keep my head mostly above water. And that was mostly the case. My aunt told me shortly after my post last year that my mom had self imposed low self esteem (now I recognize this as codependency). Watching home videos of her I feel like I could see stress in her face and I think about what she wrote in her journal about worry making her face look funny and how she didn’t want anyone to feel as she did. Maybe because it was a different time she felt like she couldn’t talk about her anxieties and had to bottle them up. I’m thinking about all the time I’ve spent transfixed by being a motherless daughter and trying to figure out where I fit into the word. I’m thinking about how long I spent tending to my father's bent and dusty wings, thinking I’d needed to see one of my parents fly so that I could’ve learned how it’s done. I’m in some required college to career success class that’s making me question my path, as if stress wasn’t doing that already. I’m laying in bed wishing that I’d figured out sooner that my wings were fine regardless of anyone else’s. I wish you were here so I could tell you all about everything. And so you could do the same. And so we could share the load. I quit smoking finally. Now my only vice is other people’s problems and trying to fix them to no avail. The eternal heartbreak I mentioned in my last letter makes more sense now. And the boy who told me to turn off the lights on my birthday sent me a podcast that said something about only being able to be loved as much as you’re willing to be vulnerable. And I think we’re all scared to be completely honest about how shitty we are, so we just perpetuate the shittiness and stay closed and unloveable. Early August 2019- I’m off track as usual, probably malnourished, definitely exhausted. This morning I was crying, I thought I wouldn’t be able to pull it together and that my eyes would be red when I got to my first job of the day. I think I was mourning. Things are going to change so much. I won’t have any more free time. I have to restructure everything. Which I think is what I wanted, but what a learning curve. I still have desperate hopes of creating a camp for motherless daughters someday. And it has to be accessible to all. But lord knows how far off in the future it is. At this time my feet are seldom beneath me, I’m sprinting forwards and if I stop I will stumble. I have to figure out my shit first I guess, and I’m putting in the worrrk. Or trying to at least. At a CoDA meeting a woman was talking about learning how to wield her anger, a thought that made me tremble. I liked the sound of it, as I have so much, and if we could turn it into a power, a force for good...it’d be all over. But I’m stifled by it, embarrassed of it. When I cancel plans it's usually because I’m embarrassed about how angry I am over something out of my control, and I can’t come down. Everyone was relatable, everyone seemed to be making progress, even if at this time it looked like a breakdown. They told their stories and I cringed inwardly, thinking of what I would have done in their situation. The time for change is now, I’m shaking in my boots. Some poetry and prose: My broken heart painted my world red slandering your name ensuring I’m to be seen as a fool who sobs wolf My depressed history understands every bit of where you come from like we have the same veins My logical self tells me that’s your burden to bear but I do everything I can to fabricate your crutches and excuse your bad behavior - Codependent Cowgirl Uncharmable. You only want your ex cause you think that’s where you can be yourself, but really that’s where was born the version of yourself you hate the most. Here I am standing strong, aching for my newest weakness. You’re having none of it. If I unclench my jaw and take a deep breath Tears roll down my cheeks THIS is relaxing So I tense back up And jump back into my cortisol spiral There is too much to get done to spend even one second thinking about you Six Sundays have passed since I’ve seen you last Codependency writes all my prose and all my sonnets All my pros and wilted bluebonnets - Go hard or go home Or go hard and stay at home, for forever because you thought you and your home would be each other’s salvation because home was the only thing that ever willingly invited you to change it and was better for it. But home got too heavy and home wouldn’t change on its own. And all the changes you did accomplish didn’t prove your worth. Plagued by nostalgia and sentiment Chronic grief Frozen in grief, and just when I begin to thaw, the temperature drops again Perpetually stressed What if to lose a parent as a child, is to lose the present. Because then you are trapped dreading the uncertainty of the future and wondering about a past you never knew and will never know, theirs. - Fuckless nights I unwittingly dusted off my fiddle strings and played as best as I could but you were never pleased. I was always out of tune or just off beat. -- And so let us not demonize others for our perceived shadows they cast and have casted We can’t all be deciphering your eccentric and elaborate needs when you’re shouting CUNT at the tips of your fingers and claiming to empower women while you dig in your claws to another. Chicken soup wasn’t enough to cleanse your soul. -- I think about you every day Literally nothing happens And I’m reminded of you I wake up I think of you I want to punch a wall I till the dirt I think of you I go on a date I don’t like him I think of you I let myself get so fucked up over you My rose colored glasses are shattered but I’m still wearing them I can’t bring myself to say nothing but nothing I say gets through to you I was operating out of a place Of fear I felt threatened by any number of women I’d never met and will never meet. I saw a message on your phone It confirmed my suspicions You drunkenly tried to explain it away I wanted to believe you but I had already poured the concrete and I cart it with me everywhere Slowly I’m leaving little bits here and there Becoming lighter - This week I wrestled with my codependency, Manic and exhausted from my nervous system vibrating I spent countless hours elbows deep in the dirt trying to find the root of it all An unsolvable problem parallel with reality Hard work makes me stronger Even if I can’t kill all the weeds Progress over perfection What even is progress? fuck my life. I’m no fun at this time. The doors will rot in the yard, my gut tells me just like the others. It’s not even a metaphor, just a strong probability, and a waste. Oh my god the realizations just keep rolling in. For hoarders the drama triangle isn’t just for people, but objects too. The doors must’ve been playing victim, and he’s gone to rescue them. The only corner left for me is The Persecutor. - Back in the thick Texas air Drawn to tough love From best friends to boyfriends Can’t get enough of the push and pull I’m nothing like the others I’m so much more with so much less You make me nervous But I don’t have much to lose I want to roll over and kiss you on the mouth I want reciprocation I want you to push my face away Just to kiss me on the neck You always get me with a twist We are scared of each other Collective hurt Collectively hurt We are missing something and are unable to accept ourselves and each other as we are I don’t know how you can lie to me Or how I can stick around for it For all those times you smash it right I guess Second best to you kissing my neck Is when I’m out of sight but on your mind I don’t fit in to some plan you thought you had I break the mold I’m quiet and bold We are anxious, we are stepping on each other’s toes Bite your tongue For better or for worse Things stay the same But with time, and your tongue between your teeth Eggshells are everywhere, splintered into our feet Make it up as you go along Keep the gas on I’m filling the space between my eyes and my rose colored glasses with wool - Same as ever Tongue between my teeth Lighting up another 100 out of 10 You wonder if you know me But you don’t give yourself the opportunity I’m right behind you writing my words that my teeth won’t allow my tongue to speak Desperation is such a drain Self inflicted low self esteem A familial affliction Looking like a 10 Feeling like a dud That low self esteem has me trembling And today was a good day - With a bottle of booze as his gate keeper He’ll never let me in I’m flushed, way too in my head Thinking up scenarios to catch you with your hands red bloodied from tearing my heart out and probably hers, too. - When I first quit drinking I felt this temporary empowerment, like I always had my wits about me. I could do anything. And then my codependency cloud settled back in, my intuition slipped back out the window. Now it’s like I’m in the desert, with a paddle, which makes even less sense than being upstream without one. It takes so much energy for me to state my needs. I’ve lived much of my life being brushed off and I predict rejection of my needs and so I try to suppress them and be ok with things as they are, but I need more. When I’m cancelled on, or am not prioritized, I need to be provided with alternatives or I feel insignificant. Reminders of my stated needs feel like nagging. I need reassurance. It’s exhausting and disheartening. -It’s the little things like when I ask if you want to do something and you tell me what you’re doing instead, without offering any alternative. Or when you tell me nothing. And I have visceral feelings that to inquire is to overstep and overstepping leads to termination. When I’m doing better I don’t write as much. Pain is romanticized, joy is foreign to me and perceived as fleeting. I’m trying to flip that script. Going to CoDA helps me in this effort. It reminds me that there is space for me and it's ok for me to have needs and taking care of myself should be step one in all of my endeavors. It's ok to say no. I don’t owe anyone anything, and also no one owes me anything. I’m closer than ever before to becoming the butterfly out of the cocoon, though I'm still very far, and that's okay. Progress over perfection. Now wash your hands and stay safe. If not for you, then for your loved ones, or your friends friends loved ones.

[stormysummerskyed]

Rewatching the Firefly series. 

Here comes my totally random commentary! 1) I forgot how Firefly opens with all the lasers and explosions of Mal and Zoe in what we later learn is the battle of serenity valley. For some reason I always think it opens with Wash and the dinosaurs. "grrr!" 2) "We've done the impossible and that makes us mighty." 3) "You know why we're not going to die? Because we're so very, very pretty. We're just too pretty to die." 4) I always loved how the opening scene cut from the noise and confusion of the battle to the silent and slow movements of Mal and the crew in space. It made for an very impacting opening sequence. 5) "We will rule over all this land and we will call it... this land. -- I think we should call it your grave. -- Ah, curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!" Classic Wash 6) "Oh motherless son of a b--" totally going to steal this

7) Out of all the sci-fi shows I've watched, I still think the Serenity is my favourite ship. She's a beauty! 8) Firefly also gets all-time-favourite theme song   "You can't take the sky from me." 9) "I don't believe there's a power in the 'verse that can stop Kaylee from being cheerful." 10) 1/? Plot threads that never got answered before Firefly was cancelled that I'm still annoyed about -- what was Inara running away from when she joined Serenity's crew? 11) 2/? Plot threads that never got answered before #Firefly was cancelled that I'm still annoyed about -- who the hell was Sheppard Book??? 12) Malcolm Reynolds calling Crowley out on his BS long before Dean Winchester came into the picture 13) "I got a share in this job. Ten percent of nothin'. Let me do the math here. Nothin' and then nothin' carry the nothin'--" Classic Jayne 14) "Jayne, your mouth is talking. Might want to look to that." I always forget how much I love the dialogue in this show. 15) Zoe: "Sir, we don't want to deal with Patience again." Mal: "Why not?" Zoe: "She shot you." Mal: "Well, yeah, she did a bit." 16)  Mal: "Anyone gets nosy, you know, just... shoot 'em." Zoe: "Shoot 'em?" Mal: "Politely." #lols Always loved the Mal / Zoe dynamic. 17) I love how they made Simon out to be sinister and creepy in the first few scenes he was in. Great misdirect for the real bad guy later 18) Mal: Did you send word to Patience?" Wash: "Yeah, but ain't heard back yet. Didn't she shoot you once?" Mal" "Everyone's making a fuss!" 19) Mal: "She's a whore." Kaylee: "The term is companion." Mal: "I always get those mixed up. How's business?" Inara: "None of yours." Mal you were kind of a jerk sometimes. Lucky Inara could hold her own. 20) Book: "Captain, you mind if I say grace?" Mal: "Only if you say it out loud." 21) oh man I forgot all the !drama! in the first ep.  And Kaylee is the one who ends up getting shot during the stand off with the Alliance agent 22) Jayne: "Move out of the way." Book: "You're not killing this man." Jayne: "Not right away." Classic Jayne 23) Simon talking about River and what happened to her 24) "Can we maybe take a vote on the whole murder thing?" Wash trying to be the voice of reason 25) "Got me a boatload of terribly strange folk making my life a little more interesting than I generally like." Gotta love Mal's way with words. 26) Mal: "Now you only gotta scare him." Jayne: "Pain is scary." Jayne logic 27) Great characterisation with Jayne's loyalties to Mal being a bit of a grey area. Willing to take a bribe and betray the captain? Or is he? 28) REAVERS!!! 29) they did such a great job of making the Reavers this ambiguous yet horrifying and credible threat throughout the eps and into the movie. 30) "You're lost in the woods. We all are, even the captain. Only difference is, he likes it that way." 31) Ah yes now I remember how much the UST between Mal and Inara drove me crazy. 32) Mal telling Simon that Kaylee was dead and then laughing about it with the rest of the crew on the bridge while Simon was in a panic running down to save her #badman 33) Mal: "I do believe that woman's planning to shoot me again." Jayne: "Here's a concept I've been working on. Why don't we shoot her first?" Wash: "It is her turn." Totally Reasonable Conversations. 34) "One of those will feed a family for a month. Longer, if they don't like their kids too well." Mal's understated sense of humor is a great aspect of his characterisation. 35) "I did a job and I got nothing but trouble since I did it. Not to mention more than a few unkind words as regards to my character. So let me make this abundantly clear. I do the job. And then I get paid." 1/? reasons not to cross Mal. 36) "You don't know me son, so let me explain this to you once. If I ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me and you'll be armed." - Mal Honor among the outlawed

[toaquiprashippar]

To those who say Jonerys will never happen in the books, just a quick reminder Dany has been dreaming of him, even if she has not seen his face yet...

Lying abed in her narrow bunk, she found herself wondering how it would be to have a man squeezed in beside her in place of her handmaid, and the thought was more exciting than it should have been. Sometimes she would close her eyes and dream of him, but it was never Jorah Mormont she dreamed of; her lover was always younger and more comely, though his face remained a shifting shadow. Daenerys, ACOK

He was who he was; Jon Snow, bastard and oathbreaker, motherless, friendless, and damned. For the rest of his life –however long that might be– he would be condemned to be an outsider, the silent man standing in the shadows who dares not speak his true name

Jon, AGOT

The flames crackled softly, and in their crackling she heard the whispered name Jon Snow. His long face floated before her, limned in tongues of red and orange, appearing and disappearing again, a shadow half-seen behind a fluttering curtain.

Melisandre, ADWD

Jon’s face and presence is often referred to as being in the shadows, he’s always been the outsider, watching the Stark children play and even if he did play himself sometimes, he tried his best to avoid irritate Lady Stark, so he kept it to himself, as the bastard he was pained to be. 

Melisandre’s visions of him, from R’hllor himself is described as Jon’s shadow hidden...It’s not SO subtle how he’s always referred to be hidden there. 

A quick reminded that when he died, she listened to Ghost’s cries...from across THE NARROW SEA...

“Jon fell to his knees. He found the dagger’s hilt and wrenched it free. In the cold night air the wound was smoking. “Ghost,” he whispered. Pain washed over him. Stick them with the pointy end. When the third dagger took him between the shoulder blades, he gave a grunt and fell face-first into the snow. He never felt the fourth knife. Only the cold … “

Jon, ADWD

“Off in the distance, a wolf howled. The sound made her feel sad and lonely, but no less hungry. As the moon rose above the grasslands, Dany slipped at last into a restless sleep.“

Daenerys, ADWD

These chapters happen at the same time, how can Daenerys Targaryen, in Meeren, listen to Jon’s murder at the Wall, North of Westeros, if not for the bond they have...without ever meeting. Call it soulmates, fate, whatever you want. Martin does not use words he does not think necessary nor he adds information that the story does not need. If you ever read one his books, you’ll know he’s sharp and everything means something, even the puzzles and riddles thrown our way. Daenerys heard his soul, Ghost’s cries (perhaps his own, warg ones), and she felt sad over it, not even knowing why.

A reminder that when Dany was at the House of the Undying, she only saw important, relevant things. Not only to herself, but to the realm: the rape of Westeros, The Red Wedding, the madness of Aerys Targaryen demanding to burn Kings Landing, Rhaegar and Elia talking of Aegon and his promised song, the fake dragon (Faegon, am I right?), Hardhome, what her son’s future would have been like, White Walkers, Rhaegar’s murmuring a woman’s name right before he died (we all assume is Lyanna’s, I guess we’ll find out eventually), and there are others, but to me it means a lot that one of these visions is:

a blue flower growing from a chink in a wall of ice, filling the air with sweetness.

Daenerys, ACOK

Oh, she also sees the red door of the house she loved and she remembers growing up, and she believed it was in Braavos. She only had important sights for the realm and herself, yet she sees a blue flower growing at the wall (if you don’t think this means Jon Snow growing at the Wall, we can’t be friends and you can’t even read this, bye! JK haha...but come on, Lyanna is said to have loved winter roses, which are blue...the same ones that composed the crown Rhaegar Targaryen crowned her with, as The Queen of Love and Beauty at the Tourney of Harrenhal. Jon lives, works, serves at the Wall, it doesn’t get any more obvious than this, y’all...only if Martin wrote she saw a ‘hot northmen with gorgeous hair at Castle Black, really...”). 

(whoever did this second gif, thank you so very much, this is beautiful <3)

So not only does this shows how important Jon is to the realm (remember how her visions are all important, not only to her but also to Westeros? *inserts my theory of them both being AA* But he’s also important to her, the flower is not just THERE, it also fills the air with sweetness, it pleases her. Do I need to say more? 

This one is very meaningful if not very telling, to me. They both feel alone, like something is missing. One can even say “they feel alone cause they are alone”, but they were not. It almost feels like there is someone out there, a better match. 

Beneath her coverlets she tossed and turned, dreaming that Hizdahr was kissing her … but his lips were blue and bruised, and when he thrust himself inside her, his manhood was cold as ice. She sat up with her hair disheveled and the bedclothes atangle. Her captain slept beside her, yet she was alone.

Daenerys, ADWD

Jon wondered where Ghost was now. Had he gone to Castle Black, or was he was running with some wolfpack in the woods? He had no sense of the direwolf, not even in his dreams. It made him feel as if part of himself had been cut off. Even with Ygritte sleeping beside him, he felt alone.

Jon, ASOS

their story is a never ending parallel.

Not to disrespect Ygritte, cause I think she was necessary to Jon’s growth. She was a great character and I do believe Jon loved her, at some point. But just like Daenerys, this love was not a choice, it was almost like a survival choice, they made the best out of a bad situation. 

He had to be with Ygritte, or Mance would have killed him, he would not believe Jon had really deserted the Night’s Watch. Ygritte wasn’t Jon’s act of rebellion, like I once read at a meta, no, she was, at first, his sacrifice/way to fill his mission. But somewhere along the way, he fell in love with her, she was strong, funny, and she awoke the sexuality in him. Again, he had to be with her, to prove himself, but it also wasn’t like he didn’t like it. 

Daenerys loved Khal Drogo? Yeah, but it was as forced as was Jon and Ygritte. One can say it was even worse for she did not go willing, she was pushed into it, sold like a slave, to get her brother an army (we do have to thank karma cause his army never came, boo-ya, sucker!). She was given to a stranger, a savage (comparing to her culture; it’s funny even to see the parallel here, both had to be with people that are considered savages, wildlings where they come from) in return of an army, and she made the best of her situation, she learnt his language, his manners, bore his child (even if the baby never came to live), she fell in love with him cause for the first time in a very long time (or forever?), she was treated with care and love (the way Drogo knew how to love) by the man in her life. 

A sweet reminder of how Daenerys thinks of her family and how she would have married Rhaegar’s son, had he lived. Rhaegar’s son, who’s Jon’s daddy again? 

Plus, we’ve seen on the show that Jon was named Aegon Targaryen too, we do not know if he will have the same name on the books but I honestly do not think they would change something so important. 

So, just another beautiful “easter egg” to ya:

Five Aegons had ruled the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros.  There would have been a sixth, but the Usurper’s dogs had murdered her brother’s son when he was still a babe at the breast. If he had lived, I might have married him. “

Daenerys, ADWD

Who says you still won’t, sweetie? Hold on, Melisandre will bring him back or he was warging Ghost, let’s just wait a bit longer, okay? 

Their journey is a never ending parallel, and their path is clearly to each other.

I don’t think the history is called ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ without a cause, Jon may be blood of the dragon, but he’s also a Stark, and Daenerys is a Targaryen through and through...

*the lord of light aka george r.r. martin speaks through melisandre*

I’m back to reading the books and even if I’m still at AGOT, I just felt like making this, had a really bad day and making this made it a little better. 

What are your thoughts? <3 

[peterguralnick]

Roe Erister (Rick) Hall, 1932-2018

photo by Jacob Blickenstaff http://www.33-13.com/

Rick Hall may have been the most determined (some might say stubborn, Rick might even have owned up to bull-headed) man I ever met.

The first time I met him, I almost didn’t meet him at all.

Jimmy Johnson was the vehicle for my initial introduction in 1981. Jimmy was the guitarist with the second rhythm section at Rick’s FAME studios in Muscle Shoals (all of his rhythm sections were brilliant, this one was perhaps his most brilliant), and there had been a falling out when he and fellow members David Hood, Barry Beckett, and Roger Hawkins had decamped in 1969 to set up their own studio, Muscle Shoals Sound, in direct competition with FAME. There had been bad blood for a while, but everyone survived and thrived, and Jimmy, as affable a figure as you’re ever likely to meet in or out of the music business, had long since re-established a good, almost filial relationship with Rick.

I was just starting out on my book, Sweet Soul Music, at the time. Songwriter Donnie Fritts, a Florence native (Florence and Muscle Shoals are two of the area’s Quad-Cities), had introduced me to nearly everyone in Muscle Shoals except for Rick the year before, and now Jimmy took it upon himself to approach Rick on my behalf. Rick, Jimmy reported back to me, would be glad to do it – but when I arrived in town a few weeks later, all of a sudden, don’t ask me why, all bets were off.

This was something I could certainly live with (it was not an uncommon occurrence – very few of the people I was talking with had done interviews before, and, this may come as a shock, but not everyone is thrilled to be interviewed) – I could wait, I told Jimmy, it wasn’t the end of the world. Jimmy, however, was stricken. He saw it as a matter of honor, and he called Rick right away from his office. “I gave the man my word,” he told Rick, while I was sitting there. “You know, we’ve been friends a long time, Rick, but you gave me your word, and I gave Peter my word, and if you don’t stick by it, we’re not going to be friends anymore.”

I was more than a little mortified (and more than a little touched by Jimmy’s loyalty), but after hanging around Muscle Shoals for a few more days without hearing from Rick, I set off for Macon to talk with Phil and Alan Walden, and Otis Redding ‘s brother Rodgers, and his wife, Zelda, along with various friends and associates of Otis’.

That was where I got the call from Rick, on December 2, 1981, a Wednesday. He was, he said, willing to see me. Great! I said. When? Tomorrow, he said. I laughed, I’m going to imagine it was a kind of heh-heh-heh. Well, I’m in Macon, I said, and I’m sure I could make it by – Tomorrow, he said, making it clear by the tone of his voice that any modification was out of the question. At 7AM, he said. At my ranch.

Now Macon is at least a five-hour drive from Muscle Shoals, and it was already late afternoon, but I didn’t hesitate – and I’d like to think I still wouldn’t. (I mean, you do anything at the service of your story, right?)  7 AM tomorrow, great! I said. And I wrote down Rick’s very specific directions to the ranch (“43 South from Littleville, one mile on the right-hand side of the road, Kennedy Road 18”) on my hotel stationery.

I arrived at 7 o’clock sharp the next day, with my notebook and brand-new Sony stereo cassette recorder TCS-310 in hand. I started out, as you often do, by asking some generalized, conversational questions, just to try to establish a little rapport, but I knew immediately I had gotten off on the wrong foot just by the way Rick was shaking his head. This was clearly not the way to begin. “Well, let me start at an earlier point of my life [which turned out to be his birth],” he declared without hesitation, “and tell you what happened to me.” And he did. Four or five hours later he was still telling me, and I was exhausted. I hadn’t gotten into the Holiday Inn in Sheffield until late the previous night, and I left for Rick’s home earlier than I needed to because I knew if I didn’t make that 7 o’clock deadline, the whole thing could be off. Finally I held up my hand for the first and I think only time in my life and said, in effect, No mas. But we would go on talking, in what would eventually turn into a two-way conversation, for the next 35 years.

Read Rick’s book, Rick Hall: My Journey from Shame to Fame. Or try Sweet Soul Music for an abbreviated version of the story of a boy who grew up in the “deep sprawling, isolated woods of the Freedom Hills with the whiskey makers and whiskey runners and saw millers,” raised by a father who could barely eke out a living (“he was a pauper”), after his mother left, when he was four, to become a prostitute in his Aunt Es’s house of ill fame in the city. In all the years I’ve known Rick and his wife, Linda (the home that I visited has since become the FAME Girls Ranch, dedicated to help victims of abuse and neglect “overcome the adversity they have endured”), the conversation has never changed. In fact, it was renewed and deepened in the ten years that he worked on the book, first with Florence TimesDaily reporter Terry Pace, then with Robert Gordon.  He wanted it to be raw, he said, something like a cross between Tobacco Road and Harry Crews, whose work he (like many of us) was introduced to by Atlantic Records head Jerry Wexler, a genuine polymath whom Rick alternately resented (their business relationship came to an end with Aretha Franklin’s disastrous 1967 Muscle Shoals session, and Jerry was the one who encouraged the second rhythm section to leave) and, more often than not admired.

The last time I saw Rick (though we always continued to speak on the phone) was about a year ago, when Rick was awarded an honorary degree by the University of North Alabama in Florence, and I was scheduled to give the commencement speech. He was already sick, although he wasn’t publicly acknowledging it, but he was in buoyant spirits, with an undiminished determination to continue to make his mark. There was a dinner the night before graduation at the president’s house, next to the lions’ cage (“Go lions,” is the university motto), where Rick exchanged fond reminiscences with old friends, none more fond than with State Representative Johnny Mack Morrow, whose father, Grover, taught Rick agriculture at Phil Campbell High School and gave Rick his first instrument, a mandolin. Rick always kept a picture of Mr. Morrow on his desk, on which he had written, “To the man who believed in me and my music when nobody did.”

The next day, in Rick’s name, and in the name of Sam Phillips, Rick’s original role model (and a native Florentine), I urged the graduates of the Colleges of Nursing and Arts and Sciences and Business and Education to hold on to their individuality, to identify and seize upon their dreams, not to let themselves get pushed around by disappointment or others’ expectations of them. And I cited how Rick, after a particularly devastating blow to his ego early on (he was fired by his partners from the musical enterprise that became FAME – it’s a long story, you’ll just have to read about it elsewhere), never gave up, barely even wavered.  “I thought it was the worst thing that ever happened to me,” Rick said. “It was like they’d put the roller skates under me and pushed me out the door.” But, I told the graduates, he was determined not to be left on the shelf for long. As he described it, “I just went home to Phil Campbell to lick my wounds – but then after a few months I took kind of an arrogant attitude and dug in for the kill.” And the next time twenty-year-old songwriter Dan Penn, who was part of the firing cabal, saw him, Dan said, “He was standing on this concrete slab he’d just poured for the studio that now stands, and he said, ‘Hey Penn, why don’t you come over here and go to work for me.’”

That was Rick, to the end. It didn’t always make for smooth sailing – and there were, unquestionably, lots of ruffled feelings along the way – but you never had any doubt about where Rick stood. And you never had any doubt that he had a good heart.

He was the furthest thing from the back-slapping, easy-going caricature of a good ol’ boy – I mean, Rick was driven from the start. “I was so very aggressive and fired up at the beginning,” he told me, trying to explain why he got ousted by his friends. “I was the guy who was beating and banging and slinging sweat over everybody else, and it got to the point where they thought, This guy’s crazy! Because, you know, IT WAS LIFE TO ME.”  It was not lost on him that the ferocity of his determination could overwhelm everyone around him sometimes, but in the end, I think, it was the lingering self-doubt, the crippling insecurity of a young boy who grew up lonely, impoverished, motherless in the Freedom Hills of rural Mississippi and Alabama, that proved to be his saving grace. As much as anything else, I would imagine, that was the innate quality that allowed him to focus on the improbable hopes and dreams of all those artists and musicians, black and white, who found their way to the studio he built with his own hands in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

The enhanced e-book of Sweet Soul Music includes this short video piece with Rick. Available at iBooks: http://bit.ly/ssmusicee  or Amazon: http://a.co/iwiMZC9