#this was essentially our debate after getting my textbooks sorted | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ilgalantuomo · 5 years

Text

Sonosilva

Note: All asterisk-ed names have been changed so as to respect the person’s right to not be named.

I’ve poured gong-fu tea many times; surely in the hundreds, potentially in the thousands. It’s something that almost comes naturally for me, at this point. Shit, I have had dreams about doing it.

By definition, my role as a tea server is to make tea. Usually, I make tea for guests who have never done it before; or perhaps, they have done it before, but they forget the steps. It’s usually one of those two. On occasion, there will be the guest who, in fact, knows all the steps, but wishes to have someone else demonstrate. In this situation, they either want to connect with you, or have someone, presumably more knowledgeable, explain to their companions.

Not every time is significant. In fact, many times, it is relatively uneventful, really. Most of the time, people sort of accept whatever you’re doing, maybe ask a few questions. If you are lucky, people get into the process, and start a conversation with you. If you somehow get even more lucky, they fall in love with the process, and you get a new friends out of it. That’s usually as good as it gets.

This isn’t to say that you can’t have extraordinary moments. You absolutely can. I’ve had many beautiful moments, some even glorious and ethereal. But many are not life-changing-ly profound. Some are just fun, and that’s worth it, by all means.

Because of this usual flow of events, I have come to not expect much when pouring tea for big groups…or, I try to, anyway. What ensued from one night of pouring tea, however, was more than I ever could have imagined.

A dear friend, affectionately called Bodhi, tells me one evening that he intends to serve tea at some recurring event held by college students called Sonosilva. He invites me to join. At first, I cannot place the name. Sonosilva to me sounds like a romance-language surname.

It occurs to me then that I know this name. I know the event. I’ve even been invited once previously. I learned of it at the memorial of Cameron Poole (may he rest in tea), a guest I used to serve regularly. In mourning his death, I connected with friends of his that seemed to run in similar circles. They had invited me to a previous iteration of this event. Because I did not attend it, I had forgotten the entire notion of it until Bodhi spoke of it.

On the night of the event, I meet Bodhi and our other friend, Celia. After gathering our needed supplies, we make our way to a local spring on Empire Grade to collect local water to make tea, in the true fashion of crazy-tea-people. Whilst there, we meet a fellow spring-enthusiast gathering water on his last night in Santa Cruz. Pleasant conversation, I wish I could remember his name.

We gather our water, head somewhere on Empire Grade, and park. We debate what we need: how much water, what tea, what teaware, what materials to create a lovely altar and tea serving station-all of the essential tea-geek matters. After some down-sizing, combining, and minor adjustments, we begin our trek in the dark forest.

I’m not from here. I didn’t go to the university. I have no idea where we are going. As far as I’m concerned, I am just along for the ride. As such, I leave it to Bodhi and Celia to both take us to where we are going, and create our space for tea. All I’m here to do is aid.

We hike along the road, cars speeding past us, missing by only a few harrowing feet. Because we have so many supplies, we chug along, ducking into the brush when cars pass. Occasionally, we stop to discover the path markers, but only find broken fences and grass. If only we had parked closer.

I have no idea what to expect. Is this a casual, sit-around-a-camp-fire event? Is it a space where everyone coming shares personal experiences over tea? What could this possible be? I keep wondering so I can act with proper decorum.

We finally find ourselves up the road to the site. I am slowing down, but enjoying the walking. The air is thick, the fog is enveloping us in a ghastly mist; the sky is dark, forest quiet. All is peaceful here. It’s nights like these that I wish we had the capability to effectively capture the mystical “atmosphere” a time, day, or place exudes. Since no such technology exists, I won’t bother to grasp at the asymptote that is this brief, ethereal moment of existence.

We eventually come across a fellow Sonosilva-goer, who shone their flashlight at us from across a meadow until we intersected. We hike further, through gnarled roots and deceiving forks on the windy path. All the while, more fellow guests seem to join us as I see more and more flashlight rays flickering around us.

Eventually, we get to the site. I’ve never been to a festival like the fabled Burning Man, but I imagine it to be something like this, but perhaps much larger and palpable. There is an electricity in the atmosphere; a textbook case of visceral experience; a place of wonder, childlike imagination; and a place of great hedonism manifested in bong rips, cheap liquor, and psychedelics. Even in spite of not knowing this world, I feel a sense of quiet awe. Somehow, everyone ends up in the same place with similar intentions, and somehow, this space is beautiful. Here are all these young people-my peers-celebrating life in an odd, but extraordinary manner: one in the middle of the central-coast redwoods with a palisade-like structure of trees surrounding a DJ booth and small dance floor.

As it turns out, there are two potential areas for us to set up our tea corner. The intended space was a jerry-rigged pergola made from logs, brush, and large branches. But that doesn’t seem fitting. It somehow feels too open. Instead, we opt for the adjacent yurt-like tent, in which we find a perfect spot to position ourselves.

Bodhi and I tend to be similar in our thoughts, which means I can help him set up in a way that makes logistical and aesthetic sense. We carried what we thought worked well for a tea table: teaware suitable for serving multiple people, wooden serving tray, bamboo tea boat, assorted lights, stones, and other accoutrements, and, of course, a nice spread of teas and our spring water. We have a simple space made from some of what we brought, but also materials and objects acquired serendipitously from the organizers (read: a milk crate and an ornate scarf that seemed to be made for adorning a tea table).

After some configuration and light introductions and small talk, Bodhi begins tea service. We both agree on a shou that we mutually enjoy, as it seems to fit the vibe of the yurt: calm and down-to-earth. Immediately, a friend of Bodhi’s, Lauren*, desires hot water, and perhaps, a cup of tea, she says. Bodhi, ever the connecting thread to so many people of different communities, greets all of his friends on an individual basis as if they were the only two here, a characteristic I respect and admire.

A festival go-er sits, gazing in wonder at what this might be. Bodhi answers his question with simple explanations in a passionate, but soft manner. Already, our new friend is amazed such a larger world of tea exists, and can hardly believe any of what Bodhi explains. A few times, Bodhi will stop and ask my thoughts on a matter, or for me to explain something in a different way. I try my best to keep it simple. I know I can sometimes lose myself in an explanation, leaving the other person more confused than before.

For a while, this is the general rhythm of the night. People come in, stop for a mere cup of tea, then leave to go back out to enjoy DJ sets, spliffs, or their friends. Some people stay for a while to get away from the festival-like energy and busyness. Regardless, we are here to serve them tea and create a safe for them to enjoy. As Bodhi serves and explains, I keep a watchful eye on guests who might need tea. If appropriate, I give new guests a cup, serve our current guests more, or offer some explanations on pu-erh, tea, or why we drink in the form we do.

In these settings, I often find it simple to give as little information as possible. Tonight is no exception. Perhaps it stems from laziness, perhaps from a desire to keep the subject of tea interesting and mysterious. Personally, I think it makes the most sense in situations such as these, seeing as some guests only want tea. Not information. Not backstory. Not some long-winded explanation of something that doesn’t even really give a concrete answer.

Now, if people really desire, I strive to give them explanations that satisfy their curiosity. Even still, I try to convey it in an appropriate manner that will make the most sense to the people in question. Tonight, there are some people desiring such answers.

As Bodhi presents our tea, and explains some of its facets, I find myself wanting to butt in and clarify a point he makes. I even find myself wanting to steer his answer in a direction that I see more fitting for our audience. The tea-geek in my head finds it appropriate to give the most correct answer to everyone, to give concrete explanations on tea and tea culture.

I know this isn’t the best place to do it. At the end of the day, we should only be here to serve people what they require. I shouldn’t insist with ferocity that my way of explaining and presenting tea in a very specific way. In fact, all my education and experience has been rooted in openness and resistance to dogmatic explanations. Why should tonight be any different?

While we serve guests, I stay quiet. I don’t want to give my dogmatic insistence a voice. Instead, I attempt just to serve, to be mindful of our guests’ needs. Occasionally, somebody will unknowingly indulge me by asking for some sort of information, thus letting me explain something in a manner I can appreciate.

Occasionally, Bodhi and I will stop and confer on whether to add a tea to the pot to keep it interesting. We even check on the other, making sure the tea can flow, the other is awake enough, and that all is well. At some point, we decide to add another shou to the pot, one that complements the one we are serving. Of course, the vibe changes immediately, and a large group comes in wanting tea.

I notice something as the night continues. I notice something I don’t like. It is something in me. I yearn to be the one people focus on; to be the one explaining; to be the focus of attention in the room. But why? How? Bodhi is doing a wonderful job of explaining. He’s passionate, very clearly; he is engaging and friendly; he is serving everyone with a spirit of love, patience, and humility, the true spirit of tea; he is doing perfect. It isn’t fair to him that I feel as if I need the attention to be on me. That isn’t his problem. That is mine. For a while, this distracts me; it makes me reflect on why I feel like this; it makes me realize that this isn’t a one-time experience. This is an issue within myself. This is me wanting to be recognized, heard, seen, and appreciated for me. This is me feeling inadequate, as if I am not enough. I feel ashamed to think that I need the spotlight, that I need recognition. The serving of tea should not be about me, or my bullshit need to have attention.

I’m brought back to the serving when someone thanks us. They thank us for the beautiful experience, they tell us how rad the entire process and beverage itself made them feel. They get up and leave. And just like that, new people, inexperienced with tea, come in, sit down, and ask for a cup.

I check in with Bodhi once more. To my enjoyment, Bodhi wants to get up and explore the festivities, meaning that someone must take over: me. I had wanted the attention, and now here it was, being handed to me. To think that the very thing that I had yearned for- conflicted about my desires-was now being given to me in the form of a duty I knew very well.

I jump in, ready to serve our guests. Surprisingly, there have been a few people that have stayed here for a while. I add another shou, continuing with tonight’s tea theme, to accommodate for the growing number of people entering the tent and wanting tea. In fact, a crew of people that had previously come in had now returned.

After some light small talk and simple explanations on tea, I found myself engaged with the people who returned. One of them, a young woman name Emily*, strikes up a conversation about mushrooms and psychedelics, neither of which is subject for which I have strongly feelings. I have been in these discussions, however, and usually it has been best to listen to what someone has to say about these substances. Usually, most people talk about their trips as well as why they feel everyone should experience substances. It all starts to sound similar after a while, I must admit. Nevertheless, I nod, not understanding much of the details, as I don’t have any experience in this realm.

Eventually, the conversation comes to a point where someone asks my name, which I say while trying to make my voice loud enough to be heard over the music. Emily, stopping what she was saying about psychedelics asks me where it comes from and what it means. As I do with most people, I explain that it is a family name, trying to keep it brief. She, however, wants know more, and insists on telling both me and our other guests that she will hear its origins.

My name comes from my maternal grandfather, Savin. To put it simply, he was a man from an impoverished immigrant family. He grew up in a tenement building, where he paid for lumps of coal to keep warm. He grew up watching polio, influenza, and a number of other diseases and maladies ravage the people of his neighborhood. In fact, he contracted a few of those diseases, and experienced just how awful these conditions were. In response, we wished to become a doctor, both to heal people and rise out of his conditions. Through a job mercifully given to him by a butcher, he worked his way to working in a pharmacy, then pharmacy school. With this experience, he pursued and acquired a medical school education at Columbia, a massive feat for a poor Italian kid who had contracted polio.

After his residency, he enlisted in the army to be a medic. This would send him through numerous trials in Europe, including: arriving at Normandy Beach on June 7, 1944 to treat maimed, suffering soldiers of the largest seaborne invasion in history; joining the forces raiding Dachau, where he treated inmates to his best ability; and raiding Hitler’s estate.

After returning home from his time in the European theater, my grandparents moved to a small town in California, where my grandfather started his private practice as a gynecologist and general practitioner. As he practiced, he treated a vast number of patients, assisted in the births of many children, and, in doing so, amassed a reputation as a man and doctor of kindness, strength, and phenomenal ability.

I never was able to meet him. He passed away some years before I was born. My father had a near-blood relationship with him, in spite of the fact that he was his son-in-law. Through a rather odd, nay, uncanny set of circumstances that demands another piece of writing, my father accurately predicted my birth in a dream. When I was born, in light of his predictions being true, and now having one boy, my father named me after my grandfather.

I proceed to explain this story in full detail, with the occasional interruption, while pouring tea for all those willing to listen. At first, it appeared to only be Emily, myself, and a few others sitting around our cozy tea table. I progressed further and further into the story, stopping to explain minor details and checking everyone’s cup. At some point, I lost my train of thought to a bewildering sight: everyone in the tent-even those not drinking tea who were sitting in the back-were watching me in silence.

As if his spidey-senses went off, Bodhi returns. As he walks in to check in with me, he notices the crowd listening to me. He smiles, waves, and motions for me to continue. So, continue, I do.

After I finish, Emily and the few people immediately around me are quiet. I figure I have probably bored them with a long-winded story about something meaningless. Emily then tells me, “Your grandfather is still changing lives through you. Do you think he imagined that his grandson would inspire joy and change the lives of some nineteen-year-olds by telling the story of his name? You have changed my life with this experience and your beautiful story. Sure, I could have chosen another thing to do tonight, and that would have been beautiful, too. But this is very beautiful, and has changed my life and inspired joy.”

By now, the majority of people inside the tent have gone back to their own experiences, naturally. Nevertheless, my immediate guests and I share more stories, especially those of great significance to us. While continuing to pour tea, I share meaningful experiences of my life and those associated with tea (many of which I feel merit their own piece of writing), and continue to pour for people wanting to join us. We even have a discussion on cultural differences, youth, and drugs.

As we approach the dawn hours, people begin to leave, or they crash on some comfortable blankets in the corner. Our water supply dwindles. The tea is lightening, losing its divine complexity. My guests must leave. As they get up, they all ask for hugs, and tell me departing thoughts. They claim I am beautiful, that my stories are beautiful, that my existence and their time with me has changed their lives, that I am patient and wise.

After the last guest leaves, I make one last pot. I sip the basically-flavorless tea, and reflect. I had spent my time craving attention. Then, I got it. I received my desire for attention in a way where I could explain who I was; where I could tell my origin story to an audience that was apparently ready to listen.

I stepped out to get some air, and to explore the other festivities. I leaned against a tree to watch the DJ that had been hypnotized the dwindled crowd, dazed by all that had just happened. When I was feeling inadequate and yearning for someone to notice me, something-God, the universe, the spirit of tea, whatever you want to call it-gave me an audience and opportunity to tell the world of my pride, my existence, and my origin. All of this just occurred over pouring tea-an entity I already consider indescribably beautiful- in the beautiful, ethereal realm of some festival-like event in the middle forest. And I began to weep.

After some lo-fi dj sets, I made my way back to the tent to look for Bodhi and pack up. Lauren*, his friend from earlier, had been drifting in and out of our tent throughout the night, and had stayed for some of my regaling of stories. I found them there comfortably catching up, and I joined.

Within the hour, the sun rose, most people had left, and we began packing up our tea corner, now ravaged by spilled tea, piles of cups, and disheveled blankets. Eventually, we wake those sleeping in the tent so that we could assist in dismantling both it and the rest of the site. The rest of clean up and disassembly takes some time, but Bodhi and I enjoy the company of Lauren and friends.

On our way back to our cars, Bodhi, Lauren, and I discuss our time pouring tea, and why it is meaningful to both Bodhi and me. We begin to depart ways. Before she leaves, Lauren claims that I have a, “Profound way of doing exactly what is needed when it is needed in the way needed for the time.” Somehow, this night became even more beautiful with that sentence.

Bodhi and I proceed back to the car, tired, but satisfied with our evening. As he handles some bodily needs, I look to the now bright morning sky and consider how beautiful life was these last several hours; how unimaginably beautiful and pleasurable it was to experience the moments in the manner we did; how all those moments came and went like a whisp of smoke.

Our journey back home consists of us debriefing our evening. Somehow, Bodhi and I took part in the amazing experience of serving others, of pouring tea. In my recap, I thank Bodhi for his spirit and passion in pouring tea, and for being a big part of the experience. Without him, I may not have had it. In his recap, he remarks how captivating it was to see an audience listen to me. To think all of this came from some gathering in the forest.

On my drive home, I sobbed as I took a voice memo to capture the experience as quickly as I could. For someone like me, someone who has felt insufficient; for someone who has struggled with mental illness; for someone who had felt not beautiful the days leading up to this experience; for someone who seeks to serve others, this night was a humbling experience of divine splendor and majesty. I could show someone-even if just a few people paying full attention-who I was, and where I came from; I could serve others tea, an act, beverage, and ritual that I enjoy for innumerable reasons; I could be myself and be found beautiful and needed when I needed it most.

These are the moments you don’t have often. This is why I pour tea.

13 notes · View notes

jimlingss · 7 years

Text

Love So Shallow [1]

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 (Finale)

Words: 11.4k

Genre: Fluff & Humour, Best Friend to Lover!Au, College!Au (sort of) Summary: There’s no doubt about it. You’ve always been thirsty. And *ahem, not just for water. Everyone and their mothers knows it and so does your best friend Taehyung. Though, rather than desperate, he’d like to say that you’re naturally bold. Sometimes, he wishes he could be that way too. Warnings: Themes of low self-esteem, hints of fat-shaming and very mean people. Swearing.

Cr.

The Ultimate Guide for the First Day of School:

Backpack

Pencil Case

Laptop

Pens and Pencils

A Notebook

Binoculars

That’s right. Binoculars are the absolute essential. If you forget everything else, you’ll still survive but without your trusty pair of binoculars - ten times zoom power, military and hunting purpose, night vision, made in Germany - you’ll be nothing.

“Oh man, he’s hot.” You press the lens to your eye sockets, licking your lips and salivating immediately. The guy you’re observing is at least six feet in height, a slight shadow around his mouth that exhibits how his testosterone levels are high enough to grow a beard, ab muscles defined through his tight shirt. “He’s smoking…ten-out-of-ten.”

As you’re snacking on your popcorn, hidden in the display bushes of your college grounds, your jaw drops.

The popcorn disgustingly rolls off your tongue into the dirt.

“Dammit. Please be a friend, please be a friend…” You watch as a pretty girl goes running up to the guy and as you’re muttering under your breath like it’s a prayer incantation, they lace their hands together. Okay.

Maybe they’re just overly affectionate friends...siblings, perhaps? Nope. Nope. They’re kissing.

You swing your head around to target another person. “Ooh, fresh meat.”

He’s a shorter kid, cute with bright eyes. You know that look all too well, the ‘I’m going to change the world and make the best out of my years here without procrastination!’. But you’re also aware that the moment they sit down in a lecture, the light will diminish. God forbid, midterms roll around. Finals will simply be the finishing attack.

But hey. If you’re around the kid, maybe you can save them.

“Impossible.” You swallow down your popcorn, almost falling into a coughing fit. Your spare fist pounds your chest as you watch the boy catch up to his friend. “You’re straight out of high school. There’s no way you’re dating…”

Dammit! They kissed each other! The world laughs at you. He has a boyfriend!

What the hell is up with public displays of affection today?! Were they trying to mock you?!

“Uh miss?” The campus security guard taps your shoulder and you crane your neck around. “You can’t be inside the bushes. They’re for display purposes.”

“Sorry.” You climb out, back cracking from crouching down for the past half-hour. The middle-aged man stares at you with a mix of horror, astonishment and slight repulsion. You don’t notice the other eyes that are on you as you brush off the leaves.

Whelp. You sling your binoculars around your neck. Might as well try some place else.

The tent is orange and brown amongst a field of different stands. There are beefy dudes in tank tops and mirror sunglasses, ripped muscles shredding through the fabric. To every chick that passes by, they slyly grin and let their eyes wander to their leaving asses. To any male that looks of any redeeming quality, they pass a flyer. In the huge bustle of crowds and of the hundreds of people promoting their own club or group, you’re standing in front of this one.

“If you think you’re a good fit, join Lambda Sigma Squared! We’re the best frat house on campus!” He hollers aloud, “We’ve got parties! We’ve got beer! We’ve got girls!”

You stride up to the man tall enough to make your neck tilt upwards to the sky. “Hi.”

The stranger looks down at you with a quirked eyebrow. “Hello?”

Your palm opens up. He looks at your hand. You nudge it forward. He doesn’t do anything. “Can I have a flyer, please?” You read his name tag, “Jungkook?”

He hums and slowly brings out the stack of paper in his arms. “Is this for you to give to someone else….?”

“Nope.” You wonder why there’s so much doubt in his voice. “It’s for me. I’d like to join!”

If there was one place ridden with testosterone and men, it was the resident frat house. You can already imagine waking up every single morning to a mansion full of glorious hunks. They’d worship you as their queen; a wake up call to cuties lying in your bed, nuzzling their hair into your neck and boys in the kitchen cooking steak, topless with only a thin apron to tease. It sounded like a Heaven ridden with sin….delicious sin. Your mouth waters.

Right as the paper is held between your fingertips, it’s snatched away. You look up to the college boy who has his brown hair slicked back with gel. “Uh, sorry. We don’t accept females.”

Your dreams are crushed.

“Well isn’t that unfair?” You laugh nervously, scrambling to find any arguments in order to win. There has to be some way. You rock back and forth on your feet, nibbling on your bottom lip. The so-called ‘Jungkook’ appears to be unfazed. “What about the people who don’t identify as one or the other? Isn’t it kind of discriminating to only strictly allow males? You should be all inclusive! I mean equality...right? I’ve heard of some fraternities that allow females...”

“Honey.” His fingers are squeezing the bridge of his nose and then he whips around to point at the banner. “We are a frat house. We have been for the past...I don’t know, fifty years? Our fraternity doesn’t allow females. If you want to join something, go to the female sorority. I’m sorry but I’m only handing out flyers. If there’s something you want to complain about, go contact the administration. I don’t make the rules.”

You part your lips, eyes watering up and a whimper leaves the back of your throat. “Please?”

“No.”

“Pretty, please?” You bat your lashes, “I’ll be good.”

“No.”

The morning hasn’t been going well for you. Okay. You’ll admit it but you’ve been shot down in your life numerous times before. You’re not going to give up so easily!

“If you’re fit and you love to run, join football!” An athletics major bellows with a smile and you march up. “Football- oh. Hello there. Are you lost? If you look for the people in blue, they can help you or give you a tour of the place.”

“I’m not a first-year.” You put your hands on your hips, attempting to appear tall and large. “Can I join football?”

If frat houses were out of the question then surely football would be a great second choice?

“Sorry. We’re a male team. No females.”

It’s not like it should be a surprise to you. You’ve already tried to join all these clubs and groups last year. But rejection after rejection makes your vigorous energy die down and you’re left in a moping puddle of your own sorrows. There’s only one thing that can cure you at a time like this...

You wander to the engineering faculty where the buildings are old and wearing down. The grounds are empty on orientation day when there aren’t any real lectures yet. Which means there aren’t any potential bachelors either. You continue to tread onwards anyways.

Sooner or later, after actively searching every corner, you come face to face with-

“Taehyung!”

As his expression blanches and he tries to make a run for it, you’ve already caught up. The honey brown haired boy sulks, slumping his shoulders. “How did you find me?”

You ignore him, gleaming irises pinned on the tall man beside him. “Who is this?! You’re handsome!” Taehyung’s friend with the blonde locks widens his eyes at your bluntness. You bat your eyelashes back and forth, standing on the tips of your toes. “Can I have your number?”

“No.” Taehyung answers for his friend. “He’s not free.”

“You’re not single? Aww…” Your pout returns and your best friend shakes his head with his infamous boxy grin.

“Namjoon’s too busy to be dating. He’s a new engineering friend by the way, met him by the vending machines.” Tae turns to the boy beside him who’s watching the two of you bicker back and forth in amusement. “Namjoon, this is Y/N. She’s a high school friend-”

You interrupt, “best friend!”

“Ah, debatable.”

“Is not!” You stamp your feet. “Kim Taehyung that is not debatable!”

“It is.” He argues back firmly and then juts his finger at the device slung around your neck. “Especially when you bring those binoculars with you. How thirsty can you even get?!”

You open your mouth to argue back but Taehyung turns to Namjoon. “You know what? I don’t know her after all.” The engineering major laughs it off, shaking your hand and smiling sheepishly. You marvel at the cuteness of his dimples and the messy ruffle of his hair.

“Are you sure you’re too busy to date?”

Namjoon scratches the back of his neck, “well…”

Taehyung shifts himself to stand in front of the dimpled boy, as if using his body as a shield. “Be gone dehydrated demon! Attempt to seduce elsewhere!” Your feet moves to kick him in the shin but Taehyung jumps back and he giggles. “Y/N!” He whines out your name childishly with a mock pout and you sob back at him. “You’re going to run off all my friends! Stopppp it!”

“You were going to run them off anyways.” You whine back to him, mimicking his pout and ugly expression. “Plus, you don’t need anyone else other than me. Let’s be honest here, I’m the bestest friend you could have.”

He pretends to cry into his sleeve. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“To deserve someone so beautiful and great and amazing?”

“Someone so shabby and shameless and horrible.” He corrects and then mischievously grins again. With his face hidden by the sleeve of his sweater, you only see the square shape of his mouth.

Before Namjoon can be left in the dust to observe the both of your antics and Taehyung completely forgets about his trip to the library to pick up his textbooks, a certain someone clears their throat behind you. The booming ‘ahem’ causes the pair of you to stop fake sobbing to turn around.

Taehyung’s eyes immediately light up. “Somi!” He leans over to his new friend. “That’s my other best friend, from high school as well-”

“What are you doing here, Miss Y/N?!” Her screeching voice causes you to visibly jump. You’re folding into yourself as if to disappear. “I turn around for one second and you’re gone! Are you harassing people still? Don’t you know Taehyung has better things to do than to deal with your sorry ass? You act like you’re drunk when you’re sober!”

“I can explain!” You sling your binoculars behind you but that doesn’t deter Somi from dropping her crossed arms to march over to you, ankle boots clanking on the cement. You have to admit she looks pretty great in her brown leather jacket and skinny jeans. “This isn’t what it looks like! Taehyung was the one who told me I should come over here!”

“I did not.”

You whip your head back. “Trader.”

Taehyung shrugs with a playful smile. Somi takes the collar of your shirt and begins to literally drag you away. Namjoon waves to you in slight bewilderment. “This is not fair!”

Your wail ricochets throughout the entire campus, causing the birds in the trees to fly into the sky, startled at your voice. “This is not fairrrrr!”

You didn’t have a lot in your life - never gifted in brains, beauty or strength. In elementary, you were called cling wrap since you attached to people and suffocated them even if they hated you. You’ve overheard teachers call you annoying behind your back, you’ve never made it to the top twenty list of smart kids in your class, never won at athletics either. But if there was one thing you had...it was blind will and determination.

“Girls! Line up!”

You listened to the frat boy’s advice, seeking out a sisterhood sorority and wow...things were not easy. They had taken one look at you and made a face of disgust. Everyone was ridiculously pretty here. They had long, clean legs and silky hair. They wore small dresses with high slits, thongs that you couldn’t even fit in, tiny bikinis that would only show off your rolls and how much you loved to eat. The women exuded confidence. All of them looked like they walked straight out of Forbes or Vogue magazine. You’d hit up any of these women in a heartbeat if given the opportunity.

In comparison, you are a pansy in the field of roses. But your enthusiasm won.

No matter what challenge, mission or the type of hazing they did, you never deterred. When the sorority sisters forced the newcomers to eat McDonald’s Big Macs and super sized chocolate bars, most whined about the potential weight gain and some threw up, a few even dropped out but you ate it all. You ate it with vigorous energy, secretly ecstatic since it’s free food. Sure, they mocked you as you stuffed your face and the word ‘fat’ was tossed around but whatever….if you became easily riled up by a few syllables from strangers, you’d be living a very difficult life.

It’s easier to live when you’re shameless.

The sisters forced you into the freezing showers in the middle of the night and you embraced the freshness while the others screamed. When they made you take out their garbage for them, you did it happily. You scrubbed the floors with a toothbrush, let them cut an inch of your hair off, let them throw food at you. They made you drink vodka and tequila but you had eaten a huge meal beforehand and secretly snuck in water between the shots. It’s the only reason why you didn’t become a huge drunken mess. On the coffee runs, you were the first to come back, having ran across campus with a huge brown stain on your shirt from bumping into someone. But you delivered it in record time and with a grin.

No matter what, the sisters had to acknowledge your eagerness.

“This is going to be one of the final missions!” The leader paces back and forth in front of the small group. The hundred candidates has dwindled down to ten people. “We’re going to be having dinner here in two nights. Bring each of your boyfriends. Fairly simple, right?”

The word ricochettes in the hollows of your brain. Boyfriend. Boyfriend. It ridicules you, laughing in your face. It echoes, reverberating in your ears. It plays over and over again. Boyfriend. Boyfriend. Boyfriend.

“What?”

“Is there a problem, number five?” Her eyes pin harshly onto you and you quickly shake your head. She smirks, continuing to strut around. “Here at Rho Alpha Beta, we are not whores who prostitute ourselves. We are committed, young women.” The leader spits her venomous words sharply and then giggles. “Bring your boyfriends, girls.”

NOOOOOO.

This is your worst nightmare. Of all the things they could’ve made you done….bring a boyfriend is literally impossible for you. You joined the sorority in order to find guys! Now what were you going to do?

“Difficult challenge, isn’t it?” You laugh awkwardly next to the gorgeous brunette beside you.

“Really?” She frowns. “I think this is a lot easier than when they made us stand for the entire night without letting us use the bathroom.”

You’re royally screwed.

“Are my eyes lying to me or is it my best friend that I’m suddenly seeing?” Taehyung blinks expressionlessly and then brushes past you. You whine out, stamping your feet and he finally stops walking down the hallway, turning around with a grin. “What?”

“Don’t ignore me!”

“I think it’s my head playing tricks on me.” He lays the back of his hand on his forehead and pretends to faint, backside dramatically hitting against the wall. “The Y/N that I used to know would never be such a hypocrite. She disappears for three weeks without a word. Then she comes back and demands not to be ignored when she’s been ignoring her dearest friend that would sacrifice his entire life for her.”

“Oh, quit it.” You throw your arm over his neck, locking him in a choke hold. Taehyung grips your arm and half-laughs, half-screams. The engineering students passing by rapidly shoot the two of you an odd look while they hasten their steps. “You suddenly want to be my best friend after you said you didn’t know me?!”

“Okay, okay. I do know you, okay?” He hits your arm and you begin to let him go. “I know that you had a bladder issue and pissed in your bed every night up until grade six!”

“Kim Taehyung.” You step forward as he takes a stride backwards, laughing his head off. A bunch of people are staring. “Shut up!”

“And that you still piss yourself when you have a nightmare!”

His scream pounds up against the ceilings for all to hear and you groan, kicking him in the knee and hearing him let out an ‘ow’. “I told you that once! How do you even remember?”

Tae has a rectangular shaped grin as he shrugs. “How could I forget?”

“Ugh! You are ridiculous. You know what?! Forget it! Pretend I wasn’t even here.”

“Y/N.” He complains when you begin to walk away and Taehyung holds you back. You scoff but yield to him nonetheless as the pair of you begin to walk out of the building together. “So what’s made you so busy that you can’t even spend time with your two dearest friends? You know Somi’s pissed, right? She told me not to pick up your calls or answer your texts.”

On the subject matter, you evade for now. “I’ve been busy….”

“With the sorority?” He takes a glimpse of your face and grimaces. “Why are you even joining? It’s not like you to be those…”

“Pretty girls? Are you saying I’m not good enough to join them?”

Taehyung sighs. “I was going to say shallow idiots.”

“That’s a stereotype. Some of them are really nice girls.”

“But they’ve been treating you okay?”

“Yeah I guess.” You clear your throat. “I only have a few things left to do before I can get officially accepted and do the pledge and all that. How’s classes been going for you?”

“It’s so painful for me to have to be such a skilled academic.” He laments with a smile. “Engineering takes up all of my time, so many math classes, so much thinking involved. My head is always full of numbers and complicated equations that you would never understand.”

Usually you’d scoff, maybe jab at him but you only answer with a- “nice”.

“So, what’s your real reason for looking for me?”

“Hey!” You snap back into it. “You’re my friend. Can’t I hang out with you without being suspected of other intentions?! Why does this feel like a witch hunt! How dare you accuse me of such thing?!”

“Y/N…” He gives you that look and you exhale in exasperation.

“Okay. Hear me out, alright?” You prepare yourself and the both of you stop under a shade of a tree. “The sisterhood sorority is doing this thing in two nights and it’s one of the last things I need to do before getting accepted. It’s really, really important to me and you’re my best friend. You wouldn’t want to disappoint me, right?”

He looks at you in growing suspicion, “What is it?”

“They want me to bring my boyfriend to the dinner.”

Taehyung laughs. He laughs and he laughs. Your limbs fall to your side and you stare at him unimpressed as he grabs a hold of his stomach. Tears fill Taehyung’s eyes and he still continues to laugh like he’s watched the best comedy of his life. “Tha-that’s impossible!” He tries to catch his breath, hyperventilating. “You’ve never had a boyfriend in your entire life!”

Your best friend spits out the last word before he’s thrown back into absolute hysterics. He howls, roars and snorts. At some point he says ‘stop it’ since his stomach is hurting so bad. But you’re doing nothing, staring at him with a sigh leaving your mouth.

“Yeah. I know.”

“Oh god.” He wipes his eyes and stands up straight, the last laughs leaving his throat. “What are you going to do?”

You stare at him. He stares at you. Your sparkling irises gazes into his darkening ones.

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Taehyung cries out, “I just can’t!”

“Taehyungggg.” You moan out the last syllable, drawing it for an extended time while pouting. His lips have fallen to the side, no longer laughing or joking around with you. You have a feeling that he won’t budge on this matter.

“Noooo…” He pulls out the last syllable like you, mimicking your childishness.

“Whyyy?”

“Because I don’t even want to be a fake boyfriend to you.” He thinks about it and then scrunches up his face, flailing his hands like it’s infested with germs. “The thought is so ewwwukkkkkk. Yuck! That’s like being a fake boyfriend to my sister!”

“You don’t even have a sister.” You have to admit the thought of being with Taehyung more than platonically is disgusting. It’s pretty gross but you’re in a desperate situation. “C’mon Taetae, it’s only for one night, for a few hours.”

He shakes his head. “Ask someone else, bro.”

“You know I have no one else.”

“No! Just...no.” He doesn’t look at you to make sure you won’t guilt trip him into it. “I’ve put up with enough of your antics over the years, okay? I’ve done a lot. Find someone else, Y/N.”

Before you can penetrate through the barriers, Taehyung takes off running in the opposite direction. You scream after him, chasing him across the courtyard before his long legs out run you. “Taehyung-! You bast….ard! I hate you!”

You show up like a sad puppy on her doorstep.

She takes one look at you and slams the door. But luckily you catch it, intruding into her apartment. “Somi. I-”

“Save it.” The girl in short blonde hair and pouty pink lips crosses her arms. “I already heard it all from Taehyung.”

You gasp, tearing off your shoes to march into the living room. “I knew it! I knew it! So you two do have a group chat without me!”

“I already know what you’re going to ask me.” Somi cuts to the chase with a pointed look. “No.”

Your body slumps down to the floor and you cry to the wooden floorboards. “Why?”

“You know I’m trying to go out with Suran.” She sits down on the floor with you, trying to appease you like you’re a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. “If she catches wind that I’m going out with you...fake or not...it won’t look good. Things are...delicate….”

You sniffle, “You fucked up, didn’t you?”

Somi smiles slightly. “I may or may not have accidentally ran into my psychotic ex on our last date.”

“Oh my god. The one that keyed your car?”

“Yep.” Somi shudders and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, pumpkin. Have you tried to ask someone else out? I mean...there’s plenty of people on campus and I’m sure there’s someone nice who would be willing to help y-”

“There’s no one!”

“Why does the sorority even matter?” Her eye twitches and the anger surges when she realizes everything that’s coming out of her mouth is right. “I’ve heard about the things they made you do and it sounds horrific. The people in there don’t give any shits about you! They’re bitches with shallow exteriors. They talk trash girls that are different from them and then turn around to talk about each other. It’s a backstabbing-bitch battlefield! Why are you doing this to yourself? You don’t need them or their validation.”

“I just...want to, okay?”

It’s true that they might treat you badly. Okay. Not might. They do.

You’ve been feeling like a modern day servant or slave. You’ve also been designated as the permanent one to go on their coffee runs. But you’re used to being treated badly. It doesn’t hurt that much. Plus, you’re too determined to give up.

Taehyung lugs his bag full of textbooks back to his dormitory, dragging his feet with him. He had gone for a three hour study session in the library, tackled a handful of assignments and readings, punching in page-long equations into his calculator. It’s only been less than a month into the school year. He has no idea how he’ll survive. All he wishes is to get a hot steaming shower and collapse on his bed for the next ten hours.

But as he opens the door, he screeches. “What the hell are you doing here?!”

You’re scrolling through his laptop, perched on top of his ruffled sheets. Your eyes don’t stray away from the screen and your mouth casually murmurs out, “came through the window.”

Taehyung quickly shuts the door before someone can catch a girl in his room. It would be even worse if the RA saw. He locks it for good measure and then skedaddles over to close the window that’s letting in a chilling breeze. “Y/N….”

“I’m on this site…” You squint your eyes and he flickers on his lamp, allowing the glow to provide more luminescence. “It’s called Rent-A-Boyfriend but it’s so...expensive.” You sob lightly. As a poor college student that’s completely broke, there’s no way you can afford a luxury like this.

Never mind eating instant ramen for the rest of your life, you would have to rely on photosynthesis and gaining nutrients from the polluted air.

Taehyung scoffs and he begins to unpack his belongings, throwing his things on his desk and not paying attention to you. “If I went to the corner street, do you think anyone would want me?”

“They’d probably throw you into their truck and drive to some abandoned warehouse. Then, they’d sell you off to some foreign country.” He mumbles, agonizing about his future study sessions as he skims his notes. Perhaps he’ll consult Namjoon who seems to be doing well.

“If I hold up a sign downtown, do you think anyone would help me?” You exhale, giving up on the site and escort pages you were looking at. You close the laptop, rolling on your stomach to look at your friend.

“No. The police might show up since you’d be loitering.”

You drop your face into his pillow, the onslaught of his cologne and clean shampoo filling your senses. “What do I do?!” Your voice is muffled but your cry is all too clear.

Taehyung finally twists around to look at you. He sighs for a long time. Ten agonizing seconds pass. “Fine.”

“What?!” You shoot right up and your eyes glimmer. “Really?!”

“You better be grateful that I’m such a good best friend and that I won’t dump your sorry ass even though Somi says I should.” Taehyung’s certain that he’ll regret this decision. But for now, you’re looking up at him like he’s lifted the sun back up and it makes him feel a bit better. “I’ll do it with the cost of five meals.”

“Three.”

“Six.”

Your jaw drops, “Hey! You raised it!”

“Keep talking and I’ll make it ten.” Taehyung grins and stretches out his aching muscles. He plops down beside your body and you pretend to zip up your lips.

Taehyung threatens to go eat the most expensive steak at the most expensive restaurant. It’s only after you whine to him that he tells you to pay for his convenience store food. Instead of showering and hitting the sack like he had intended to do, he’s out at midnight, sitting outside on a dingy bench with steaming hot instant noodles, eating with you.

It’s not such a horrible alternative.

The sorority is completely white with pillars on either side, a dim glow appearing from inside. At the brown double doors, it looks like a humongous palace and you gulp nervously. Your fingers pull on the modest blue dress you have and you look over at Taehyung.

He’s pulled out his fancy clothes, Gucci-whatever and you still don’t know he could afford it with his old part-time job of working at the diner. His long sleeved shirt is tucked into his pants, paired with a belt. You can admit when Taehyung cleans up and he doesn’t look like a stressed out college student half dying and burning in hell, he looks pretty damn good.

“Do whatever you need to do to prepare yourself.”

“Okay. I’m not standing next to Y/N.” He shuts his eyes and braces himself, murmuring under his breath. “This is Rachel Mcadams. I’m standing next to Rachel Mcadams. I’m going on a date with Rachel Mcadams. Okay….okay….” There’s an extended moment of silence. “Alright!”

You jump in a startled response when he suddenly grabs your hand and holds it.

Taehyung smiles and knocks on the door once. It swings open and one of the girls snarl at your appearance. “Oh. It’s number five. Did you bring your boyfriend?” The girl you recognize as Sandra swings her head over and then she does a double take. Her mouth drops and she openly ogles your best friend, scanning him up and down. “I- uh..this-”

“Nice to meet you, I’m Kim Taehyung.” He tips his head to the side, wearing a smirk and using his infamous charms to shake her hand. The girl gasps and wheezes. You hold back from rolling your eyes. “You’re a very beautiful lady. Thank you for opening the door for us.”

She makes a strangled noise. “Come in.”

As you enter, he leans over and angrily whispers to you. “Do they really call you by a number?” You hum, nudging him to be quiet as you turn the corner into the massive dining room.

“N-number five is here. I-I mean...”

“Y/N.” You correct when she turns around and stares at Taehyung some more.

“Y/N’s here.” She mutters and snaps out of it, shaking her head to sit down at the table. It’s then that it dawns on you that you were the last one to show up, about twenty two people seated around in total, six of them being sorority sisters There aren’t any more chairs and it occurs to you that two of the ten candidates never showed up.

Everyone is staring at Taehyung. “And..who is this?”

“Hello, my name is Kim Taehyung. It’s nice to meet all you pretty women.” He pulls out the chair for you and gestures you into it. You sit down and the leader nods her head slowly, perhaps in suspicion that you managed to reel in such a beautiful boy that looks like he was carved from angel tears.

“We were just beginning to eat. But now that everyone’s here, feel free to dig in.”

The hired waiters put down the plates and you begin to eat in small, delicate bites. Everyone around the table takes turns to introduce themselves, their majors and their relationship details. Some males appear highly uncomfortable and a few are basking in the attention, even going as far as to let their eyes wander to the pushed up breasts of the sorority sisters.

The leader smirks, going as far as to lean over the table more. The girlfriend of the guy has obviously realized what’s happening but she’s unable to say anything, trapped in utter humiliation.

Taehyung manages to keep his wits and realizes what the girls are trying to do. When you met the kid years ago, he was an awkward and introverted fellow. You wonder how he made such a change and how he could even enchant babies at the supermarket with one killer look.

“I met Y/N in high school and I don’t know but we’ve always had a connection.” He throws his arm over you and pulls you close to him. “Isn’t that right?”

You laugh lightly. “I was the one who approached him and told him to be my friend.” What you’re saying is the most truthful thing you’ve done all evening and night. “He attracted so many people and I thought it would be easier to make friends if I was around him.”

“Who knew we’d become the best of friends and gradually fall in love…”

Taehyung’s teeth are gritted and your own fists are clenched in your lap. You don’t have telepathic abilities but one glimpse of him is all it takes for you to know that he’s doing the exact same thing you are - cringing and screaming in your heads. “She helped me break out of my shell and loved me even when I had long limbs and so much acne.”

“You, having acne?” Krystal is a gorgeous sister with long, black hair and milky skin. Her aura has been that of an ice queen, cold and calculating, intimidating. She’s dazzling and reminds you of a porcelain doll.

Krystal bats Taehyung playfully on his shoulder and her sudden smile makes you blink twice. “I can’t imagine. But the two of you are so cute. High school sweethearts are always adorable.”

“Aren’t we?”

Taehyung gazes into your eyes, a millimeter away. “We are.” The guy has the audacity to nuzzle into you, rubbing his nose against yours. You hold in your vomit. Taehyung’s smile is tense.

Your best friend pulls away and pecks your forehead in another form of pda. You push him away, a bit harshly and he nearly falls out of his chair. “Oh, stop it, you.”

The entire table had to be witness to your cringey actions but at least they seem to believe you’re in a legitimate relationship now. The leader decides to move on, interrogating other couples.

“Do you both go on a lot of dates to fast food places?” The sorority head asks two of them and the girl fidgets in discomfort. Her boyfriend faintly grazes his rounded stomach and grimaces.

“You should try going on an exercise date. Running is really healthy.” The leader tips her head and smiles. “You two are actually the perfect pair. You should try losing weight together.”

You're becoming more and more irritated by the second but the chance to speak up is stolen by your best friend. “Isn't that a bit rude?” Taehyung swoops in, saving the couple and surprising you. The sisters seem even more shocked, appalled that he uttered a word and intervened. “I'm sorry but it's a bit difficult for me to sit here and watch.”

“I-”

“Such a pretty person shouldn't say such ugly words.” He leans his chin in his propped hand, attention solely on the flushing girl. “You don't want to be a bad girl now, do you? Only good girls get rewarded...in life, that is.”

The leader clears her throats with a quiet ‘alright’, moving on and the couple smile at him in thankfulness. You admire your friend for being able to muster the courage that you lack.

As you listen and munch on your salad, you notice some movement underneath the table. Taehyung is completely stiff, blushing from his chin to the top of his hairline. It’s a stark contrast from before and his cool facade has shattered. He discreetly elbows you as if to grab your attention but you can already see it.

Krystal is playing footsies underneath the table with Taehyung, caressing her bare leg against his. Her hand is also on his thigh, moving up and up. You instantly dart your pupils elsewhere.

“Uh-”

Before anything can be said, the leader stands up from the table and she smiles. “Ladies, could we have a brief meeting in the other room? Everyone is required to come. Men, feel free to continue.”

Krystal detaches from him and Taehyung releases a sigh of relief, eyeing you closely as you firmly nod, leaving the room. The sorority sisters surround the eight of you and they strangely appear friendly.

“Good job.” The redhead pats one of the candidates on the shoulder. “You all did a fantastic job.”

Your companions relieve themselves, including you. But then the brunette steps forward with the click of her heel. “There's one last obstacle before all of you can officially be part of the group.”

The leader smirks, pacing in front of the scared little lambs. “In this sorority, we are all sisters. Sisters meaning we share everything. That's how we build an everlasting bond. But boys always get in the way. They break up friendships and cause all sorts of drama. Hence, to prove the rule of sisters before any misters, you will watch us sleep with each of your boyfriends.”

The redhead giggles, “sharing is caring.”

Krystal and a few of the sorority sisters looked as shocked as the candidates. A girl beside you murmurs that she might be sick. They shiver and look to the floor, contemplating their morals while some look like they’re up for the challenge. You feel a muscle in your cheek jerk.

“I’m sorry.” You cough out. “I don’t think I can do this.”

The leader quirks her brow at you and the brunette seems to be disappointed she can’t lay a hand on your supposed ‘boyfriend’. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t think this sorority is right for me.”

You can live shamelessly and boldly to do what you want. You can self-sacrifice and allow yourself to be humiliated. But you will never let Taehyung be harmed in such a way.

“D-do you know what this means?!” The leader stammers out, appalled at your rejection.

“Yes.” Everything you worked so hard for will go to waste. “I’m sorry.”

You bow your head as you move past them out of the room. They can scream, throw objects at you, haze you but you have to let Taehyung walk out of this place with his dignity. You can only hope the other candidates will have enough respect for themselves and their significant others as well.

“What’s wrong?” Your dear best friend blinks up at you in bewilderment. The other eight males look at you and you shake your head. “Is there something wrong?”

“No, not really.” You grab onto his wrist pulling him up. Taehyung drops his scone and wipes his fingers on the napkin. “Let’s go home.”

“O-okay…”

The both of you lead yourselves outside, without turning back once but he stops you on their lawn. Taehyung laughs nervously at your serious expression. “No, seriously...what happened? Why did we leave? I thought this was important to you…”

You shrug. “I just came to my senses. They never treated me right and it feels wrong to be in there.”

“That’s it?” He looks at you in suspicion, studying your face. “There’s nothing more?”

“Nope.”

“Okay. Well, I’m glad.” He begins to walk with you, hands buried within his pockets. Tae grins, “that place is deranged. They’re really rude and it’s insane how long you stayed there for...”

“Yeah. They are.” There’s a long silence where the luminesces of the street lamps cascades down their glow. You bask in the peacefulness of the street. “Thanks.”

His eyebrow lifts. “What for?”

“I don’t know. For coming with me….putting up with them...being my friend.”

You know it’s the right thing to do. There was no doubt that you should leave such a toxic place behind but you can’t help feeling empty. Everything you’ve been working so hard towards, your goal and your backbreaking labour for the past three weeks has disappeared in front of your very eyes. You realize how difficult it is to let go of something that seems so important in the moment. But you know you’ll thank yourself later for it.

Despite feeling empty, you could be alone right now to dwell in your sorrows but you’re not. Taehyung’s still here with you.

“Okay. Now there must be something wrong with you.”

You match Taehyung’s humongous grin, laughing and bumping into him purposely. “Why?! I can’t thank you without being suspected of something?! Wow, what a friend!”

“Is there someone recording?” He tries to search for a hidden camera around. “Is this going to be a prank put on youtube? I don’t want to go viral. Someone’s hiding in these bushes, aren’t they?!” He screams at the plant, shooting out his hands in a martial arts position. “Ahh!”

You laugh, the misery slowly but surely evaporating from your heavy chest. “No one’s hiding in the bush, idiot. Maybe your brain. Did you forget to bring it with you again?!”

“Rude.” He snaps playfully, “you just thanked me for being your friend and now you’re insulting me. What kind of contradictions are you throwing out there, girl?”

You giggle but before you can retort and banter along with him, there are huffs and puffs behind you. When you turn, you find Krystal having dashed four blocks to catch up. The beautiful girl with long hair is bending over with her hands on her knees, catching her breath. “H..ey…”

There’s a look of exchange between you and Taehyung. He decides to go on ahead to allow some privacy and you stride up to the sorority female. “Are you okay?”

“I-...” She breathes in and sputters, pounding her chest. “I wanted to apologize. I didn’t know that they were going to do that. It went too far...I’m sorry. For everything actually...the girls, they can be really nice but they-”

“It’s okay.”

You’re fully aware that Krystal is a decent girl. She was never cruel to you like the other members. You also knew that she was intelligent and a fashion design major, ridiculously gorgeous and better than you can ever be. “I saw what you were doing to Taehyung.”

“I-” Her face transforms into a shade of scarlet. “I’m sorry. It was inappropriate of me.” She rushes to explain, “he’s your boyfriend and I-”

“Actually, he’s not. I don’t have a boyfriend.” You admit to the girl. “He’s just a friend who was helping me out.”

You shouldn’t stand in the way of Taehyung’s relationships. The best thing you can do is be a good friend, a good wingwoman and not cockblock him like you’ve done a handful of times before. He’s your dear friend that you want to treat well.

“Tae’s a really good guy so if you’re interested and serious about him, you should totally go for it.”

Krystal registers your approval and she nods with a bright smile. “Okay. Thanks, Y/N.”

“No problem.”

“You’re a really good person.” Krystal tucks a strand of her midnight hair behind her ear, lips puckered in a rosy shade. She looks like a painting. “I’m sure you’ll be able to find someone.”

Your head tilts to the starless sky. “Hopefully.”

The world is punishing you.

“Fifth ramen of the day! Let’s go!” You fist pump the air in an attempt to make yourself feel better as you stir up the cup noodle on your dingy cardboard box-makeshift-table, sitting on the stool you bought at the dollar store. “I’m not sick of it at all!”

You might be going crazy.

After you left the sorority, you tried to enter the dormitory but you were late to the application process and all their rooms were full. You talked to Somi about it and you couch surfed for a week at her place but you didn’t want to intrude on her and her evil roommate - who you swear has it out for you. The evil roommate threw out your food in the fridge and only said ‘oops’ when you asked her about it and your clothes were on the floor all the time for no reason.

There was no other choice but to move out on your own to some poor apartment that was as small as a closet with walls that were peeling, cabinets that came right off if you tried to open them and stained, coarse carpet that you don’t even want to know the story behind. You could’ve tried to move back with your dad but that’s a four hour transportation process, meaning eight hours a day and you would get endless questions from him. You’d be better off sleeping at the train station on a bench.

The apartment isn’t that bad…..it’s pretty close to your school at least...

“Are you a law student?” Someone at the buffet table looks at you.

“O-of course I am!” You laugh nervously. “I-I’m in your Criminal Law 101 class..your name is…”

“Seokjin.” He frowns and then smiles, piling food onto his plate like you are. “Strange. I’m sorry. I just thought I hadn’t seen you around before. What’s your name?”

“Somi.”

You hurry back to your table, sitting at the very back to stuff your face and grumbling stomach. For the past two weeks since you’ve moved into the place, you’ve been eating so meagerly that you discovered another solution - the holy grail that is conventions.

There were a ton of networking events for all sorts of majors and graduate students. The trick was to slip in, pretend you belong there and act casually. You’d listen in on the presenters trying to inspire future workers and then, you could completely raid the tables, stuff your face to your heart’s content. They often fed you better than your own mother did.

Sometimes, you’d get dragged out.

But six out of ten times, no one really noticed anything.

“You’ve been doing what now?!” Somi groans and facepalms when you reveal what you’ve been up to. “Oh, Y/N.”

Instead of being upset and telling you off, your best friend sympathizes with you as she looks around the tiny place. She’s sitting on the second stool, knees gathered together. At the sound of scattering in the corner, you ease her by telling her it’s not a cockroach.

Occasionally it’s better to lie than to tell the truth.

“You should’ve moved in with me when I asked you to. Now I can’t kick out my nutty roommate. Her lease is all the way to next year and my own is the same.” Somi exhales, “as much as I’d like to be poor together with you, I can’t. There is some old furniture we have though..if you want.”

Your eyes light up and you nod enthusiastically.

Well...your own life might be falling by the seams but other people seemed to be having a better time than you are, namely Taehyung. You’ve seen him around with Krystal lately and you tried not to intrude, only texting your friend to catch up with him. The sorority girl’s already making her move and you applaud her for it.

“You’re really so cute, do you know that Tae?” Her hands are on the boy’s thighs, stroking up and down at an excruciating pace. “You’re handsome too and so...thick.”

Taehyung gulps, scanning the library premise but when he’s in the corner and certain things are happening underneath the table, no one seems to notice at all. The only person that calls him ‘Tae’ is you or Somi - you’re the one who made up the nickname for him anyways. It sounds weird to have someone else call him that.

“D-don’t you have a boyfriend?” He sweats from his hairline, cheeks flaming up to a thousand degrees.

“No. I broke up with him awhile ago.” She shifts closer, bare thighs brushing against his and uncaring that her skirt is pooling higher and higher. Her hot breath whispers against the shell of his ear. “Things weren’t working out since he wasn’t able to satisfy me. I’m lonely at night, Tae. Do you think you can help me?”

Taehyung swallows hard and his eyes dart, thankful to see you.

He shoves Krystal off and hastily says ‘gotta go’. He abandons his belongings to chase your shadow in the maze of bookshelves and cases. “Y/N!”

“Oh dear god!” Your heart stopped beating, startled from him. The librarian immediately hushes you two sharply and a few studying students glare from their books. “What do you want?”

“What is up with that girl, Krystal.” He leans on the shelves, whispering hastily under his breath. “That girl’s coming onto me like strong….she's got game. I-I am just so confused right now. Like is this a dream?!”

You smile at your friend, taking the novel off the top shelf. “She's a nice girl. You should try to get it on with her or something. Wouldn't want the chance to fly away.”

He nods and hums in a delayed response. “Thanks Y/N. You hooked me up with her, right?”

You laugh as he suddenly throws his arms around you. He makes you pet his hair like he's some kind of dog. “At least one of us is getting some…”

Your friend is popular by nature. It’s always been that way. You can remember the awkward years but how he still managed to draw a crowd merely by being himself. In retrospect, no matter what you do, not many people stick around. It isn’t necessarily because you’re a bad person but you tend to make others feel uncomfortable with your natural boldness.

“I can’t believe you got invited into a frat party and I didn’t.” You mutter underneath your breath bitterly and Somi laughs.

“He is technically part of the house…”

From Krystal’s influence, Taehyung had entered the Lambda Sigma Squared fraternity and it didn’t take a full week before they accepted him. He didn’t even need to go through any hazing rituals or grueling challenges. You can’t help but feel a bit jealous.

But for now, the music is thumping the walls and ceiling, strobe lights flashing colourful hues in the dark crowd of sweaty bodies. You can’t feel a single thing aside from euphoria with the liquid courage burning through your veins. The red solo cup is filled with a concoction that you can’t begin to describe. It’s some part apple juice but most part vodka, tequila, whiskey and rum. It tastes atrocious but you feel great.

“Oh my god.” The brightness of Somi’s phone makes you and Taehyung wince. “Suran’s here. She’s at the front door.” Your friend is jumping for joy and you grin.

Tae shoots out his arm through the sea of people, “go forth young one and be with your truest love.”

“Will you guys be okay here?” She’s shaking and jittery, the type of excited drunk that for once overrides her calm rationale.

“What? Ditch us for your girlfriend? Psh, completely fine.” You make a waving motion and her smile dies down. “I’m joking! Gosh, why do you take everything so seriously?!” You push her through and she grins again, yelling a ‘see you later’ over the booming music.

There’s a long silence between you and Taehyung as you sway to the music and Tae leans against the wall. He takes a good look at you. “Are you alright? What’s up?”

Of course of all the people, he would know that there’s something wrong.

You take a long drink, tipping your head back and downing the entire cup until it’s empty. With a recoil at the bitter taste, you narrow your eyes. “If Somi can get a girlfriend, if you can find someone and all these people can get with other people…” You bite away the pain with a hard blink, “why can’t I have someone?”

“Y/N….”

The people who knew you would assume that you’re a psychotic drunk that jumps, climbs onto things, humps the floor and flirts with others. In reality, you’re the emotional type that tends to start crying for no reason. You know it’s happening but you can’t really help it.

Your emotion of sadness is amplified ten fold and a puppy walking past is enough for you to burst into tears, thinking about all the unloved pets in the world.

“I deserve love too!” You sob out and Taehyung sighs, begrudgingly patting your shoulder.

“Listen-”

In the mass of people grinding on each other, spilling alcohol on the floor, a certain girl in a short black dress revealing too much thigh and cleavage comes ripping through the horde. “Taehyung!”

“K-Krystal!” Your nervous friend smiles charmingly and she monopolizes him within an instant. “I didn’t know you would be here.”

“Same here. It must be fate that we ran into each other.” Her red stained lips are puckered and perfect, curls in her hair rest at her shoulders. “You look good, Tae.” Krystal runs her hand over his chest and she nibbles on her bottom lip. He staggers his breathing.

The woman emits an air of absolute sexiness and confidence. You feel envious but it’s overridden by the thought that your best friend is going to get lucky tonight. As her eyes flicker to yours, you know it’s your cue to leave.

“Y/N...I didn’t know you were here either.”

“Not for long. I’m a person on a mission.” You will find someone. You won’t be alone. And you’ll do whatever it takes. “Catch you later, Taehyung..”

As you dive into the crowd, he lets his eyes linger and follow until you’ve all but disappeared in the ocean of people. Taehyung simply laughs and shakes his head to himself.

The sunshine sears into his bedroom, causing him to groan with a thumping headache. The girl beside him whimpers and returns back to sleep. Taehyung staggers to the bathroom to find hickies marked all over his neck. His mind travels back in time and he remembers the alcohol and the bedroom, sweaty sheets and the feeling of skin on skin...also very loud noises, the unpleasant kind like banshees are shrieking.

The memory causes him to shiver.

As he goes down the stairs to find some aspirin that’s in a kitchen drawer, he catches a conversation in the living room. “Did you fuck her?”

“God no. I send her home without even making out or getting a blowjob.”

The voice he recognizes as Jungkook piques his interest. He hasn’t had many opportunities to talk to him before but he seemed like the typical guy and a well respected brother of the frat.

“Aw, why not man? She was so fucking desperate for that dick.” Hoseok laughs, “what was her name?”

“I don’t fucking know. Why would I know?” It’s not Taehyung’s intention to eavesdrop but it’s more of his ears accidentally being active. They’re only a wall away but he pays no mind as he gets a glass of water and takes the pill to ease the nausea. “It was...uh...Y/N, right. Fuck.”

Taehyung sputters.

“Why didn’t you just bang her? It’s not like you to refuse anyone.”

Jungkook exhales in irritation, “I would have but she’s just so fucking annoying.”

Hoseok giggles, “oh shit.”

“If only I somehow could’ve covered her face up and gag her so she’d shut up.”

The two frat boys are lying on the couch, catching up on some video games together. They partied all night and got woken up by their respective sleeping partners, cute girls that went dashing in yesterday’s dresses like a hot mess. The both of them don’t remember their names.

“You’re such an asshat, you know that?”

One second they’re joking around with each other, the next…

Taehyung’s marched into the other room and his clenched knuckles is meeting the cheek of Jeon Jungkook in a punch that nearly shatters bone.

It’s really odd. Taehyung had left his dormitory and went to the frat house and then left that place all in the course of two weeks. He never really tells you why and you’re completely bewildered when it seemed like he was having fun and fitting in nicely with his ‘brothers’.

Well, it’s ex-brothers now.

He doesn’t say anything about it and there aren’t any rumours spreading around at his sudden leave. You suspect that there’s been a cover-up, maybe an embarrassing situation had transpired. Krystal was the one who asked you for the reason when you were going to ask her. Somi was as confused as you are. Taehyung simply told you that it wasn’t a right fit, like how you didn’t match with the sorority you tried to join.

But everything ended up fine anyways.

“We can be poor together!” You celebrate in your tiny apartment, staring at the dirty couch you had bought from a guy living on the streets. He took fifty bucks for it and your best friend told you that you totally got scammed. “This is destiny, dude! Who knew that two separate bedrooms would come in handy? And here I thought I got duped when the realtor showed this place to me.”

“I wonder if I betrayed my nation in my past life.” Taehyung mutters dramatically as he attempts to hot glue the wallpaper back onto the wall. “What did I do to deserve this?”

You ignore his sobs, boiling some expired pasta on the weak gas stove - you’re pretty sure the extra salt you added will kill any germs or bacteria that could get you sick….probably.

It was a lot less lonely now that you have Taehyung around. You don’t feel like you’re suffering alone and with the extra money he’s chipping in, you don’t have to sneak into conferences or networking events to eat that often anymore.

“Maybe this opportunity will make you realize that you’ve been in love with me this entire time.”

Taehyung looks down from where he’s standing on the stool. You’re holding the slotted spoon in your hand, blinking up at him innocently.

“I’m moving out.”

“I’m joking!” You have to grab onto his ankle when he tries to get to the doorway. Taehyung drags your entire body while he lugs his anchored leg. “Please don’t go!”

Life with Taehyung is great.

“Did you just fucking fart?”

He chucks a grimy cushion at you and you evade the dust cloud. This evening, after an intense match of rock-paper-scissors, Taehyung has won couch privileges which means you get to sit on the floor to finish school work. But really, the floor isn’t as bad as the bug infested sofa.

“GOD! What did you even eat, lady?!” Taehyung pinches his nose.

You laugh as he shouts that there’s been a nuclear bomb attack. “I had bean burritos for lunch.”

What were you saying? Oh yeah… Life with Taehyung isn’t so bad-

“What are you doing?!” He shrieks and shuts his eyes, clawing at his face while simultaneously melting onto the floor. You scoff at him, kicking the side of his ribs before stepping over his body.

“I forgot to bring my clothes in the bathroom and I was doing laundry...so...no towels either. Nude life!” Your words shoot past the man who’s still groaning on the dirty floorboards. It’s as if he’s going through a metamorphosis or in the middle of an exorcist, screaming and flailing his limbs.

You question how he has so much energy at midnight and how he never fails to act childishly. But maybe that’s why the two of you are such close friends. “Oh c’mon. Don’t be embarrassed, Taehyung! You’ve seen it all before.”

Your naked body collapses on the sofa and he gets up off the floor. “Doesn’t mean I want to see it again.”

“Hey.” You fill your mouth with chips, stuffing your cheek. “My body is goddess-like. The whole world’s just missing out.”

“What? On those bee stings of yours?”

You gasp, “do not call my boobs bee stings!”

“Sorry.” Taehyung hurls your jacket on top of your head for you to wear temporarily, so you won’t get cold and complain about it. “I meant mosquito bites.”

“Rude.”

You’re beginning to question if life with Taehyung is that great or not.

It is fun. And you’re not so poor anymore which is a massive plus. Your best friend proves to be your best friend for a reason. Taehyung’s is a companion you adore to be with, to tease and to chat to. You almost don’t feel too bad about being single anymore. Almost.

“Aren’t you quiet today?” He frowns and spins around, deciding to finish his paper later or maybe tomorrow...or whenever the deadline is. “Y/N? Earth to Y/N…”

“Hm?” You lift your head from your phone monitor, met with Taehyung in his heart patterned pajamas. “What?”

“What are-...is that tinder?!” The honey brown haired boy gapes at you with an open mouth.

You continue to swipe left without looking. “Don’t judge me. You have hot Krystal taking you out on dates and leaving me here every other night.”

He collapses next to you, watching the netflix show on your laptop propped up on a chair. “Are you not even looking at their profiles?”

“Nope.” You pop the ‘p’ syllable, finger still moving erratically across the screen as your eyes pin on the monitor where two characters are running towards each other after being separated for ten years. “I think there’s a glitch with my app. Maybe it’s the wifi. I’m not getting any matches.”

“That’s weird.”

“I know right.”

The both of you sit in silence for the rest of the half hour, finishing the show. Taehyung chows down on your hot cheetos and feeds you when you open your mouth with an ‘ah’. He doesn’t really care that your hair has been unwashed for the past two days or that the rips in the couch scratch uncomfortably on his skin. The pair of you simply allow time to pass as the flickerings of the lights flash onto your faces until it dies out.

“What the fuck?!”

“Shit.” Taehyung jumps from your sudden yelling voice. “You startled me!”

“Why am I not getting any matches?!” You cry out, still swiping. “I’ve downloaded this, Bumble, eHarmony, OkCupid, everything under the damn sun!”

“Well maybe-”

“Ow.” You wince and the mobile device falls from your hand. Taehyung yawns, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He feels terribly drowsy and exhausted, no better dream than to collapse onto his bedsheets at this very moment.

He groans with your hiss, “What is it now, woman?”

“My thumb hurts, Tae.”

“Well yeah, you’ve been swiping for how long now?”

“Three hours...I think four actually.” You whimper out, trying to bend the bone.

“Dear lord.” He shakes his head and stretches his arms out. “Go ice it or something. I think I’m going to head to bed now. See you in the morni-”

A strangled shout erupts from your lips. Taehyung is jolted awake and he immediately flickers on the lights. It takes a second before electricity runs through the bulb but when he lays his eyes onto your thumb that you’re trying to fold into your palm, he sharply inhales. “Oh fuck.”

Your digit is not only swollen but bruised, bent in a weird direction, coloured blue and purple.

“You actually sprained it!”

“Did you think I was making it up?!”

“Oh my god...why can’t I have a day of peace with you?! Get up!”

“What?” You’re hauled up when his hand wraps around your other wrist. “Where are we going?!”

“The hospital.”

You’ve died.

Suddenly, as you peel back your lids, you’re in a large room of white. It burns to the back of your eyeballs, the immaculate shade of purity embracing your cold heart and the pain of your hand has dwindled into nothing. Wherever you look, wherever you go, there are good looking people everywhere. Women and men are dressed in ivory coats, slicked back hair and adorning gorgeous smiles. This is Heaven.

“Are you her guardian? Please register.” The nurse hands your best friend the clipboard and several sheets of paperwork. He sighs and drags you with him as he takes a spot in the open waiting room. Your eyes are going all over the place and you’re drooling.

He snaps his fingers in front of you. “Y/N, Y/N...Y/N?” When you look at him, he pets your hair like you’re a puppy. “Good girl. Now I need you to use your left hand and sign here.”

You obey his command and he nods, filling in your home address and your date of birth, everything in between for you. “Taehyung. Be honest with me…” You ogle a smoking surgeon as they ruffle their sweaty locks, rushing past you. “Am I dead?”

“Yes.” He giggles, deciding to entertain you despite it being one in the morning.

“If this is Heaven…” Your pupils find his. “Then why are you here?”

He uses the clipboard to lightly smack the top of your head. You let out an ‘ow’ but he saunters off to submit the papers to the counter before sitting back down. “How could you hit someone ill?”

“You’re not ill.” He nags, “and you did this to yourself.”

“Maybe it was worth it. Why are there so many good looking doctors and nurses, here? I’ve been missing out, Tae. This is where it’s at. Maybe you should break my leg so I can stay longer.”

“At this rate, I might run you over with a car first.” He holds his head in his hands, questioning every single deity and god he knows the name of, as to why you’re so thirsty and desperate.

Your best friend’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he pulls it out. You lean over, reading his messages over his shoulder. It’s Krystal and she’s asking him what he’s doing, sending a wink emoticon along with the message. He stares at it for a second and then puts his phone away.

“You’re not gonna answer that?”

“Nah.” He shuts his eyes, crosses his arms and leans back. “I’m too tired to.”

You let out a baffled scoff. If it was Taehyung, he could afford to give radio silence for two full weeks and people would still be all over him. If it were you, no matter how far and wide you would search, there would be absolutely no one.

You repress the urge to strangle Taehyung out of pure jealousy.

“I really don’t understand it.” Every once in a while, you would consult him on some girl advice, whether it’s on what preferences men have on lingerie or ranting as to why people are so difficult. He always listens and it reminds you of the sleepovers that you, Somi and Taehyung used to have in high school.

“Am I pretty, Taehyung? Or is it because I’m just unlovable?”

“I think you’re a bit psychotic but you’re honestly fine.” He mutters and opens his eyes slowly. “Half-decent, I guess.”

“Psh, thanks for the comfort, dude.” You nudge him and he laughs. The two of you don’t get to banter back and forth when Somi comes strutting down the hallway with her hands on her hips.

Her kitten heels click against the tiles and you suddenly feel you’re getting into trouble with your mom or a teacher. You stand up and Tae follows you, silenced by the menacing aura approaching. “What did you do, young lady?”

“Nothing.”

“She sprained her thumb by swiping left on tinder for four consecutive hours.” As if to further mock you, Taehyung hitches his healthy thumb to your form beside him.

You whip your head up with a sharp glare. “Tattletale.”

Taehyung grins mischievously, shrugging his shoulder upwards as his mouth moves into a boxy shape. Somi’s face falls within her hands as she mumbles something like ‘oh god’. “You’re an embarrassment, you know that?” She scolds you without restraint, “you should be lucky I’m working a graveyard shift.”

Somi’s in the nursing program and to help add to her resume, she’s working part time at the hospital. You never thought it would come in handy until now. “Thank you.”

“Wait here until I can get some bandages or something…” She gradually backs away. “Both of you. Do. not. move. I don’t need any trouble around here.” When you nod and Taehyung mimics your motion, she takes off running down the hall.

You’ve never had a boyfriend or girlfriend in your entire existence. You’ve never once been embraced tightly. You’ve never had a lover before. You haven’t been kissed. You haven’t held hands with someone. You haven’t been touched or caressed by another. You don’t know what it feels like to mean the world to someone or to be held close by a person’s heart. The words of ‘I love you’ have never been spoken on your tongue.

But you have also never been alone.

As you watch one of your best friends scatter away, you turn to directly face the other one beside you.

“Maybe the person I’ve been looking for this entire time has been standing right in front of me.”

Taehyung who’s standing in front of you, steps off to the side almost immediately, nearly getting whiplash from the movement. He bursts out into laughter and the corners of your own mouth lift upwards.

#sfwbangtan stories #bts fanfic #Taehyung fanfic #taehyung fluff #taehyung scenario #this is probably my favourite OC that I've ever written....

2K notes · View notes

bardonastick · 7 years

Text

The Meaning of Life (Or at least a pretty convincing metaphor I came to while in the shower trying to find it)

tl;dr Life is Art, but that might not really mean anything to you unless you go through the steps to understand it.

Read this if you’re like me and need to figure out the meaning of life before you even get out of bed in the morning, let alone deal with bigger problems.

Kind of long at 2493 words, but Part 1 is all metaphysics so you could skip to Part 2 to get the good stuff. Part 1 might help you understand what I mean when I talk about the “literal and fundamental universe” or whatever.

I hope this answers some important questions for me and you both.

Preface

So, I often have a problem where I can’t find purpose for my actions, or I can’t find the desire to do them – not really the desire, I know that deep down I have that, but rather the feeling of that desire, or maybe the motivation.

It’s hardest when getting up, and today was one of those hard days. I don’t even want to say hard, because that’s not how it felt. It wasn’t difficult to get up and do something so much as I just simply didn’t have the nerve or the want.

I’ll get back to that point about nerve later.

After debating it a little bit (since I didn’t have anything to do today), I finally encouraged myself to go take a shower and sort out what I was trying to think about.

Part 1

My analysis started with a question about existence. I just started out by thinking, and I returned to something I had thought about in the past, about how the universe consists of only substance, interaction, and in their combination, change. Well, this time I was thinking about fundamental components more. There’s an idea that the universe is One, which I believe, and that everything is in Duality, which I can also believe but with slight skepticism.

I looked into the duality: really, it’s a human concept. Yes or no, masculine or feminine, light or dark, the list fills itself in (or maybe it does not, another dual-faced proposition). I thought about it from the perspective of what we know about the fundamental nature of the universe. From this perspective, Existence and Non-Existence, each the other’s opposite, make up the universe. The non-thing is as much an effective entity as is the thing, despite, by its nature, not really existing.

But that didn’t really seem right, and I went further down to specifics, to quantum mechanics. At their basics, the most fundamental particles – protons, neutrons, electrons – are made of quarks. And how many quarks does it take to produce a particle? Except in very rare cases, it takes three. No more, and absolutely no less. Taking that a step up, what do we find in atoms? Except for minimal hydrogen atoms, matter is built with units made of protons, neutrons, and electrons. So it seemed that three was the most basic number of “things that pretty much always come together.”

Something was different about this, though. I’ve never fully understood quark theory (up, down, top, bottom, strange quarks? Spin? Color theory? Someone get me a textbook) but I had learned that neutrons have a curious property of weighing as much as one proton and one electron combined, and also that they don’t carry a charge. So, this debate between duality or triplicity can really be both of those things, as the third building block of the atomic structure is sort of a combination of the first two, but equally necessary.

In our original equation, that thought of Substance + Interaction = Change, it seems I got the order wrong. Interaction wasn’t really a “thing,” it was the function in between, it was the plus sign. So what we have here is +Substance * -Substance = Change, or SubstanceA + SubstanceB = Variety, where the symbol (+, *, etc.) in the middle of the expression isn’t so much definable but rather itself definite, all we know is that it is there and it is happening and doing something.

A relevant question before I go on would be, why do I consider Change a distinct thing? Part of me wants to say that it’s because, unlike substance, it doesn’t have an opposite – that change is a state that even itself can be affected by, and that a change from change is “stagnation,” a state that is, of course, changeable. Another word I could use to try to express this concept I’m defining as Change could be “possibility,” and that within possibility is the possibility of unchangingness, so they are inherently the same. And secondly, I believe (though this can be debated and interpreted in different ways by different people) that matter and substance simply “are” and do not have an innate property of change (though they do have an innate property of being “changeable”). Hence why an interaction is required for change to occur. I saw a quote once that went something along the lines of, “When two chemicals meet, if there is any interaction, they are both forever changed,” which is what I’m basing this off of. So while change itself is not something you can hold the same way you could substance, I consider it as literal as substance – which holds the properties of interactability and changeability but, as single instances, cannot interact or change. That’s another good clarification, that the things I’m defining here are done so on a basis of being literal and foundational, as opposed to something like the color red which is true based on perception and is an extension of the greater idea of substance, or something like the emotion fear which is not a “literal” entity, or does not exist outside of our conception of the name we give to a particular set of circumstances that are soaked with change. (That is not to say that emotion is not “real,” it is very real and valid and I will get to this later, but understand that it is not an inherent or immutable part of the universe as I see and describe it.)

Good to note: there are no words that can define this concept in 1:1 fashion, so bear with and fit this into your own mental schema however you need to, even if the words themselves don’t mean the exact same thing to me as they do to you.

Part 2

So, I’ve got all this stuff about the universe, which is cool and all, but it’s not really what I boarded this train of thoughts in order to find.

“So, what did I want to find?” I asked myself.

Firstly, I wanted to find what question I was needing or wanting to ask, I replied.

“And that was?”

… Good question. To which I answered, almost instinctively and almost purposely, almost self-servingly, self-revealingly, imitatively, or maybe by chance: “How do I want?”

Or something like that, the lines are kind of fuzzy. I ought to start thinking out loud and recording it so I can retrace my train of thought.

But it was funny because, even though I didn’t ask “What is the meaning of life?” (I mean, I did, almost habitually, but I laughed because it was such an old and basic question, one I had worked past many times. The meaning to life isn’t something that can easily, effectively, or even worthwhile-ly be summed up in an answer to one question, the real answer was a series of other, more important, relevant, or worthy questions and the answers to those ones) my question revealed some implicit assumptions about the nature of conscious existence and human life and spirituality. How can one want without the implication that to receive one’s wants is “good,” “positive,” or worthwhile? This seems redundant, but it ties back into other “truths” that we as humans and philosophers have relatively worked out – truths such as that life is completely subjective, nothing in it is moral or polarized until we attribute to it morality or polarity – you know, thoughts like that. And it was funny, because what else do I know that has repeatedly been critiqued as, at least potentially, meaningless, though it can have meaning if someone chooses to give it meaning and others choose to perceive that meaning or yet others?

Art.

Art has neither literal nor fundamental purpose in the nature of the universe. The same is absolutely, exactly true of life.

Like life, Art is an outcome of an otherwise true force. So it is not inherent, necessary, or fundamental in any other context (except human life but we’re getting there, hold on), it is not essential or absolutely existing in any way, yet, like every other thing in the universe that is not a lone trio of quarks, or a lone hydrogen atom with an atomic weight of 2.014, or a clear cut dynamic of change like a supernova or cold star death, does it still have meaning? Of course! And that is just as much true because you give it meaning as it is because it is meaningful itself. Debate that if you’d like, but I would imagine it will be a fairly unfulfilling endeavor.

Art, music, movies, literature. Life.

When they say art imitates life or life imitates art, that is not only true, but it could be even truer.

Life is the single ultimate form of art. And if someone is able to debate that and show me an even more ultimate form of art, I will be more ecstatic than I already am at this revelation.

So, this is it. The point of life is, without better words to say it, the act of “doing” life itself. Think about it. What is the point of a painting? What is the point of a song? From the perspective of an empirical scientist, a physicist, someone analyzing meaning only in terms of fundamental universal properties, it is nothing! “But,” you cry, “that isn’t true!! Art has plenty of meaning!! It evokes emotion! It causes change!” To which I reply, tears in my anecdotal eyes, “Yes! Exactly! Thank you!”

Whether or not we serve life is a decision we might not have yet made, but life is and always will be serving us. Life serves us in the same way a painting serves the person who wanted to see it – it doesn’t matter in what way it serves, because the point is that it does.

Life is both the painting you go to see and the painting you create. And if it isn’t serving you, then I have the simplest advice that will hopefully excite you as much as it does me: if you don’t like this painting, do whatever you can to get to a different museum. If you don’t like this song, keep rifling through albums or tracks until you find the one you want. And if you don’t like the painting you have on your own easel – and, taking a look at the x-rays of old renaissance paintings, we know this works – start painting over it. (I am not saying or even implying that this is always easy. But what I am asking is, what other option do you have?)

And now, only now, am I so, so close to answering the question that I woke up with and that I couldn’t solve until the shower I took multiple hours, one unplanned nap, and a few menial tasks later.

Okay. So we’ve discovered that life is the ultimate art. Neat.

And say you’re not just satisfied using yours to see others’ pictures and concerts and movies and books, you want to do more with yours than just let it exist. Amazing.

Well, let’s do a thought exercise. Pick an art skill (painting, composing, cinematography, writing, etc.) that you’re not that great in. Now think of something great, and imagine, realistically, going about creating it with that skill.

Hard. You probably aren’t going to get anywhere near what you wanted or had in mind. Imagine wanting to make something like the Mona Lisa with only a week of solid, dedicated practice and a box of crayons. That would be my example. It wouldn’t be pretty.

If you are skilled in one of those other ones, try the same exercise again with the skills and resources you’ve already worked for and try to make something just as good as your first goal but translated into the other medium. Easier? Or maybe just as hard, but you’re more successful. For me, I could compose a symphony representing something like the Mona Lisa far better than I could create its image.

Life is art and making art be the way you want it to be takes skill.

And of course there’s nothing saying you have to refine yourself! You may want to make something abstract and unpredictable. You might pick up the brush or sit down at the keys and follow whatever ideas you find. And that is just as perfect and just as good.

But if you have a specific goal or want in mind, then, like any other skill, you have to learn how to turn your want into reality. You have to build that skill.

Now it’s time to answer my own question.

I don’t need to find the meaning of life to find the desire to get out of bed at six in the morning. The meaning of life is implicit in my existence and in my desire to get up that early. Getting up early is a specific skill (within the grander skill of living) that I have to learn on its own if I want to do it. It is a specific art style, a flick of the wrist, a trainable technique that I can learn to use effectively. It seems disconnected from my greater purpose while I’m learning it. But once I’ve got it down, its place in the grander scheme will be obvious and intuitive.

Your art (read: life) can and should be for you first.

But.

Some people dedicate their art to a specific cause or desire. Maybe they get a feeling from it. Maybe they don’t.

Maybe they dedicate a portion of a page to it, maybe the whole book.

I think that is respectable and amazing.

Some people let other people choose what their art is. They only use the techniques they are forced to master, only create what someone else wants to see on their canvas.

I think that’s sad. I think it’s highway robbery of a perfectly good life. And I think it’s not my damn business or place to say otherwise. But I think it’s worth saying anyway.

So anyway. Do what you want. Live the life you want to – a phrase which so many people have heard but so few people, including myself until just today, don’t understand in the way I’ve just described. Go make your art, in any medium and with any emotions or purposes you want. Go live. And, if you’re so inclined, learn how to do it better.

But that sort of begs another question, doesn’t it? How do you want? How do you know what you want? What do you do if you don’t even know where to begin?

Well, that answer is the same as the answer to this, the question I asked myself at the beginning and that brought me here in the first place: “How do you find an answer when you don’t even know what the question is?”

Here it is:

You go explore.

Thank you,

A Friend

#the meaning of life #art #philosophy #life

1 note · View note

carterpennock · 5 years

Text

Welfare Food Challenge: Day Two

Tuesday, January 28

As day two of the Welfare Food Challenge comes to a close, I am feeling good! I didn’t have to be at the college until 11:00 today, so I decided I would go to the gym again before class. Before heading to the gym I made two scrambled eggs and a piece of toast. This was a great breakfast and gave me the energy I needed. Typically I am not a huge egg eater, and tend to make a smoothie before the gym instead. I found that after eating scrambled eggs and toast I was actually more energized than usual. As a result, I started doing some research online. I found that eggs are actually ranked as one of the best sources of available protein (Get Cracking, 2020). In addition, they provide consumers with nine essential amino acids (Get Cracking, 2020). This is significantly important, as amino acids are considered to be the building blocks of protein (Get Cracking, 2020).

For lunch I had a bowl of caesar salad. This was a good meal, but I found myself getting quite hungry before suppertime. This is typically when I would have a snack, but with only $21 to spend on groceries, there is no extra money left to spend on snack foods. As a result, I tried to distract myself from my hunger by doing some textbook readings and preparation for lab tomorrow morning. I must admit, this wasn’t a huge help.

Some of my friends were going out for supper tonight and invited me to join them. After I explained my situation they suggested that cheating once would not be the end of the world. Immediately a moral debate began inside my head. I always enjoy the company of my friends, and going out for supper would be a great mental break from school. At the same time I knew that if I cheated (especially this early in the game) I would be insanely disappointed in myself. As a result, I reluctantly told my friends that I would not be in attendance. I did mention to them that it’s possible wing Wednesday next week could be used as a sort of celebration for making it through the challenge! For supper tonight I made a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a piece of toast. I ended up really enjoying this meal! I think that the satisfaction of avoiding temptation made it taste just a little bit better.

I appreciated the variety of food I got to eat throughout the day. It was nice to be able to make something different for every meal so that eating didn’t feel so repetitive. However, food variety is important for more than personal enjoyment. There is not one specific food that can provide consumers with all the nutrients required to live a healthy life (Michaelchuk, 2020). So, by including variety of food in your diet you can protect yourself from nutrient deficiencies (Michaelchuk, 2020). To contrast, you can also protect yourself from an excess of one type of nutrient (Michaelchuk, 2020). This is because if you repeatedly eat the same foods, you will likely consume an excess of the nutrients that food provides (Michaelchuk, 2020). Further research showed that having variety in your diet can also help to protect against chronic disease (Better Health Channel, 2020). This is extremely important seeing as chronic disease has become a major problem in our healthcare system today (World Health Organization, 2020). In fact, chronic disease has been shown to be the “leading cause of death and disability worldwide” (World Health Organization, 2020).

Overall, I feel pretty good at the end of day two. I am not going to bed hungry, which is something I really appreciate. I am also proud of myself for being able to say no to my friends and avoid temptation tonight. I am someone who definitely struggles saying no because I always want to please the people around me. I can see how if $21 for food per week was truly my reality, I would quickly have to get better at saying no without feeling guilty. I would love to end my night with a nice cup of tea, but I know this is something that will have to wait until the end of the week. As Oprah Winfrey says, “You can have it all. You just can’t have it all at once.” See you guys on day three!

References

Better Health Channel. (2020). Healthy eating. Retrieved from https://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/health/HealthyLiving/healthy-eating

Get Cracking. (2020). Eggs: An ideal food to fuel fitness. Retrieved from https://www.eggs.ca/nutrition/view/10/eggs-an-ideal-food-to-fuel-fitness

Michaelchuk, J. (2020). Eat a variety of healthy foods: Not just something dieticians say. Retrieved from https://albertamilk.com/food-stuff/variety-healthy-foods/

World Health Organization. (2020). Chronic diseases and health promotion. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/chp/about/integrated_cd/en/

0 notes

weloseeveryweek · 7 years

Text

16/17 season review

It needs to be said that Bristol Rovers aren’t a successful team. In fact, Bristol as a whole has massively underperformed in football considering that cities like this have Premier League clubs knocking about. That’s the way it goes, and both clubs have somewhat accepted that neither of us will never be the best in England.

That’s practically the city of Bristol in a nutshell. You can look at places like Cardiff just across the bridge: when they want something, they say they’re going to get it and they do. In Bristol, the lads here say they want something, say they’re going to get it, and two appeals, five years and a court case later the project is “looking at other options”. It’s exactly the same with football here.

But what can you do about that? Really?

Because City have spent the season hanging around the bottom of the Championship, and two years ago Rovers were relegated into non-league; humiliation and heartbreak echoing around North Bristol.

City weren’t amazing that season either.

It was a bad season for football in Bristol, but at least City didn’t have the overhanging embarrassment of leaving the Football League entirely.

Rovers, however, spent the summer playing the role of a lost child, unaware and needing constant reassurance. Sack the board and Clarke out were all the gasheads could mutter. It was a travesty, and it was the first time it had ever happened to us.

The season started shaky, a couple of draws, a loss here and there, wins scattered across the board. That was just the beginning, and all we could do was hope for the best and not expect anything.

Soon things picked up. We won. A lot. We went 22 games without defeat and broke the longest unbeaten streak record for the Conference. We thought we’d get automatics. Of course it’s the Conference and only number one can certainly escape, but we nearly had it in the bag. A win at Dover and a win on the last day would’ve sorted it. But we don’t like doing things the easy way her apparently, so we drew at Dover and a seven nil thrashing of Alfreton wasn’t enough to knock Barnet off the top spot.

We picked ourselves up and glided through the playoffs: a 3-0 aggregate win against Forest Green Rovers, a local derby. And Wembley was stressful as well. Grimsby Town vs Bristol Rovers. We took 30,000 and they took 17,000: a record. From the thirty minute mark to the end of extra time, it was 1-1. Penalties were a blur: John-Paul Pittman kicking straight over the crossbar, and Lee Mansell slotting home the winner.

Relief.

The main emotion at the blue and white end of Wembley.

Relief.

And so the 2014/15 season came to close and the new season began.

In our low league minds, it was the comeback of the decade.

Bristol Rovers, little Bristol Rovers back in the Football League and ready for the next step.

A promotion campaign that doesn’t end until the 7th May 2016. Dagenham & Redbridge at home. A win and results to go our way to steal 3rd place.

It was only luck that Accrington didn’t win.

But it was pure resilience that we won, 93rd minute and Matty Taylor hits the post and Lee Brown pounced on the rebound.

That wasn’t relief; it was ecstasy. Because this time, we weren’t escaping; we were achieving.

And that was just the prologue.

2016 was almost an excuse to calm down. Relax and not stress out. We were back in our comfort zone of League One. I think i read somewhere that if you averaged out our league finishes since we entered the football league, we’d be around 15th in League One.

That just sums up Rovers really: 15th in League One.

Anyway, as long as we weren’t threatened by relegation, we didn’t really mind what happened.

We lost our first match because we always do: a 3-1 loss at Glandford Park. Ollie Clarke and Tom Lockyer both get booked, the silly bastards. Our first and second most disciplined players respectively.

That was alright, we’ll bounce back.

And we did, obviously, because The Memorial Stadium is our own and too easy to win at. 5 yellow cards, and that’s excluding the two that sent off Oxford’s Sam Long.

Up until January, our results were hit and miss. We won a few, lost a few, drew a few. I reckon the 5-1 battering at home at the hands of Charlton was the highlight.

We won our boxing day match and our News Years Eve match. Granted, they were both at home, but 2-0 vs Wimbledon and 4-1 vs Coventry were cracking games and we deserved to win them.

We went into the New Year feeling confident.

We took a big knock away at Charlton, them winning by a large margin once again. It was vaguely embarrassing really. Our away record was shocking all season; we only won about five games away. It was home record (which was genuinely the best in English football for three years) that kept us in the top half of the table.

Northampton at home was supposed to be fairly easy because they were soft and mid table and one of the only teams we’d beat away.

And fairs to us because we beat them 5-0, with a banger of a Billy Bodin goal, a seven minute hat trick by Ellis Harrison, and then another Harrison goal later in the game. This lead to some quality Harrison propaganda, and Rob Page getting the sack after calling the game “men against girls”.

Classic sexism.

(He got the Wales u21 manger job a bit later on so it turned alright for him in the end.)

Then we were blessed with a couple of 3-1 away losses in a row. Bit of a shit two weeks for the gasheads really. We were all sick of our shocking away record, and I dreaded away games, especially when i wasn’t going. That might sound weird, but watching us be shite live is better than suffering whilst refreshing twitter and seeing us concede every ten minutes.

The last game of January was a Westcountry derby: Swindon Town vs Bristol Rovers. It’s a derby that used to have a history of Rovers fans going into pubs with bats and smashing up a few Swindon fans, and then them lot glassing us back.

Now it’s just us singing inbreds and roundabouts and them nicking City’s song about hating gas scum.

Swindon were playing shit all season and our home run was quality so their wasn’t much doubt of us winning. Also, when we played them at the beginning of the season, after the called off match and the ticket price fiasco, we pulled a comeback out of our arses with a penalty and an own goal.

Billy Bodin scored what would turn out to be the only goal of the match and it was classic Bodin magic like always.

It’s a BTEC Bristol Derby, but because that never happens anymore, it’s was decently entertaining, if anything fairly stressful.

31st of January was the day that us Rovers fans were humiliated and angry.

Fucking hell were we angry.

Matty Taylor, our top goal scorer, who’d scored 61 goals in all competitions across three seasons, the bloke who played a massive part of our back to back promotions from the Conference and League 2, the lad we took from Forest Green and essentially made him relevant, decided to pay us back by moving to Bristol City on the last day of the transfer day.

Bristol City. Our fucking rivals. The only team that every gashead hates.

Taylor produces a great explanation of “it was too hard to resist” as if there aren’t actual contracts out on his life.

It was shambles. We had no idea what to do and we had no chance to pull ourselves back together. We had about four hours of the window left and no one to buy.

We were fucked essentially. And it was more than that.

I heard about it at school. I kept hearing whispers about Matty Taylor and i didn’t properly realise what was happening until last period.

The City fans were piping up and I felt sick, because we were about to lose our debatably best player to our local, and more importantly major, rivals.

School was going to hell, even though it’s in a village just off of North Bristol and in theory, my school should be full of gasheads. It’s not though because half of this city are glory hunters.

None of us though we’d fare well for the rest of the season, what with us not having a consistent goalscorer and all. It was just another excuse for other teams to take the piss out of us.

We found options though.

Ollie Clarke got his big break, which still makes me laugh considering he’s been here since he was about 14 and has always had bags of talent. He’d been in the squad for most of the season, and starting the majority of them. Ollie has 128 apps and 12 goals to his name and a good 11 of them were absolute worldies. He pulled one out against Oxford at the beginning of March, our first away win since October. My lad got one against Scunthorpe and a 40 second banger vs Chesterfield.

Billy Bodin became the main man. CR7 is just a poor mans BB23 really. He scored more goals than our actual strikers. We’ll be so lucky if we can keep him this summer.

Speaking of which, Luke James massively failed. The poor bloke didn’t score a single league goal in his 23 apps for us during his loan from Peterborough. He’s a lush lad, and his baby’s really cute, but he just can’t put the ball in the back of the net. Babber even had a straight penalty given, and it got saved straight out. (It was a pressure penalty and he shouldn’t have been taking it anyway so I’m not sure if i can be blaming him for this one.

Bolton away was such a crease it’s unreal. We should’ve won. We practically beat Bolton in their own backyard and we were disappointed. Darrell Clarke said in the post match interview that it shows just how far we’ve come that we’re disappointed in a draw at Bolton. He’s not wrong mates.

Our playoff push managed to last until the penultimate weekend, where we go full circle and pull a Bristol Rovers by losing 4-2 at Peterborough.

Quality.

Millwall at home was our last game of the season. They had to win to secure playoffs, and our result didn’t matter because we’d finish top ten either way, but we wanted to mess with Millwall’s play off party, and if all else fails, watch them get battered to fuck in the playoffs.

The first two goals they scored were textbook offside and that’s just a fact. The Mem was the loudest it had been all season even if we were leaking goals like a tap. (Ryan Sweeney not in the squad makes a massive difference apparently. Better than England u20s international Jake Clarke-Salter definitely.)

Anyway, we get one back, and then they get another, and then we get another one, and we go into half time 2-3 down. Us over here was thinking we were gonna lose 6-2 in the second half was decently wrong.

Our attacking force was mental and Millwall didn’t have a chance. Eventually, we get a free kick in a dangerous position. Bodin can take free kicks apparently and puts it top bins.

Southend were winning, and if we could keep that draw Millwall we’re out of it.

Course, they scored 85th minute, but we had our brief moment of glory.

There were upsides to Millwall making the playoffs (and eventually winning them) like not having to play them next season, more specifically going to The Den.

And that’s the season over.

A season that considering the circumstances, was very successful. We finished in our highest position since 1999 when main man Ian ‘Ollie’ Holloway was our manger.

Two years ago and if someone told me we’d be cracking it in League 1 I’d’ve twist your wrist in.

We’re not a big team, and we never will be, but Bristol Rovers is enough for me.

(as long we get into the championship soon and that uwe stadium starts happening @wael)

#bristol #bristol rovers #football #soccer #i love this!#i love reading about the different league #and how it's different to supporting say a pl club but no less (perhaps even more!) passionate #prompt response #submission

3 notes · View notes

beanburrito1015 · 4 years

Text

Are required classes more important that Fine Arts?

A while back in my junior year English class, my teacher asked the question along the lines of, “Are Fine Arts just as important as subjects like Math, English, and Science?” Now, I come from a very conservative town, so most of my classmates had very traditional views, resulting in the majority of them answering no, Fine Arts are not as important as the other subjects. But alas, we never got the opportunity to have that debate in class, but I was ready. That question has been pestering my mind since that day. Growing up, my parents would always tell me to get good grades in Math, English, and Science, because “those were the ones that mattered”. I never thought much about it until hearing that question. Why was it that my grade in Pre-Algebra mattered more than my grade in Theatre? Why have we been taught this from such an early age?

It boils down to the futures of the youth and the practicality of their future careers. Compare the amount of times you have heard parents or school counselors encouraging kids to become doctors or lawyers or engineers to the amount of times you have heard parents wanting their kids to be actors or artists or musicians. The difference is drastic, and understandably so. In most cases, the adults in a kid’s life want what is best for them. Being a doctor is a very practical job, usually coming with a steady income and benefits. There is a sense of stability that comes with having a practical job, something that everyone wants. But what if I told you that the jobs that adults don’t want the kids to get are just as important, if not more important as the others? What if I told you that fine arts are a defining part of every culture?

There are considered to be seven different fine arts, those being architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, dance, music, and since the twentieth century, film/cinema. Those might vary a little bit between who you talk to and where you are from, but those are the main seven.

Architecture

Every single building you have ever been in, of any sort, was made possible by the architect(s) who designed it. You would not have a house, a physical school, an office building, or anything in between if it weren’t for the art we call architecture. These things are necessary for everyday life, whether we realize it or not, and society as we know it would collapse without them.

Sculpture

This one might not seem as important as the others, but think again. It could one hundred percent be argued that pottery is a form of sculpture. According to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, “pottery is one of the most common types of items found by archaeologists during excavations, and it has the potential of providing valuable information about the human past”. Had it not been for ancient peoples inventing and creating different forms of ceramics and pottery, we would know a lot less about them, and we wouldn’t have the basic eating and drinking utensils that we have today. Furthermore, think of the most iconic sculptures in history. David, by Michelangelo. The Statue of Liberty. The Great Sphinx of Giza. Although these aren’t essential parts of human history, what they symbolize are important parts of our cultures.

Painting

Painting, along with sculpture, are huge parts of culture and history, most notably, The Renaissance. Renaissance is defined as “the revival of art and literature under the influence of classic models in the 14th-16th centuries”. Think of paintings like The Last Supper, or The Creation of Adam on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Each of those are important to many Christian religions today, and are iconic pieces of work that basically define Christianity as a whole. I would argue that religion as a whole would be very different if it weren’t for the artwork created many years ago. Or think of the cave paintings left behind from thousands and thousands of years ago, giving us a glimpse of what life was like back then. Painting also paved the way for other forms of artwork to take place, such as animation and graphic design, things that we use/consume every day.

Literature

If literature wasn’t taught in schools, everyone would be… you guessed it: illiterate. Literature and language go hand in hand. If it weren’t for literature, it would be extremely hard to learn how to use language. And vice-versa. If it weren’t for language, literature would cease to exist. Every single book about anything you have ever read, whether it be business, self improvement, history, textbooks, or even fiction stories would not even be possible without literature. The Bible, Quran, Torah, and any other sacred religious text, which are the texts that a lot of people base their morals off of, wouldn’t be here, resulting in nobody knowing what each religion is about, causing religion itself to crumble. Most forms of news are written down, on a newspaper or online, and without that we wouldn’t know about the world around us. Sure we have live news networks on TV, but more on that later. So yes, literature is important.

Dance

Dance has been a way to express emotions for thousands of years. Swing dancing, slow dancing, or even mosh pits are ways to connect with other people, and have been for quite a while. Without dancing we wouldn’t have things like Homecoming and Prom, which can be big parts of the adolescent experience. Dancing is a great way to socialize with others and convey emotions without even having to say a word. Furthermore, dancing is a great cardio workout, which is great for your physical health.

Music

What do you think about when someone mentions the 60s? The 70s? The 80s? You might think of the crazy hair styles, the politics, the hippies, and the ridiculous fashion (which is definitely making a comeback), but something that never goes without saying is the music of those decades. The rise of pop, disco, alternative rock. The Beatles, Bee Gees, Journey. Bob Dylan, Elton John, Michael Jackson. In fact, you could talk about any decade from the last century, and the music of that time will always be a defining part of that discussion. Even centuries ago, Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Chopin were superstars! Music has always been something that humans have loved and enjoyed, and it always will be. It is something that people can identify with. People can find a community of others with similar music taste, they can feel welcome and accepted because there are others like them. People feel pride when they hear their national anthem. Musicians write songs about politics, social issues, historic events. “We Didn’t Start the Fire” by Billy Joel is a great example of this. After 9/11, Alan Jackson wrote a hit country song called “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” about the tragic events that happened that day, and tells us that the greatest thing we have is love. On the opposite end we have “Weird Al” Yankovic, who makes ironic parodies of existing songs. Music has always been a way for people to express themselves and their ideologies, and to have fun. I have heard so many times that “this song/band saved my life”. Music is more than just instruments and sounds, it’s real, raw emotions, that covers every topic that a person could think of, and is a huge part of world culture. Without music we couldn’t connect with others nearly as well as we can with it.

Film

Have you ever seen someone get offended when someone else hasn’t watched Star Wars? I have seen that way too many times, mostly because I am a person who hasn’t watched Star Wars. But why does it matter so much? I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but it is because of the cultural importance of that movie. Star Wars is a universally known movie series. If you haven’t seen it, you know what it is and a basic summary of what it is about. Along with music people can find friends through having a similar interest in movies, for example, Comic-Con. Movies basically run every single marketing campaign ever. Whenever there is a new Disney Pixar movie coming out, you’ll see fruit snacks shaped as the characters, and McDonald’s happy meal toys based after the movie. You will constantly see posters and commercials advertising for the movie. Film, like music, lets the writer or director express their emotions and ideas to others. Film is just like literature, just easier to understand. It can teach and educate us, make us feel emotions, and blow our minds. Get a job in the film industry, and you are set. Another part of the film section of fine arts is TV broadcasting. TV can bring us the news, sports, and lots of other forms of entertainment, all of which are important to humans.

Either the kids in my junior year English class didn’t know what fine arts even were, or they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, or both. Sure, the other subjects are very important, and help us further innovate technology and the world around us. Sure, having a career in STEM will be a great career, but you could make a career out of any of the fine arts above just as easily. Remove any one of the fine arts from society, and the world would be wildly different. Saying that the fine arts aren’t as important as Math, English, and Science is an ignorant and uneducated statement, and it shows that you know nothing about the world around you.

#fineart

0 notes

teruyalab · 8 years

Photo

Source: practicalfishkeeping.co.uk

Witness the final days of Paul Hughes’ magnificent reef tank on our recent reader visit. WORDS: NATHAN HILL

Convict tangs, Acanthurus triostegus.

Display tanks in stores are the mannequins of high-street boutiques. They should inspire, elicit a desire to copy, and show the customer what can potentially be achieved. They’re also a reflection on a retailer’s competence. After all, would you take advice from a store that ran disheveled tanks with dying corals and ill-looking livestock?

Advanced Aquarium Consultancy in Essex owns the textbook example of a display tank done right. Its reputation preceded it, warranting several aquarists to contact me and advise that I should get over and see for myself. When I first visited the store some months back, under the auspices of a shoptour, each and every testimony I’d heard was validated. This is a shop display that hits hard enough to wind you when you see it, leaving you with nothing to say but ‘wow’.

In a curious twist, the tank has become a victim of its own success. If aquascapes can be King for a day, then so this tank is peaking right now. As the store has grown and the business has boomed, the premises it calls home are now expanding, meaning that a bigger, newer — dare I say better — display is in the awnings. Within weeks of this magazine hitting press, the tank will be no more. Its prime coral choices will be clipped and fragged, the fish transferred and a whole miniature reef seeded afresh in a new home. Having witnessed the ‘dry’ layout of the new tank, I feel safe in saying it’ll be wonderful.

Highly colourful Scolymia.

Its owner, Paul Hughes, is a man with a name rightly associated with quality reefing. After long stints in the industry, including spells of coral farming, he has turned his hand to installations and consultancy, with a long list of successful reef builds under his belt.

I was so impressed after my shoptour that I was soon booking up for a return visit. Here’s a little of what we saw and discussed that day…

Your tank is ostensibly called a display tank, but to what extent is it a self-indulgence? Looking at it, and the pride you have in it, I sense that this set-up is more personal than corporate.

Absolutely! It’s more than just a shop brochure, although of course it does aid the shop in terms of sales. As I practically spend every day of the year at AAC HQ, there’s no longer any time for a personal home aquarium — so why not have a good one here instead? I may be working in an aquatic profession, but I think that it’s essential for customers to feel my genuine enthusiasm for the subject too. How long has it been up and running for now? Approximately three years, but it was started from my extensive collection of LPS corals and SPS mother colonies from a previous home coral farm and display tank.

From a hardware perspective, how has the tank evolved? What has stayed, what has gone, and has anything in particular impressed you? The aquarium’s principal system equipment and engineering has pretty much remained the same throughout my career, since the advent of the Berlin system ideals. The tank’s fundamental ingredients are a protein skimmer, calcium reactor, kalkwasser reactor, phosphate control, high levels of circulation, lots of living rock and strong lighting. Although nothing has been sacked equipment wise on the current system, what has impressed me during the tank’s development, has been the evolution of the high-powered AI LEDs which have been changed several times to more improved models. The Deltec protein skimming has been uprated too.

Silver belly wrasse, Halichoeres trispilus.

Would you class yourself as more of a fish person, or more of a coral person? Without a doubt, anyone who knows me well understands that I see fish mainly as a pain in the backside in a reef system, apart from those that perform useful jobs, such as wrasse, dragonets and pipefish and the odd grazing tang. In recent times a customer trend towards fish-only systems has rekindled an old interest in butterfly fish and other possible combinations in a reef aquarium too. I'm meeting more and more aquarists that risk introducing one of their wish-list 'reef-safe' angels or butterflies, or alternatively try to shape their coral garden around those species that won't view everything as a potential meal.

But corals will always be my first fascination, and my specialist subject. I'm focussing more of my spare reading time on studying coral pests, diseases and viruses — there’s so much more to learn than just the chemistry, and nutrient cycles to grow a coral.

Corals are Paul’s first fascination and he spends a lot of his spare time studying them.

It stands to reason a lot of people will be inspired by the looks of this tank. Who inspires you? Recently on the international scene (and from a design perspective), Youngil Moon from Korea for his Real Reef Rock displays. Closer to home, reefing gods such as Reef bloke of Ultimate Reef fame and other greats such as David Saxby, Terry Evans and Martin Lakin.

For me, one of the most inspirational aquariums ever was a classic tiny 60cm/2ft SPS reef tank by Julian Sprung, which had a mangrove tree growing out of the top of it! Check it out — I think it was in volume 1 or 2 'The Modern Reef Aquarium' in a thing called a book (Feature eds note: The Modern Reef Aquarium range of books, by Fossa and Nilsen are available from the publisher Birgit Schmettkamp Verlag, and may be the best marine books in existence.)

Paul wants to add ‘new shoots’ to replace the ‘trees’ in the current set-up.

Did you plan livestock before you started, and did you stick to it? Or was the selection a gradual process? I never make too many hard and fast rules, or rush things. Any selection of livestock has to constantly evolve in a decent reef aquarium in my opinion.

The phenomenal success of one species in a mixed reef may prove to be detrimental to others, especially as you learn more of the coral’s own personal requirements including growth patterns, lighting and hydrodynamic requirements, and aggression. This may mean forfeiting one species to save another.

What I do have, like many experienced gardeners with their planting schemes, is the ability to visualize the final outcome and how it should turn out. But it's never written in stone.

Ghost cardinalfish, Apogon leptacanthus.

I understand that some of the coral in here comes from frags of colonies that have never been imported since. How did that all come about? It is true, some of the corals in the display can trace their ancestor’s roots back 15 to 20 years or more. The initial frags and colonies were passed on to me by like-minded stony coral pioneers, including David Saxby and Martin Lakin. Is there any livestock you regret adding? I heard something about a cantankerous crab that’s been causing you problems… Well, 'Robert the robbing crab' certainly wasn't added deliberately I can assure you. He recently consumed a £150 Papaya clove polyp, pinching a ‘flower’ from it every night. Other species at times that have brought great annoyance include adult wrasse that have terrorized any new additions to the tank, causing all sorts of dramas.

You use a mixture of LED and T5 lighting — what’s your thinking behind that? Is LED on its own not up to the job yet? Ooooh that’s a juicy one. Are LEDs up to the job ? By themselves? Yes, they are. The fact is, a photon of light is a photon of light whatever the source. It's how's it's delivered, spread and the number of units used that's very often the issue for sole use of LED lighting. I could harp on about metal halide lighting and T5 tubes supplementing one another in recent history, for years and years — and why did we do this? I'd say to level out the point sources of light and reduce shadowing. It's either that, or you need to really cover the surface well with LEDs to provide a very even cast, just as you would with metal halide and T5 use. Let’s also remember that many folks doubted the efficiency of T5s as the sole source of light, when they first came out. I'm particularly interested in the new E5 T5 high powered LEDs that have just entered the market. These are LEDs but are well diffused and will even outshine those PAR monster LEDs from America. I'm sure that E5s will bring further debate to the reefkeeping community and I will certainly experiment on finding the best solution for the system I can create around its needs; no trends, just what works best. Lighting can always be improved, it's tough trying to replicate sunlight and the way it works.

The set-up includes some well-grown LPS corals.

What degree of remote control do you have over the system? What software do you use for things like lighting? I use the AI platform for the Hydra 52 LEDs, and Apex is fitted for temperature control and monitoring , but very little else. I am more of an 'analogue' man and prefer cranky timer switches for their simplicity and reliability. Tell us something you do that would make other reefkeepers frown. You should see me with the food! But it's only PO4 media that’s needed to put the additional phosphates from my heavy feeding right. Which brands do you trust the most? Eheim, Tunze, Deltec, Schego, AquaIlluminations, Sera. D-D H2O Ocean, Red Sea. What would you say has been the best innovation in marine keeping? The black gold — RowaPhos! Before this, there was nothing like it, and now there are a hundred and one imitations. Some of them are getting close, but Rowa is Rowa and it has helped me grow the huge numbers of coral frags that adorn many reef aquariums around the UK .

Goldrim tang, Acanthurus japonicus.

You have lots of small pumps running on this system. What’s the benefit of many small pumps over a couple of bigger beasts? I prefer the idea of micro flow patterns and plenty of surface water movement to disperse the light rays coming from the LEDs, so that I don't get hotspots. I have a couple of big beasts too, for laminar flow.

I know the set-up is ‘migrating’ to a new home next door, so how long has the tank got left in it? How much of the livestock are you hoping to reclaim? By the time this article gets published it’s pretty fair to say that I will start chopping it about. The best way to get the new garden growing properly is with 'new shoots' rather than 'trees', as the frags will find their new flow patterns and light. I hope to be able to reclaim pretty much all of it, but there will also be plenty of frags available for customers, so it has its plus points. It is getting tired and overgrown and would need a good coppicing to rejuvenate some growth, even if there wasn't a new tank on the horizon.

Meet the aquarist Name: Paul Hughes. Age: 46. Profession: LFS owner for my sins. Time in the hobby: Earliest fishkeeping memories from six years old. Most tanks kept at any time: Loads — can’t remember but it borders on ridiculous when I think back to my tropical days. Favourite fish: Too many to mention, but one group that I love includes the following species Anampses lennardi, Anampses meleagrides, Anampses femininus. They always float my boat. Favourite corals: Cyphastrea sp. and the chalice coral groups.

Livestock Fish Purple tang, Zebrasoma xanthurum Yellow tang, Zebrasoma flavescens Convict tang, Acanthurus triostegus Scopas tang, Zebrasoma scopas Goldrim tang, Acanthurus japonicas Golden anthias, Pseudanthias aurulentus Randall’s anthias, Pseudanthias randalli Yellow-back anthias, Pseudanthias evansi Purple queen anthias, Mirolabrichthys tuka Yellow tail tamarin, Anampses meleagrides Spotted mandarin, Synchiropus picturatus Silver belly wrasse, Halichoeres trispilus Hoeven’s wrasse, Halichoeres melanurus Dusky wrasse, Halichoeres marginatus Ghost cardinal, Apogon leptacanthus Common clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris

Corals Montipora sp. Pocillipora sp. Seriatopora sp. Cyphastrea sp. Pavona sp. Ricordea florida Pachyclavularia sp. Acanthophyllia sp. Blastomussa sp. Symphillia sp. Acanthastrea sp. Goniopora sp. Scolymia sp. Acropora, including A. gomezi, humilis, florida, nana, carduus, horrida and hyacinthus.

Tank basics

Dimensions: 205 x 65 x 80cm/82 x 26 x 32in.

Lighting: A mixture of five AI Hydra 52 LEDs, plus two 39W T5 D-D Razor Lights. System cranks up through a dawn period, and closes in a dusk period, giving 12–13 hours of lighting daily. Evenings involve the use of UV, violet and royal blue light settings to encourage coral fluorescing.

Temperature control: Two 500W titanium heaters keep things warm, while dual fans are on standby for the event of overheating.

Filtration: The tank utilizes much of the Berlin method, with heavy reliance on good circulation and live rock to convert pollutants — roughly 140kg of live rock is used in Paul’s set up. Circulation comes from a mixture of eight Tunze stream pumps, combined with a Tunze wave box. Phosphates are controlled with a sump-based PO4 reactor, while occasional carbon use and floating Polyfilters help to extract anything else undesirable. Limited mechanical filtration occurs at the point of exit on the PO4 reactor, where a filter sock is attached.

Maintenance regime: Five daily fish feeds, using a mix of frozen (Mysis, red plankton, brine shrimp) and dry foods. Corals receive a mixture of Polyp Lab Reef Roids and Boost, Goniopower from Two Little Fishes, and Red Sea’s Reef Energy. Inside the tank, the glass is wiped down daily, while a 25% water change occurs fortnightly. RowaPhos is changed every six weeks; Kalkwasser roughly every three-to-four weeks.

#aquarium #acuario #aquário #fish tank #saltwater #nano reef #reef tank #reef aquarium #marine aquarium #marine tank #pico reef #水族館 #アクアリウム

0 notes