#that didn't always get along with each other that well and were culturally and linguistically diverse

[canisalbus]

what part of italy are machete and vasco from? not their birthplace since from what i've seen you're still workshopping that. where do they live? i assume rome?

In the 1500's setting Vasco lives and was born in Florence, his family has lived there for centuries. Machete was born in Sicily, was taken to Naples to serve as an apprentice and ended up living and working in Rome (and more specifically today's Vatican city, which as you may know has been an independent country since 1929 but wasn't back then). They first met when they were both studying in Venice in their late teens/early twenties.

I think in the modern au they live together somewhere in Florence.

[mazuru7]

Just Finished Midnight Mass and I have some (a lot) of feelings...

Finished watching Midnight Mass in two days and three days later it's still on my mind (along with fanfics in the works...)

Firstly, I like the setting of Crockett Island; it has this calming beauty about it with a clear sense of isolation. The houses on the island are small, fitting because they're on an island but the chippings and the bits of dilapidation on the house's exterior is a nice touch. I don't know if the chippings are an effect due to the salty beach air or whatever, but the dilapidation does show the poverty of the Islanders.

Warning I am going to ramble about characters while also adding headcanons for future fanfics...

As an atheist myself, I did like how they went about Riley's character, granted, Mike Flanagan is atheist too. I'm just glad he wasn't a God's Not Dead or a PureFlix stereotype about atheists. I loved his relationship with Erin and maybe because I've been watching a lot of decentering men content and just being emotionally unavailable and unimpressed with getting into a relationship but I liked how he wasn't jealous or had audacity about Erin being pregnant with her ex's baby. He just accepted it and still loved her. (Ugh, in an AU, he would be stepdad, the dad who stepped up). But even though he was an atheist, he respectful of the community's religion.

Me and a lot of other atheists while we don't believe in God, we can see why others do. It brings them peace and even joy and it let's them be apart of something. Hell, sometimes I'm jealous of those who has love and faith in their God. And just like Riley, I research other religions, I even watch Christian TikTok of TikTokers who don't fit into what "Christians" (you know the type) believe are good people. I watch a femme pastor who uses they/she pronouns, a Christian Witch, and Jegaysus. They have the historical and cultural and the linguistics understanding of the Bible, and I appreciate that as someone who wasn't taught that.

But anyway about Riley, what I love the most is his end. Tragic and beautiful. He didn't want to hurt anyone after turning, more than likely thinking he doesn't want to kill someone again like he did to Tara-Beth; he spent his last moments with the woman he always loved, but just like how the Islanders found peace and forgiveness with each other and by each other and God, like how John/Paul found peace and forgiveness with and by Millie while holding Sarah, Hassan and Ali found peace with Allah, Riley found peace and forgiveness within himself. And THAT is just as important as someone finding peace and forgiveness through religion.

And speaking of Erin, let's talk about her. I was sad that she lost her baby, she was so happy to become a mother (she would've been a better mother than her own). Her relationship with Riley is so sweet. I liked that she was quote unquote what "Christianity" (society too) would see as a "fallen woman." She left her Catholic community, she partied and was wild, she got a divorce, was going to be a single mother, but she was still and kind and compassionate person. Which side note, that whole "born from the dust, return to dust" thing can be applied to, I think, to her and Riley, they were from the Island, left, and returned.

Another side note, this, to me, think of the parallels to her and Millie, which in turn causes parallels to John/Paul and Riley. From what Millie talked about from what she was doing in her youth in the Uppards, "Boys and booze," and seeing how old she was and how the societal expectations of girls were (and honestly, still is), Millie too, had a bit of an adventurous side (well, adventurous as she could since she never left the island and was surrounded by her catholic isolated community) and she was called "the mother of whores" by Bev (who we'll get to). She had an affair with a priest.

So, Erin and Millie, being seen as "fallen women," but still being so kind and compassionate, and loving and having small support systems (Erin from Riley and his family, Millie from her daughter) and being brave and strong (Erin left her abusive ex, she literally uses herself to distract the vampire long enough to slice its wings and using the hurt "the clipped wings" trauma her mom did to her to save others, Millie in front of the whole congregation proclaims that her and Sarah will *never* go back into St. Patrick's when John/Paul was up there talking all sorts of wild shit and SHOOTS him, the man she loved, IN THE HEAD, to stop him when he goes all Jim Jones on his congregation. (I love John/Paul, but honey...no).

Both women were "fallen women" who were loved deeply by the men who loved them even when they were apart; who, at least at a certain time, were seen as, what society (Christian and the like) thinks are good men - John/Paul a priest, Riley the "Prodigal Son" (until they fucked up. John/Paul literally brought a vampire to the island and lead to its destruction and Riley killed a girl and was an alcoholic. Both were cast to side - Riley in beginning of the show by many and John/Paul by the end of it by many too. But at the end that didn't matter, because they had the women they loved with them at their ends).

Unlike Bev who uses and manipulates people and does terrible shit to get attention and power and was seen by those who she manipulated as a "good woman," she was abandoned at the end and died alone and a coward, Erin (and Millie), the "fallen women" had love and compassion, they were genuinely loved by those that truly mattered to them and they were saviors, Erin clipping the vampire's wings and Millie forgiveness to John/Paul.

Erin's speech at the end didn't make me cry, but made me feel deeply. You go, Erin and even though I'm iffy on my belief in an afterlife, I hope she's with her baby and Riley.

Now we'll talk about Bev Keane...*sigh.*

Bev, Bev, Bev; I love to hate her, I love the actress that just makes her hateable. She's like the actress who played Umbridge. Such good acting that you just hate them because they're real people who we've met. Granted, I've never really met anyone like Bev, but I've been around judgemental Christians, few in my family and a lot in the church my grandparents went to (non-denomination) just saying some shit about the queer people and Harry Potter (which granted that book should be judge, not because of concept of magic as a whole but it was written by a bad person).

But anyway, Bev got on my nerves the first time she just lets herself into the rectory (someone take away her keys and get her away from poison), because I raised to respect people's houses and it would just irritate me if someone just walked into my personal space especially without warning. Like girl, get out of John/Paul's ass and go home 🙄. Pike the dog was right to bark at you.

Bev's whole thing was about obtaining power and she could do that since the place they were on was an island. If she pulled this shit on the mainland, then yeah, she would have like-minded people listening to her, but she would have a lot of people argue with her and a lot of those people would have facts. But barely anyone on the island opposes her until the end. Sheriff Hassan, rightly, was concerned for the Bible being passed around the school, Bev with no knowledge of Islam or anything thought she knew better but when he corrects her, she freezes, has an "Oh, shit" look in her eyes while the rest of the PTA look actually interested and nodding, learning in what Hassan is saying about his religion and how there are similarities between Islam and Christianity, how Muslims love Jesus and study the Bible too, but Bev shoots that down, taking power by bastardizing scripture, something she does and something familiar to the community.

She doesn't want her faith and inconsequentially herself, even though how she believes is terrible, to have a connection with another faith, another person, that she deems as beneath her. Which is impossible because Islam came after Jesus and Jesus is a prophet in their eyes too, and before Christianity, there was Judaism and Jesus and his disciples were Jewish. Now I want to know how Bev feels about Jewish people, probably not in a good light, and probably refuses to acknowledge that Jesus wasn't white.

This just goes with the theme of not asking questions, not seeking knowledge, just blindly following. Bev takes advantage of that, and lets be honest, what average person actually learns the historical, cultural, and linguistics of the Bible to actually understand the scripture and unravel that what the institution has taught them wasn't right?

...Not that many, right? And you would think as a teacher, Bev would like to learn but doesn't.

I've seen posts around here saying that Bev wants to be John/Paul's Mary Magdalene to his Jesus. I've looked up about Mary Magdalene (love her by the way) and I can see the comparison even in an ironic way when I'll talk about the pop culture persona of Mary Magdalene and what I think is Bev's internalized misogyny and her obsession with Erin and what I think was jealousy of Millie.

Mary Magdalene was a close confidante to Jesus to the point that we today speculate that they probably had a romantic relationship. I, personally, just think that had a spiritually close bond that didn't have or need romance. It was Mary who told the people (while the men where hiding behind close doors) that Christ has returned. Bev sees John/Paul "resurrect" and goes on about spreading the gospel, granted when she figured out who Paul actually was, she was about that whole "he has returned!" thing, but was full on into it when he came back to life. And Bev and Paul do have a relationship, it's fucked up, Bev uses him for his high position and wants to be close to that proximity of power, but Paul uses her too; the island didn't know that he was Monsignor Pruitt, he was a new face to them, therefore not having a relationship with them and even when he is performing miracles, it's Bev telling the people what to do and he lets her because that'll further his plans and he knows what kind of influence Bev has.

But there's also this weird, inkling sense of care underneath. You can make the argument that Bev was just using him and discarded him at the end, that Paul was using her for his goals, but the way she rushed to him when he fainted and held his face, how she immediately wanted to take care of him, how she made him homemade soup, and how she held him when he "resurrected." She looked genuinely upset, thinking that he died but her instinct was to hold him, caress his face, connect their foreheads, whispering to him while crying and being genuinely happy that he was alive. Mike Flanagan on his tumblr said that Bev had feelings for the younger Monsignor.

And after Riley's death while he is grieving, Paul softly touches and caresses Bev's cheek. There is care underneath that fuckery. And I speculate their relationship before Canon. Bev is the only one with keys to hid rectory. Why is that? Was it because when John was starting to get dementia, she was given the keys to help him? Seeing how old he was, in his 80's, he had to have known Bev FOR YEARS; I'm going to use the actress's age for simplicity sake, which is 45 and we know that she was raised on the island. Her mother was the teacher and Joe Collie knew her since grade school, so that means more than likely (likely, I headcanon) that John/Paul watched her grow up. So, she has always seen him as an authority figure, a powerful figure, but not a romantic figure, yet. Through the eyes of a child, adults are gross (and seeing the kind of person she is, she had to learn that from somewhere, so I'm guessing her mother and I can see her mother being like, "we're not going to talk about your body or sex) and by the time she was an adult, 21, he would be in his 60's, still not attractive to a young person.

But John/Paul comes back de-aged, around her age, attractive, with power, but he needs her connection and influence, yeah, she's going to be attracted to that. But then here comes Millie, John's love and mother of his child, you can see at the last episode, Bev put the pieces together, she looks more hurt than angry to me. But instead of cursing John/Paul, she insults Millie. You can say she did it to hurt him to insult his love, but societal and in circles of religion, it's easier to blame and insult the woman than a man, a man with power, even though she discards him when he wasn't useful, told her to stop, and didn't have her in his heart. She still called Millie "the mother of whores," which is wild because pop culture sees Mary Magdalene, the woman Bev is supposed to mirror, as a whore.

Mary Magdalene wasn't a whore, even if she was, that's okay. Jesus hung around them, but there's still that negative connotation about sex work. Pope Gregory XIII in the 6th century combined Mary Magdalene, Mary of Bethany, and the anonymous woman from Luke 7:37, *"...And behold the woman in the city which was a sinner..."* to diminish women's role in Bible. We don't know who this woman is and from my quick research, in Jesus: A Life in Conflict, Crossley and Myles point out that the term "sinner" in the gospels does not have a sexual connotation but in fact refers to "exploitative rich people". They persuasively argue that the "sinner woman" was actually one of the core group of affluent women that were supporting the Jesus followers "out of their resources."

And Bev did that whole money laundering thing, so that with what you will...

So, here's Bev mirroring Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus's confidante and pop culture's hoe, she does help John/Paul and desires him but doesn't act on it because that's not what "good Christian women" do and she has an image to uphold, she looks down on the quote unquote "fallen women" Erin and Millie who are actual good Christian women. Kind and compassionate and was all about love. I think Bev was jealous, Erin lived life (even if she had an abusive mom and ex-husband) and Millie got with a hot priest who still loves her all the while Bev stayed on a boring island, seeped in poverty and the only power she obtained was through manipulation while not being powerful enough like a priest because the Catholic church doesn't really ordain women, I mean there are 200 ordained women priests in the States, but they weren't ordain in the traditional way and I don't think, maybe, more than likely that the institution sees them as real priests.

Oh, God, imagine Bev as a priest...

When Annie Flynn basically said that Bev couldn't stand the thought of God loving anyone else than her, I was thinking, "Oh, it's what Sara Raztresen said on TikTok..." Christians like Bev, I think now, are so and viciously and ferociously insecure in their own existence, their importance, and general standing in the world that they cling to some sort of outside force to validate their own existence. Projecting her own insecurity as faith...

It was really ironic that Bev met her end beside the two people she looked down on the most, Hassan and his son while digging in the sand screaming, alone without love, peace, and no forgiveness. I do love to hate her.

Minor stuff before we get into two hot men and cutie pie who I want to write fanfics of with headcanons, my personal feelings, and rambles...

All of the couples in this show are so cute and as a mainly Canon x Oc writer, I was shocked that I loved all of the couples. I can count on one hand of Canon couples who I don't see making Ocs for. Utena x Anthy (Revolutionary Girl Utena), Maomao x Jinshi (Apothecary Diaries), Darcy x Elizabeth (Pride and Prejudice), Mitsukuni "Honey" Haninozuka x Reiko Kanazuki (OHSHC)...

Uh...

I'll think about it...

Anyway, love the couples. Ed dancing with his wife, them finding each other at the end 😭. Annie calling out Bev was so good and her leading the singing when everyone made their peace, like what Paul said, in times of darkness, we sing. Although I do side-eye her a bit when she said she was glad that Ali "left that behind," and I'm pretty sure she meant Islam.

But everyone making peace and forgiving each other was just beautiful.

Sarah is my wife. She was just so loved by her parents and I just love that fact that she's just accepting the weird shit going on. Like her mom is just de-aging and her bio, true dad is a priest. She's just going with the flow and I liked how smart she was and nobody made a big deal of her being gay. Maybe some did internally but it wouldn't be a good idea to piss off the only doctor on the island. But when she spat out the blood given to her by Paul, rejecting it, even shaking her head no, she knew what would happen and didn't want that. If she was going to die, she was going to do it as a human.

Leeza's speech to Joe Collie was powerful and I hope this was a good representation of disability for disabled people, I can't say anything about it, because I'm not disabled (although I'm 90-95% sure that I'm autistic) and I do like with her and her mom Dolly that we got black Catholic representation. She was brave and badass too at the end.

Joe Collie deserved better, loved his bluntness. I loved that Riley related and cared about him. I wanted that friendship to blossom, dammit! His and Hassan's relationship I enjoyed. Pike deserved better too, he was a good boy. And I, personally, think that it's ironic that he, a dreg in Crockett Island's community, an outsider, someone Jesus would've fought for, literally got sucked dry, ate, killed by Father Paul, someone who represents the corrupted institution.

And now here we are where I babble about two hot guys and a cutie pie who I'll write fanfics of. And these fanfics will deal with and have intersectionality, especially with black women.

I been a nasty girl, nasty, I been a nasty girl, nasty, I been a nasty girl, nasty, I been a nasty, nasty, nasty...

This fine ass mfcker🫦 the reason I watched this show.

This man is clearly still grieving over his wife, he still wears his wedding ring which I just learned muslim men are prohibited from wearing gold and is allowed for women for spiritual reasons. He said that before he met his wife, he wasn't religious and Ali said that he became Muslim (or something along those lines) because of his wife. So, I imagine her having such an influence on him that he took religion seriously. From what him and Ali were talking about when discussing about the miracles, he talked about how kept her faith, even when she was withering away from cancer. He probably admired the way she worshipped and kept her faith.

Despite their disagreements, Hassan and Ali have something they can agree on, whenever Hassan tells Ali to kiss his mother's picture, Ali does so without question. That tells me he misses her too, I mean he is a child that lost his mom, that is something painful to go through. To me, it felt like Hassan was more upset over the possibility of Ali leaving his faith because it would feel like slap to his wife's memory. (And honestly, just me, I got a forced conversion fear feeling, but that's just me because if you know the history of Christianity and forced conversions...ick).

Hassan just wanted to protect his son and keep him safe, keep him away from the Islamophobia he experienced but he ironically brought him to a place where it's isolating and the Islamophobia is still happening, just on a small island. He didn't want to rock the boat and cause problems to people who just ready to jump him and attack. But honestly, it didn't matter if he didn't fit the stereotype or did, he wasn't respected some people because of who he was. And as a black person, this reminds me of respectability politics which has its own issues but still...

At the end, he did what did before arriving at Crockett Island, protecting people and got to do what he missed, praying with his son.

Fanfic Idea, probably an AU where vampires don't exist or follows Canon, I don't know yet, but anyway, black revert muslim Aaliyah Ambroise has been husband hunting for awhile and job hunting after she quit being a history professor for personal reasons. She and her friends go to a Muslim singles event (I decided it was a skating event) where she meets Hassan who's just there to support a friend. They surprisingly hit it off and afterwards she gets a job as a teacher on Crockett Island where she meets Hassan again.

This will have an older woman, 39-40 years old and on the thicker side in terms of body, hijabi fashion, a revert, a black woman, topics of ageism, misogyny, racism, colorism, stereotypes, toxic family, women's health issues (Aaliyah has endometriosis), finding love after losing a partner and connecting with a future stepson.

Since we did Hassan, we'll do cutie pie, his son, Ali.

He just wanted to fit in, to belong and I've been that only black kid in a classroom of white kids and it was so awkward especially when we had to talk about slavery, so I can guess how it was being the only Muslim kid. I do wonder if he had friends on the mainland when his dad and him went to mosque on Fridays, and maybe that made him feel connected or awkward because these are friends you only see on Friday while thinking about possibly choosing to go the Christian God.

But anyway who else felt so offended when Bev called him 'Boy' at the last episode? I did, I lurched. That was when he realized that it didn't matter, he didn't matter to these people, they just wanted him to be a sheep, and maybe Bev felt this condescending superiority for taking away Hassan's son from him. I've seen "Christians," you know the type, how they behave when they convert someone, there's this air of arrogance...ick.

But I'm so happy that Ali was the one to burn the last safe space on the island, realizing and coming to terms with that these people will never accept him, no matter what. And he dragged his dad east where mecca is pointed at, the beach is calm, the sun is rising, and he's leading the prayer, something his dad and him did together. And at the end, he's holding on to his dad as he burns, accepting Allah back in his heart. I've seen Muslim paintings of them on fire, but golden fire and as he burns he looks like something holy. Have you ever seen what a halo looks like in Islamic art?

Yep, looks like fire.

But anyway, fanfic idea of Ali. New girl Yelena Spinoza, she insists of being called "Lena," moves to the island to care for her grandma and she doesn't even try to fit in. She's a afro-russian-cuban Jewish girl and Goth, but from the few instances where they do talk, Ali finds her quite charming.

This will be more of a teen romance, first love type story, puppy love, school drama, food, antisemitism, racism, misogyny, health concerns (Lena is celiac), reconciliation between family, learning to accept yourself, finding who your real friends are, and a grandmother who knitted a black blanket with the star of david for her Lenochka, because that's what Goths like, right?

And now we're getting to this man who started everything...

Mummy don't know daddy's getting hot, At the body shop, doing something unholy, He's sat back while she's dropping it, she be popping it...

God, he's such a slut.

So much has been said about this man already and I agree with a lot of them, so I'll keep this brief. Although I will say, that while I do love the Islanders, their refusal to see that old man John was sicker than he was, riddled with dementia, sending him away by himself to Jerusalem, reminds me of the "Let God handle it" blind faith I heard when I was a child and not get any professional help. Granted that costs money, then granted again, get John, Leeza, Joe, the Shabazz's...get all of the traumatized people some actual help.

But anyway, this man has caused so much shit and I love him. Everything he did was for love, he cared so much, and wanted the life he didn't have with Millie and Sarah. But that was his downfall, the desperation, he wanted to help the islanders and the intensity of his feelings caused Crockett Island to burn. Very Shakespearean.

This main was still grieving over his sister Alice, he became a whole priest to understand why did she die, especially in a horrible way. How could that be God's plan? He couldn't accept that things can just happen for no reason and that there doesn't need to be a reason behind everything. Life can just suck. He couldn't accept that because, to me, that'll mean Alice's death meant nothing, that she meant nothing, which further means that his death will mean nothing, he means nothing, and that just means death means nothing and life means nothing. How could that be God's plan? Why make people? Why let them suffer? There *has* to be a reason for him.

He might be a calm person, but he feels intensely. He can hold in his irritation, staring on and moving his fingers, but damn, when he explodes...he screams at Riley when trying to gaslight him, his first response when Sarah is shot is to throw himself on Struge and strangle him, that was instinctual, and he screams "WHERE ARE YOU?!" outside of the rec center after pacing like a fiend needing a fix, wondering where his "angel" was (ironically happens after an AA meeting with Riley and Vampirism has been used as a metaphor for addiction).

This man felt so much, his stubbornness, his refusal to see the "angel" is a monster (once again, the theme of not asking questions and blindly going along with it) and it wasn't until the end, he realized his huge mistake. But at the end of everything, he doesn't ask for God's forgiveness, he throws away his clerical collar, becoming the father he wanted to be, and ask for Millie's forgiveness because that's who mattered to him the most and she, their relationship, their daughter wasn't a sin. How could love be a sin?

Now, here's my fanfic idea, it's 1967, pre-canon, when John Pruitt becomes the new priest for Crockett Island and the welcoming committee is one person because he was brought to them early. And from that moment, him and Lydia Mangiaracina were connected.

This is more of a forbidden love story between a priest and a lay woman, midwifery, fertility issues, medical fears, Island gossip, historical events, singing/music (especially opera), racism, misogyny, ableism (Lydia has a limp), societal pressures, war, herbs and witchcraft (African-American hoodoo and Sicilian stregheria, because that's her heritage).

So, yeah, those are my two cents, my thoughts, feelings, and future fanfics, and I'm done rambling.

[thirteenashmctrash]

list of things about me as a child that my peers gourd frightening or freakish, but that i still think are rad:

special interests in anatomy, horror stories, family musicals produces between 1955 and 1975, language/linguistics, and Celtic history/culture

being the "walk laps around the playground at recess" kid and therefor always knowing all of the tea in every social group and clique in a two grade level radius of me despite being actively excluded from almost all of the "in the know" groups and deeply not caring

i went to a small Christian school in a church basement, and in about 2nd grade my classmates learned about horror movies. they would chase each other around singing Freddy Krueger's song and lie about having seen different ones with their older siblings. i took this new fad in stride and started trying to summon demons in the bathroom, which i knew how to do because of the affirmationed special interest in horror. this did not go well.

i got in trouble at the same school for asking questions about the way they were teaching pronouns during the grammar lessons. mind you, i had never been told that gay or trans people were a thing, or any of the connected things. but i was also autistic. so i asked why he and she were masculine or feminine if we didn't have that in our grammatical structure. and i was told to stop being difficult. i didn't. they almost called my parents in because i was genuinely confused why we had that and no other grammatical gender

least freaky thing on the list, but i was also the kid they had to bar from asking questions in the bible lesson, because of what happened my first year at that school during the story of Christmas lesson. my first question was "how do we know it's in December if the years start there?" i got kicked out of the classroom after about 5 minutes of "but what does virgin mean?" "she wasn't married" "but i was born before my mom was married" "but there was not a known father" "i don't have a known father" "just listen to the story" "but why is not married special" "because she is the virgin mary" "but you said that's the same thing" "be quiet" "why is her being a virgin special" I was later told i had broken a record for that teachers longest and most insistent "what's a virgin" conversation in 30 years of doing that lesson. i did know what sex was, i was just trying to get her to give a straight answer.

i ran a joint fanclub at my school for the babysitters club and the boxcar children. in the years 2007-2010. no one on the planet was reading these except for adults reading for nostalgia as a treat. i singlehandedly made half my class read both series

i correctly diagnosed a gym teacher as having a connective tissue disorder in 2nd grade. she was always yelling at everyone about their range of motion during stretches. she would single out me and the two ballet kids as positive examples. i got frustrated with her and told her that i don't have a normal range of motion and she should get hers checked out. she elected to ignore me because i didn't have a doctor's note about it (my doctor's still refusing to test me for eds almost 20 years later) but the next year, she dislocated her knee on a normal jog and it took a long ass time to heal because it kept getting reinjured. her pt had her tested and she was diagnosed with eds, exactly the thing I had told her to be tested for. i got in trouble for this because that school was stupid.

as a fun outing, i took several of my friends to a watch and clock museam. multiple times. with the same friends. i did not think this was a weird thing to be excited about as an 8 year old supposed-to-be-a-girl. i also corrected something about steam engines on one of the plaques

our playground was along a river, so at the edge of it there was a little concrete wall and a good 100-150 ft drop into rocky water. i used to climb onto the wall and pace on it when i was tired of my laps around the perimeter. the teachers were never paying attention and even if they noticed, I think they figured i was weird enough that I'd be fine and not fall. this terrified my classmates. they were convinced i was possessed specifically because of this. they hadn't thought that when i 'summoned a demon', but pacing on the barrier for the river was absolutely demon behavior. i didn't notice they were afraid of this until several years later when I was too big to comfortablely do it anymore and one of my friends told me.

i used to hide in furniture. this on its own isn't abnormal, but i took it to the next level. i would climb up into the top shelf of my parents entertainment center and close the door and wait for hours to scare whoever opened it. i would get out of bed at night and sleep on top of the kitchen cabinets. there was no shelf or drawer too high or too small. i was like a cat. to this day my family can't figure out how i got into some of my favorite spots. i did this at school once and got into trouble

you cannot all have been weird little girls btw. I know some of you were mostly normal and are just clout chasing

[citylightsbooks]

Listening as an act of love: Marie Mutsuki Mockett in conversation

This is an excerpt of a free event for our virtual events series, City Lights LIVE. This event features Marie Mutsuki Mockett in conversation with Garnette Cadogan discussing her new book American Harvest: God, Country, and Farming in the Heartland, published by Graywolf Press. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom and hosted by our events coordinator Peter Maravelis. You can listen to the entire event on our podcast. You can watch it in full as well on our YouTube channel.

*****

Marie Mutsuki Mockett: You don't see me talking about love or the importance of love very much. Maybe I would have a larger Instagram account if I constantly put up memes about love. I should probably do that.

I consider [American Harvest] to be an investigation of something that I didn't understand and that I thought was important. So I asked questions and wanted to try to answer those questions by talking to people who were very different than I am. To sit with them and find out what their genuine experience in the world is, and then see if I could answer some of the questions that I have.

I did not tell myself, "This is a book about love," or "You must employ love." I also didn't spend a lot of time saying to myself, "This is a book that's going to require you to be brave." I just really was trying to focus on the questions that I had and on my curiosity. I was trying to pinpoint, when I'm in a church, when I'm in a farm, when I'm around a situation that I don't understand, what's actually happening. And that was really what I was trying to do and how I was trying to direct my attention.

Garnette Cadogan: But love comes up a lot in the book. And for you, a lot of it has to do with listening. In many ways, this book is a game of active listening, and listening--as you've shown time and again--is fundamentally an act of love.

You decided to go and follow wheat farmers and move along in their regimens and cycles and rituals, and not only the rituals of labor, but rituals of worship, rituals of companionship, and issues of community. When did you begin to understand what is the real task of listening? Because in the book, time and again, you remind us that there are so many places in which there is this huge gap, or this huge chasm, in our effort to understand each other.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett: Well, that is where love comes in. Because that is the only reason why you would spend time listening to people or talking to people. What would be the motivation for trying to be open to others? Why should you be open to others? We don't have to be. So why should one be?

And you're right that things do get reduced down to this question of love. I had always heard that Christianity was the religion of love. And that love was one of the things that was unique about Christ's message. I didn't really grow up with any one religion. Also, my mother was from Japan, so I also grew up always hearing about how for a long time, the word love didn't really exist in Japanese. There really is no way to say “I love you.” Linguists still debate whether or not you can say "I love you" in Japanese and there are ways in which people say it, but it doesn't have the same history, and it doesn't have the same loaded meaning that it does in Western English.

So I was aware from a really early age, because I heard my parents and other people talk about this, that this question of love was very much a part of Western culture and that it originated from Christianity. And I really wondered what does that mean? And if it means anything, is there anything to it? And if there is, what is it? And there's a scene in the book where I talk about my feeling of disappointment that no one had ever purchased me anything from Tiffany, the jewelry store, because if you live in New York City, you're constantly surrounded by Tiffany ads. When you get engaged, you can get a Tiffany box. And then on your birthday, you can get a Tiffany box. And then in the advertisements, the graying husband gives the wife another Tiffany box to appreciate her for all the years that she's been a wife and on and on. I know that that has nothing to do with love. I know that that that's like some advertiser who's taken this notion of love and then turned it into some sort of message with a bunch of images, and it's supposed to make me feel like I want my Tiffany ring (which I've never gotten). That's not love. But is there anything there? And that was definitely something that I wanted to investigate.

I think I started to notice a pattern where I was going to all of these churches in the United States, and I'm not a church going person. And the joke that I tell is that I decided to write American Harvest partly because I wasn't going to have to speak Japanese. I could speak English, which is the language with which I'm most comfortable. But I ended up going to all these churches, and I couldn't understand what anybody was saying. I would leave the church and Eric, who is the lead character, would say, "What do you think?" And I would say, "I have no idea what just happened." And so it took time for me to tune in to what the pastors were saying, and what I came to understand is that there were these Christian churches that emphasized fear, and churches that didn't emphasize fear. And then I started to meet people who believe that God wants them to be afraid and people who are motivated by fear or whose allegiance to the church comes from a place of fear, in contrast to those who said, "You're not supposed to be afraid. That's not the point." That was a huge shift in my ability to understand where I was, who I was talking to, and the kinds of people that I was talking to, and why the history of Christianity mattered in this country.

Garnette Cadogan: So you started this book, because you said, "Oh, I only need one language." And then you ended up going to language training.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett: I needed so many different languages! I mean, even this question of land ownership that we're talking about: I feel like that's a whole other language. There are places in the world and moments in history where people didn't own land. It didn't occur to them that they had to own the land themselves. So what's happening when we think we have to? Like with timeshares. I'm really serious. What need is that fulfilling? And you don't need to have a timeshare in Hawaii, where you visit like one week out of the entire year, right? So what need is that fulfilling?

Garnette Cadogan: Rest? Recreation? I’m wondering . . . has the process of living, researching, and writing this book changed you in any way? And if so, how?

Marie Mutsuki Mockett: I mean, absolutely, but it's so hard to talk about. I think that I have a much better and deeper understanding of the history of our country, and a much greater understanding of the role that race plays in our country. A deeper understanding of the tension between rural and urban, and also of our interdependence, which is something I sort of knew, but didn't completely know. And why just kicking out a bunch of states or getting rid of a bunch of people isn't actually an answer to the tension that we've faced. And it's because there's this great interdependence between people. So understanding all of that and realizing how intractable the problem is, oddly, has made me feel calmer about it. Because I realize it isn't as simple as if I just do "X" everything will be fine. I think, when you feel like, "If I just master the steps, if I can just learn this incantation, then everything will be fine," I think when you live that way, it's very frustrating. And I realized the problems are deeper than that. And some of the problems the United States is facing are problems that exist all around the world. I mean the urban rural problems: it's a piece of modernization. It doesn't just affect our country, it affects many countries.

Garnette Cadogan: You know, we've been speaking about land, God, country, Christianity, urbanity, and in this book, a lot of it is packed in through this absolutely wonderful man, Eric, and his family. Part of what makes it compelling and illuminating is we get a chance to understand so much through this wonderful, generous, and beautiful man, Eric. For those who haven't read it yet, tell us about Eric, and why Eric was so crucial to understanding in so much of what you understood, and also some of the changes that you went through.

Marie Mutsuki Mockett: He's a Christian from Pennsylvania. He’s a white man who’s never been to college, but has a genuine intellectual curiosity, although not immediately apparent in a way that would register to us. Because we're at an event that's hosted by bookstore. So when we think of intellectual curiosity, probably the first thing that any of us would do would be to reach for a book, right? That's not what he would do. He wouldn't reach for a book, he would find someone to talk to. He's a person who is very much about the lived experience. But he was very open to asking questions and trying to understand other people's experiences and how the world works, and he was very concerned.

He was the person who told me in early 2016 that he thought that Trump would probably win, when none of us thought that this was possible. And he said this is because we don't understand each other at all. And he's a very open-hearted, very generous person. And you see him change over the course of the book.

He called me the other day. He said, "I've been hearing a lot about violence against Asian Americans." He's met a couple of my friends. He wanted to know, "Are they all right?" And then he said, "I just want you to know that we talk about racial justice all the time in church," because of course, that's the way that he processes life's difficult questions: through church. And I was kind of moved by that, because one of the points that American Harvest makes is that these difficult questions don't get talked about in church. And he said, "I just want you to know this is something that we talk about." So you see him really develop and change as a result of his exposure to me and to seeing how I move through space versus how he moves through space. And it's a big leap of imagination for people to understand that other people have other experiences that are legitimate and real. It seems to be one of the most difficult things for people to understand, but he really made a great effort to do that. And I think that’s kind of extraordinary.

***

Purchase American Harvest from City Lights Bookstore.