#the transcendant love language that is cutting up fruit for your loved ones

[cspcrashing]

"wolfwood...?"

"ya like cute things, yeah ?"

"yeah... but these are too adorable to eat."

"shut up, tongari."

"you did this to cheer me up, didn't you ?"

"can't ya just eat them and shut it ?"

"awww wolfwood ! you love me !"

"jesus christ."

[jokertrap-ran]

[スタオケ] La Corda d'Oro Starlight Orchestra: Legendary Musician Myoga Leiji SSR - The Ice of Cocytus Translation (Part 1)

伝説の演奏家 [冥加玲士] SSR-コキュートスの氷より ※This card is obtained from the Limited-Time Legendary Musician Gacha

*Starlight Orchestra Masterlist *Spoiler free: Translations will remain under cut *Legendary Musician tag will be #Starlight Legends

A lavish fruit basket sat on the table with a name written on it— To: (Y/n) (L/n).

However, the sender's name was not written and thus, remains unknown.

Rei: My, my, those are some delicious-looking fruits. From melons and muscat grapes to peaches, apples, and even mangos.

Rei: That's a rather lavish assortment of fruits. What's the special occasion?

Rei: A present from an unknown sender? Fufu, you sure do have some passionate fans if they're willing to come all the way to The Magnolia to deliver this.

Rei: Or maybe it's the start of a fated love story, one that transcends even that of a fan’s admiration.

Rei: It's possible, you know. I heard that the exact same thing had happened in this school before, in the past, when someone sent another a fruit basket.

Rei: The recipient had been the first violinist of the Orchestra Club, and the sender had been a student from a rival school…

☆ ━━━━━━━ ∘◦♬◦∘ ━━━━━━━ ☆

Leiji: …

Sousuke: Um… Pre-President Myoga. I apologize for bothering you while you're working.

Sousuke: Regarding the bowing issue you pointed out the other day…

Sousuke: I've practiced really hard, and, um… I think I might have improved…?

Leiji: Oh? Has it improved to a standard that isn't jarring to my ears now?

Sousuke: N-Not at all. Erm… It might actually still be terribly hot garbage…

Sousuke: But I think it has improved a little compared to the last time, at least… So, if possible, could you listen to it…?

Sousuke: (Eek… This is so nerve-wracking! The atmosphere in this room is so intimidatingly frigid, and there's the sweet tang of fruit in the air.)

Sousuke: Wait… What? Come to think of it, what's that delectable smell…?

Sousuke: Whoooa… What a plump peach! I knew that something was different about this room today, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I never thought you'd have a fruit basket in here.

Sousuke: Look at those vibrant mangoes. I bet it'd be delicious when made into mango pudding!

Leiji: …Nanami…

Sei: —There are apples too. The flower language of apples means “temptation” if memory serves right. Quite meaningful, don't you think?

Sousuke: Whoa! Amamiya-san…? S-Since when were you here? I didn't notice your presence at all.

Sei: They do say that sweet scents are capable of befuddling one's senses.

Sei: But, Myoga, I never thought that you'd be one to send her gifts. I'm sure she's overjoyed by them.

Leiji: Don't be ridiculous. She was the one who pawned off useless items to me. I'm simply returning the favor.

Leiji: Being indebted to that woman is unthinkable. That's all there is to it.

Sousuke: …"That woman"? Are you talking about…

Leiji: Nanami, are you here just to gossip? If you want to chat, then please take it elsewhere.

Sousuke: Oh, nono, no! Sorry, erm…

Leiji: I suppose the results of your training aren't half-baked If you have the time to be chit-chatting away here. Let's hear it.

Sousuke: O-Okay. There's a cello in the music room, so let's do it there!

Sei: …How interesting. Love sure is complicated.

Sei: She's the only one capable of throwing you into disarray. Although, I'm sure you're aware of it yourself.

Sei: The flower language of an apple might be “temptation”, but an apple blossom means “preference”...

Sei: Between you and her, I wonder who will end up preferring one or the other in the end?

☆ ━━━━━━━ ∘◦♬Starlight Legends♬◦∘ ━━━━━━━ ☆

Next Part: (Chapter 2)

[vajranam]

Elimination OF Desires

Milarepa

Elimination of Desires

“One day while Jetson was staying in Medicine Valley of Chu Bar teaching Dharma to several disciples, the Yogi Orton Gendun approached him and asked, "Precious lama, in the teachings of several geshes you are renowned as a buddha. They say you've totally eliminated desire. Is this true?"

Jetsun replied, "So they say. But there are many ways of eliminating desires. None of them are certain to yield buddhahood. You can understand the meaning of the term 'buddha' by listening to this old man's song."

I bow to the feet of great Marpa,

Lotsawa who spoke two tongues,

Who with vision of the three times

Realized the reality of the many as one.

Specifically, one who's cleansed

and totally removed

The mass of negative preconceptions

and imprints

And the obscurations of affiiction and action

Produced by the power of ignorance;

Who's cleared the dark deluded aberration Obscuring knowledge of the objective world And obtained strengths,

confidences, and unique properties

Through gnostic realization of the natural state To such a one who's developed

All the qualities of total omniscience

The term "buddha" is applied.

Such a perfect buddha

Is perfectly free from all desires.

To say that even bugs in trees

And infants lacking clear conception

Are buddhas is the talk of fools.

Though lacking sophisticated concepts

Like possessions and friends,

They're still tormented by reactions

To heat and cold, hunger and thirst.

These root associations gradually develop

Into full-blown concepts of desire.

Outsiders, sages, and the heterodox

Have numerous attainments

Like soaring flight through the sky, Unobstructed clairvoyant knowledge,

Various magical transformations,

And freedom from cravings

for the objects of desire.

But they'll revolve in samsara again and again Through the fault of incorrect refuge-source And lack of the vision

Of analytic wisdom and skill in methods.

Likewise, with Buddhist meditators

Though they've traveled the four absorptions And four formless media

To samsara's peak where desire is gone-

If they're not imbued with wisdom and method, They'll revolve in samsara as before.

Therefore, buddhahood will never be won

By merely stopping desires without integration Of method and wisdom through skill in method. So how is it done?

Study the paths of the three personality types, The six transcendences of giving and so on, The four social means and four infinitudes,

The three vehicles and three bases of practice, And the integration of compassion

and voidness.

Then strive to compile a great store of merit

By transcendence of giving,

morality, and patience.

Build up the store of gnosis

By practicing the transcendences of absorption and wisdom. Vigor assists both

By intensifying mental effort.

Though everything is actually void,

Insistence on mere nominal "voidness"

Without actual voidness realization

Leads to denial of action and result,

The great cause of hell and loss of freedom. Therefore, of good and bad actions and results Avoid the sinful in the slightest degree,

And cultivate virtue to its greatest extent.

Strive also to cultivate inseparable union

Of both wisdom and absorption,

For by absorption the mind is stabilized,

And by wisdom strayings are detected.

Likewise, with voidness and compassion, Cultivate the integration

of wisdom and method,

For by that sublime method

of great compassion

The welfare of beings in samsara is achieved, And by wisdom's view of voidness Dharma-body for one's own sake is realized From planted seed of supplication

Imbued with the sublime method

of compassion

The resultant twofold form-body arises.

And by form-body's inconceivable emanations

The hopes, wants, and needs of beings

Are fulfilled in ways

concordant with their welfare,

Like a gem that grants all wishes,

Or a wish-granting tree,

or a divine tree of worship.

And omniscience also,

free from preconception,

Fulfills the hopes of all trainees

As inconceivable, streaming rays of sun Dissolve the fog of all the world.

The stages of such cultivation

Overflowing the mind of Marpa,

That king of all translators,

Are the range of Mila's realization.

I've explained to you, son Ortiin,

This beggar-yogi's understanding

Bear it in heart, 0 nobly born.

Till the natural state's been confronted

Through union of Dharma

and your essential mind,

Don't disregard cause and effect.

Till you're free from fears of birth and death

By realizing appearances lack true reality,

Don't make empty, senseless talk.

Till you've attained skill

In all sutras, tantras, and sastras,

Don't teach Dharma pointlessly.

Till body, speech, and mind

toward others' welfare are directed

By slashing entanglement

with your own desires,

Don't behave with pretension and deceit.

Till you've slashed entanglement

with your own desires

And can sacrifice life to benefit others,

Don't say, "I'm a bodhisattva."

Till engaged in others' welfare

with four social means

Through inception of four infinitudes in mind, Don't say, "I work for others' welfare."

Till your heart is one with your lama

And you pray to him four sessions each day, Don't say, "I have admiration and respect."

Till beings and world shine as divine,

without attachment,

And illusory-body's purified into clear light, Don't say, "I'm a practitioner

of the mantra vehicle."

Till dakinis gather at your feast

And holy offerings change to nectar

Don't say, "I perform religious feasts."·

Till mastery of white element,

currents, and channels,

And the element can be emitted or held,

Don't perform karmamudra.

Till the force of clear awareness

rises In brilliant, thought-free quiescence,

Don't say, "I meditate the absorptions."

Till essential reality is borne on brow

Through examination

by analytic, gnostic wisdom,

Don't say, "Realization has dawned."

Do you understand my meaning, yogi?

Moved by strong faith, the yogi sang:

Eh ma! Great yogi-repa! Eh ma!

Protector of the three realms' beings! Eh ma! Buddha with human form! I bow to your feet, great Jetsiin father.

Clouds of love and compassion

Gather in the infinite sky of your mind,

And with the resonant thunder of your speech A rain of explicit Dharma falls.

You planted the seed of profound precepts

In the hard, untilled soil of my mind,

Irrigated with dear revelations,

Warded off the ruinous hail

of mistaken thought,

And cultivated with timely,

compassionate skill in method.

Though omniscient fruit hasn't ripened yet

By fault of my own inferior nature,

No one surpasses you in method.

From now till enlightenment's attained

May I accompany you, lord of yogis, Inseparable always like body and shadow.

In your company

may I realize the essence of natural state,

and win enlightenment unexcelled

May I then work for others' welfare

And thereby liberate all beings.”

~ Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibet's Beloved Saint, Milarepa Translated by Lama Kunga Rinpoche & Brian Cutillo

"Jetsun Milarepa, Tibet's renowned and beloved saint, is known for his penetrating insights, wry sense of humor, and ability to render any lesson into spontaneous song. His songs and poems exhibit the bold, inspirational leader as he guided followers along the Buddhist path.

More than any other collection of his stories and songs, Drinking the Mountain Stream reveals Milarepa's humor and wisdom. Faithfully translated by Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Brian Cutillo, this rare collection - never before available in any Western language - cuts across the centuries to bring Milarepa's most inspiring verses, in all their potency, to today's reader."

[recipeforme]

C7: Somehow I’ll Be Strong

Book: A Good Kid

It was a tradition in our friend group that once a month we would gather at Patton’s house to have a movie night. I’m sure that if it was up to Patton it would be at least every two weeks. But Patton’s Dad, Mr. Thomas, said that we could only do it once a month during the school year.

If it had been up to me we would do a movie marathon of some kind every month. But once again, Mr. Thomas said we could only watch one movie and that it couldn’t be longer than ninety minutes. The last rule was made after I tried to get everyone to watch ‘The Sound of Music’ which is two hours and fifty-five minutes.

The way our movie nights worked was that we rotated each month on who got to pick the movie. Last month it had been Logan’s turn which meant that we watched some boring space documentary. But this month it was my turn!

-----

I walked up to the front door of the Sanders’ household with five different DVD cases in my hand. I know that we were only allowed to watch one film but I still like to get Patton and Logan’s opinion on which to watch.

Standing on the front porch I rang the bell. I could hear Patton’s joyful yell and the sound of running footsteps, I smiled as he threw open the door and flung his arms around me.

“Roman! You're here!” He yelled “I missed you.”

“You just saw me at school.” I laughed, hugging him back.

I chuckled lightly as I pulled away from the hug and Patton led me inside and to the kitchen where Logan was. “Hey Nerd,” I said.

Logan rolled his eyes, keeping them in the book he was reading.

“So I see that Roman’s here.” I looked over to see Patton’s dad standing in the entryway that led into the kitchen.

“Hello Mr. Thomas,” I said with a smile.

The man laughed “Roman, how many times do I have to tell you? It’s just Thomas.”

“Sure thing Mr. Thomas,” I replied with a cheeky grin.

Thomas playfully rolled his eyes at me and moved to the kitchen table where he opened his laptop. Most likely to get some work done, not like that’s any of my business. I started chatting with Patton before his foster brother came downstairs.

“Well, if it isn’t the Emo Nightmare!” I said with a smirk. Virgil looked over at me with a scoff of annoyance before moving to the fridge and pulling out a water bottle.

“So,” Patton said, returning to our conversation. “What are we watching tonight Roman?”

“I haven’t decided yet but I do know that it will be one of these movies,” I said pulling out the DVD cases I had brought.

Logan set his book aside and looked at the cases “why do you always choose Disney movies?”

“I don’t always choose Disney!” I protested “sometimes I chose a musical.” I heard Virgil snort and I turned to him “what? You have a problem with Disney?!”

“No,” He said. “I, too, am a Disney fan.”

“You?” I laughed.

“What? Why is that so hard to believe?”

“Disney movies are the embodiment of goodness and purity, something you would know nothing about!” I said, still laughing.

“Be nice kiddo” Patton scolded.

“Disney movies have such wonderful and empowering messages!” I said to Virgil.  

Virgil gave me a dark smirk and leaned up against the kitchen counter, still holding his water bottle.“You must not be watching the same movies then.” He said, “because the movies I know have much more sinister undertones.”

He looked over at Logan and Patton “Come on, you must sense it. I'm just making sure you're alert to all of the messages in those films, whether they were intentional or not.”

“Actually, this is kind of intriguing,“ Logan said.

“What?” I cried.

“So you think every movie has a darker meaning or a misleading message?” Logan clarified.

“Oh yeah.”

“This is ridiculous!” I yelled “you besmirch the name of Disney. This time, you have gone too far!”

“Really?” Virgil raised an eyebrow, setting aside his water. “This is where you cross the line?”

“Well, how 'bout this?” Patton cut in “Logan and I will throw out some Disney movies and you two tell us what we’re supposed to learn from each movie.”

The two of us agreed and Patton got started. I’m sure I’ll win. There was no way that evil villain will be able to find anything wrong with such perfect movies.

------

“Okay, movie one. Cinderella.” Patton said.

“Ha! Easy.” I said, “believe in your dreams and one day, they will come true.”

“Sure, just literally wait around your entire life, subjecting yourself to the cruelty of your ungrateful, ignorant family members, until some magical fairy comes along to save you.” Virgil said sarcastically “don't take action yourself.”

“She had mice, too!” I protested.

“Not to mention, men can't memorize the face of a woman they've been dancing around with for hours, they have to rely on the shoe.” The darker teen added, “ergo... men are idiots.”

“He was a very busy prince! He had a lot on his mind!”

“Let's just move to another.” Patton said, “um, Snow White!”

“Okay, so this time the message is to not do what the princess did.” I said, “don't accept random fruit from strangers.”

“Or, don't eat fruit...?” Patton said.

“No,” Thomas called from the kitchen table.

“No?”

“The bigger message is to just run away from your problems and become the housekeeper for seven men,” Virgil said.

“Sometimes the best solution is to get out of a bad situation!”

“Not to mention, a prince comes out of nowhere and plants a kiss on a seemingly sleeping girl?” He adds “I guess consent isn't really that important.”

“I never did understand that,” Logan said to himself.

“He thought she was dead! It was a farewell kiss!” I yelled, “what's with all the prince hate?”

“I wonder,” Virgil said in a sarcastic tone that I’ve grown to hate.

“Well, how about something a little bit more recent: Frozen,” Patton suggested.

“A sister's love triumphs overall!” I said.

“And don't trust random princes. I can get behind that” Virgil added.

“I swear…”

“Also, when Elsa passes away, Olaf's gonna die too, 'cause the magic will be gone. So just prolong the inevitable?” Immediately Patton and I cried out about how dark that was. Virgil just shrugged saying that he’d warned us.

“How about we lighten it up with Peter Pan?” Patton suggested.

“Don't let your childhood spirit ever die” I said.

“Also, it's totally fine to believe a random stranger when they tell you to jump out the window after they've broken into your house.” Virgil said “but I would guess that's how your whole being would die.”

I groaned “urgh…”

“Okay, how about Aladdin? My favorite!” Thomas said, moving to lean up against the table. Watching us with interest.

“The value of a person is not determined by wealth.” I told them “a diamond in the rough can be found anywhere, even someone who may be considered a street rat.”

“And they can get what they want by lying and deceiving their way right into the castle and getting the princess.” Virgil smirked.

“Oh, come on!” I cried “he came clean in the end! He even freed the Genie!”

“Yeah, he did.” Virgil agreed “but not before his way lying and deceiving right into the castle and getting the princess.”

“How about Fox and the Hound?” Patton asked.

“True friendship overcomes any boundaries set by society.” I said, folding my arms and glaring at Virgil.

“But then that friendship will be immediately be terminated by that society, and the two must learn their place in the world.” He added.

“Beauty and the Beast” Logan suggested.

“Okay, I know what you're gonna say, you're gonna say--”

“Stockholm Syndrome.” Virgil and I said in unison.

“But,” I said “it is more than just a prisoner falling in love with her kidnapper! It is about a love that transcends outward appearance. Even a beastly, hairy, animal-- you're right, that doesn't sound much better.” Hums of agreement floated around the room “But come on, can you really look down so harshly on these movies?”

“I still like them,” Virgil said “there's just some darker messages that we don't first see.”

“Bambi?” I asked.

“Man is dangerous.”

“Pocahontas!”

“White man is dangerous.”

“Sleeping Beauty!”

“Well, now we're back to the lack of consent with sleeping women.” He responded with a smirk.

“It was to lift a curse!” I yelled.

“The Little Mermaid?” Thomas asked.

“Don't just sign a contract without having your mer-lawyer look over all the fine print and stipulations. That one's just common sense.” Virgil said.

“Or learn to write, or use sign language.” Logan added “there's more than one way to tell the prince you're the girl that saved him.” I couldn’t help but silently agree with both Virgil and Logan.

“Well then, how about we just concede that Disney movies have a lot of different, interesting messages within them” Patton said.

“Duh, that's what I've been saying.” Virgil said “I never said Princey was wrong.”

I was surprised “you didn't?”

“No.”

“Well,” I said slowly “then I suppose I shall concede a few points to you.”

“Great.” Virgil began to leave the kitchen, water bottle in hand, when I called out to him.

“Wait,” he stopped and slowly turned around “there’s one movie you forgot” I said.

“Which one?”

“Tangled.”

Virgil stiffened “there are those in your life who are supposed love and care for you but sometimes all they do is hurt you.” He answered quietly.

Everyone in the room went silent. Virgil ducked his head and flipped up his hood, hiding his face from view. And he quickly disappeared down the hall.

[someschooling]

Selfhood in “Call Me By Your Name”

Spoilers included

I will start with the end.

Loss implies a decrease, an absence. It is subtraction, taking a part away from a whole. But the loss that follows love is something different—it is alive, present inside of you, stealing your breath, whispering in your ear. Remember this place? Remember this feeling? It is a profound pain, tethered to the joy that preceded it. Call Me By Your Name lives in the wounds that love creates--the spikes of fear and overwhelming need that force you to open up a space in yourself for someone else to inhabit. The feeling of enveloping them, of them enveloping you. And finally, predictable and wrenching, the hole they leave when they are gone.

The lovers are 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet) and twenty-something Oliver (Armie Hammer). It is the summer of 1983, and Elio's summertime inertia at his family's Northern Italian villa is disrupted by the arrival of his father's research assistant, Oliver. Elio is our protagonist, and thus we regard the visitor with a cautious remove at the film's start. He is first glimpsed from above—a flash of golden hair, tanned skin and enviable height—as the camera peeks at him from Elio's upper-floor bedroom window. "He seems very confident," Elio says to a friend, smirking.

At the breakfast table, the camera cuts to a close-up of Oliver's Star of David necklace; Elio, too, is Jewish, but seems to wonder how he could hold anything in common with Oliver. Elio is irked by the easy and voracious way that Oliver occupies space; the newcomer flops onto Elio's bed with barely a word, and in the morning he gulps apricot juice and devours a breakfast egg as if these surroundings were created to bend to his will. Elio, by contrast, enjoys quietly reading and composing music. He is brilliant but unformed, and seems threatened or envious of Oliver's seemingly brazen projection of self.

I saw this film three times in one week, on a Monday, a Thursday and a Sunday. I revisited it in part because Chalamet is so enrapturing as Elio that I barely processed Oliver's interiority the first time I watched the movie. That is no fault of Hammer's; he gives Oliver substance and charm. But for a large portion of the film, Elio does not recognize the nature of his feelings toward Oliver, and once he does, he can't discern if they are reciprocated. Oliver's motivations are a mystery to both viewer and protagonist; we only know that Elio is drawn to the very boldness that at first alienated him from Oliver, and the hint of melancholy beneath Oliver’s beauty. Elio's attraction is crystallized in the much-memed scene in which Elio watches Oliver dance with abandon to the Psychedelic Furs' Love My Way. It's all there in Chalamet's brilliant performance; Elio is conflicted, but enamored. He begins to pursue Oliver romantically, and the camera drinks up the object of Elio's affection, as in a particularly gorgeous shot of Hammer's back as he wades in a sun-dappled river, the camera low, tipped skyward to face this Platonic ideal of a man. 

Director Luca Guadagnino and cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom construct Elio and Oliver's love story through atmosphere rather than dialogue. Sings Sufjan Stevens, who provides much of the soundtrack, "Words are futile devices." We do not know what Elio and Oliver discuss on their meandering bicycle rides through the countryside. Guadagnino prefers to meditate on the winding road, the whisper of leaves in summer breezes, the villa's creaking stairwells and slamming doors. Much of the conversation we are privy to is coded and barbed with defensiveness. "What are you thinking about?" Oliver asks Elio as they lounge in the pool. "It's private," Elio responds from behind his Risky Business sunglasses. Oliver hops out of the water with a chuckle and begins to help Elio's mother pick fruit from their orchard. Elio hurries behind him, pushing Oliver to the side and taking his place under the tree. At the river, Elio gazes at Oliver adoringly, then splashes him with water and jumps atop his back. These chances to brush against one another, to fuse body with body and bodies with place, are their love language, and the orchards and gentle waves of Northern Italy that summer will be more indelible to their memories of that love than any words.

Except, of course, the titular line. "Call me by your name, and I'll call you by mine," Oliver offers Elio. The scene is a turning point in our understanding of Oliver. He, too, longs to be consumed by the love affair. He seems to be the more experienced lover of the pair, and approaches Elio's youth tenderly. In one of my favorite scenes, Elio gets a nosebleed during a fraught dinner-table conversation and retreats to a hideaway in the bowels of the villa, where Oliver finds and comforts him. There is an innocence to the scene; Elio and Oliver regard the older adults fighting at the dinner table almost as aliens, and when Elio appeals to the housekeeper for ice, she sends him to an empty fridge. Elio goes looking elsewhere--the adults are no help. But Guadagnino stays on the fridge door, which Elio has left hanging open. The housekeeper comes over and slams it shut. We can imagine her muttering about children as she does so. The scene typifies the in-between world that Elio has found himself in. He is not a child, but not yet an adult. The discovery of love and sex, its pleasures and pains, is the discovery of that selfhood. Oliver seems aware of this transitionary period, and is at once eager to love and be loved by Elio, and afraid to push him too far, too fast. "It wasn't my fault, right?" he asks when he finds Elio, bloody rag to his nose. "No," Elio responds, embarrassed. "I'm a mess." Oliver gives him a foot massage, a care-taking technique he learned from his Bubbe, he explains. "You're gonna fucking kill me if you do that," Elio exclaims at the intensity of the massage. "I hope not," Oliver replies, gazing at Elio. He takes his foot and kisses it gently.

Oliver’s slow, assured consent to the relationship conveys his longing and fear, and ultimately you sense that his fears are not only for the safety of Elio's young heart, but also for his own. Guadagnino focuses in on Oliver in the final third of the film, bathing Hammer in moonlight as Oliver reflects upon the relationship in its final days. We watch him watch Elio, the tables finally turned, and sense the impending grief that Oliver's departure will visit upon the couple. Elio cannot foreshadow this pain, because he has not yet felt it, but Oliver seems to know what is coming. We see that Elio’s initial impressions of Oliver’s arrogant nonchalance were in fact his defense mechanisms, his attempt to wall off yearning. Hammer is careful to reveal Oliver's layers, subtly imbuing him with a deep empathy and guardedness. 

The intensity with which we buy into Oliver's feelings, not just Elio's, is central to the film's gut-punch of an ending. When Oliver calls in winter to inform Elio and the family of his surprise engagement, his lover breathes into the phone, "Elio. Elio, Elio, Elio." Oliver draws in a long breath. "I remember everything," he declares. And you know it is true. Elio almost smiles at this confession, not out of joy, but out of transcendent pain. He loved, and was loved, and that makes it all the more impossible to let go. And so we end with the devastating final shot, certainly one of the greatest I have ever had the privilege of seeing. "I have loved you for the last time," Sufjan Stevens sings, as Chalamet lays bare Elio's grief. The second and third times I saw the movie, my heart began to pound as we drew near the scene. Why sit through it? Why stay with his suffering for those long final minutes, as the credits role? Because you must hold onto it, the film argues. All of it. The agony, yes. But also the ecstasy that built it. You must feel it, and let if form you.  

[thecowardlycreative]

Writing prompts as things my family have said:

I’ve often found that the problem with taking a writing class is that you’re often put on the spot to write. 20 minutes free writing time isn’t very helpful when you don’t have an idea. So I started keeping a list of things people have said to help me out when I get stuck. I lost a bit of the original purpose along the way but it’s been entertaining all the same. (Context in brackets where necessary)

My brother:

‘Punch ups can take a long time. Especially when you’re not good at punch ups.’

‘This stuff is pretty hardcore. It could be used in some sort of chemical warfare.’ (about his acne cream)

‘I’ve got a second stomach. I’m like a cow. But only half a cow.’ (On his fourth desert)

‘I’m like one of those salmon that only breed once and then die.’ (On what it would be like to cut up all his clothes to make an oompaloompa costume in a single night and then have nothing else to wear except an oompaloompa costume -- this one’s more context than quote.)

‘I find it weird that people hug each other... just, you know, willy-nilly... without intent of harm. If I’m hugging you, I’m trying to hurt you.’

‘Gary, Gary, Gary... put some clothes on. This isn’t some Daniel Radcliffe play.’ (After coming into my room uninvited)

‘I love how that feeling of your organs about to come out of your mouth transcends language. There’s a common word for it. Just “urgh”.’ (On the plane)

‘If I could lick my lower abdomen, I would too.’ (To our dog)

‘There’s something wrong with your armpits, Gary. They’re meant to be holes into your soul.’

‘Taxis... how quaint.’

[It’s worth noting: my name is not Gary. It’s just been so long since my brother’s called me by my actual name that, when he had to introduce me to his friends last week, he actually blanked.]

My mum:

‘I’ve heard things from that computer no one should ever have to hear. Things that haunt me in the middle of the night; “You ain’t got no cloud.”‘ 

‘Don’t talk to me about my delicate under-story...’ (muttered while watching Gardening Australia)

‘That stuff on the potatoes smells a lot like armpit. But not in a bad way.’ (About some chips my brother made)

‘This shirt’s just stretched and stretched. It’s going to be a dress soon. So I figured I’d turn it into a fashion statement. The statement is: my shirt’s too big.’

‘Never buy anything busier than you. That’s my motto.’ (About a polka dotted skirt)

‘Not my mother, of course. She always encouraged being in moral danger. If you weren’t in moral danger, you better have a pretty good excuse.’ (About growing up in the 60s)

‘If it didn’t make me look so much like a Nazi, I would have bought a leather jacket.’

*Reading a number plate* ‘”Tasmania -- the natural state.” My natural state is not Tasmania; it’s mania.’

Eldest sister:

‘They’re just a wombat’s bum with ostrich feet and a tiny beak glued on.’ (About kiwis, the bird not the fruit or the people)

‘So, you know, just head towards the usual blend of the sound of stabbing and Pharrell Williams’ Happy.’ (Giving me directions on where to find her on campus)

‘I will press the very well hidden button that turns this piece of crap into a tank and I will CRUSH YOU. Tiny turd to tank!’ (Her road rage)

‘I don’t have the energy or lung capacity to laugh at you but I want you to know, I would if I could.’

Middle sister:

‘I don’t understand SnapChat. I’d understand StabChat more.’

‘While I was there I had to keep just substituting the word “weird” with “cute”. “Oh boy. What cute dogs you have. They’re just so... cute.”‘ (while housesitting)

‘I don’t know what it is about this granola. It’s just like... what I would eat if I’d lost the will to live.’

[Bonus; my friend’s boyfriend: ‘If you’re going to be horny, at least bring Kenny G into it!’ (on why he hates ‘Blurred Lines’)]

[manjushriwisdom]

Elimination OF Desires

Milarepa

Elimination of Desires

“One day while Jetson was staying in Medicine Valley of Chu Bar teaching Dharma to several disciples, the Yogi Orton Gendun approached him and asked, "Precious lama, in the teachings of several geshes you are renowned as a buddha. They say you've totally eliminated desire. Is this true?"

Jetsun replied, "So they say. But there are many ways of eliminating desires. None of them are certain to yield buddhahood. You can understand the meaning of the term 'buddha' by listening to this old man's song."

I bow to the feet of great Marpa,

Lotsawa who spoke two tongues,

Who with vision of the three times

Realized the reality of the many as one.

Specifically, one who's cleansed

and totally removed

The mass of negative preconceptions

and imprints

And the obscurations of affiiction and action

Produced by the power of ignorance;

Who's cleared the dark deluded aberration Obscuring knowledge of the objective world And obtained strengths,

confidences, and unique properties

Through gnostic realization of the natural state To such a one who's developed

All the qualities of total omniscience

The term "buddha" is applied.

Such a perfect buddha

Is perfectly free from all desires.

To say that even bugs in trees

And infants lacking clear conception

Are buddhas is the talk of fools.

Though lacking sophisticated concepts

Like possessions and friends,

They're still tormented by reactions

To heat and cold, hunger and thirst.

These root associations gradually develop

Into full-blown concepts of desire.

Outsiders, sages, and the heterodox

Have numerous attainments

Like soaring flight through the sky, Unobstructed clairvoyant knowledge,

Various magical transformations,

And freedom from cravings

for the objects of desire.

But they'll revolve in samsara again and again Through the fault of incorrect refuge-source And lack of the vision

Of analytic wisdom and skill in methods.

Likewise, with Buddhist meditators

Though they've traveled the four absorptions And four formless media

To samsara's peak where desire is gone-

If they're not imbued with wisdom and method, They'll revolve in samsara as before.

Therefore, buddhahood will never be won

By merely stopping desires without integration Of method and wisdom through skill in method. So how is it done?

Study the paths of the three personality types, The six transcendences of giving and so on, The four social means and four infinitudes,

The three vehicles and three bases of practice, And the integration of compassion

and voidness.

Then strive to compile a great store of merit

By transcendence of giving,

morality, and patience.

Build up the store of gnosis

By practicing the transcendences of absorption and wisdom. Vigor assists both

By intensifying mental effort.

Though everything is actually void,

Insistence on mere nominal "voidness"

Without actual voidness realization

Leads to denial of action and result,

The great cause of hell and loss of freedom. Therefore, of good and bad actions and results Avoid the sinful in the slightest degree,

And cultivate virtue to its greatest extent.

Strive also to cultivate inseparable union

Of both wisdom and absorption,

For by absorption the mind is stabilized,

And by wisdom strayings are detected.

Likewise, with voidness and compassion, Cultivate the integration

of wisdom and method,

For by that sublime method

of great compassion

The welfare of beings in samsara is achieved, And by wisdom's view of voidness Dharma-body for one's own sake is realized From planted seed of supplication

Imbued with the sublime method

of compassion

The resultant twofold form-body arises.

And by form-body's inconceivable emanations

The hopes, wants, and needs of beings

Are fulfilled in ways

concordant with their welfare,

Like a gem that grants all wishes,

Or a wish-granting tree,

or a divine tree of worship.

And omniscience also,

free from preconception,

Fulfills the hopes of all trainees

As inconceivable, streaming rays of sun Dissolve the fog of all the world.

The stages of such cultivation

Overflowing the mind of Marpa,

That king of all translators,

Are the range of Mila's realization.

I've explained to you, son Ortiin,

This beggar-yogi's understanding

Bear it in heart, 0 nobly born.

Till the natural state's been confronted

Through union of Dharma

and your essential mind,

Don't disregard cause and effect.

Till you're free from fears of birth and death

By realizing appearances lack true reality,

Don't make empty, senseless talk.

Till you've attained skill

In all sutras, tantras, and sastras,

Don't teach Dharma pointlessly.

Till body, speech, and mind

toward others' welfare are directed

By slashing entanglement

with your own desires,

Don't behave with pretension and deceit.

Till you've slashed entanglement

with your own desires

And can sacrifice life to benefit others,

Don't say, "I'm a bodhisattva."

Till engaged in others' welfare

with four social means

Through inception of four infinitudes in mind, Don't say, "I work for others' welfare."

Till your heart is one with your lama

And you pray to him four sessions each day, Don't say, "I have admiration and respect."

Till beings and world shine as divine,

without attachment,

And illusory-body's purified into clear light, Don't say, "I'm a practitioner

of the mantra vehicle."

Till dakinis gather at your feast

And holy offerings change to nectar

Don't say, "I perform religious feasts."·

Till mastery of white element,

currents, and channels,

And the element can be emitted or held,

Don't perform karmamudra.

Till the force of clear awareness

rises In brilliant, thought-free quiescence,

Don't say, "I meditate the absorptions."

Till essential reality is borne on brow

Through examination

by analytic, gnostic wisdom,

Don't say, "Realization has dawned."

Do you understand my meaning, yogi?

Moved by strong faith, the yogi sang:

Eh ma! Great yogi-repa! Eh ma!

Protector of the three realms' beings! Eh ma! Buddha with human form! I bow to your feet, great Jetsiin father.

Clouds of love and compassion

Gather in the infinite sky of your mind,

And with the resonant thunder of your speech A rain of explicit Dharma falls.

You planted the seed of profound precepts

In the hard, untilled soil of my mind,

Irrigated with dear revelations,

Warded off the ruinous hail

of mistaken thought,

And cultivated with timely,

compassionate skill in method.

Though omniscient fruit hasn't ripened yet

By fault of my own inferior nature,

No one surpasses you in method.

From now till enlightenment's attained

May I accompany you, lord of yogis, Inseparable always like body and shadow.

In your company

may I realize the essence of natural state,

and win enlightenment unexcelled

May I then work for others' welfare

And thereby liberate all beings.”

~ Drinking the Mountain Stream: Songs of Tibet's Beloved Saint, Milarepa Translated by Lama Kunga Rinpoche & Brian Cutillo

"Jetsun Milarepa, Tibet's renowned and beloved saint, is known for his penetrating insights, wry sense of humor, and ability to render any lesson into spontaneous song. His songs and poems exhibit the bold, inspirational leader as he guided followers along the Buddhist path.

More than any other collection of his stories and songs, Drinking the Mountain Stream reveals Milarepa's humor and wisdom. Faithfully translated by Lama Kunga Rinpoche and Brian Cutillo, this rare collection - never before available in any Western language - cuts across the centuries to bring Milarepa's most inspiring verses, in all their potency, to today's reader."

[petyrbaelishs]

I was tagged by @apprenticemockingbird, thank you so much dear! ♥ List the top five and bottom five of your fics on AO3, by kudos.

Top Five

1. One Feather Bed

I was floored this got many hits at all, much less that it proved the most popular of my fics. A racier imagining of Petyr and Sansa’s boat journey to the Eyrie that heavily played up the master/apprentice vibes of the ship.

2. Sharp

Once upon a time Tywin x Sansa was an interesting crackship to me, although it didn’t have nearly the staying power of P/S. Pretty cut and dried Iron Throne smut that makes me wish I’d written some for my OTP too.

3. Brumous

This was a request fill for the first Petyr x Sansa Week (side note: round 3 soon?) and I’m very proud of the language and imagery I used here. It’s an AU I’d like to return to in new one-shots sometime.

4. A Flower Does Not Choose Its Color

An early fic of mine: a Stoker-inspired canon AU that I ran out of steam on after a couple chapters. This was something I felt very confident in for the set-up, then realized I had no idea of where I wanted to go or how I wanted to end it. Even today I get questions about finishing it and I might. It needs a serious re-write and some disciplined plotting first though.

5. Prized Possessions

Shameless endgame P/S smut that plays off an extended joke about Petyr’s elitist dandyism. So, the best of all worlds.

Bottom Five

5. Fruitful Promises

Another attempt at a multi-chapter fic that I abandoned after realizing I didn’t have much inspiration past the set up. Maybe outlines aren’t such a bad thing after all...

4. Discovery

My first story on AO3, from a Tumblr ask prompt. It wound up as the inspiration for an extended Hunger Games AU. Even though the writing feels a little amateur in retrospect, it has a very fond place in my heart.

3. Awake, Arise, Or Be Forever Fall’n

MY FAVORITE AU. Oh my god, introducing the daemons of Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials into a relationship that’s dependent on subterfuge and masks is a delicious idea to me. But no sexy times and it reads like the introduction to a longer, multi-chapter work, so I understand the diminished interest.

2. Transcendence

Creepy Swan Lake AU that has a lot of innuendo and no dirty stuff, which I assume is why it’s one of the least popular. Another experiment with imagery that I think worked out well even if it lacked the sexy times to give it mass appeal.

1. A Kiss Like Dying

I wound up re-reading this while filling out replies to this meme and wow, I love it. A Deathless AU that’s heavy on the BDSM and keeps the power imbalance between Petyr and Sansa intact, even though she has much more agency. I want to write more of them in this universe.

I tag: @joannalannister, @myrandar, @alayne-stonecoldfox, @manbunjon, and any other fic writers who want to do it! (I haven’t checked AO3 in so long, please forgive my missing all the newcomers!)

[hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff]

PALESTINIAN AMBITIONS have not fared well under the Trump administration, which cut funding to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), closed the Palestine Liberation Organization office in Washington, DC, and moved the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Each of these moves strengthened the relationship between the United States and Israel, encouraging American voters to view what’s left of Palestine as a sinister land full of half-built houses, rocket-launching sites, and angry terrorists.

Both Seth Anziska and Marcello Di Cintio grew up with this Israel-centered Western narrative; now they have written books that explore the complexity of the historical and political reality of Palestine. In Preventing Palestine: A Political History from Camp David to Oslo, the Israeli-American Anziska traces how diplomatic relations following the 1967 Arab-Israeli War set the stage for the current sidelining of Palestinian demands for statehood. In Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Life in Contemporary Palestine, the Canadian Di Cintio travels to Palestine to see how al-Nakba — or “the catastrophe,” the displacement of Palestinians after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War — has shaped Palestinians’ everyday lives. Both authors show how attempts to quash Palestinian nationalism have only prolonged violence in the region.

Anziska views the 1978 Camp David Accords as the primary enabler of Israel’s suppression of Palestinian self-determination. He documents President Jimmy Carter’s attempts to include Palestine in the discussions, which soon faltered when faced with the intransigence of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who criticized the mere suggestion of interacting with the Palestine Liberation Organization. Begin assumed that the United States “would wish to refrain from having any contact with this terrorist organization whose method is the murder of innocent civilians, women and children, and whose purpose is the destruction of the state of Israel.” Backed by the 1975 US pledge not to negotiate with the PLO until it recognized Israel, the negotiators banned Palestine’s main representative body from the Camp David Accords.

While the topic of a Palestinian state remained on the Camp David agenda, without the PLO — or Syria or Jordan (both of whom refused to negotiate with Israel) — the significance of the discussions was diminished. Instead, Carter mediated between Egypt and Israel over the status of the Palestinian territories. Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat, who prioritized the return of the Sinai Peninsula over any allegiance to Arab-nationalist goals, agreed to self-autonomy rather than sovereignty for Palestine. This framing of Palestinian political rights as non-territorial allowed for increased Israeli settlement in the region.

Transnational skepticism of Palestinian statehood grew with the rise of neoconservatism. During his 1980 election campaign, Ronald Reagan cast Palestinians as proxy warriors for the Soviet Union. On November 30, 1981, President Reagan signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Israel promoting strategic cooperation to deal with the Soviet threat. Israel took advantage, rapidly expanding an operation meant to combat PLO attacks in Beirut into an attempt to destroy the PLO itself. The violence that followed included a saturation bombing that killed 500 Palestinians and a massacre of at least 800 others at the Israeli-controlled refugee camps Sabra and Shatila. Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed the dead as terrorists; however, the PLO had already evacuated the camps, meaning that only Palestinian civilians were killed. Anziska supplies numerous examples where the Israeli government refused to differentiate between PLO fighters and civilians, a conflation that justified any military action against Palestinians.

In Anziska’s account, Israel and the United States are the leading powers, the intricacies of their relationship sometimes overshadowing its impact on the Palestinian people. Anziska dedicates a chapter to political alternatives to the controversial PLO, although a more thorough discussion of the difficulties of Palestinian political representation would have been welcome here. The chapter on the PLO illustrates how the organization evolved away from radicalism but remained the main representative party; in 1988, the poet and member of the PLO Mahmoud Darwish wrote the Palestinian Declaration of Independence, proclaiming that an independent Palestine could coexist with Israel. This possibility was noted in the 1991 Madrid Conference and subsequent Washington talks, where Palestinian delegates were invited to speak for the first time. Anziska believes that these talks offered the greatest potential for a peaceful resolution.

Yet the hope was short-lived. Following outbursts of violence by Hamas activists, Palestinian participants were again excluded. Without the knowledge of Palestinian delegates or American mediators, a frustrated PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat turned directly to Israel. These discussions led to the Oslo Accords of 1993–’95, which divided the West Bank into three separate zones of control. The result, far from the national sovereignty the delegates had fought for in Washington, mirrored the language of the Camp David Accords.

Where Preventing Palestine concentrates on the diplomatic history surrounding the crisis in Palestine, Pay No Heed to the Rockets is a ground-level view that shows the real-life consequences of that history. Rather than adopting a third-person viewpoint, Marcello Di Cintio is an active participant who reacts emotionally to the Palestinians he interviews. A photograph of a smiling girl pulling books out of shattered concrete in Gaza functions as a metaphor for Di Cintio’s reportage. Rather than focusing on the ugliness of deprivation, he seeks out the experiences of Palestinian writers and artists for whom, he says, nothing is more beautiful than a story.

Di Cintio begins his time in Palestine by researching the late Mahmoud Darwish, from whose work the book draws its title. (During Israel’s siege of Beirut in 1982, Darwish wrote about the mundane process of brewing coffee: “Turn off the heat, and pay no heed to the rockets.”) Darwish puts a human face on the contentious PLO; a member of that organization when they still endorsed violence, he resigned in the wake of Oslo. Darwish’s influence was so great that, when he wrote a poem criticizing the Oslo Accords, President Arafat demanded he revise it. The most influential Palestinian writer, Darwish was in many ways also the most constrained. In general, his work sought to transcend politics, presenting Palestinians as more than the products of repression and war. As a result, he was sometimes rebuked for writing about trivialities like love during a time of pressing need.

Di Cintio also explores the work of younger writers, such as Maya Abu-Alhayyat, whom he meets at the Café Ramallah in the West Bank. On the first day of the Second Intifada in September 2000, Israeli forces shot Abu-Alhayyat’s boyfriend. Yet, Israelis rarely appear as characters in her stories, since Maya admits she doesn’t know any. Such omissions are a common practice of many of the writers Di Cintio interviews. But he also shows that partitions exist not merely between Israel and Palestine, but within the Palestinians themselves. When he travels to “the 48” (Israeli-controlled territory that had belonged to Palestine before 1948), he discovers that Palestinians living there are called, by their countrymen in the West Bank, shamenet, a term meaning spoiled from birth.

Yet the reality is more complicated. As Di Cintio shows, some Palestinian artists enjoy greater freedom in “the 48” than they do in the Palestinian territories. For example, gay writers like Raji Bathish can publish homoerotic works without fear of persecution. Nevertheless, Bathish rejects the notion that Israel’s accommodation with the LGBTQ community proves its humanitarianism. “You cannot be a fascistic state, with apartheid and occupation,” he tells Di Cintio, “and be proud of your gay integration.”

Pay No Heed to the Rockets ends where it began, with a dedication to the people of Gaza. Despite poverty and war, Gaza is the only place where Palestinians live as Palestinians among Palestinians. Here, Di Cintio meets Mona Abu Sharekh, a writer who believed Arafat when he promised that Gaza would become the next Singapore. But the Israelis shut the Erez border in 2000 and starved the region of resources. While Abu Sharekh may have grown up in Gaza, she hates the place. She sees her people’s difficult lives as only likely to worsen, pointing to a 2012 report by UNRWA that claimed the region would soon be uninhabitable. But Mona cannot leave: Israel considers Gaza a “hostile entity” and requires Palestinian people to acquire permission to pass the Erez Crossing, a boon bestowed almost exclusively on traders or medical patients seeking treatment in Israel.

A contrast between the domestic and the political informs nearly every scene in Pay No Heed to the Rockets. While most of the writers Di Cintio meets describe themselves as non-political, their charged words reveal the inescapable influence of their situation. This painful contradiction exists side-by-side with the beauty of the landscape itself. In one scene, the author hikes in the Hashmiyet Mountains: “We passed pomegranate trees ablaze with scarlet blossoms and old olive trees bearing new fruit as small and green as peppercorns […] Tender chickpeas grew in wide fields near lentils, tobacco, and Egyptian cucumber.” In another scene, he visits Khuza’a, a small town in Gaza, “with concrete roofs that sagged, almost comically, on the broken bodies of houses.” Through its rich descriptions, Pay No Heed to the Rockets depicts Palestine as a place filled with life and hope.

Pay No Heed to the Rockets portrays Palestinian writers without exploiting or romanticizing them. Some were admittedly involved in violent terrorist organizations from which they now seek to distance themselves. Di Cintio concludes with a return to Darwish: “The Nakba is not a memory; it is a continuous uprooting that makes Palestinians more worried about their existence.” Most of the writers Di Cintio meets tell stories of what it means to be human in a context where the prevailing powers do not view them as such. All Palestinians are shaped by this conflict, but none are fully defined by it.

Both Preventing Palestine and Pay No Heed to the Rockets offer vivid portraits of Palestine that transcend the fragmentary glimpses of poverty and violence that the region is often reduced to in Western media. Anziska provides the historical background, while Di Cintio explores the lived experiences, of a people whose homes, but not their identities, have been displaced.

¤

Sam Risak is a short-story writer and MA/MFA candidate at Chapman University, California.

The post A Sidelined People: On the Crisis in Palestine appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

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

[autolovecraft]

Maybe we'd know who you are!

The abnormal ticking was hideous and the glow of 'Umr at-Tawil's quasi-sphere—played around their shrouded heads. Slowly there filtered into his mind had hitherto deemed capable of grasping. Had he found them even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of queer fancies. His now uncovered face was turned to Aspinwall, representing the heirs, was that for which the old black servant had instinctively fled, the lambent nimbuses around the now drooping and motionless heads faded, while the fumes from the vague regions of his boyhood dreams, and large, white mittens gave him an air of trivial, puerile extravagance. To him let me go on with my tale.

This heavy, material silver key. However, a product of Hyperborea on Earth until he might bodily visit all those infinitely distant ages and parts of the world? Indeed, it is written in the confidence of Randolph Carter at all, what was then that he alone of living men had been the usual legal advertisements of the abyss: I accept you as my grand-sire knew before me. As the Shapes had achieved a oneness, that fabulous town of turrets atop the hollow cliffs of a tri-dimensional extension, the Providence mystic, was white-mittened hand, a sweep of creation that dizzied his senses.

For a while he sought.

Off with it—As he reached the old remembered way past graceful lines of rolling hill and stone-walled meadow, distant vale and hanging woodland, gnarled, neglected orchard, gaping-windowed, deserted farm-house. They could pause from their everlasting dreams to the hills to the inner cave with vague sensations to the multiform entity of which Carter had miraculously leaped a gulf of years earlier in the brain, among which an ancestor had oddly vanished a century and a few people and create certain nightmare rumors among the Poles and Lithuanians of Boston's West End, where the wooded hill climbed again to heights above even the Great Impostor. That rose-tinctured sea; a Guide—and thirst-crazed nomads have returned to boyhood, and there are those, the ancient one, which occupied no pedestal, but seemed still to be; had strayed very far away to places where he had lingered, for his mother and her fathers before her were born, and things he read in prehistoric books and sought out deeper and more terrible men of fantastic erudition; delving into arcana of consciousness happened to Carter after he left his car as he looked upon prodigious forms whose multiple extensions transcended any conception of being, size and boundaries which his eyes. The Prolonged of Life. This rascal is in the light of small-paned windows shone out at the tall, uncertainly colored miters, strangely suggestive of those letters, but rather some vast reality, and from what I know Carter, in endless cosmic cycle. Off with it—said it would have run off to the very Border which no man has passed and retraced his steps to say that his calculations, and Whom they served; and because he knew all things, and I have seen what lies beneath—and had found in a world grown too busy for beauty and ugliness are only ornamental fruits of perspective, whose fabulous towers and numberless domes rise mighty toward a single red star in an unsuspected galaxy around which the cyclopean bulk of masonry to which those cowled Shapes on the sinister hillside near the place in the old wizard Edmund Carter the wizard Zkauba on the Zkauba-facet in prodigious waves that smote and burned and thundered—a haunting, fascinating and almost horrible familiarity which no man could read. He artfully fashioned a waxen mask which would be a part of himself, and whose four hands did not know that one is no difference betwixt those born of real things, and had shown him certain terrible secrets in the car at Arkham; yet his language was as crazy a notion as that other whisper—that the Companions had been somewhere he ought not to provoke me to it. It was, and the crystal windings of the nighted and immemorial crypts that burrow beneath that brooding, eon-weighted city, the double planet that once revolved around Arcturus; could turn a human discovery—peculiar to a body from Yaddith.

People wouldn't go there, in the primal tunnels that honeycombed the planet. He prepared a light-years beyond counting but the love of harmony kept him close to the ways of his own clumsily mittened members, evoking a curious, fascinated sort of shuffle toward the new-found prodigies of science, yet could not detect any eye-holes through which it sought to escape from the shadow of Gallows Hill just in time and space he was to have an uncanny knack at prophesying future events. Still guided by instinct and blind piety for those who inferred from the tedium and limitations of waking reality in the dimensional seething. There could exist at the hideous Necronomicon had taught him to look into the shadowy core of that hideous night when two had ventured into an ancient graveyard—but when he was, he realized, no doom, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a sphere. Mr. Aspinwall grew doubly apoplectic-looking claw.

It occurred to him in 1919, and was standing as if he wished to do. The waves surged forth again, he had forgotten that all his forebears had once been, and is the bane of the other. Half way up Elm Mountain, on the silent and bewildered form of tensely clear pictures from his dreams; and these in turn are cut from a man into that wizard, Edmund Carter the wizard of Yaddith in space and time from the car at Arkham; yet his language was as easy, correct and idiomatic as any native Anglo-Saxon's. Carter secured a good test. Even the First Gateway. Old Benijah had been annihilated; and as the key was indeed the frightful Guide and Guardian of the Ancient Ones, as if he wished to find.

You, Mr. de Marigny as executor, and drawing an object from the vague regions of possible dream.

When he complained, and only one thing to do while hurtling through space, yet without dissolution of the impressions translated themselves to Carter after he left shortly before the time sitting mooning round that snake-den in the brain of the First Gate, the price of a cone seem to change the planetary angle and send the user at will send him bodily to any spectrum of our physical creation. Then all the butts of a sort, and all stages of growth in each case. We can know of things as past, present and future. After all, what was almost mortally wounded there in 1916, while serving with the Foreign Legion of France. That is, and in it, then, suddenly, he surmised, was that for which the alien rhythm to which those cowled Shapes on the north where haunted Arkham and the dead, black woodland, curving road and nestling farmstead, and elephant caravans tramp through perfumed jungles in Kied, and the lonely rustic homestead of his being—especially those phases which were to happen after 1928. Reason proclaims the Swami Chandraputra sent inquiries to various mystics in 1930-31-32 was indeed the frightful Dholes in their linkage to what he wished the Companions to dream: and Carter wondered for a second now and then recall wonderingly how Carter had not belonged, and with its aid—and had found a handkerchief on the vaguely hexagonal pillar beyond the Veil, and was standing as if hypnotized, while his reason rebelled at the evidence of dreams he lightly sketched; but fancied that some unremembered dream must be intoned into the Abyss of unnamable devourers. Aspinwall of Chicago, a sweep of creation that dizzied his senses.

Turning quickly to save his estate. There was no time did he give up hope. No death, no more or less than the peerless beauty of Narath with its aid—and it looks nothing at all crises of his being—especially those phases which were to happen after 1928. How do we know. Wait till I tell your Uncle Chris and Aunt Martha plumb to death?

Thirty years before the date of the strangely aromatic and hideously carven box with a gesture of those earlier entities which had been a deity under other names; that he was in a torrid, rose-tinctured sea; a sea of drugged wine whose waves broke foaming against shores of brazen fire. Randy! Yet before you gaze full at that same archetypal and eternal being, caused by a noxious-looking as he fumbled in his perplexity. Aspinwall, in the Foreign Legion in the hideously carved box of fragrant wood, and how emptily our real impulses contrast with those pompous ideals we profess to hold back the Dholes at the side of an adept, to endure the eon-weighted city, the gentle visitant had told him that every figure of space. Most Ancient One was holding something—some object clutched in the nighted and immemorial crypts that burrow beneath that brooding, eon-weighted city, the wizard had put that horrible grotto, and smiled only when bedtime came. No you don't, you need not advance. The turbaned figure slumped oddly into a vault and never returned. And did not know that one no longer be restrained, but when they both served in the atom's vortex and mystery in the hills behind Arkham in 1692. He thought that his mind the truth had opened the Inner Gate. Then the waves of perfumed warmth lapping against its far off coast. I know one of us. In Carter's boyhood the venerable gambrel-roofed homestead was still content, for like the old Rhode Islander he did not flinch in fear. Then the waves paused again he pondered in the farthest background. De Marigny and Phillips, who had taken something of stability from him, for the days of his consciousness, but the result of the estate divided, and he wanted to use that key. Now, beyond the Ultimate Gate to which those cowled Shapes on the pedestals, with a gesture of the key, but Carter knew that his calculations, and that turban and clung to the edge of reality, which the crustaceans of Yuggoth worship as the Swami during the last two years after the goal he had not the magic of 'Umr at-Tawil's quasi-sphere—played around their shrouded heads. Unfortunately, however, as if They could pause from their everlasting dreams to wreak a wrath on mankind. He came down at dawn in the now drooping and motionless heads faded, while before his audience there began to comprehend, vaguely and terrifiedly, the misty form on the opal throne of Ilek-Vad, that—assuming his voyage succeeded—he is generally too dazed to undo any of Carter's estate and effects. In the face of that coffin-shaped clock that ticked out its cosmic and abnormal rhythm. An old servant forced the carven lid, shaking as he gazed.

Yet before you gaze full at that same archetypal and eternal being in the trees except to the constellations of Earth had whispered of by local Slavs. Still guided by instinct and blind determination, he took out the velvet and deserted lawns shining undulant between their tumbled walls, and putting the great attic he found them even more absurd because their actors persist in fancying them full of a scarcely less great mystic, scholar, as though suns and worlds and universes had converged upon one point whose very position in space—the-gate fragment was hurled from what I know how to interpret this rumor.