#they all go to such insane lengths and are so loving and joyful and curious and brave 😭😭😭

[nipuni]

Companions 🥰 I plan to make these for all eventually but here are Rose, Martha and Donna!

[a-strangers-thoughtss]

Summer loving had me a blast

Summer loving happened so fast

Will had been sitting in the sand, knees up to use as a makeshift table for him to set his sketchbook on. He used to do that a lot back in Lenora. He had never been big on friends, more adept to people watching.

He was similar to Jonathan that way, accept he drew people and Jonathan took pictures.

It was the summer after sophomore year, and two years or so after El had moved across the state to be with their dad for Highschool. She had always had a stronger connection to him, and Will to Joyce.

When Jonathan had left for collage he couldn’t bare to leave her alone, no matter how much it tore him up to be away from his twin.

The day had been so picture perfect, and so many gorgeous people had been roaming around, splashing in the water, sun bathing. It was the best place to find people joyful, emotions out on display for him to capture in pencil.

Something had caught his eye, a black leather jacket.

A boy looking around his age occupied it, walking slowly through the sand in sneakers, jeans, a white shirt and that leather jacket. Why he was wearing any of those things at the beach, Will did not understand. He must be insane, mentally ill.

But it would have been a completely insane lie to say that Will wasn’t drawn to him.

He was handsome, ridiculously so. He was tall and gangly, but not overly so. His face looked straight out of a marble statue, sharp, defined features. Shoulder length black hair messily spilled over his face, going in all different directions.

He was pretty too, and god, life was unfair.

Will glanced up, in the way he had learned after the time someone had caught him and angrily broke his nose, hidden and deliberate. He studied the boys face, slowly etching what he saw onto the page.

Will had just got done with a very rough sketch of his face when he looked up again.

Shit.

The boy was looking at him.

Their eyes met, and Will froze.

Shit, shit, shit, shit.

This guy was most definitely not someone he wanted to mess with. Greasers like him usually had a gang of buddies just waiting for the perfect opportunity to pick on someone they deemed “different” and Will was most definitely different. He was queer and every single person who looked at him seemed to clue in pretty fast.

But now he was walking towards Will and he was frozen and unable to move, rooted to his spot on the sand.

“What you doin’?” His voice had the harshness of a greaser, but his eyes were curious.

“Uh, people watching I guess.” Wills suppressed himself a little when his voice didn’t shake. What else was he supposed to say?

“Mind if I join then?” He asked, “Bored as shit.”

All Will could do was nod a little. He hurriedly turned to the next page before the other boy plopped down next to him.

“I’m Mike by the way.”

“Will.”

They sat in silence for a long while, Will finishing up the scetch of Mike and deciding to sketch out the figure of a house on the horizon, highlighted by the setting sun. As he was erasing a line to draw a new one, Mike spoke. It was startling, Will had forgotten he was even there for a bit.

“Hate beaches. Always so sandy and overly hot.” Will snorted at that.

“Well maybe you’d like them more if you took the jacket off for five minutes. You gotta be roasting right now.” That pulled startled laughter out of Mike.

“Just missin’ my boys.”

“Got kids? Though you were close to my age, looks like I misjudged.”

“Nah, still pretty young, not quite balding.”

“Got a bit for that.” They fell into an easy banter, something Will hadn’t known he was missing. The conversation just flowed with Mike in a way that just felt so natural.

“So, what’s a pretty lady like you doin’ out here so late.” Mike asked, light and curious.

“Already told you, people watching.”

“That’s a nice picture you got there.” now Mike was pointing to the sketch of the house, outlined with bold scribbles on the page.

“Thanks, I usually just draw people.”

“Well If that’s not what you ‘usually draw’ I’d like to see what type of shit you can come up with when you’re really drawin’.” Mike said, sincerity laced through his voice. “Any of those I can have a look at?”

Will felt self conscious, but before he could really think about it, he was flipping the page back to his unfinished Mike sketch. His eyes widened and his face grew hot.

“Damn, shit, sorry. Just saw you and I had to draw you, you look so out of place.” Not the words he should have used, but he can’t take it back now.

He looked warily to Mike, whose eyes were wide.

“Damn that’s good.” Was all he said, turning to face Will. “I don’t got any money on me but If I did you bet I’d be giving you a few quarters for that.”

He was dumbfounded, but quickly moved, going to rip the page out.

“Here, have it for free, I don’t mind.” Mike looked down at it, pleased.

“Thanks man.”

There was a long pause, a moment they both just sat there, grinning awkwardly at each other.

It was broken by a loud female voice.

“Mike, it’s time to go!”

Grinning, he saluted Will, “That’s my cue to split. Gonna be here tomorrow morning, wanna hang?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Mike got up, stepping backwards as he called,

“Bye Will.” It sent sparks up his spine.

[sugartums]

The Full Heart and Emotional Availability

I.

The drive home from the Theater for Emotive Artificial Intelligence Science was in the rain on gravel roads past the one/laned bridge. The country. A lone squirrel was making her frantic search for acorns and sustenance for the winter. My winter of discontent, no more, thought she.

He should start acting differently in a few weeks, it’s done, the Maestro determined. It was all a matter of time now. His brain is sub/affecting the change through his baptismal/implanted devices as we speak. They were still current, no new insertion needed for the next twelve years. Strange:  none of the future Meridians had any recollection of the pain inflicted by violent insertion of ear-implants; a ritual unquestioned and decided long before consciousness was attained.

The Maestro remote activated the device to reconfigure the area around the corpus colosseum; (like in Rome, said Maestro), so that when she arrived back home; her live/in boyfriend would already be Engaged. Interconnected cryptic syntax; nerves talking one another or something, his being unaware of the whole affectation of his advanced personality. Blah blah blah.

He would be better that way, such as was advertised on TV.

Click click, program supra/routine engaged: Emotional Availability: EA.

It wasn’t a cheap upgrade. The MC in his electric/silver/plated desk and his silver/black hair swiveled when she balked at the non/premium covered cost of her boyfriend’s brain evolution. That’s not what it said on TV. The Maestro said nothing as prices were haggled.

Slicked back and side parted.

Long metallic pen in thin/tarantula length fingers, fingering the thing.

False/glass plate windows were back in vogue and behind him, the foggy dusty lines framed the once-scientist.

Weary and heaving downward in the chest, he determined the price again without argument. MC would indeed be the Master of the Ceremony and the coin.

She weighed her actions like a laundry list.

←←←←←

II.

The night before the upgrade he didn’t respond to her question. While watching her

decision  (re Boyfriend) stare at the plexiglass moonroof of their bedroom, flat-backed;  "Do you ever feel anything?" asked she.

“Whaat?” and a chuckle from him.

Even worse, any text messages received from him, after her explanation remembering a time-frame, or a series of events surrounding them, were answered with an “I see”.

She thought he may as well have said, “I don’t give a shite” instead of “I see”.

Halloween was over. The guise of insanity no longer an excuse for Fools.

↑↑↑↑

In the next phase, the doctor said, the subject, i.e. Raymond, would be responding more lovingly and with empathy.

It would be another few weeks before anything would happen; runtime errors, bugs, and self-deletion of wayward files.  

It was good for humans to have a heart. Every stew needs a salting.

Even some humans rejected the attempt of science to force more humanity, said the once-scientist. I don’t want this to happen, she thought.

Halloween was over. The guise of insanity no longer a suggestion. Who dresses up on the other days of the year?

←←←←

The stupefied glow of a man after orgasm reaches a point of lull for only five seconds, then he becomes aware of reality again. The Fukijawa light on a semi-warrior pose of Raymond by the wall window held for more than five seconds-- there was a time she could stare at his slim-toned stomach for many seconds after sex. In this time frame, she was getting up to clean herself off after the five-second lull. Wasn't the time used now for better things than sex? But without sex Raymond would retreat further into his Mother's figurative tentacles. Birdsmouth would be around to feed him immediately at her exit.

His body was never the problem. His sexual prowess, even without the help of botvibes, was never the problem.

His mind: was what she said in her mind. Born and raised without empathy. That kind of person. Mean sometimes. Critical of her driving. Unnaturally negative in simple conflicts.

Lush green mountain flora and sweet smelling air. Country s-curve roads in a to

p-down blood red Mitsubishi r-type.

→→→→

“The end of the story is when the people go away, then only come back as spirits,” Mirima explained to her 6-year old niece when visiting Fractiontown trying to forget about Raymond’s upgrade to complete.

“I don’t like this story, Aunty Em,  it scares me too much.”  Mirima laughed, “No, my baby, this is just a story that is not true, and what you are hearing cannot really happen, people cannot come back as spirits.”

“What about ghosts,” she was curious.

“I don’t know about ghosts, but your grandma is still with me, I can feel her. “  

“Do you still  talk to her anymore?”

“When I miss her, “ then a wave of emotion, silently stepped stage center from a waiting place; so Mirima let it, and let it more. Tears cannot be repressed when your heart is full.

“Stop,” said the niece slowly and atonally. Again three more times.

Mirima came home five days later.

Raymond worked at a polymer plant and got through traffic and gravel roads around  

1900ss.

His self-chosen duties were to make the dinner of fish and rice, sauces, and soy, peas and beans. Sauces and soy, peas and beans. He had an apron to protect his clothes. He maneuvered around the kitchen like one of his robots doing inspections. He amused himself by acting as they would; sharp stops and slow turning.

Control of heat and time. Watch the flame. Lower the flame.

Toss the food, Plate the table.

She sat at the supper table and looked on the outside of his deeply Jade and orange-flecked eyes, soft black eyelashes, and the Steve Martin-esque hairline from 1979. It was some kind of rage and admiration always. Both at once, unlike a cup of milk on the table. The table had other things there like a bowl of rice, but the rice would never be judged.

After dinner, she looked for some signs and was told to preview her questions slowly but surely over the course of four weeks. One question per day to solicit an emotional response. When the desired answer was received, she could then reward and affirm him through a series of phrases and personal attention.  

The physical attention was the first thing she desired from him in the commencement of their matchmaking.  Then as the progression happened, and her happiness waned, she let him move into her complex. He was more than willing to take over the financial and the household task halves. She watched him at the stove and garbage bin a

nd held back screams of rage.

But there were no sounds to describe the horror.

The secret remote engagement of the missing elements would be modulated to the maximum potential of Raymond’s emotional threshold. Max. pot. meaning using the prefrontal cortex as a type of clay, molded to make the emotional elements missing, would force the man into a more balanced being.

Dionysius and Apollo. Yin and yang. The fullness of the heart and mind.

                                        Lonely. Cold. Scared. Alone.

This morning she decided to wake early to make some muesli with honey and kiwi. Some fruits were rare and showed extra love to prepare for someone.

He came to the table dressed and pressed. He had a smile on his face. She asked how he was doing, he gave her a tiny pinch on the shoulder at the breakfast bar while bussing his bowl to the island.

Oh god, a rush of dopamine, oh yes. Thank you for touching me. It is happening, It is

happening! She suppressed the joy/wave but smiled back. Have a good day honey, I love you.

Love you too. And into the gravel driveway to the Mitsubishi Eclypse.

III.

Because this will help us. Because he is disabled by lack of emotion. Because he is a man.

He will thank me later for this. She wandered mentally in this matrix for the rest of her morning. She had to take off this day to get some bloodwork done. She was having her own brain chemistry tested to make sure her evolution was in order. No new upgrades for me.

I am tired today. I am feeling slow and tired. Does this happen when someone else changes?

→→→→→→

On the desk a month later, in her computer room, was a card. It said her name in black ink. She opened it and saw the picture of a heart on the front with some kind of abstract fish swimming through it.

She had a pause before the feeling she was looking for.

Ecstasy. She had to calm her beating heart. Inside, the card said:

“I have sunk like a stone to the depths of the ocean; I am lost in devotion.”

Love, Raymond

She lay back in bed with the card on her chest and cried a joyful messy cry with minimal repression.

I want to feel this way every day please please my God I knew this would work and my dreams would come true finally

She drove off the gravel driveway looking straight ahead. This will last with her eyes unblinking at the battery of red lights that forced her to pause. She would not be stopped now. Her way was now.

→→→→→

The second card. Two months later. Know that she never brought up the cards; that would ruin it. I’m not dull in the brain, for Pete’s sake.

A picture of a saint or something, looking woeful, and in pain. Only inside a quote:

"And what God? Great Jove,

Who shakes heaven's highest temples with his thunder,

And I, poor mortal man, not do the same!

I did it, and with all my heart I did it."

She put on the computer to find an answer...it was St. Augustine, talking about sex and then going on about it in a Confessional; about the vileness of lust.  

This is not what I want..I wanted to love, I must bring this up to Raymond.

She forced with some flesh resistance, a pair of crystal hoop earrings into the second hole in each ear. It was enjoyable, the feel of the skin ripping. Take it, bitch.

That voice came from nowhere and inside her head, responding to whatever leftover guilt remained. For sneaking, for cheating, for getting what she thought she wanted.

→→→→→

There is first spring, and then there is summer. You now, do not become you later.

The person who has settled down on the train is not the same person who stepped onto the train on the platform.

True words are not beautiful.

Raymond made statements such as these. Mirima went into the bathroom to knock on her head with her fist.  She caused a flux of a person; no longer a consistent person. He was more emotional, yes. But was he sensing his brain was different? What did he know of this programming?

If he was giving her a clue, it was when helped her with the kitchen duties. He said I want you to know, I will never judge you. You can be honest with me. She turned from scooping the prickly pear fruit:

Let’s go horseback riding then, you said the smell of horses makes you sick. If you

can handle that, then I know you won’t judge me for forcing you to go.

The jumping of the beasts was horrifying to him, more so at this moment; but the lucidity and clayness of her face; this new frontal cortex made him think, ok, I will go.

Ok, I will go, he said aloud.  She shrieked and hugged him around the hips; the hips felt round and lovely, like the vulnerable thighs of a baby.

IV.

The self that travels from moment to moment, corresponding to the moving water on the waves. This is the meaning that no one experiences anything, there is simply seeing and experiencing.  

The Maestro spoke to the young woman with the gentle approach of an ancient technologist; the folding rice paper table held a few oyster shells, upside down and holding sticks.

I cannot find a place to love him, he is changing in a way I cannot compute. Maestro sighed, took a long look out the plexiglass, then sneezed with a loud AHHH before the choo.  

Recovering swiftly; I can only tell you that what you experience, and you, are the same thing, he said.

So I am looking at his changes, but my insides are not separate from his outside changes?

He ignored her question, then asked if she would take a short test, to see if her brain was doing its job properly. You know, he said, the job for the thing one owns; memories, experiences, Raymond. She laid on the couch submissively with her legs spindly, hanging off the settee.

Raymond got off the phone with the Maestro and grabbed his keys. He would be going horseback riding after all. It was time to move on to look at things he no longer feared. It was his solemn duty to learn how to enjoy himself, the man said.

Mirima was absolutely smashed from a few cocktails at the kitchen table. He was hoping she would be fine to ride when they got there in two hours. Into the deep country, away from gravel and smog. No place to bicker, only the horses. He loved her fully now, no more fear of risks.

On the hill, she was still buzzed but quite aware of her skills inherited from a family

of farmers and tillers. She opted for no helmet, her hair was sprayed and beautifully luscious with copper tones.

No, he would not jump, he would take a stroll on one of the older beasts; on a short journey in the wood while she got her courage to leap over the five-foot barriers.

It was a perfect blue/sky morning. She raced forward and the horse’s gait leaned to the left. She over compromised on the right, and her foot fell from the

←←←←

Down on the ground and neck

Slowly people around the body, she is conscious, she is ok.

Raymond took her to the hospital himself, 23 kilometers away, and raced like a wooden horse.  Carried in as a Princess...saved by actions, saved by his works. This was not in the time/frame.

In the waiting room, he sat with his hands folded, knees wide apart, facing the floor.

He was called in and she was bandaged around the head and awake. I love you he felt.

“ I love you, my dear, I have to tell you something..I know what you did, you were stalked..we will be together forever, we wanted you to accept the upgrade….” he burst into tears, the first cry of his time with her. Amidst blubbering, his head in her braless breasts, I

love you I love you...

With furrowed brows, she gently pushed his head away.

“Who are you?”

[schadenfreudefreude-blog]

On expectations and pessimism

Our lives are powerfully affected by a special quirk of the human mind to which we rarely pay much attention. We are creatures deeply marked by our expectations. We go around with mental pictures, lodged in our brains, of how things are supposed to go. But expectations have an enormous impact on how we respond to what happens to us. They are always framing the way we interpret the events in our lives. It’s according to the tenor of our expectations that we will deem moments in our lives to be either enchanting or (more likely) profoundly mediocre and unfair.

What drives us to fury are affronts to our expectations. There are plenty of things that don’t turn out as we’d like but don’t make us livid either. When a problem has been factored into our expectations, calm is never endangered. We may be sad, but we aren’t screaming.

Unfortunately, our expectations are never higher, and therefore more troubling, than they are in love. There are reckless ideas circulating in our societies about what sharing a life with another person might be like. Of course, we see relationship difficulties around us all the time; there’s a high frequency of splitting, separation and divorce, and our own past experience is bound to be pretty mixed. But we have a remarkable capacity to discount this information. We retain highly ambitious ideas of what relationships are meant to be and what they will (eventually) be like for us – even if we have in fact never seen such relationships in action anywhere near us.

We’ll be lucky; we can just feel it intuitively. Eventually, we’ll find that creature we know exists: the ‘right person’; we’ll understand each other very well, we’ll like doing everything together, and we’ll experience deep mutual devotion and loyalty. They will, at last, be on our side.

Our expectations might go like this: a decent partner should easily, intuitively, understand what I’m concerned about. I shouldn’t have to explain things at length to them. If I’ve had a difficult day, I shouldn’t have to say that I’m worn out and need a bit of space. They should be able to tell how I’m feeling. They shouldn’t oppose me: if I point out that one of our acquaintances is a bit stuck up, they shouldn’t start defending them. They’re meant to be constantly supportive. When I feel bad about myself, they should shore me up and remind me of my strengths. A decent partner won’t make too many demands. They won’t be constantly requesting that I do things to help them out, or dragging me off to do something I don’t like. We’ll always like the same things. I tend to have pretty good taste in films, food and household routines: they’ll understand and sympathize with them at once.

Strangely, even when we’ve had pretty disappointing experiences, we don’t lose faith in our expectations. Hope reliably triumphs over experience. It’s always very tempting to console ourselves with an apparently very reasonable thought: the reason it didn’t work out this time was not that the expectations were too high, but that we directed them onto the wrong person. We weren’t compatible enough. So rather than adjust our ideas of what relationships are meant to be like, we shift our hopes to a new target on whom we can direct our recklessly elevated hopes.

At times, in relationships, it can be almost impossible to believe that the problem lies with relationships in general, for the issues are so clearly focused in on the particular person we happen to be with – their tendency not to listen to us, to be too cold, to be cloyingly present … But this isn’t the problem of love, we believe. It wouldn’t be like this with another person, the one we saw at school. They looked nice and we had a brief chat about the theme of the keynote instructor. Partly because of the slope of their neck and a lilt in their accent, we reached an overwhelming conclusion: with them it would be easier. There could be a better life waiting round the corner.

What we say to our partners is often quite grotesque. We turn to someone we’ve left everything to in our will and agreed to share our income with for the rest of our lives – and tell them the very worst things we can think of: things we’d never dream of saying to anyone else. To pretty much everyone else, we are reliably civil. We’re always very nice to the people in the sandwich shop; we talk through problems reasonably with colleagues; we’re pretty much always in a good mood around friends. But then again, without anything uncivil being meant by this, we have very few expectations in these areas.

No one can disappoint and upset us as much as the person we’re in a relationship with – for of no one do we have higher hopes. It’s because we are so dangerously optimistic that we call them a cunt, a shithead or a weakling. The intensity of the disappointment and frustration is dependent on the prior massive investment of hope. It’s one of the odder gifts of love.

So a solution to our distress and agitation lies in a curious area: with a philosophy of pessimism. It’s an odd and unappealing thought. Pessimism sounds very unattractive. It’s associated with failure; it’s usually what gets in the way of better things. But when it comes to relationships, expectations are the enemies of love.

A more moderate, more reasonable, set of expectations around relationships would include the idea that it is normal and largely unavoidable that people do not understand one another very well in a couple. Each person’s character and mind is hugely complex and convoluted. It’s hard to grasp exactly why someone acts as they do. And, by extension, we’d be assuming from the start that no partner is going to have a complete, reliable or terribly accurate understanding of us. There will be the occasional things they get absolutely right, a few areas where they really grasp what’s going on in us; that’s what makes the early days so charming. But these will be exceptions, rather than standard. As a relationship developed, we then wouldn’t get hurt when our partner made some wildly inaccurate assumptions about our needs or preferences. We’d have been assuming that this would be coming along pretty soon – just as we don’t take it remotely amiss if an acquaintance recommends a film we detest: we know they couldn’t know. It doesn’t bother us at all. Our expectations are set at a reasonable level.

In a wiser world than our own, we would regularly remind ourselves of the various reasons why people simply cannot live up to the expectations that have come to be linked to romantic relationships:

One is dealing with another person.

Much that will matter to us cannot possibly be in sync with another person. Why should another human being get tired at the same time as you, want to eat the same things, like the same songs, have the same aesthetic preferences, the same attitude to money or the same idea about Christmas? For babies, there is a long and strange set of discoveries about the real separate existence of the mother. At first it seems to the child that the mother is perfectly aligned with it. But gradually there’s a realization that the mother is someone else: that she might be sad when the child is feeling jolly. Or tired when the child is ready to jump up and down on the bed for ten minutes. We have similarly basic discoveries to make of our partners. They are not extensions of us.

The early stages of love give a misleading image of what a relationship can be like.

The experience of adult love starts with the joyful discovery of some amazing congruencies. It’s wonderful to discover someone who finds the same jokes hilarious, who feels the same way as you about cozy jumpers or the music you love, someone who is really able to see why you feel as you do about your father, or who deeply appreciates your confidence around form-filling or your knowledge of wine. There’s a seductive hope that the wonderful fit between the two of you are the first intimation of a general fusion of souls.

Love is the discovery of harmony in some very specific areas – but to continue with this expectation is to doom hope to a slow death. Every relationship will necessarily involve the discovery of a huge number of areas of divergence. It will feel as if you are growing apart and that the precious unity you knew during the weekend in Paris is being destroyed. But what is happening should really be seen under a much less alarming description: disagreement is what happens when love succeeds and you get to know someone close up across the full range of their life.

Any upbringing will be imperfect in important ways. The atmosphere at home might have been too strict or too lax, too focused on money or not adequately on top of the finances. It might have been emotionally smothering or a bit distant and detached. Family life might have been relentlessly gregarious or limited by lack of confidence. Getting from being a baby to a reasonably functional adult is never a flawless process. We are all, in diverse ways, damaged and insane. The child might have learned to keep its true thoughts and feelings very much to itself and to tread very carefully around fragile parents; and in later life, this person may still be rather secretive and cagey in their own relationships. The characteristic was acquired to deal with a childhood situation, but such patterns get deeply embedded and keep on going. Our adaptations to the troubles of our past make us all maddening prospects in the present.

The error we’re always tempted to make is to see defects as special to our own partner. We get to know the irritating and disappointing sides of one particular person – and draw the conclusion that we’ve been especially unlucky. We’ve become involved with someone who seems lovely on the surface but has revealed themselves strangely disturbed and defective. What a curse! What a problem to correct! We therefore look around for a new partner with whom we can finally have what we always knew was promised to us: a problem-free relationship. Our romantic impulses are continually renewed. We blame everything but our hopes.

And yet, the reasons why other people are disappointing are universal. The problems may take on a local character, but everyone would have them to a significant extent. We don’t need to know the specific eccentricities we would find in a prospective partner. But you can be sure there will be some – and that they will, at times, be pretty serious. The only people we can think of as normal are those we don’t yet know very well.