#there’s the pieces of the replica mirror of twilight
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Day 2 -- Solitary Confinement
Modern AU where young Wild is a feral forest child, raised by Wolf Twilight. He is captured, separated from Twilight, and put under observation. Confusion, claustrophobia, loneliness.
Wild missed the Wolf.
Well, he missed a lot of things. He missed his own clothes—his cloak, soft blue tunic and khaki trousers, even his shoes—which had been taken from him and replaced with a scratchy, backless gown that seemed to slip off his shoulders every time he dared to move. Even his hair tie was gone, and his long blond hair hung loose around his face. He missed the forest he’d lived in ever since that portal had snatched him up and dropped him in a world he didn’t recognize. He missed his cave that he called home and shared with the Wolf, and he missed the little trinkets the Wolf had brought to him he kept on the shelf next to his bed—his sketchbook, his few pencils, his stuffed replica of Wolf that he slept with every night that Wolf was away. He missed the sounds of the wind blowing through the trees and the birds singing from their branches and leaves rustling beneath his feet on the forest floor. He missed the sky, bright and blue above him.
It was all replaced with silence and this dim white room. Eerily steady lights hummed and flickered overhead, making his ears ring; the cold tile floor nipped at his toes anytime he ventured from the low bed in the corner of the room; the white walls burned themselves into his vision; the air itself, stale and heavy, weighed heavily against his chest with each inhale and exhale; and the one-way mirror on the opposite side of the room antagonized him worse than anything else, taunting him with his own bedraggled reflection.
Wild glared at that mirror, loathing it with all of his being. He imagined driving his fist through it and shattering it to pieces. He focused on a section of the glass, and he hoped that he was managing to stare down whoever was behind it, though he couldn’t tell. Those people hiding behind its shield—people with rounded ears and blinding lights in their hands and rough voices, that talked in a language that he didn’t understand—had been the ones that brought him here. That kidnapped him.
Wild hugged his knees close, curling smaller into himself where he sat on this unfamiliar bed, wedged in the corner of the white, sterile room. Even the bed itself was an odd thing, with dark blue covers covered in cartoonish shapes and the walls around it surrounded by faded, peeling stickers of stars and rainbows as far as one could reach. He thought it might have been meant to brighten up the atmosphere of the room, but the odd splashes of color clashed horribly with the white of the rest of the room, and it only made him all the more anxious.
Guilt and fear waged a battle in Wild’s chest. It was all of his fault that he’d been kidnapped by these strangers, he knew. The Wolf had warned him, with sharp nudges and low growls, from getting too close to the people of this world. People with rounded ears and language and machines outside of his comprehension, similar to the Divine Beasts, but also so different. They’d had a few close encounters—each time, Wolf had signaled for Wild to hide and driven the interlopers away with his fierce stature and glowing blue eyes—and afterwards, Wolf would move them deeper into the forest. He would drive it in, with his expressive glances and exasperated huffs, that these people were to be avoided, at all costs.
In his curiosity, Wild hadn’t listened to the warning. Last night—had it been last night? There was no sun by which to tell the time within here—he’d snuck away from the Wolf to explore one of those nearby villages, with its bright lights and tall buildings and roaring machines.
He’d only meant to have a little expedition, not even crossing the hard roads that crisscrossed the thinner parts of the forest. He’d only wanted a glimpse. But they spotted him, and before he could get his wits about him, he was surrounded. A group of them—all older than him, stronger than him—had run him down through the forest, cornered him against a natural cliff, caught him and wrestled him inside of one of their roaring beasts even as he kicked and screamed, crying out for the Wolf to save him all the while. He’d been too far from home by then, and the Wolf hadn’t heard.
Something had stabbed into his neck, an unnatural sleepiness had overcome him, and he’d woken up here, under the thin covers of that bed in the corner of the room.
Completely alone.
Wild wondered if the Wolf knew where he was. If he knew that he’d even been taken. Perhaps the Wolf was sitting at home, his head on his paws, as he wondered when Wild would get home to cook dinner from whatever he’d hunted during the day. Maybe it hadn’t been long enough, and he didn’t even know that anything was wrong. Wild’s heart clenched at the idea, and he turned his mind away from it, towards action.
Wild knew, rationally, that he had to escape and get back to the Wolf on his own, somehow. But he’d run through the scenarios a thousand times, and there was nothing in the room to help him get out. The door that trapped him here was thick and windowless, its handle stiff and guarded by some glowing square that the strangers hit little buttons on to open and close. He’d already crept over to it, and despite how much he fiddled with the contraption, it only flashed red and beeped at him unrelentingly. Both chairs in the room, as well as the metal table around which they sat, were bolted firmly to the floor, so he couldn’t use their edges to break that cursed window. The flap in the door through which they delivered food—which he had ignored earlier that day—was too small for Wolf to fit his muzzle through, nevermind for Wild himself to shimmy his way out.
And besides, those strangers were still watching him through that window. He couldn’t see them, but he knew they were there, observing his every move. It made his hair stand on end, to know that they could see him while he couldn’t see them in return.
And suddenly, frustration and anger seized Wild so fiercely that he was shooting to his feet and crossing to the one-way mirror before he even realized he’d moved.
“Let me out! Let me out of here!” he demanded in a yell. His reflection shouted back at him, wild-eyed and pale, its shoulders drawn up in defensive anger. He banged his fist against the glass, and it bowed slightly underneath the weight of his blow, but it didn’t break. “What do you want? Who are you people? Where am I? Where’s Wolf? What’s going on? I want to go home!”
There was a cup on the table, it had been there since he arrived. It was filled with some syrupy, sweet smelling liquid that Wild was sure was poison. In an instant, Wild had snatched up the cup and thrown it at the mirror. It bounced off of the glass with a brilliant spatter, then rolled along the floor, emptying the rest of its contents in a wide arc across the sterile white tiles.
“What’s going on? Where’s Wolf! I want to go home!” Wild’s voice rose to a hysterical shriek. “Let me out! I want to go home!”
Wild’s chest heaved with fury as he glared down the mirror, his ears pinned back and his teeth bared in animalistic anger. The mirror, as always, gave him no response.
And suddenly, the room seemed to be growing smaller, and the air thinner. This was it, the walls would close in and the ceiling would lower until he was crushed into a little tiny box. The room would run out of air, and he would suffocate. He’d be trapped here forever until he died, and he’d never escape those eyes that he couldn’t see, and he’d never find Wolf again.
Wild stumbled away from that cursed mirror, choking on air. He had to get away from those eyes, to get away from the white walls so that he could breathe . But how could he hide, when there was no way to escape this room? Somehow, he found his way back to that bed in the corner of the room, and a semblance of an idea managed to rise from the panic consuming his mind.
Wild threw himself underneath the bed, dragging down the covers of the bed to the floor like a curtain to hide himself, and wedged himself into the far corner of the small space. With the eyes finally off of him, his breathing eased, but not by a lot. He hugged his arms around himself, breathing in and out with a count of eight just like Wolf had taught him.
He longed for Wolf so much that it brought tears to his eyes. Wolf would have curled up next to him underneath this bed, poking him with his cold, wet nose until Wild uncurled and buried his face in his thick fur instead. He would’ve walked him out of here and taken him home, where his surroundings had color and sound and natural light, where he wasn’t watched and where things made sense. Instead, he was here all alone, and it was all his fault.
Hylia, he missed Wolf.
Visit me on ao3! Day 2 -- Solitary Confinement
Yeah so basically this is an AU i've been sitting on for a few years that's like Pete's Dragon but instead it's Wild's Wolf and also he gets taken to freaking Area 61 because he's from another world and got those long elf ears. Listen, I don't really have this thing fleshed out. Anyways let me know what you think :D
First Chapter >> Next Chapter
#linked universe#linkeduniverse#wild linked universe#lu wild#wild lu#twilight linked universe#tbf he isn't really here#but he's mentioned a lot#also he's a wolf not actually a person#haven't decided if he can transform or if wild knows if he can#i am in awe of all you modern au people#linked universe au#cheetowrites#febuwhump 2024#febuwhumpday2
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☆ — @replica-model
kind, luke had called him kind. while kratos knew he was giving and compassionate, kind was not exactly his first word of choice of words to use. true kindness, in his eyes did not require seeking atonement nor redemption for past atrocities committed in misplaced grief. kindness was found from a heart that picked love instead of hate—joy instead of sadness even in a world that gave it nothing but misfortune back. how often had a boy with a fondness for the color red bestowed upon kratos new perspective? the crackling of the fire gleamed as a glowing ember engulfed in twilight, kratos used one long log to twist and turn the others to keep the flame burning hot and bright—celeste hued divinity appear as stained glass broken off a shrinechurch behind his person, the slight chill in the air was unaffecting the angel ( being able to turn on and off senses at will had perks ): it allowed him to do something else ‘kind’ as luke would put it—such as giving the replicated man his cloak to use as a blanket as a way to keep himself warmer.
❝ there is much more to humanity than common decency. ❞ or rather, kratos had kept daemon and creature that sometimes had more morals and ethics aligning with humanity’s law than humanity itself. it was an age old question he pondered on from time to time—what it meant to be a human and what it meant to be something far more grandiose or horrifying. was it the ability to rationalize thoughts into the categories of emotion or logic ( or perhaps it was some other third thing inbetween? ): even a man past ten thousand still had questions the universe at his fingertips had yet to give. ❝ but mayhap it is that common decency ideology that makes one human. ❞ kratos stares at luke, his visage slightly distorted by the fire between, and within him sees someone that has over gone much change on a journey like himself—but luke still had much growing to do—but so did kratos— ( did people ever stop evolving? could a person ever truly be complete? ): maybe they did, maybe they did not but kratos was proud of the fact the man he occasionally saw in the mirror was like nothing of the him of the past—but pieces of every version of himself lingered behind his eyes and deepest memories just out of reach—some more tragic than the last. ❝ every kind deed has come at a cost—some great and some small, but a price was charged all the same. ❞
#replicamodel#☆⋮█ ▌𝐈𝐍 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐀𝐂𝐓𝐄𝐑:⠀⠀ ☆⠀⠀ his tongue spills fables long thought lost.#☆⋮█ ▌ 𝐕𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐄 › 𝐃𝐄𝐅𝐀𝐔𝐋𝐓:⠀⠀ ☆⠀⠀ he never claimed to be god but then he never claimed not to be god.
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I think abt Twilight Princess’s Hyrule so much it’s not even funny. It’s soooooo fuckin weird and I love it.
There are inexplicable chasms. Everywhere. What’s beyond them? There’s no ocean, the biggest (and only) body of water is lake hylia. The entire continent seems to be a plateau. There are mostly hylians but also just Normal Actual Humans in Ordon village. Where did the humans come from/disappear to? There’s a secret resistance, but it’s unclear what they’re resisting. The Gerudo desert exists. It is walled off for some reason and you have to access it via canon. The Gerudo themselves are just fucking gone. This is probably because the Hyrulean royal family committed genocide. The only signs of them are at the Hyrulean royal family’s off-site prison/execution grounds. They had a dinosaur at the off-site prison/execution grounds. What were they doing with the dinosaur?? There are four provinces, of which the main three are named after the three golden goddesses, and their respective light spirits. Are these light spirits the goddesses? Servants? Something else? They do not make another appearance in any other game (to my knowledge), so we don’t know. The fourth province is named “ordonna”, after the light spirit, ordonna. What is ordonna? She is completely omitted from the creation story interloper section. Is she not important? She’s literally never mentioned again in any other game, she doesn’t even have a mountain or hill in botw. Was she just so good at minding her own business that when like. Calamity Ganon showed up for the first time, she just took her whole province and peaced out??? Is she just the fourth goddess before skyward sword lore made hylia the main goddess and removed all significance from the other three???
#twilight princess is closely connected to like. ocarina of time. and that’s it#it is soooo separate from the lore of the other games aside from oot#but like. so much is IMPLIED to exist in the background of the world that’s completely unexplained#and then neither ss or botw acknowledged that lore like. at all.#it’s so weird to me#like. botw has tp’s hyrule castle and castle town but otherwise there’s like. nothing.#there’s the pieces of the replica mirror of twilight#YES you can bring wolf link into the game but that’s with an amiibo#also can you tell I’m kinda salty abt how irrelevant din nayru and farore have become#i could make a whole post entirely abt that#i don’t mind zelda being the reincarnation of hylia that’s fine but like. demise’s curse completely sidesteps Ganondorf as a character#the triforce pieces choosing bearers and like. din and the triforce of power choosing ganondorf is just… gone#the individual pieces of the triforce? don’t matter. Zelda holds the triforce of wisdom and that’s INTERESTING#ganon holds the triforce of power and that’s COOL#link holds the triforce of courage and that means he was chosen FOR his courage#having everything come back to hylia just. rubs me the wrong way#i might make a post abt my thoughts on the matter at some point#ANYWAYS#I. LOVE. TWILIGHT PRINCESS’S HYRULE#IT FEELS SO LIVABLE#THERES AN ECONOMY. TRADE. AGRICULTURE#you all know how I get abt the agriculture of hyrule#there are CATS and ENTERTAINMENT and a BAT#BAR#ramblimgs#legend of zelda#zelda#twilight princess#loz tp#loz
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Local resident Zonai knower, I have no knowledge about the Zonai and I've tried to engage in the theories but it's a complete and utter rabbit hole. I presume you know about the Zonai theories so I have to ask either where can I find the basic info or what is the basic info? I recently got the Barbarian Armour Set (I do agree it's very odd they're referred to as war-like and barbarians but setting that aside) and I've been looking at the ruins in Faron so an interest has been ignited within me.
pffft, I do not consider myself much of a Zonai expert, I haven't studied the theories or anything, but the thing about the Zonai is that we really don't know much about them at all. What they looked like, why they made mazes all around Hyrule, or what even happened to them. But, coincidentally, I am working on my own interpretation of them for my Priestesses AU and that involves a little bit of studying what we do know about them on my part so, without further ado, onto the lore and theories!
First of all, let's start with what we can infer directly from the game, they are often described as 'savage' and 'warlike', (which seems like Hylian racism if you ask me...) but that doesn't mean they were primitive or anything, they were had strong magic and invented rubber, a technology that was lost with them. (Though that's only implied as it's an 'ancient material' with the ability to create it being long lost and all the parts being found in Faron... it's not a hard inference to make.)
The statues that are scattered around Faron correlate to the pieces of the triforce or the golden goddesses, implying that they were what was worshipped instead of Hylia. There are primarily owls for Nayru, suggesting that they greatly valued wisdom, the dragon around the spring of courage and generally decorating a lot of their stonework, and a few boar heads here and there, though they seem less important and are much harder to find. (also creating a champion states that they worshipped a water dragon, and we've seen a water dragon in Faron before... cough cough sksw cough) Anyway, they seem to be a very spiritual people ignoring all the synonyms of 'savage' Nintendo shoehorns into their descriptions.
One of the most popular theories about the Zonai are that they are connected/ evolved from the Twili. This is mostly derived from the fact that the MIRROR OF TWILIGHT (or a replica) sits broken into several pieces around Palmore Ruins, the fact that Typhlo exists surrounded by an eternal shadow, and the idea that they have a very similar black and teal aesthetic going on. In Zelda we've seen races evolve over time, Kokiri into Koroks, the Zora just in general, all the monsters. So it's not crazy to think that some Twili had to adapt to live in the light world, at least they found a bunch of trees in a rainforest that has frequently overcast weather to help them avoid the light.
The idea that they were 'warlike' really bothers me though, you can see fragments of the Zonai everywhere but especially with the Sheikah and the Koroks. Those little metal blocks that the Koroks use for puzzles? they have the Zonai crest on them. A bunch of Zonai ruins surrounds so many ancient shrines, their labyrinths are probably made to house some of these shrines. They have towers far outside what would've been considered their domain. They clearly got along with at least a few people.
In any case, they were heavily associated with being magical 'savages' who disappeared suddenly, with no one really knowing what had happened to them, or if they did, it has long been lost to time. Knowing how well religiously centered monarchies treat indigenous people, it's likely far grimmer than just ditching the light world you know? (I have a feeling that with their connection to the sheikah, they could've been made an example out of by the King, as they were more resistant to stopping their technological advancements, with their histories erased and villanized by the royal family, but there isn't really much evidence for this, just my own ideas until more info comes out, the 10k king does seem threatened by entire races of people who are advancing the world...)
Side note: It's also possible that the descendants of the Zonai moved to Lurelin, as their little swirly icon can be seen in the beach town, slightly augmented over time but still recognizable. Perhaps they kinda just merged with the Hylians nearby.
I'm sure we'll get more information about them once TotK comes out, it seems to be pulling from the Zonai aesthetic a little too much to not include more lore about them.
Here's the Zelda Wiki about them if you want it
#having them be descended from the twili gives a lot of interesting artistic interpretations that will be shattered once the game comes out#a lot of people especially when making zonai!Link au's tend to just make them Hylians with war paint#which is weird to me#they don't even make them less white#I'm going to work out my Zonai designs are y'all are going to love them#hopefully#botw#zonai#botw theory#loz botw#totk#tears of the kingdom#breath of the wild#ask andromeda#i love talking lore you have no idea#this ended up much longer than I thought it would be...
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‘THE STARMAKER WHO BURNED TOO HOT’ (The Sunday Mirror - June 14, 1970) The above piece is an extract from journalist Godfrey Winn’s 1970 autobiography ‘The Positive Hour’
Brian Epstein built an empire around the Beatles - but he carried the seeds of his own doom
By GODFREY WINN
BRIAN EPSTEIN was the business brain behind the pop revolution of the sixties. He discovered the Beatles and made them millionaires. As a star-maker, Epstein's career was spectacular but brief. He was thirty-two when he died in August, 1967 - poisoned by an overdose of a sleeping drug. With his love of show-business, GODFREY WINN - Britain's best-known journalist - was a long standing friend of Brian Epstein and watched the pop impresario build a world wide entertainment empire. And he was close enough to Epstein to see the tragic consequences that instant fame and untold fortune had on the young genius.
I found myself one Saturday evening in 1963 climbing the stairs of an anonymous building close to Cambridge Circus, in London’s theatre-land.
In a barren, unfurnished room the walls, with their peeling paint, were decorated with posters of such plays as A Taste of Honey and The Miracle Worker.
i looked at the posters, and decided that there was a certain symbolism, a link here with the intriguing encounter that lay ahead of me.
I thought, too, of all the players who had rehearsed in this room for a multitude of productions: so full of hope that success was this time almost in their grasp, and so often to be reminded that half the members of the actors’ union, Equity, are permanently out of work.
Acclaim
Would it be different for the latest Merseyside group who, already acclaimed in the provinces, were about to have their most important challenge to date, the star spot on the Sunday Night at the Palladium television show?
The Beatles, with the hair-style that they made their own, were still not much more than a name to me.
A few days before I had talked with their manager and discoverer Brian Epstein in the lounge of the Grosvenor Hotel next to Victoria Station.
He was dressed in the kind of silk suit that pop groups wore like a uniform. But there, all comparison ceased.
For at that time he had not yet discarded the solid air of the middle-class Jewish back-ground from which he was sprung.
Unreal
Epstein’s tragedy was that, in surrendering one background, he became so overwhelmed by the trappings of the world into which the fantastic success of his proteges catapulted him that he was never able to put down roots into reality again.
This son of a prosperous Liverpool store-owner was the classic example of the actor manque.
He was nearly thirty when we first met, but as soon as he started talking of the time when he had enlisted as a student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, his voice had the eager lilt of a stage-struck youth.
A moment later his expression had changed. He was earth-bound once more as he described his return to Liverpool and entry into his father’s business.
And how, one day, while he was serving behind the record counter of one of his father's stores, a customer asked about a record made in Germany by an unknown Merseyside group.
And how he tracked down the record, later saw the group performing “for peanuts” at the Cavern in Liverpool, and sensed "something dynamic”; then peddled their tapes around London recording companies.
“And do you know, that tape, that very first record, Love Me Do, sold a hundred thousand. We were IN."
Just as I was in, now - the only spectator at the Beatles' private rehearsal for the Palladium.
Screams
Or rather, myself plus the tailor who had brought with him the four new suits, black like a matador’s, that Epstein had ordered for them to wear, replicas of his own. They put them on and pranced round the rehearsal room, bowing to an imaginary audience of fourteen million viewers.
“Ladies and Gentlemen: We are very pleased to be here at the Palladium.
Suddenly, uncontrollable excitement possessed them. The Palladium. The Palladium, they shouted out, screaming like their own fans, as other pilgrims have cried across the centuries. Jerusalem on high.
It was the youngest who spoke the introduction. He wasn't satisfied till he had taken them through it a dozen times.
"It's the moment before the curtain opens," Paul commented with the air of a veteran. “You finger your guitar and hope they won't start throwing things."
The moment they started to tune their guitars they seemed to fill the shadows of the lonely rehearsal room, darkening into twilight, and at the same time to grow in stature themselves.
The Beatles will always be held in high regard for what they have achieved by the unique sound of their music.
Having been among the first to recognise their talent, I feel I am in a position to suggest now that what has gone wrong somewhere along the line has been their inability, especially in the case of George Harrison and John Lennon, to pour back sufficient of the bounty that has fallen into their lap.
Perhaps it has been part of their appeal for the adolescents, that they themselves have not grown up in the full meaning of the phrase, any more than Brian Epstein was able to do.
Right up till his unnecessary, wanton death Epstein went on referring to his discoveries as his “boys,” seeing himself as the fifth member of the hierarchy, the eldest Beatle.
Then, when the group ceased performing together except for recording sessions, he could not help feeling to some extent excluded, even though he was still their manager - “the boss,” as they called him.
Dire
So in order to try to prove that he was someone big, in the theatrical firmament, in his own right, he started producing and putting on plays, with dire results.
He had all the money in the world to squander, but too little productive talent of his own.
Disappointed, and depressed, though he would not admit it, he finally turned to pep pills by day, and sleeping pills by night, a diet that was ultimately to destroy him.
Once he proclaimed to me, standing outside the Palladium: “All that matters is to have your name in lights.”
I could not persuade him otherwise, though I had persuaded him to spend the Sunday before the Whitsun holiday, making the journey all the way to Bolton in Lancashire, to hear an unknown singer in a pub, who had been recommended to me with such persistence and such enthusiasm by one of my readers, that in the end I felt it churlish of me not to do something about it.
Kinder?
The singer’s name was Michael Haslam. He was married and worked by day in a local tannery, and he specialised in singing ballads.
As it happened, Epstein was looking at that moment for a ballad singer, as a contrast on his touring bills to such of his properties as Billy J. Kramer and Gerry and the Pacemakers.
Otherwise, I doubt whether he would have ever listened to my suggestion, and in a way now I wish I hadn’t been persuaded myself to make the effort.
To have done nothing might have been kinder in the long run to the dark, tall young man, with the sort of looks which Elvis Presley first made fashionable, and the physique of a miner, who packed them in at weekends at The White Hart.
Except that if the Beatles’ impresario had not turned up that Sunday evening in Bolton, yet another pub singer might still be imagining he was there only because the luck of being discovered had just never happened to come his way.
Certainly the audience reaction that evening in Bolton was tremendous and entirely spontaneous. I can hear it, smell it how. Even so, I was not entirely convinced myself.
Undoubtedly there was a voice of some lyrical power, but did he also possess sufficient personality?
And how would he stand up to another environment, bereft of his regular admirers, alone on a stage, or in front of a TV camera?
Epstein brushed aside my doubts. On the spot he decided to sigh Haslam up, with the arrogant impetuosity of a Tsar.
Anxious
Two or three evenings later, Epstein and I met again, this time in my London home. We had arranged that he should pick me up and have a drink, en route for the Palladium.
He was eager for me to see another of his proteges, This time the girl, also from Liverpool, who through his astute judgment had with surprising sped reached what used to be the Mecca of all music hall artists.
Cilla Black.
In the fervent hope that one day Mike Haslam, equally skilfully projected, would reach the same goal, I accepted, though Miss Black’s nasal voice with its Liverpudlian vowels screaming at me over the radio at breakfast time had not created in my mind the most enticing of images.
Doubts
However, none of that was my affair. I could switch off the knob.
Whereas the other artist, uprooted and disorientated, was to some extent my responsibility.
In the forty-eight hours which had intervened, my initial doubts had only grown.
“After all, Brian, if I hadn’t dragged you to Bolton, you would never have heard of him.” Even to myself, it sounded like a self-accusation, but my guest again brushed aside my fears.
“Don’t worry,” he replied, with a rajah-like wave of his hand.
“But I do worry,” I protested anxiously.
“You shouldn’t. Don’t you realise, it’s nothing to do with you anymore. Mike Haslam belongs to me now.
“From this moment he is my discovery, and I shall look after him completely, change him, mould him, fit him into my set-up.
“All the credit, all his future success will be entirely my doing. You merely introduced him to me. Anyone might have done that.”
I was flabbergasted rather than relieved by this lofty declaration.
Rebuff
In an instant he had assumed the air of the great, international impresario slapping down a small-time sleazy agent who had dared to suggest that he should have a slice in the property value of the unknown name about to be groomed for stardom.
Of course, I wanted no financial stake in the young man’s future. I was not in show business in any shape or form.
At the same time, I surely had an ethical stake. A moral stake, if you like. Anyway, something quite different and rather more binding.
But I was meeting the real Brian Epstein for the first time.
Gone was the mask of mock humility, worn by the apparently modest young man fresh from the provinces, who in his original talk with me had praised and congratulated everyone except himself.
For the first time I glimpsed the strong streak of paranoia, which was swiftly to grow into a kind of sickness.
Welcome
Not surprisingly, I was dismayed and we had an uncomfortable evening, saved, as far as I was concerned, by the affectionate welcome I received in the dressing room of Frankie Vaughan, who was the real star of the show.
He and the boys in the band were deep in a poker session, but the occupant of the coveted No. 1 room broke off without a trace of annoyance and jumped up from his seat to offer us drinks.
How different had been my reception in the No. 2 dressing room.
Miss Black was seated in an ungainly position, her legs sprawled out in front of a portable television set, and did not trouble to get out of her chair, or to make any attempt at conversation.
After a few embarrassed moments, I backed out into the passage again, and it was then, at my suggesting that surely his new girl needed a matronly, experienced woman in attendance to help and advise her back-stage, that Epstein made the comment that having your name in lights was the only thing which mattered.
I expect he thought my suggestion was an impertinent one, though it was only intended to be constructive.
Unfortunately, I had already promised to have supper with him afterwards, and then to see his new house, and Miss Black, dressed in a black leather coat, more suitable for the back of a motor-cycle, came along, too.
Surprise
Not wishing to lie openly about my reactions to her performance, and searching for some topic of conversation which would be of mutual interest, I asked my host if he was contemplating adding any other female singers to the troupe of artists under his banner.
I am still surprised when I recall the reply I received, uttered with absolute and final conviction.
“No, I do not need any other women artists. Cilla is the Edith Piaf of England.”
Whatever she was or has become - and Miss Black has undoubtedly achieved a large and loyal following among her contemporaries - she is not another Edith Piaf, that great Parisian singer. How could she be?
Despite all Epstein’s confident assertions, Mike Haslam failed to float for long in the larger pool.
Symbols
Even while he was still alive I never talked with Brian Epstein alone again, after that evening at the Palladium, when in the small hours I found myself standing in a room in his house dominated by a row of telephones of different colours on a long desk.
Nothing else about the house, the modernistic innovations of which suited his temperament, left any mark upon my memory.
Only the telephones, those inanimate props of a tycoon existence, stare at me like a blown-up photograph on my desk. The symbols and instruments of a certain kind of power.
“I lift one receiver,” he told me exultantly, “and say to the operator ‘Get me a Hollywood number.’ I book in that call, and five minutes later I am talking to New York.
“Hardly have I rung off, when it is Australia on the line. Everyone wants me, everyone wants the Beatles. Everyone wants all my boys.”
“What about the time factor?” I asked. “For instance, when it is mid-day here, and perhaps three o’clock in the morning there, or vice-versa?”
“I don’t mind about that. I am ready to take calls all round the clock. I like it best sitting here by myself through the night, doing business. Big business.”
His usually deceptive, quiet voice rose to a crescendo: he was playing the big scene in the third act from all the stage and screen dramas of which he had been cheated by his inability to make the grade as an actor in the legitimate theatre.
But I had no desire to play in turn the part of the stage stooge, and fled from that house in Kinnerton Street to walk home through Belgrave Square, where at the corner of Chapel Street and Groom Place the nocturnal life of the fifth Beatle was finally to snuff out in the last of his London homes, whose larger rooms he had furnished in even more grandiose style.
Some months before that happened, he had a breakdown, which was hushed up, and then they put him in a private nursing home at Roehampton, in Surrey, which caters particularly for patients whose minds have been temporarily disturbed.
Guarded
After that he was never without a friendly and considerate bodyguard, who became his shadow.
Except on that final weekend when, in a sudden change of mood, he decided to drive himself from his country home at Heathfield, Sussex, back to London, though it was a bank holiday.
The Chapel Street house was only a stone’s throw from where my elder brother lives, and sometimes, when I was dining with my family, my sister-in-law, more in bewilderment than disapproval, would comment:
“Such strange people hang about Mr. Epstein's house.
“I suppose they are waiting, hoping that one of the Beatles will come out.”
That Sunday afternoon, when the news of his death broke, and the police cars drove up, the flower boys and girls in their peacock clothes left the Kings Road parade and crowded into Chapel Street, as though they were queueing up for a pop concert.
As far as I was concerned the epitaph was spoken by David Jacobs - not the disc jockey but the lawyer, with the looks himself of a film star - who acted for so many other names in show business beside the Beatles.
Freedom
Now that it was all over, the final battle lost, Epstein's adviser from the start spoke to me with a freedom he could not have done before:
“The trouble with Brian was that he had everything, and yet nothing.
“He had a strong family feeling, right till the end, and his loyalty towards the Beatles and his other properties, like Cilla Black, was fantastic.
“I suppose you could describe it as a kind of love affair on his side, but nothing stands still in life, and he was conscious that they were inevitably growing away from him, as they matured both as artists and people.
“This made him more and more restless and unhappy, though he wouldn’t admit it except in one of his increasing moods of depression, when all I could do was to remind him how much he was worth, in money and properties.
“But even that knowledge began to lose its flavour. It was then that he started taking pills to try to recapture the sense of euphoria he had had at the beginning.
“It was imperative for him to feel that he was still in the swim himself, not just taking a percentage of their earnings.
“I hoped so much that the house at Heathfield would make a difference.
“He had gone down that weekend for the Bank Holiday. But after dinner on that Friday evening, he suddenly changed his mind and drove himself back to London, alone.
“What would I have done had I known? It’s always so easy to be wise after the event.
“Sometimes one has a kind of instinct, and can act swiftly, but even then it can be too late, or impossible to protect the person indefinitely against himself, if the seeds of self-destruction are strongly developed in him or her.
“In this case we shall never know for certain exactly what happened. Except that he went to sleep again that night, and never woke up.
Loner
“In a way, I was closer to him than anyone. He really unburdened himself to me.
“He was not so much a loner, as a oncer.
“What do I mean by that? I mean that he was incapable of any lasting physical relationship with anyone. He was incapable of love.”
All too soon David Jacobs himself was to discover his own torments.
#Brian Epstein#Godfrey Winn#The Positive Hour#Cilla Black#Michael Haslam#David Jacobs#Sunday Mirror#newspaper#1970#70s
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Too much had happened.
Of course Xemnas had gone for Kairi. And Isa’s passing was a sore that Lea wasn’t ready to look at, wasn’t ready to embrace for the possibility it was. But Roxas and Xion were here, and when Xion burst into relieved tears, Roxas looked as shocked and startled as Lea felt.
She had...never cried in front of him before. Not even when she learned the truth. Not even at the end.
"I...wish I brought some ice cream,” he threw out, hoping the oddball nature of it would lighten the mood. Who brought ice cream to a fight to the death? But both of them turned and smiled at him like they didn’t even need it, and Lea saw the tears swimming in both their big, expressive eyes, and--
In the moment before his arms would have closed around them, Axel woke up.
He panted disjointedly in the darkness of his room, jade eyes darting around for imagined enemies as every horror and every elation in the dream assaulted him at once. Even though he was awake now, the dream remained in crystal clarity, detail for detail, with every domino leading to the next and the next. Axel could see them all, reflected in the life he’d re-entered, just waiting for the first one to waver.
Sitting up, he swept his fingers over his eyes and cupped his face. Was that real? Had that happened? Stupid question, when he was still in his room at Never Was. But he flung aside the covers on a whim and turned on the light, padding quickly over to the mirror and staring into it.
Two fingers pressed down on the purple tear under his right eye, and released. Still there.
They were permanent, he reminded himself. Like all of this. What the hell kind of logic was it, that “recompletion” or whatever would just erase them? The thought bothered him. If that future came to pass, and Isa never returned, then...
It would be the only thing left to Lea to remember him by.
Axel leaned forward, numbing his forehead against the mirror as his thoughts raced. It couldn’t be true. None of this was right. None of it would come to pass, but yet...but.
Xion was a Replica. And Roxas grew weaker, day by day.
---
“I’m just talking theoretically,” Axel said, tentatively laying down a seven of clubs. “I mean, if anyone’s an expert on predicting the future, it’s probably you.”
“Hardly,” Luxord said, and the Gambler Nobody at Axel’s right laid down a three of clubs in turn. “The future is anybody’s game. I live entirely in the now,” he said, dropping the Queen of Spades with a flourish.
Axel made a pained noise, but reluctantly collected the trick. “Alright, I mean, but...what if it’s. Not like that? What if it’s already written.”
Luxord didn’t answer that.
They played until Axel lost horribly, trading his breezy Twilight Town mission for Luxord’s in Neverland (as both of them pretended this hadn’t been the inevitable outcome), and only then did Luxord return to the subject. “If the future were so linear,” he said thoughtfully, frowning at the idea; “then knowing its secrets would be a terrible fate indeed.”
As he probably should have expected, Axel left Luxord’s company worse off than he’d started.
---
How would he explain it to Roxas? That thought haunted him. Already it was so difficult to put things into words around them both, and Axel didn’t expect Roxas to understand. There was a part of him that wanted to enjoy this while it lasted, put it off, deny. But he’d seen the results, and the only way to fight that outcome was to risk it all and welcome the worst with open arms.
“Axel!” Xion said in surprise, when he answered her offer to come in. She was already partway to the door, most likely expecting Roxas instead, and her eyes widened at the look on his face. “What’s wrong?”
And Axel took a deep breath.
“Xion...” he got out, and took both her shoulders in his hands. “Listen to me. There’s someone who can fix all this. But it’s...it’s gonna be really hard.”
Xion’s eyebrows turned up and a worried look crossed her face. “Sora.”
Clenching his jaw, Axel nodded.
Xion’s lips turned up in a trembling, sad smile, and she put a hand over one of his, closing her eyes.
“I understand.”
---
There was one more loose end.
No matter how Axel turned it over in his mind, he knew it’d never work. Saix already couldn’t even see what drew Axel to Xion, and there was no way he’d understand Axel taking them both and fleeing the Organization to turn them over to the Organization’s enemies directly. It would be a betrayal, no matter what he did. All he could do was make it painless.
And take Saix’s choices away.
So he visited in Saix’s office, the place where Saix was most likely to be distracted. Just like he would any other day, he entered with a flourish and a casual skim of his fingertips over the desk, his face as empty of emotion as any Nobody’s, with a joker’s grin that didn’t reach his eyes. He’d prepared enough, and all the pieces were in place for this last little show.
And, unlike his last card game, Axel had an ace up his sleeve.
“Hey. You busy, or can I monopolize you for a bit?”
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5 Futuristic Furniture Designs in TV & Film
Inspiration from artistic directors and designers looking to emulate the styles of the future; the unknown.
Koonsian chairs, in 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
It’s always intriguing to watch a futuristic film that was set in a year we’ve now surpassed. We look back and think, “Is that what they really thought we’d have by now?” 2001: A Space Odyssey’s idea was that the future is in Outer Space. The 1960s were a time when space exploration really took off, pun intended, and if it had continued at this same rate, this film could have very well been a spot-on depiction of 2001. Their idea of the future of furniture and interior design was clean, simple, yet playful and almost always void of sharp edges. It’s not hard to wonder why right angles and edges wouldn’t be suitable for a space station.
A Clockwork Orange, 1971.
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, the same as ‘A Space Odyssey,’ there was no determined year that this story took place. They emulated furniture designs of the 1970s as well as fine art and performance pieces of the time. The goal here seemed much more focussed on oddity than estimated accuracy. An attempt to make an unknown future as bizarre as one could imagine, adding the female form coffee tables as shock factors.
Mars Attacks Ball Chairs, 1996
Supposedly taking place in the 1990′s, the film takes on a lot of modern design inspiration from the 50s and 60s. It’s noticeable in the US army uniforms, tanks, and other military equipment throughout the film, but also within the furniture. For example the famous Ball Chair, similar to those in the photo above, was designed by Finnish furniture designer Eero Aarnio in 1963.
Bedroom set in Black Mirror: Fifteen Million Merits, 2011.
Black Mirror, a popular Netflix TV Show, is our modern day version of the Twilight Zone. Each episode is different from the last but is always depicted in the future. With the dates not specified, plenty is left to the imagination. Often dealing with themes of dystopian societies, the episode Fifteen Million Merits gave us the world’s most annoying bedroom. Covered in LED screens and void of real windows or natural light, the bedroom feels like what would happen if someone became physically stuck within YouTube. The alarm clock is an AI that turns the screen to animated rooster calls. The characters are forced to interact with the AI making the room feel much like a futuristic jail cell. The heavily technology based designs in this show draw their inspiration from our modern day gone terribly wrong.
Men In Black 3 headquarters, 2012
Not unlike the other films in this list, the Men In Black series takes much of their modern design inspiration from the late 1950s early 60s. In the photo above, the chair to the very left is a replica of the Egg chair, designed by Arne Jacobsen in 1958. While most everything in this particular Headquarters set has been replaced with a seamless white plastic or fiberglass material, the designs depicted are familiar. This movie takes on the challenge of highly futuristic designs set in the modern day, but right underneath our noses.
Where do you think the future of design will go?
#furniture design#futuristic#movies#tv#film#egg chair#eames#mars attacks#men in black 3#black mirror#space odyssey#a clockwork orange#future#koonsian#furniture#design#interior design#set design#movie set#production#furniture building#artistic director#matthew shively#mshivelydesign#art love design#art
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Timestamp #160: Doctor Who (The Movie)
New Post has been published on https://esopodcast.com/timestamp-160-doctor-who-the-movie/
Timestamp #160: Doctor Who (The Movie)
Doctor Who: The Movie (1996)
It’s a major turning point: The gateway between the classic era and the modern. But first, the Doctor must face Y2K.
The Master finally came to trial for his litany of crimes on the planet Skaro as part of a treaty between the Daleks and the Time Lords. Over cat eyes, we learn that the Master’s final request was for the Doctor to carry his remains back to Gallifrey for final disposition. The Doctor places the Master’s urn in a lockbox and secures it with a new sonic screwdriver before settling in with “In a Dream” on the gramaphone, The Time Machine in his hands, and a bowl of jelly babies. The control room is massive and gorgeous, and reflects the Seventh Doctor’s twilight years to a tee.
The Master breaks out of the urn and the lockbox, moving as a shadowy snake form to the TARDIS console and shorting it out, forcing the Doctor to make an emergency landing on Earth, San Francisco, New Years Eve, 1999. The TARDIS materializes in the middle of a gang fight, saving a young survivor in the process. Unfortunately, the Doctor (who didn’t use the scanners, I guess) steps into the fight and is shot. As Chang Lee calls for an ambulance, the Master escapes through the TARDIS lock.
The Doctor (on the record as John Smith) is rushed to the hospital, but modern medicine fails him. The x-ray accurately reflects his two hearts, and the bullet wounds are not particularly life-threatening (one in the shoulder, two in the leg), but the heart readings require a cardiac specialist. Enter: Grace Holloway.
The Doctor wakes up on the operating table to the sound of Madame Butterfly, pleading with Grace to stop the surgery and get him a beryllium atomic clock. The surgical team ups the anesthetic and proceeds, but human surgery on Time Lord physiology proves fatal. The Seventh Doctor dies on the operating table. Grace reviews the x-rays before informing Lee of the bad news, and Lee runs off with the Doctor’s personal effects.
We are treated to a double Time Lord resurrection: On the other side of the city, the Master has hitched a ride home with an ambulance driver named Bruce. As he snores away, preventing his wife from sleeping, Bruce is taken over and killed by the Master. Bruce’s wife is happy for the silence. At the hospital, the Doctor’s body is loaded into the morgue and regenerates in parallel with the 1931 version of Frankenstein. The Doctor bangs at the door and breaks out of the freezer, scaring the on-duty attendant. The Eighth Doctor finds a mirror (or thirteen… see what they did there?) in a broken room (seriously, what?) while humming Madame Butterfly. In shock, he screams and questions who he is.
As morning dawns, we find Grace Holloway in her office, the Doctor rifling through lockers for clothing (and discarding a replica of the Fourth Doctor’s scarf), and Lee trying to figure out what a sonic screwdriver does (as well as examining a yo-yo, the Doctor’s pocketwatch, and the TARDIS key). The Doctor finds a Wild Bill Hickok costume (intended for the New Years Eve costume party), discarding the gun belt and hat in the process. Meanwhile, the Master awakens (with glowing green eyes) and kills Bruce’s wife.
Pete, the morgue attendant, shows Grace what happened the night before. She walks right by the Doctor, who is still suffering from the effects of his regeneration, before meeting with the hospital administrator. The administrator tries to cover up the events of the botched surgery, and she quits her job as a result. As she’s leaving, the Doctor joins her in the elevator and follows her to her car. He begs her for help, pulling the abandoned cardiac probe from his chest as Grace drives him away.
The Master arrives at the hospital and demands to see the Doctor’s body, but finds out that the corpse is missing and that Lee has the Doctor’s possessions. Meanwhile, Grace and the Doctor arrive at her home to find that her boyfriend has left her (and taken her furniture). She examines the Doctor and his heartbeats as his memory fades back in. Grace is upset and confused by the whole affair, but the Doctor comforts her in his awkward way.
Lee finds his way to the TARDIS and steps inside, having one of the most amazing “bigger on the inside” moments. Unfortunately, he also finds the Master, who somehow entered before without the TARDIS key. The Master enthralls Lee and takes the Doctor’s things before demanding that Lee help him find the Time Lord. The Master tells Lee a false tale of how the Doctor stole his regenerations, offering the human gold dust and a tour of the TARDIS, including the Cloister Room. In the depths of the Cloister Room is the Eye of Harmony, the heart of the TARDIS, and Lee is able to open it with a little coercion. The Eye shows the Master and Lee the Doctor’s Seventh and Eighth incarnations, and the image of a human retina leads the Master to believe that the new Doctor is half-human.
That’s an important note to make: The Master makes the assumption that the Doctor is somehow half-human. While the Master – who has known the Doctor for a really, really long time – should presumably know better, the Doctor’s lineage is not a statement of fact. It is a wild assumption.
The Doctor finishes getting dressed (and finally removing his toe tag) as Grace examines his blood. They take a walk to clear their minds, jogging the Doctor’s memories of his own childhood. The joy of this incarnation is amazing. As the Eye of Harmony is opened, he remembers that he is the Doctor and kisses Grace, making this the first romantic moment for the Doctor in the franchise.
I’m okay with that. New face, new body, new Doctor.
With the Eye of Harmony open, the Doctor and the Master can share vision through the Eye. The Doctor closes his eyes and gives Grace the download on who he is. Lee also hears this, chipping away at the Master’s thrall. Grace runs away in shock and locks the Doctor out of her house. Despite the Doctor’s protests, Grace calls for an ambulance, but the Doctor shows her that the Eye of Harmony is tearing the planet apart by walking through a window without breaking it. The Master and Lee oblige her request by hijacking an ambulance and taking it to meet the doctor (and the Doctor).
The Doctor watches the news while they wait for the ambulance, learning that a local institute is unveiling a beryllium atomic clock, which is exactly what he needs to close the Eye. The doorbell rings, and it’s the Master calling. Grace has no idea, but the Doctor obviously recognizes the Master, and nevertheless, they all pile into the ambulance and hit the road. Eventually, the Doctor unmasks the Master and runs with Grace. They hijack a police motorcycle with jelly babies and race for the institute with the Master in pursuit.
Notably, the Doctor does use a gun once again, but it’s a distraction instead of a threat.
Lee knows a shortcut – of course he does – so they beat the Doctor and the doctor to the clock. They proceed inside and look for a way to the clock, passing the Doctor off as “Dr. Bowman” and meeting Professor Wagg, the inventor of the device. In the meantime, the Doctor explains more about himself, and distracts the professor with a joke about being half-human while swiping his badge. They take a piece of the clock, distract a guard with a jelly baby, and spot the Master before running. They race to the roof (understandably, the Doctor is afraid of heights) and use a fire hose to drop to the street before heading to the TARDIS.
They use a spare key to open the TARDIS, have a humorous moment with a police officer driving in and out of the time capsule, and go inside to install the clock component in the console. Unfortunately, the Eye has been open too long and the cosmos are in danger. The TARDIS also has no power. They attempt to jump-start the TARDIS, but Grace is enthralled by the Master as he arrives. She knocks the Doctor out and together, she and Lee take him to the Eye. The Master supervises as Grace places a device on the Doctor’s head to prop his eyes open. The Doctor pleads with Lee, and Lee refuses to open the Eye when the Doctor points out the Master’s lies. The Master kills Lee by snapping his neck, then enthralls Grace into opening the Eye.
Apparently, only a human’s eyes can open the Eye. Which is weird, but kind of plays into a theory of mine… more on that later.
The Eye’s light is focused on two points, designed in this case to channel the Doctor’s regenerative energy into the Master and extend the villain’s lifespan. The light of the Eye breaks Grace’s trance, and she runs to the console to reroute the power. At the very last second, Grace jump-starts the TARDIS and they travel into a temporal orbit. She releases the Doctor, but the Master throws her off the balcony and kills her. The two Time Lords fight over the eye, but the Doctor is triumphant and the Master falls into the Eye. The Doctor tries to rescue him, but the Master refuses and is (apparently) killed.
The Doctor places Lee and Grace on a balcony in the Cloister Room, and the energy of the Eye infuses with them, bringing them back to life courtesy of the TARDIS and its sentimentality. The Doctor shows them Gallifrey from a distance before returning midnight on January 1, 2000. Lee departs with the gold dust and a little advice after returning the Doctor’s stuff, and the Doctor offers Grace the opportunity to travel with him. Grace declines, and the Doctor departs for a new adventure.
This presentation is deeply flawed, but it does have a lot of things working for it. I love the theme music (even if they don’t credit Ron Grainer or Delia Derbyshire) and I do love the humor and Doctor/Grace banter. On the other hand, it is swimming in the cheesiness that defined televised American science fiction in the 1990s, and a lot of those elements fall flat in the spirit of Doctor Who. I mean, can we get that hospital a little more funding for the entire floor full of broken junk?
The story also has a fixation on people stealing people’s stuff. Was there a major trend of kleptomania in the mid-90s?
Paul McGann is simply a joy to watch, and his energy and joy shines in this story. It’s also interesting to watch the “half-human” controversy play out: The Master takes it seriously based on scant evidence, but the Doctor plays it as a joke. I have often wondered if Gallifreyans are some sort of evolved human being – it’s definitely possible given that the default appearance is always human, most medical exams show only the two hearts as a physical difference, and that whole Eye of Harmony key thing – but I don’t think that the Doctor is any more human than that. The evidence just doesn’t support it.
All in all, this story would fall into the average range, which is a shame since Paul McGann deserved so much better. Of course, this was also a regeneration story, so it gets a little boost per the rules of the Timestamps Project.
Rating: 4/5 – “Would you care for a jelly baby?”
UP NEXT – Seventh Doctor Summary
The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.
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@recordbound found a lost hero
Somewhere in all of this, Link had made a mistake, a fact which was made all too clear by the blood seeping between his fingers, and the fragment that lay in the dirt before him. Despite the stinging throb in his side, the latter was more of a concern than the former, for his skin would mend itself - the mirror replica, however, wouldn’t, and especially not if the rest of the pieces were missing. Without it, the hero found himself effectively trapped, not to mention at a loss as to where he was.
For this certainly wasn’t the Twilight Realm, much to his agonizing disappointment.
“D... D-Dòch-ch-chas!” The curse slid past his lips in a pained growl, and Link squeezed his eyes shut as he tried to clear his head. It wasn’t exactly an easy task for one who found themselves on their knees, battling the dizziness that came with blood loss. Last time he’d gone in search of mirror fragments, he’d had Midna to guide him, to help make the journey go smoothly. Now, however? Link was alone in a strange place, and that alone might very well end up stranding him in there.
What to do?
It was the sound of something approaching him from behind that caused Link’s shoulders to stiffen instinctively. Hands flew for the bow at his back as he turned, an arrow at the ready and pointed in the direction of the noise. For a moment, he held his position, ready to fire should some beast have decided to approach - only to realize that there was no monsters in sight.
Just a young man, close to himself in age, albeit with a... strange appearance.
“C... C-Cò ...?” He wavered, weapon lowering now as he stared at the newcomer. The other’s white hair reminded him of Impaz, though obviously it was impossible for them to have any relation. Still, the sight of another was a relief - perhaps his situation wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.
Cringing, the Hylian pressed his hand to the wound at his side once more, “An urr-rainn dh... dh-dhut m-m-mo chuid-d-deacha-dhdh?”
#Δ ●v; realms● Δ#Δ ●wanderings; ic● Δ#recordbound#recordboundtag#Sorry this one got kinda long xD;;;#I got kinda into it lol#Also hover over the links to see the translations <3
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The silver-colored dial is sandblasted and has a slight curve to match the shape of the case. Slender gold hands, gold indexes and Roman numerals at the six and twelve o'clock positions complement each other perfectly and are of course made of the same gold as the case.
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The "Tornaroglou" (or you prefer "Mouratornare") project began quickly and eventually became a beautiful timer. "Patrick told me that his dream was to create his own watch, so I said he had to come over and visit the workshop, " Tonere said.
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Season 2, Cassette 8: Ohara Museum of Art (1980)
[tape recorder turns on]
Hello, I am curator Leah Akane, welcoming you to the Ohara Museum of Art, and our special exhibit of the work of the late Claudia Atieno. Toward the end of Atieno’s life, it was suggested by friends that she was walking toward more epic depictions. But as those works are unfinished, or perhaps not begun, we have but her more intimate concepts.
In this exhibit, we will see some of Atieno’s more political tributes to classic works, which were lost in the Great Reckoning. We also have the rarely displayed “Attentiveness”, which I feel has been an underrated part of Atieno’s catalogue.
Narrating your audio guide is journalist, artist, and dear friend of Atieno, Roimata Mangakāhia. We are (blessed) to have Mangakāhia’s knowledge not only of Atieno as an artist, but as a person. While not nearly as successful as her late friend, Mangakāhia has been an invaluable champion of Atieno’s work, perhaps as important to Atieno’s popularity as Atieno’s own talent.
We hope you find deeper understanding and appreciation for Atieno’s work, a life in art sadly cut short.
The exhibit begins in the main gallery. Artworks included in the audio guide are numbered. Enjoy your time at the Ohara Museum of Art.
[bell chimes]
One. “Stars”. Little remains of impressionist Vincent van Gogh’s work. There are a handful of photographs of “Starry Night”, and a portion of what remains in the paintings hangs in Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art. Its new (Harmer Island) structure, a masterpiece of modern architecture.
Many works of the European masters were lost in the Great Reckoning. Many works by artists worldwide were lost, but at the center of Western art history were the impressionists. “Starry Night”, Manet’s “Olympia”, Cézanne’s “The Card Players”. These paintings are often recreated by artists in our new society. An exercise in cultural reclamation of course, an attempt to return to the knowledge and art and history that was lost after the war. But with “Stars”, Atieno took this replication trend in a new direction, a direction that rejected recreating what was lot. In fact, Atieno’s replicas were reappropriations of classic images. In her way, Atieno was rejecting a return to the past and embracing the society, albeit the society she wanted, not the society that was.
From the moment I first saw Claudia in 1970, she was obsessed with replications. In “Stars”, she takes the stylized swirls and moist, twinkling glimmer of twilight, and brings all of its vibrant motion to a halt. The irony of Atieno’s version of “Stars” is its complete lack of stars. The black sky looms above a charcoal city at night, mostly war-scarred and evacuated. Or worse, eradicated. The stars likely shine and soar behind the choking clouds, unaware and unobserved. What we see is merely a moon struggling to be seen in a humid black haze above the town.
Notice in the center of her painting the church spire, broken. The rising hills along the right, rocky and charred. The homes him and roofless. There are large spirals of smoke mirroring van Gogh’s inspired blue swirls, but in Atieno’s “Stars”, we see only variations of gray. The one contrast in her bleak landscape is the tall flames in the foreground on the left.
Did you ever go to church? What is a spire? Did God do this to us? If so, whose God?
Some critics refer to this as a fire representing the destruction of the Reckoning. But I believe that Atieno was attempting to evoke a bonfire, a possible celebration by the townspeople in the universe of her painting. A communal fire to burn old art, books, clothes and doctrines of the tribes which led the world to such destruction. The art of war, obviously, paintings and written accounts of war heroes, as we know now that war holds no place for heroes. All themes of national superiority were turned one by one to ash. Underneath the bleak sky, we have a fire of a new day, of a new people wishing to rid themselves of the package of their past, the treachery of nation states and family.
It’s a brilliant work and a perfect approach to artistic repurposing. It’s difficult to say when repurposing becomes just a copy or plagiarism, sometimes even the artist doesn’t know where to draw the line.
[bell chimes]
Two. “Attentiveness”.
Many critics claim Atieno’s “Attentiveness” is her most garish work, noting its bold, almost clumsy strokes and its unsubtle praise of her own fame and wealth. I don’t disagree with them, but I would hate to completely dismiss this work simply for its lack of tact and technique.
While Atieno never stated directly that it was a self portrait, it’s easy to place her as the woman central to this painting. Her narrow shoulders and short stature contrasted against the long, dark, braided hair.
The woman is exiting a luxury automobile, her head turned from the viewer, and a woman on the other side of the open car door, taking a camera from her bag.
Look at the photographer’s mouth agape, caught in a moment of surprise and awe at this chance encounter with a celebrity. Have you ever seen a celebrity? [chuckles] Were you this obvious about it? Are you impressed by luxury automobiles? Do you wear driving gloves?
While she often bemoaned the loss of her anonymity and by extension, a freedom of self, Atieno most certainly relished the attention her career provided her. She would shower, dress, put on makeup, take off makeup, undress, shower again and repeat the process for two hours before a gallery opening.
She always dressed fashionably, but at private parties or events, she carried herself casually and comfortably. She did not like photographs, only compliments. She grew bored with conversations that did not acknowledge her talents at least occasionally. I had many conversations with Claudia that acknowledged her talents, as I urged her to focus on larger projects, pieces that could continue to impact the art world, as she slipped further an further into lazy drawings of discarded papers and staplers and weak forgeries disguised as tributes. I told her about her incredible talents and she liked that part. I followed it up with a critique of her process, and that she liked less.
In “Attentiveness”, Atieno does not paint the face of the woman, only the face of the woman who sees her.
Look again into the photographer’s stunned face. Do you see awe, panic, adoration in a single oval (moor) into glistening eyes, and a hand frantically clutching a camera strap. Do you believe cartoons are art?
This painting is garish. It is clumsy. But it’s so revealing of Atieno herself. I do not feel we can devalue its worth simply because it does not seem to show any skill.
If Claudia were still alive and could hear what I am saying, she would never speak to me again. But she’s dead and cannot hear what I am saying and will still never speak to me again, so what are you going to do?
[bell chimes]
Three. “Sunglasses and Cigarettes”.
These are two men wearing sunglasses. They both hold cigarettes. Next to them is an unpleasant looking dog. The five-buttoned suit jackets these men are wearing are dissimilar to the conservative business fashion of council employees or the simple structure of police jackets.
These men look quite different from usual police, even undercover officers. Atieno has also spent quite a bit of time on their mouths and hands. Notice the texture of her lines in these areas of the picture. Much more detail on their tight countenances and the tense physical postures. Their hands are clenched, cigarettes poking out of stone fists. Their lips curled, not in anger but stern concentrations. And unlike agents from the Society Establishment, they do not attempt to hide their observations of Atieno and her private home.
Statespeople who appeared at Atieno’s home often tried to gather information, but in a sociable and subtle manner. These two men and their dog, a mixed breed similar looking to a Dobermann pinscher though, stand brazenly at the curb staring directly inside.
Given the rectangular framing around this sketch, I believe Atieno drew this from the front window of an apartment she lived in years before I met her. It suggests she did not go outside to greet or confront them. I believe she was perhaps frightened or at least dubious of these men and their dog.
Claudia socialized with many politicians of the new society, as well as other well known artists and business owners. She wanted to be as important as her art. But the edges of these circles (--) [0:12:19] roughly with insidious people, people who do not trust nor like those within.
These men and their unpleasant dog were from some place we should not want to know. [softly] Look at the way they stand and stare. Do you feel watched? What do you think they know about you?
Who do you think they report to? Do you believe in conspiracies? Claudia did.
I saw men like these once sitting at small tables on the footpath outside a small café in Cornwall. They watched me, smoking their cigarettes. I did not believe them to be anything other than well dressed men with a bad habit and an unpleasant dog. But Claudia was certain they were dangerous and covert operatives. I told Claudia if they were a threat we should lay low, have fewer parties and get togethers, but we did not. I don’t know how strongly Claudia believed in her own stories.
We had more parties with bigger, more important, more controversial people. Her then lover, Pavel Zubov, brought many friends who talked often of the new New Revolution. Nothing ever came of their bluster. But in an unstable new world, revolutions are not difficult. What happens after a revolution is another matter, of course.
[bell chimes] [tape recorder turns off] [ads] [tape recorder turns on] [bell chimes]
Four. “Lamp”. Oil on wood.
Of this particular era of Atieno’s life, during the height of her frame, this might be my favorite work, the type of work I encouraged in her. A piece which when she finished it, I applauded and opened a vintage Cabernet (--) [0:16:43] I’d been saving for such an occasion.
Most of her paintings from this time pander to a broader pseudo-intellectual audience, in search of strange moderately confrontational art, a story they can tell others, a debate they can have over art’s virtuosity and validity. They may say this is not art, but that argument is the art itself.
In “Lamp”, Claudia basically painted an inverted yellow V atop a brown circle on a flint background. It’s geometric to be sure, and part of a post-war revival of art deco, all of the evolutionary flourishes of art nouveau eradicated, however. Here we see only the effects of the lamp, an incandescent shine in the dark, but the actual architecture of the device is missing entirely.
I spent a full 20 minutes raving to Claudia about this work when she showed it to me in 1969. We had not known each other long, and our initial relationship was almost like a master and pupil. I could teach her nothing about the craft of visual arts. But we drank wine and talked late into the night. For all of her political and refined small talk at parties with celebrities and power brokers, I was – I flatter myself, one of the few people she could really talk to.
There was Pavel, but their relationship was purely one of mutual and tumultuous passion for each other’s bodies. Claudia’s and my relationship was one of passion for creation.
My praise of this painting, original in a way she had seemed incapable of, so bold but on the noise politically, went past her. I told her this, this is what she should be creating, not staplers or glorifications of celebrity, not copies of other works.
She put the painting away and later told me she’d destroyed it.
When the staff at the Ohara Museum told me they were showing this work, I flew to Japan just to see it again. I’m glad she did not destroy it.
[softly] Look at its architecture, its balance. How it’s teetering slightly. It’s not physically possible, this lamp, but every element is in harmony. Look at that shade of yellow closely. How can a human make that color? It almost makes me angry.
Which brush strokes in this painting do you resent? Are they the same strokes you admire?
I’d like to tell you that this is her finest work, but in the past few years, more tributes and derivatives of “Lamp” have multiplied throughout the modern society art movement. Her work seems to be a cheap replica of itself, rather than an original that inspired hundreds of copies. Perhaps this painting’s brilliance has been eclipsed by the works it instigated.
Or perhaps I’m the wrong person to be narrating your walk through this exhibit. There are several other paintings I could describe to you, but I think after just a few you’ve got the idea. These works are decades old, and you’ve seen countless tributes or copies of them. You don’t need me to tell you what a clear acrylic box full of acorns mean. It honestly doesn’t mean anything. Or rather it means Claudia Atieno recognized that quantity was greater than quality, that celebrity simply means that demand surpasses supply. If she could keep generating new work, she could keep putting on exhibits all over the world, filling the needs of art-hungry survivors of a terrible war and its apocalyptic aftermath.
[bell chimes]
Five. “Box of Acorns”. Acrylic box, acorns.
I already said you don’t need to hear about this work, but oh I don’t know. [sighs] Perhaps you need to hear about it.
There was an oak tree on the island of her home in Cornwall, and she collected the acorns, I watched her do it. She found this acrylic in a warehouse of post-war debris. I was with her that day and we marveled at the number of paintings and sculptures in that warehouse.
[crying] I really didn’t… [long silence, music]
[bell chimes] [silence]
[bell chimes]
I’ll stop beeping in your ears. No, I won’t.
[bell chimes]
Eleven. There’s not actually a painting 11, but I’ll just go on the idea you forgot to press stop or you’re curious to see how far I’ll take this.
[sadly] I will tell you though that investigators found parts of Atieno’s body two years ago. They weren’t certain they were hers at first. Pieces of bone and clothing washed up on a lonely beach on St Agnes island. Then this year they found teeth and most of a torso underneath several inches of mud along a rocky beach. The torso had pieces of clothing that matched the previous clothes. They knew from the torso that the body had fallen, been crushed by the hard slap of gravity.
And 8-year-old girl found the body. The girl’s attendant had to report the girl to retraining at the institute. A-a place dedicating to ensuring that society’s new precepts aren’t disrupted.
Not much is known about the institute, and what is rumored about them goes unproven but… there is reason to be suspicious. There is reason to be more than suspicious.
I’m positive that the scars of seeing human remains were less impactful than the scars of whatever… [sigh/weep] recalibrating they’re putting her through now. Or perhaps she didn’t know what she found, just a blue gray mound of – fetid biology, vaguely human-shaped, partially preserved in salt and mud.
Maybe the girl could make out the outline of a person in this rotten flesh lump? Somehow, that’s even more frightening. Something that looks human but is not. Is not anymore.
Crushed from a fall, they said. But it wasn’t the fall that killed her. [scoffs] She’d been falling for years. It was the rocks, or something that she hit, I shouldn’t just say “rocks” out loud.
I never forgave her for slighting her legacy in favor of fame, but maybe I’m the one who needed to be forgiven. For demanding too much of her, for resenting her. [sighs] For adoring her. For lots of things.
Teeth and a torso. [chuckles] Someone should paint that. Oh god, I’m sure you’re gonna want your money back from this audio tour. Tell the folks at the Ohara that the tape player seemed broken, or tell them that you didn’t end up enjoying it. don’t tell them what I said. Or do, I don’t care. I honestly don’t.
I loved Claudia! She was a gifted artist and giving friend. She had a period of work this museum seems to like, but which I find contemptible for its naked pandering.
Maybe I’m just sad. I can’t reconcile my feelings. [whispers] I can’t believe they found her body! [deep sigh]
I can’t believe I don’t get to tell anyone anymore that she’s still alive. I probably knew she wasn’t. but I could always tell myself she was.
Bone fragments on the beach, near a home for preteens. The first post-war generation to grow up without parents. The great experiment for a bright new world. [sighs] I don’t know.
[tape recorder turns off]
“Within the Wires” is written by Jeffrey Cranor and Janina Matthewson and performed by Rima Te Wiata, with original music by Mary Epworth. Find more of Mary’s music at maryepworth.com.
The voice of Leah Akane was Julia Morisawa.
Don’t forget to check out the amazing “Within the Wires” T-shirts and Claudia Atieno art print at withinthewires.com.
OK. Our time is done, it’s you time now. Time to stop by the museum gift shop, grab yourself a souvenir book of paintings about [the sinus infection I have], pick up a poster featuring [me coughing] and buy a commemorative vase made out of [-].
#within the wires#season 2#season 2 cassette 2#ohara museum of art (1980)#within the wires transcripts
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Me, Myself, and I
“Could you at least try to not be so giddy about this?” asked Ventus with a tired sigh. All of those who resided within Sora’s heart were holding yet another conference in the Dive To The Heart as they’d come to call it, to discuss what was going on with Sora in Eos. Roxas was pacing around the edge as usual these days, Xion was sitting down at the table that stood at the center, whilst Vanitas… well, he was grinning like he was one number away from winning the lottery.
“I’m soooo sorry, but come on! Mister Chosen One of the Light’s becoming more and more a part of the darkness, and this time there’s nothing he can do about it!” the dark haired youth cackled. “No last minute saves from his silver haired boyfriend, and no talking animals to keep him in one mental piece either!” he crowed. “I can’t be the only one to see the funny side of all this eh? What about you Captain Emo Pop Star?” he asked looking over at Roxas with a smirk. “Sora boy gets devoured by this worlds Darkness, you get to exist again outside of being a memory. And who knows, you might even be able to take Miss Forget-Me-Not with you for the ride.” Vanitas said as he hiked a thumb over towards the dark-haired girl at the table, who blinked and proceeded to blush and mutter under her breath.
Roxas however was not as passive. “I want to exist again sure, but not at the cost of Sora’s own!” he snarled. “And besides, we don’t even know if this Starscourge stuff works the same way as the Heartless! For all we know, if Sora goes, we all go with him.” he said, gesturing to the darkened edges of the Stations glass painting. It looked like some sort of ooze-like substance, and each day it spread another bit closer to the center. Not noticeably at first, but after a few more days it would be. After a few more weeks… a few more years… And here they all were, stuck in the middle of it all.
“Urgh, you are such a downer.” grumbled the dark-haired mirror image of Sora. “Besides, we don’t even know if we would be reborn in Twilight Town, or wake up in Castle Oblivion,” said Xion with a nod towards Ventus, “or still be stuck here in Eos.” she said from the table. “So either way we’re screwed is what you’re trying to say eh Little Lost Memory?” asked Vanitas before Roxas stalked over and socked him one right across the jaw, sending him to the floor. “Ow!” he cried out, Ventus couldn’t help but grin a little at seeing his doppelganger beat up his darker half.
“Talk about her like that again, and I’ll push you into that Starscourge crap, and we’ll see what happens next time Ardyn comes to draw it out of Sora.” Roxas growled, his hands glowing as if he were about to summon his Keyblades. “Sheesh, alright tough guy. I’ll leave your girlfriend alone. I can take the hint.” said Vanitas, holding his jaw and rubbing it slightly as he got back to his feet. “I think that’s the one thing we can all agree on though.” Ventus declared, all three sets of eyes drawing on him. “We can’t let Ardyn take this… disease from Sora. No matter what its doing to him, it looks like its what that-” he said before Vanitas interrupted him. “That fedora wearing bastard wants? Yeah… I can get behind screwing that bastard over in his plans.” he said, the Nobody and the Replica raising an eyebrow in unison at Vanitas’ remarks.
“That guy’s like a knock off Xehanort, would’ve thought you’d be first in line to get in his good books.” said Roxas, to which Vanitas chuckled albeit without much humour in the effort. “Not a chance. I may not like any of you here, especially you Ventus.” he said, which drew a shrug from his Light half. “And I may not like Sora that much either, but like hell I’m going to let some cheap knock off playboy wannabe be the one to kick Sora’s ass or draw more power from him.” he said, calling his shattered Keyblade to his hand, which caused the rest of them to do the same with their own. “Why? Because we wield the most powerful weapons in existence. If we lost to this guy, what does that say about us eh?”
Xion smiled softly as Vanitas stood there. “What are you smiling about eh?” he asked, the dark haired girl chuckling a little. “That… that was almost a moving speech. Almost as if you actually cared about us and Sora.” she teased, Vanitas blinking before abruptly turning around, folding his arms across his chest. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said sharply, with Roxas and Ventus chuckling in the background joining Xion’s own.
Out in the world, Sora sat alone looking out across the empty darkness, and began to chuckle. The sensation hurt his throat, and he had no idea why he was doing it… but it felt good all the same.
I HAVE BEEN BLESSED THIS DAY!!! Thank you for sharing this!!! <3 <3 <3
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Goodbye from The Hollywood Tower Hotel
I know this is really long, but I need to open up somewhat about this. For those of you that do read this, thank you.
“Hollywood, 1939 …”
Those words ring loudly in my head and have ever since May, 2004. I was 12 at the time and had avoided thrill rides adamantly up to that point. That single day in 2004 changed everything for me.
It started back in November of the previous year. I had received an annual pass for Disneyland for my birthday. I hadn’t been there since 1997 and couldn’t remember what the place was even like. At the time, Disney was seen as a kids thing. Being the preteen I was, I avoided talking about it among my friends for fear of being seen as less “cool.” This first trip was also the first time I’d see Disney’s California Adventure. As it had opened in 2001, I had not had a chance to go and experience it.
Upon arrival at the esplanade I was shocked to see this building looming over DCA’s skyline. My family and I debated what it was and if it was even in the park or just in Anaheim beyond. The words “The Hollywood Tower Hotel” stood out among the skyline. We were confused to say the least. This “hotel” didn’t feel like one as much as it looked like it. Our curiosity was piqued so we booked it into Sunshine Plaza and down through the Hollywood Picture’s Backlot. As we reached the Hyperion and turned the corner we were met with … Walls. But these walls made me the most excited I had ever been. Along the stretch of construction walls that lined the street were the words “The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. Opening May 2004. Drop in … If you dare.” I was blown away. I thought I had never heard of this attraction before and shamefully learned I did know of it quite well when I got home that evening.
I was a big fan of The Twilight Zone television series having been raised with it among other classic shows of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s. The Twilight Zone was paranormal, exciting, easy to grasp but complex in nature. It was everything I enjoyed in tv. To have an attraction entirely themed around it excited me. I was deeply curious about it so I jumped into researching it. Mind you, I had seen the Tower of Terror television movie but I never pieced it together that it was, in itself, based on something real. When I finally saw WDW’s Tower I was awestruck. I researched everything I could about it. I looked deeply into the attraction through fan sites and low resolution videos. I couldn’t get enough.
January 1st, 2004. I had made it a point to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade every year and this year was no different. I got up and watched in wonder as parade float after parade float turned the corner and showed off it’s detail. Late into the broadcast a looming building came into frame. It was so noticeable that even the broadcasters commented on it before it turned the corner. At 100 feet tall, the float “A Sudden Drop in Pitch” made me bounce off the walls. This floral ode to the coming haunted Hollywood retreat just blew my mind. Again I was energized. As the clock ticked down to May, I kept up with the attraction. I watched video after video, many of which seem to have been lost to time. Gallagher and the sign lighting ceremony stands out as one of the stranger ones.
Finally, May arrived. I booked it to Anaheim about the second or third week of it’s opening. The lines were massive (for the time) but I stood there, eagerly awaiting my turn to “drop into the zone.” The lobby was lavishly furnished, every crack and speck of dust seeming to tell a story. Everything stood out to me and I could barely soak it all in. When we entered the library I stood in wided eyed wonder at the shelves of books and the raging storm just beyond the window. With a flash of lightning came the story of that fateful night long ago. The eerie intro, the echoes of a child singing, the thunderstorm just beyond. I was lost. Dragged into an episode of Rod Serling’s anthology of terror. As our huddled group wandered into the boiler room the sound of pipes clanging and furnaces roaring gave life to this dead building. The heart was still beating, long after it’s veins had rusted and faded. The gloomy bellhops throughout encouraged our group forward, helping us deeper into the depths of the hotel. As we arrived at the service elevator, my heart was racing. I was nervous, I was scared, and I was excited. I stood with sweaty hands watching the dial slide down slowly to “B.” The doors opened to our final bellhop who loaded us into our rickety elevator. The sounds of screams echoed throughout. Everyone was nervous. With a devious smile the bellhop bid farewell and the doors closed on us.
A lurch backwards and flashes of lightning dragged us beyond the depths of the Tower and to the front door of The Twilight Zone. I gripped the handlebars of the elevator seats tightly. I was terrified but entranced. We moved up and in front of us was a grand mirror. A bolt of lightning and we turned into ghostly reflections of ourselves. In a flash we were gone. The empty elevator carriage sat staring back at us. We descended to a long stretched hallway. 5 ghostly apparitions beckoned us to follow them. The hallway grew dark, stars glittering all around. Those same 5 guests beckoned one final time from a distance set of elevator doors, then they were gone.
We plunged into darkness.
As the sunlight stung my eyes, I could see everything. In those couple seconds I viewed the distant horizon of Disneyland and Anaheim. Before I could even process it we were falling.
When the elevator came to a rest with clanging and bangs, cheers erupted from our elevator. We had survived. As we returned to reality we were greeted by our haunting bellhop one final time before we drifted toward the gift shop.
I was in love. Everything about this ride captivated me. In one single ride in May I became obsessed. I collected everything I could afford. I bought pins, I got shirts, picture frames, posters. You name it, I tried my best to buy it.
That summer I spent working on a digital rendering of the Tower of Terror in LEGO form. I wanted a replica of this attraction for me. I wanted my Hollywood Tower Hotel. I spent weeks studying every angle, looking at picture after picture. I tried so hard to detail this model out of little blocks. When I finally finished and sat back, I was, for the first time, impressed with myself. There in front of me was a LEGO rendering of the Tower of Terror. I immediately set to work. I used every LEGO brick I had and when I ran out, I bought more. After the 6th tub of bricks I stopped. It was getting too expensive. With the need to paint the LEGOs afterwords, I shelved the project till I could reasonably get everything I needed.
Still, I ached for replicas. My brain kept latching to LEGOs and after a couple years I tried again on LEGO’s official Digital Designer program. As I reached the half way mark, I decided to check the price for the massive Tower of bricks I needed. The program promptly crashed. I selected a third of the building and copied it elsewhere, then tried again. After a few minutes the price popped up. $1800. I gasped and was discouraged. I couldn’t realistically shell out almost $2000 for just a segment of a massive project. Again I shelved the project and looked for alternatives. I stumbled on a now defunct YouTube channel HomeImagineering. The channel featured someone building custom miniature attraction variants using materials like foamcore. I also stumbled on Sam Towler’s Mine Train model and was inspired. My dad ended up bringing me home some foamcore poster board and I went to work. I carved windows and doors. I tried to shape out the Tower of Terror with foam and paper. It made a terrible mess and I was never able to figure out how to best support the massive structure. Eventually I shelved this project too.
As DCA started it’s 2.0 conversion I was at the parks almost every other week. Tower was my go to for a must ride attraction. I had memorized everything about it. The layout, the script, the drops. I loved it still. It was a classic to me and I desired nothing more than to be a bellhop. I started applying but got nowhere. It wasn’t until fall 2012 that I hit the jackpot. I was hired on October 13th, 2012 as a DCA Stores cast member. I started on Buena Vista Street and came to know many great people through that fall and subsequent winter. I still ached for Tower. I wanted to get photo training so I could work the gift shop, but my true dream was to transfer to attractions and fight my way to Tower. Unfortunately that dream fell short. I quit Disney in late April 2013 due to medical problems making it hard for me to continue working. I dreamed of going back, but for the time I set my dream aside to focus on school.
In February of 2016, a rumor sprouted that the Tower of Terror at DCA was to be changed to a Guardians of the Galaxy ride. I was scared. A part of me tried to ground reality and tell myself that it was way too stupid to be real. There’s always rumors and they almost never happen. As time moved forward the rumor persisted. The original leak kept insisting it was real and continued to detail the changes to come. Petitions popped up, attempting to fight the truth in the rumor.
In July, 2016, at Comic Con San Diego, Disney announced that Guardians of the Galaxy: Mission: Breakout! would take the place of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. I was heartbroken. Here was something I had spent 12 years of my life involved with suddenly dying in front of me.
The reason it hurt so much is difficult to pin down entirely. Looking back, I struggled greatly with depression and continue to do so to this very day. I was teased and bullied in school and there wasn’t much of a way for me to escape. My home life was okay, but fighting between my parents and the affects of what caused those fights strained the household. Disneyland was my sanctuary, and Tower, to me, was my escape. I could be someone else with Tower. It gave me confidence and it inspired me. On nights where I might have been struggling, where my mind drifted to thoughts of suicide, I spent them at a computer, designing and building, and connecting with the Tower fan community. I made friends due to the shared passion for something that is as simple as a ride at a theme park. While my depression never healed, I was able to fight it back through this passion. As time pushed forward, I lost connection with a lot of these Tower fan communities. Many faded away or died as time marched on. I lost connection with the friends I had made and struggled to maintain my happiness. When I was forced out of high school, I spent a lot of nights with these fan communities, and suddenly they were gone. I held onto the memories of the conversations had and the stories shared and still kept returning to the parks with hopes of finding new friends and people that could be a part of a Tower of Terror family. When I worked there, I wanted nothing more than to be a part of the Tower, but my diagnosis of fibromyalgia and the worsening of it made that impossible. With the announcement it felt as if my heart was ripped apart. Everything from the past 12 years shattered instantly. I know I have the memories of this attraction and the joy and happiness it brought, but with me it’s not the same. Those memories are sad now, reflections of a history and point in time where there was an escape for me. It sounds stupid, even to me, but Tower was more to me than just a ride. Everything about me was connected to it. I built my life on that ride. My education and major was directly inspired by the ride. I wanted to one day craft something unique and amazing. Something that would inspire another the same way I was inspired way back in 2004. The change of this ride also spoke to the climate inside Disney. The corporate meddling and orders from higher ups that have no reflection on the guest satisfaction but instead on the easiest way to sell things now and to forget the long term. It hurt to see a company so good a hiding their corporate side suddenly flashing it for all the world to see. Their reckless disregard for the masses of fans and for the terrible show caused by this change is unforgivable. The Tower died in September, 2016, when the sign was pulled off unceremoniously. Ever since it has been on life support, being kept barely breathing as they slowly strip away what made it unique.
Some of you might say that there is still Walt Disney World’s Tower (and Paris’), but that isn’t the point. To me, DCA’s was the Tower of Terror, original or not. It fit the world crafted in that park. It told it’s story perfectly and dragged you into the hallowed halls that once held lavish parties. It was my definitive version.
On January 1st, I attended the 13th Hour party. There I met two wonderful Tower fans and celebrated this attraction in a way no other attraction could ever be celebrated. Disney did a great job on a party that should never have happened in the first place. That night, on our final elevator’s return, our bellhop greeted us crying. That’s when I noticed that every bellhop had been struggling to choke through the spiels. It sunk in. I felt the shockwave of this loss throughout yesterday and struggled till the very end to maintain myself. In the end it was too much. As I sit here writing this, I find tears streaming down my face.
For me, my year ended last night. 2016 has frequently been personified as this taker of life, this year of the reminder of our own mortality. We did lose many great people in such a short time, and while that can be explained by the years from which these greats were born, it doesn’t change the fact that we desire someone or something to blame. 2016, for me, took one last life. It took something I found sacred and tore it away.
Walt Disney said that “Disneyland would never be completed as long as there is imagination left in the world.” This isn’t a justification for the change of something loved and enjoyed, but a reflection on the shifts of guest’s desires and wants. A story goes that Walt overheard a child wish to ride Jungle Cruise only for the mother to refuse, stating that they “rode it last time” and “didn’t need to this time.” Walt was mortified. He went about shifting what the ride’s purpose was, giving the skippers freedom to spiel in a way they felt fit. Jokes and comedy became the ride’s signature and to this day is beloved by many. He didn’t rip it out because it was stale, nor did he retheme it. It was still an adventure through a jungle, but instead of a serious documentary tone, it took on a dark foreboding joking aesthetic. Tower was loved, and the massive lines and 300% merchandise sale increase proves that guests still wanted it. The change for change’s sake should only ever be done for the betterment and improvement of something. Guardians, especially to me, is no improvement, and does neither Tower, nor Guardians justice.
Today I struggle to push forward. My future feels shaky and distorted. I am uncertain of where I am to go next and while I will continue to try, the desire to just lay down and give up is very strong. So with this I say goodbye to The Hollywood Tower Hotel and the The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. I hope, as Vera Lynn sang, “we’ll meet again. Don’t know where, don’t know when. But I know we’ll meet again some sunny day.”
#the hollywood tower hotel#the twilight zone#the twilight zone tower of terror#tower of terror#dca#disney#disneyland#goodbye#hth#tot#tztot#the hollywood tower hotel preservation society
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Flowers
morning
It was 4AM when I blossomed, surrounded by shoplifted mannequin body parts to keep me company. It was less of an obsession but a necessity, like oxygen. Mannequins, formed by the hands of men, a crude replica of countless millennia of evolution- were the perfect version of humanity, lacking the layers of complexity that humans were endlessly plastering over themselves. Hanging out of the glove compartment, stacked on top of each other on the passenger seat, it gave the illusion of human company under the dark blue haze of the early morning. I was forty-five and depressed.
The hymn of the overpass began seventy-eight minutes before sunrise, cutting the sultry June air like a crescendo of blunt knives slicing the serenity into increasingly smaller portions. It began with a long, dragged-out trembling, evolving into a dull pulsing similar to that of a beating heart, accompanied by the ever-increasing barrage of cars joining the performance. Fog stretched its sinuous fingers over the boulevards like a sheet thrown in the air, ebbing in and out like a continuation of the tide, as if trying to sweep the city away. Sometimes I pretended that I coul pull little strands of time out of the fog, so that one day I could weave a way out of my mess. I was going southbound on the Harbor Freeway, halfway through downtown, weaving my way through the canyon of synthetic monoliths, standing testament to civilization, as if signaling the advent of an age of permanence. I checked the side view mirror, watching a beat-up Camry come racing down the lane. For a split-second, I could see who was inside the car.
It was an everyday, dressed in the characteristic paper bag draped over the features, two slits carved out for visual aide. Being an everyday required a strict regimen of total singularity, where the most devoted symbolically gouged out their own eyes to eliminate the clout of judgement that was inflicting society. At first it seemed like a fad, soon to be washed away by the passage of time. Society was steadfast yet ever-changing, endlessly metamorphosing for the better or the worse. Yet it swooped down on the nation like an army of fish nets, gripping the idle in its fists while only the shrewd slipped through.
The first subtle promise of the day sat along the horizon, spitting specks of light on the dashboard. It was a time of transience, an awkward, misshapen time; labeless and lacking any particular definition. The air tightened, the equator had shifted northwards, the magnetic forces that so precariously held the planet together were dissolved, and for thirty seconds in the time between twilight and dawn, the silent time, the world was turned on its feet. Bags flew off of everydays, the Sun gazing upon their pasty skin for the first time in years. Third eyes briefly opened up in the wrinkled brows of the masses, expanding to fit neatly over the skull. The Southland was picked up on two sides and folded like a piece of paper. Children spilled out of the sewers, rows of bungalows closed in on each other, and the pipes of Los Angeles, sucking the lifeblood out of an arid valley two hundred miles away, spewed water into the streets. Everyone rolled out of their cars and tumbled under the First Street Bridge, and for ten seconds we stared at each other, extremely content, knowing that we were a heap of flesh, a thinking pile of flesh that was tied together by the strings of connection, that somehow, through countless past and future lives we found ourselves here, witnessing the simple spectacle of being in each other’s company.
Layers of sentiment fell upon us like a sensory overload, piled layer upon layer in different shades and combinations that no tongue could ever describe. The fact that we had all found ourselves in the river was something special, that we were building relationships through merely understanding the circumstances, that our identity was not our own, but made of the people around us. Being human was never easier, or more gratifying. This mantra swamped us, and in the silence that filled the morning air we blossomed.
I blossomed.
It was an odd sensation, to have a flower grow inside of me. The strings of connection, so firmly attached to each and every one of us- the beggars, the 1%, the murderers, the colorful, the privileged, the illegal- built a physical cobweb-like structure between us. It looped over the graceful curve of the bridge and spread out into Boyle Heights to the east and the freight depot to the west. As the structure grew in its perfect mess, the flowers too crawled out of the sterile blank space inside of us. They made a humming sound, not unlike that of a group of desperate bees, both eldritch and calming, as if confirming their presence. And in that paragon of time, when the forces in the universe at least pretended that they were in perfect balance, and what was that word I saw in the bookstore at Echo Park, the one built over the dead bodies- hygge, yes, the feeling of being safe, known, and that was it, the feeling of being nestled up between all of these people. People with beating hearts, with seeing eyes, who shed tears and felt pain, who were susceptible to the sting of merely a word but could live on this desolate planet for millions of years, and probably millions more. With our flowers we made a garden, the Garden of Eden, a paradise that lasted only a few seconds but held so much.
Light climbed up the sky like sand in an hourglass, and like all things the flowers wilted, the cobweb structure dissolved in the river, carried down to float with dead whales and plastic straws in the port, and the memory, the reality of these seconds would become vaguely distorted and rearranged so that the fog drifting over the city would rest in my head. The polluted, the freethinkers, the pious, the messiahs, the dispossessed, the damned all disappeared in a quivering mirage of the brain, for the eyes were of no use, they only relayed the images, and it could have all been the way I processed it, the way my brain fabricated an image. But the flowers lingered, their petals rotting in my heart.
afternoon
The surveillance video of the pileup played over and over again on the TV, highlighting the moment when we all fell into the river like a pack of lemmings. I sat in what I presumed was the emergency ward of some hospital- public, obviously, with the characteristic aseptic stench leaking off the walls. I had no insurance, and next to lay a hundred or so others, others who had been found at 4AM lolling around in the Los Angeles River, stuck under tires and bleeding profusely in a perfect circle. There was a freaky quality to it, and already people were attributing it to La Llorona, it was summer, and people needed a chill. There was a dryness in my mouth, as if I was holding a tadpole in my mouth and it grew into a frog, hopping out before I woke up.
The flowers. I stuck my finger deep into my throat, and it was as if I nudged a tender something down there, something that I hadn’t noticed before. My fingers traced the ridge of my spine, and out came a puff of fine dust. Pollen. It was like a photograph, as if time was grinding to a standstill until all you saw was one image, one that would define a whole period of time but time passes even if that’s all that dwells in your memory. It rose up and merged with the dust floating up and down, mingling and blending into one large farrago of particles, because in the end our head and our shit will come together and we’ll have a nice paste of everything laid down over us.
I didn’t have any severe injuries, just a few cuts and bruises, souvenirs of the morning. I started walking through the emergency room with a casual gait. I decided to leave the life that I had previously lived. Not that I particularly liked it. The highlight of the week was getting hungover on the weekends, and not with any other people, but by myself, sitting in my apartment covered in mildew, the only riparian habitat for miles.
I walked straight into the smog-ridden heat waiting quietly next to the entrance, ready to absorb me back into its grasps. Slowly but surely, I melted into the scene, being yet another character in the demented, asinine stage of Los Angeles, where at midnight tar pits opened up beneath the boulevards and swallowed up the stragglers, preserving their skeletons for millennia.
evening
I walked along the edge of the freeway, accompanied by a mass exodus of salarymen from downtown. The frenzied rush was not unlike salmon going upstream, each in his own fight, navigating their way over each other. It was terrifying, yet my helplessness to the deluge of cars was almost soothing, as I let their presence wash over me.
The traffic flow was so strong that it carried me with it, a swell pushing me into the shadow of Chavez Ravine and under the watchful fronds of rows of Washingtonia palms. Blood was coursing through the arteries of the city, and I was but a cell drifting on course, picked up by the sheer force of the movement. I missed my alcove of mannequin parts, but returning but claiming my truck would mean facing the hospital bills, after I blossomed I had been picked up and placed on another course, and there was no way back. It may have seemed like a horrible accident, but only to the naïve eyes of those who haven’t yet gone beyond the simple comprehension of the physical. Something had made us descend like a pack of tumbleweeds into the concrete corset of Los Angeles, and in that action came yet another, a rich yield of flowers.
I rushed pass crumbling warehouses lining the freeway like dominoes left to stand in the brink of falling down, pass an odd amalgam of quintessential suburbia and gritty side streets north of the city proper, pass the uneven urban carpet laid down over the numerous hills. each balancing each other out. A soft gradient of purple and blue hung over the ridges. I rode over the whole of the Valley, arriving at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountains, both an enigma and a symbol, a wall between a parched desert and an endlessly hemorrhaging sprawl.
Yuccas dotted the slopes along rows of newly fabricated gated communities sheltering countless seemingly perfect nuclear families. Beyond the maze of the upper middle class lay a scattering of hunched figures, gathered around fires set on the highway and sitting patiently, as if waiting for something. The smell of patchouli drifted in a haze down from the encampment, and suddenly, in a riot of noise, the inhabitants jumped up, awkwardly adjusting themselves to standing, and started a parade down the highway, bearing flashlights and lanterns, bearing various instruments and attempting to join them in song. There was already a barricade at the beginning of the mountain route, effectively reserving the whole of the forests to the marchers.
“We’ve occupied the mountains. It’s our terraform, a land with love and peace.” A group of volunteers, clad in matching T-shirts ushered me into the parade.
Some of the marchers were barefoot, scraping their feet along the asphalt. As the Sun’s last gasps of light faded over the sky, we headed up, past the shrubland and into the realm of the pines, and all of a sudden it became completely dark, and the stars shone above us. Perhaps there were a billion different types of trees hiding out in the dark, but in truth it didn’t matter because in the end we were all placed on this lonely rock somewhere in the vast expanse of the universe.
A kid, tall and skinny like a papaya tree ran up to me and screamed. “People think that the Sun set. But in reality it’s just an illusion, and it’s the result of Earth spinning sixty thousand miles an hour around the Sun. Don’t fall for what they cram into your head.”
A chorus of clapping and singing promptly began, which was somewhat coordinated yet off in a way, the effect being the opposite of ethereal, and reminiscent of something wild. And this crowd, composed of mostly adolescents, were wild, shedding off their skins, their lives, everything bestowed to them in an attempt to chase after opaque visions of the ideal youth. They were refugees, latching onto their own romanticism, crawling up the mountains in search of something, just as I was. They lusted for the counterculture of their forefathers and saw a contorted future without promise. They were the last generation, one no one really knew about.
I tried my best only to observe them, but in the midst of their cacophonous, yet strangely enchanting ceremony of sorts, I found myself being wove tightly into their fabric until all I saw were the paisley swirls that dominated the bandanas they wore over their mouths as we pushed up higher into the darkness of the forest, a solitary boat bringing a pageant of color over an ocean of emptiness towards a greater spectacle sitting as its own island, breathing among the heavens.
This was where all the missing children went, donning weeds in their hair and growing their own drugs to medicate themselves organically. Everydays that had so carefully made small incisions every year around the eyes of their offspring saw them escape in a fit of individuality. Emo teens, already a dying breed, converted to a desire for love instead of a desire to die, effectively ending their reign as the lemons of suburban high schools. Wherever there was flat ground there were tents and cardboard beds, and many slept among the branches of the trees. People frolicked in the mud, rubbing tree sap on their skin. They were carefree and young, quick to toss a cliché if noted by anyone, trying to fit in and create their own hype.
“Hey, you look new.” A woman my age, covered in beads and checking her phone stroller up to me. “Tear up some grass and put it over your head- you’ll fit right in.”
I glanced up at her, not sure if she was joking. “It looks like we're at the odd end of the age spectrum here.”
“Oh, I’m only here to chaperone my kids. Don’t want them to get so high that they jump off a cliff or something.”
She looked over her shoulder and promptly ran into a tent, peering at a group of ten-year-olds grinding their teeth so hard that they were chewing on their sweaters.
A blond teen beckoned me with the bough of a manzanita. “Haramokngna is the shit. That’s the native name for this areas. Fuck colonialism!”
He stared at me, blinking, as if expecting praise for his remark.
“Oh.” He pointed at my eyes and laughed. “ It’s fine if you can’t speak English. Here, I can recite the Heart Sutra by heart, if that helps.”
I stay silent like a monk.
“You know, we have different areas for aliens, you know, people like you. It’s just our energies don’t match.” He pointed towards an empty clearing next to the bathrooms. “You. Go. Over. There.”
I ignored him and his inherent racism. As my mother always told me in her melodic Korean voice, “Don’t step into dog shit.”
I was looking for something that could bring back the flowers, bring back that feeling of being inserted snugly into that perfect slot of belonging. I passed a cart bearing psychedelic goods when a kid, maybe fifteen came and looked up at me.
“Whatcha lookin’ for.” He said. “There ain’t no window shopping here. Only buyers.”
There was no point in trying to explain anything at all at this point, so I asked him about himself.
He was a forager back when he lived in the city with the rest of his family. “There’s a technique to finding hearts if you want one.” He said, slurring his speech. “You gotta hop on the freeways. It’s easier to check the parks but there isn’t a good selection. Accidents are a routing thing, and people dump bodies so they get all mushed up under the tires. Sometimes you can even chip away at the concrete and find a heart that’s still beating.”
These people were lost, all searching for something different. You can’t organize a blossoming, it’s spontaneous, just like the advent of spring. Like millions of separate amoebas wandering aimlessly on a petri dish, we were confined, examined by the rest of society.
I had to escape, get myself out of this mess.
midnight
As everyone lay in an intoxicated daze, I slipped off the highway and onto the five-mile-long road that led to Mt Wilson. The cops didn’t bother you as long as you didn’t go there because they didn’t want mischief near the observatory. Fuck that.
The road lay coiled along the ridge like a snake, and without my sobriety I might’ve fallen down. I held a baseball bat that I stole from a dozing group of teenagers in my hands. No one was there, and at one point I wriggled over the road because I had no way where I was going.
At one point the sky opened up more than it ever had, and the stars fell in a parabolic motion towards the Earth. My breaths became slower, and I fell to my feet, only to rise again, pulled by the gravitational forces of the moon in an eternal tug-of-war. I looked over Los Angeles, a tapestry of lights, laid down like stitches over the land, and it was curious to see how many people lived under the great dome of the sky. How many functioning people played their lives as the Sun rose and paused as the Moon reached its apex, interacting with each other, loving and hating.
I swung my bat, toppling the antennas. There were no more broadcasts in the city, but it didn’t matter, because no one watched television or listened to the radio anyway, it was the dawn of a new age whether you liked it or not. For innumerable years before that day, the fate was decided that we would all seek sanctuary in this god forsaken corner of the planet, and for untold years in the future this would bind us together.
The flowers that lay dormant within me blossomed again. I remember hearing something about the human condition, essentially every experience that shapes being human. There, with the souls of millions at my feet, I realized that my flowers were that condition- the simple fact that we are not alone in this lonely planet to see continents shift, mountains fall, and each other love. The smile that comes to the lips with company is a flower. And thank god for gardens.
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Sand & Stars
The taste of the ocean is bittersweet and the salty air stings my lips in a purifying way. From above, I can see the stars of our universe glittering, shimmering like beautiful living diamond creatures. They are always there; it does not matter if it is dark or light, whether I am alive or dead, their presence remains. There is a dark star that cannot be seen from the outer edges of the night. It remains locked away deep inside of me. It is only when I hold up a candle to the reflections in my eyes that I realize what I have seen is simply a mirror of time and the words that are left in my head are only thoughts that collected in the deep abyss of a haunted human head. Yet, they do not go away, they only evolve and change. The universe is inside, patterns left of mathematical designs, and nothing makes much sense.
A poetic grace escapes me as words spill out, overflowing from the beauty that is deep and over flooded by the oceans side.
Sand falls from my skeleton’s mouth…like a spiraling seashell dropping dust…what is this? A dream…a vision… tiny glittering pieces of the ocean caught up on the shoreline of our world. Together, it is an unstable surface but I find enough foundation to carve meaning in the sand with my hands. I am overwhelmed and I cannot speak when I see what it all is.
Separately each piece of sand is nothing but a moment in time…a fraction of something incomplete…when put together…it becomes land that I can draw upon, something elemental. Something tiny has given life and now there is an ocean and wind within the design. Mana is also created and fed to me as words. There is something anyone can understand… there in the sand is a spiral that goes on and on forever building high into eternity.
The ocean wipes over the spiral, erasing the scar and taking it back. A bottle washes upon the shore as I step back. It seems everything I let go may come back to me. Inside of the bottle, there is a paper. I uncork the bottle to read the paper and this is what it says…
A Haunted Reverie poetry by Deanna Jaxine Stinson Twilight glitters Breathing & bleeding Beauty transmitter Kneading into the quick sand Of a mystical land Where Time is slipping Through an hour glass Like Cinderella’s shoes Everything that falls behind us We love and we let loose Shattered into A river of solitude Waves on the shore Where ocean meets land Time and memory again Will we ever understand? The precious moments that we had As we fall away into ghost hands Of a haunted reverie An eternal melody…
Then everything in my hands suddenly melts. It seems there is a bit of a sickness growing in my soul as I inhale the black smoke left from the burning note and I pass away into a dream land where I see more of the universe.
My Dreams Gathering Agate and Amethyst
I am in a place that is filled with sand and tire trails from a vehicle.
The sand is light tan colored and very loose.
This place seems like a place for jogging because there is a woman that walks by in jogging clothes. She is an older woman with short blonde hair. I am also in jogging clothes.
The woman points over to a corner where there is a hole with sand filled in. I see an amethyst chunk and I go over and start filling up my pockets with amethyst, agate, crystal points some with a titanium coated look and other precious minerals of various colors.
I run back home to wear Paul is but it’s a different home, very dark with wood floors and one couch where he is watching tv.
There is no sound in the house, even though I see the tv on it does not turn on so I could not figure out how to tell him what happened.
Sands Falling
I am in a cave. The cave was large and it is filled with sand on the bottom, and leaking through the top. It is dark in the cave but not pitch black, it is a deep blue.
I am on top of a steep cliff inside of the mountain. The sand is falling through my hands as I clutch with my hands from the sky. Beneath of the cliff, I see small pools of blue water. There is also sea green colored water dripping down the cliffs.
I am not wearing a swim suit but rather modern clothes that are grey and white colored. I think that I am actually wearing sweats. On the other side of the sand, I start to see a vision of a place where a lot of people live. The people live underground. They do not live above ground. I think they are dead people because they go into the bottom of volcanoes and tunnels in the Earth with no sense.
On The Shore
I dreamed that I was on a shoreline of a beach. I was standing on the other side of a huge piece of black driftwood. There was a dead woman in the sand and there was other people trying to hide her corpse. There were two men with black hair. Apparently, we had accidently killed her.
She was a white woman with light brown hair. She disappeared into thin air. My higher self said that in a past life we killed this woman and got away with it and now we were paying the karmic prices. I dreamed than about my children that I love and about demons and vampires and I held my head in my hands and just cried in deep anguish.
Buried in the Sand
I dreamed that there was a girl that went missing on her wedding day. I found her three days later. She was buried in the sand, in a coffin.
When I opened the coffin, she was in the sand and she woke up and sat up in the coffin. I turned around and saw that she was alive.
Egyptian Sand
I dreamed I was riding in the sand, past a bunch of workers. I was in some sort of jeep vehicle. I stopped and got out of the vehicle and looked over a slight edge and saw some ancient Egyptians working on a white boat. I said nothing and kept traveling.
Up ahead on the road I saw my friend. My hair was black and I was contemplating whether or not I believed in reincarnation. I looked outside of myself for a moment, and saw a scarab tattoo on my lower back.
My friend said she had spoken with the man building the boat. He had lent her a piece of jewelry for a day. It was a gold and black case that opened up like wings spreading on a beetle to reveal a gold and ruby scarab. It was a necklace. I lied to my friend and asked to borrow it knowing I was going to steal it. I felt like it was mine, like I could remember it.
The next day I was driving through the sand and stopped where the boat man was working the day before. An upside down man, yellowish creature jumped in front of me hanging by his legs. I said here I have something for you and threw a replica of the necklace at him. He became off guard and could not see well believing it was the original necklace. So, I ended up keeping the scarab necklace.
Sand & Stars
I wake up slowly and open my eyes. I am shivering as the sun is rising.
I must have slept along time. I looked around to gather myself. I look into the eyes of someone standing above me. It is a bright star hovering close. I recognize her immediately. It is Psamathe, Greek goddess of beaches. She shines so bright that it is blinding but my head fills up with information as she glows and brightly darts away. I see now, the meaning in my dreams…
In dreams, the element of sand symbolizes the borderlands. This could represent where the ocean meets, or land and it could be representing your unconscious and conscious mind merging together. Sand also represents time as it would inside of an hourglass or as tiny pieces of something that when put together make something larger for a bigger purpose than one might be able to comprehend in the current situation..
Sand can symbolize shifting spiritually and emotionally, as the entire world is made as little pieces of a bigger situation.
An even brighter light comes my way…it is Apollo, Greek god of the sun.
He seems to be holding onto my hands as I stand up off the sand and I feel the warmth drying my clothes. The day becomes calm and beautiful as the sun shines high and mighty, as I tread barefoot back to the city from where I came. I came to feast upon the universe, and that I did and I am now satisfied. I will not return until the hunger aches again.
White Mage
Stars fall down in a spiral motion Turning to stone like pillars in the ocean Tides splash around me Sounds like a full moon melody And I hear songs like Words of eternity Return to me God, is like a white mage He bathes my soul in prisms of smoke and sage
For more dreams and poetry please visit Teardrops of an Angel dot com. End
Deanna Jaxine Stinson, HPI Esoteric Detective aka The Rose Goddess Halo Paranormal Investigations (HPI International) https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/HPIinternational/
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The World takes shape: Magic
“Again!” Shouted the grizzled old man in his robe that seemed to always be rustling even when there was no wind.
Khaila brushed the silty soil around her until she had created a swathe of smooth dirt in a full circle around her. The dirt from the arid plain blended in with the tone of her tan skin making her skin look like it had a strange texture to it. She once again took the jagged rock the elder wizard had given her and began quickly creating a single unbroken line in the flat circle of dirt she had created. Or, as quickly as could be expected of a hedge wizard who had only started practicing sorcery three months ago.
Khaila’s green eyes shined with a determination that never left her. It was easy with chalk on a piece of wood or a smooth slab of rock; back in her home when she wasn’t worried about what sort of thing she was about to bring into the world.
“You must concentrate! If you can’t concentrate now how do you expect to perform when there is actual danger!?” Aetisham’s angry quips had become so commonplace that they had begun to lose their edge which Khaila suspected was part of learning to work under pressure. That and Aetisham’s anger was renowned among the wizards and was a source of ridicule for him as temperance is a virtue and wizards love virtues. At least when it suited them.
Aetisham was tall and thin but surprisingly filled with energy a man who was clearly quite old, not that you could ask him about his age. His dark olive colored skin contrasted with his thick white beard which he always kept neatly trimmed. For wizards beards are also a virtue and for Aetisham that made up for his temper if not for anybody else.
As soon as the circle was complete Khaila began scrawling straight lines within the circle. They formed into triangles within circles sharing edges with octahedrons. Hexagons repeating densely to create complex forms. Khaila’s voice then cut through the quiet sound of scratching and Aetisham’s silent disproval at everything that was not his own success.
“Fulfilled Eternity’s Contradiction. Tempted Inspiring Grey-dance. Perplexing Love’s Schism.” The sacred phrases now set free evoked interweaving webs of meaning, forming and reforming, mimicking the sacred geometry drawn within the circle. As each phrase was uttered lines within the circle would change from dirt into bright blue light until when the last syllable was intoned the entire geometric labyrinth glowed brightly and the words seemed to repeat themselves quickly and quietly as if a hundred Khaila’s were whispering fiercely in prayer.
“Hmmm decent work.” Aetisham grumbled even though Khaila’s incantation had been expertly spoken and her lines were above average for a hedge wizard.
Khaila now crouched completely still in the epicenter of the glowing geometry and chattering hymns. Three feet from where she crouched another circle began to shimmer into existence. It was an exact replica of hers except it glowed red and she could hear words spoken in her own voice but in a guttural language she had only just begun to learn. The circle remained still for a moment before a burst of fire erupted from its center followed by the smell of sulfur. When the smoke cleared a figure was perched in the center of the circle exactly mirroring Khaila’s posture. In fact it was an exact replica of Khaila, it had smooth black hair pulled back into a single intricately woven braid, its face was small and round, its limbs, mirroring hers, were longer than she liked for her relatively short stature, and it wore her simple plain robe as well. Except that where her eyes should have been there was only smooth unbroken flesh, the creature’s ears suffered the same particularity.
Khaila breathed deeply, calming herself. She followed the exercise Aetisham had made her follow hundreds of times. She pictured her will, her soul, and her thoughts as a simple triangle, unbowed under pressure. The creature shifted slightly as if trying to shift the bones and muscles to better fit inside their fleshy wrapper. It awkwardly lifted a limb slowly toward Aetisham whose expression had become stony. Its fingers soon came to the outside of the circle and stopped moving as if pushed up against a pain of glass. Its tendons twitched at it struggled against it for a moment and then moved back to mirroring Khaila exactly.
“What is your bidding?” The creature spoke in a raspy languid version of Khaila’s own.
“You are to address me as mistress.” Khaila spoke in a clear commanding voice leveraging all her willpower not to stutter or show any amount of uncertainty. “Aggravated Despair’s Anchor.” She intoned, the familiar holy verbalism seemed to give her confidence as she locked her gaze directly to where the creature’s eyes should have been. The words once again were whispered back in the air around her. In accordance the other circle was soon filled with her words but in the strange guttural language. A red pentagon glowed fiercely and from it erupted a small bolt of lightning that struck the creature, scathing its skin and leaving a blistering welt.
The creature flinched slightly and then shrieked the quickness of which became a very close approximation of Khaila’s own voice. It continued shrieking loudly, perfectly mirroring Khaila’s own vocals. However what the creature didn’t know is that Khaila does not cry out.
“Silence!” Khaila roared fiercely, eyes bright with anger that stemmed from deep seated pride. The creature’s cries cut off suddenly.
“What is your bidding mistress?” The creature questioned with feigned obedience, now convinced that this wizard was not so easily cowed.
“Demon, speak to me your name.” Khaila commanded, her anger still stoked.
“I have many names, mistress.” It spoke again in its plodding version of Khaila’s voice. “I have been called plague and pestilence, despair and desire, gloom and greed, mistake, failure, ruin, weakness…”
“Enough!” Khaila shouted louder than she intended. The demon perked up slightly at her reaction, its posture shifting to sit up in a more alert position. Fear shown briefly in Khaila’s eyes. Aetisham drew a long iron rod out of his robe and scratched a precise circle around him in a flash, words already pouring out of his mouth faster than could be understood by human ears.
“NO!” Khaila pleaded towards Aetisham. “I can do it! Its fine! I still have control!” As soon as she turned her attention away from the demon it leapt violently at the outer circle, red sparks cackling wildly where it made contact. The circle bowed out but held. Khaila turned swiftly back to the demon her face panic stricken. The demons redoubled its efforts, the circle bowed out further. “Overwhelming Heaven’s Bright-light, Unsettling Gravity’s Veracious-eater, …. HIDDEN FORBIDDEN TWILIGHT!” Khaila screamed out her voice faltered with both fear and rage but holding firm onto the sacred words.
The red circle erupted with coruscating ropes of crimson lightning. Khaila’s doppelganger was dragged forcefully to the ground while the tentacles of jagged light ripped into its body. Black blood spewed forth, watering the arid soil beneath. The demon screamed, this time in earnest. Its cries were inhuman but somehow a trace of Khaila’s still remained. The lightning continued to attack the demon like a hungry beast, ripping off now unidentifiable hunks and consuming them whole, leaving behind piles of ash. Soon there was only coal black blood and ashes within the circle, the lightning had retreated back into its sacred dwelling within the lines and geometry.
Khaila breathed heavily as she released the lines from her will, the blues line fading back to dirt and the red disappearing completely. Aetisham had stopped chanting and drawing lines. He stood stock still, eyes locked on his student.
“You should not know those words. How did you come to know them?!” Khaila continued to breathe heavily attempting to calm her panic and not think about the screams. “HOW DO YOU KNOW THEM KHAILA?!” Aetisham strode over and grasped Khiala’s shoulder tightly, shaking her violently. She continued to stare blankly forward at where the demon had been. Aetisham sighed deeply. He picked up his student and carried her like a small child his focus distant and his face wearied. “You are too prideful by half. If you didn’t know so much already I would banish you from my tutelage. God knows what destruction you would unwittingly reap upon the world un-monitored. Beginning tomorrow your teaching will begin in true but not as before. You must know your limits and the limits of us all. Know this; if you cannot I will not hesitate to do what must be done.”
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