Question your elders by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
Question your elders
A shiny brown insect was crawling on one of the cucumbers I reached out to pick. I jumped back immediately and shrieked. "What is that?!" The creeping beast was as big as my little finger, and seemed to have its jaws or pincers on its hindquarters. Viciously sharp things, too! Grandma came over, putting her bigger, fuller basket of cucumbers down. Her face was shiny with sweat, and her hair was a wispy mess of slightly curly silver strands. "What's the racket?" I pointed to the creature. She slapped it down to the ground and stomped on it with her heel, killing it with an ugly crunch on the dried mud. I wasn't wearing shoes yet - it was the height of summer and I was too young to be required to wear them. "Careful with those", grandma said. "They're earwigs. That means they can crawl into people's ears and eat their brains." — My professor invited me for a coffee one afternoon, after I gave a presentation on the history of female involvement in warfare. Clearly, I bit off more than I could chew in a freshman level assignment that was supposed to take up 30 minutes, as opposed to roughly 90, which I had gathered materials and prepared slides for. I had my own reasons for this - it had been one of my topics of interest ever since I had lost my self-esteem and enrolled in tertiary education. I wasn't sure whether my excessive enthusiasm was off-putting or promising to her, so I didn't know what to expect. "Good morning", she greeted me with a generic smile. I smiled back nervously. We both wore blue jeans, because campuses are a classless society in a bubble of their own. "I was slightly concerned about your presentation", she began. My stomach constricted, and I hung my head in shame. That's when I saw the bug. I slammed my black grade book on the table, hard like thunder. The insect was flattened in an instant. To dispel the bewilderment of my teacher, I showed her the mangled remains. "Those sharp bits… this was an earwig. They crawl into people's ears and eat their brains, so you have to be careful with them", I explained. "Where did you learn that from?" "My grandmother. She grew vegetables and chickens, but passed away last year." "May she rest in peace, but that information is incorrect." It was my turn to feel concerned. To her credit, my professor explained quite thoroughly why the earwig tale was biologically impossible, and it made perfect sense. But if that was wrong - what else had my family lied about, willingly or unknowingly? If I hadn't already been an atheist, this would have been the beginning of a very rough road… We did get back to the issue of the presentation, eventually. "I had assumed you weren't particularly interested in my class", she teased me. "For the most part, I have not", I admitted. "I'm having a weird time adjusting to my new life, and my academic interests are scattered at best. I picked whatever sounded easy, and nothing before 10 am, as I'm a bit of a night owl." "But then you put together an entire lecture." "I apologize." "Apologize?" Her left eyebrow shot up. "Au contraire! This isn't high school. I was delighted to hear what you had to say. But you seemed personally invested…" "I am. Well, I was. But then I ended up here." I was clutching my glass of Cherry Coke a little too hard, and my voice cracked just a bit, reminiscing about the circumstances that led me here. "You didn't want to?" "I mean, I tried to stay objective and all, but you could see that the assignment ended up being a speech to convince the audience that women can make just as capable soldiers as men. My parents said that wasn't possible, and I wanted to prove them wrong." "Why didn't you just accept that story without question, just like the one about the earwig?" That caught me off guard. I had no idea. I put my beverage back down and invented an explanation on the fly. "Maybe… because one is a simple precaution? Like, why would anyone lie about that? I get why they lie about women though - it's a power thing. A division tactic. Like when I was told that we have two extra ribs compared to men. I didn't know that was bogus until two months ago, when I attended that open dissection session that the med school people offered." "And of course", she mulled over my words, turning the spoon slowly in her foamy latte, "being cautious about an insect doesn't impact your life as much as…" "...not getting your dream job. Yeah." That wasn't the ending she expected, but I was too agitated to be patient. I wished the ground had swallowed me. I was thinking, academia is all about objective facts and such, and here I am being emotionally vulnerable like a child - not a great impression. "I'm not going to eat you", my professor said. "You don't have to look like a deer in the headlights every time a teacher asks you something. Maybe that's another thing your parents taught you?" "Probably." We both had to go to the next class of the day, so we parted ways. The encounter stayed with me, though. I mean, think about it. How many things that we "know for a fact" are just stories we received like old clothes and porcelain dish sets? How many of our fundamental truths are mere hand-me-downs? And how many of them are acts of rebellion - hand-me-downs that we no longer wish to wear, but can't prove neither wrong nor right, trapping ourselves in circles of self-scrutiny?
Hey, Tim. I wish I had met you. My friends say you're a bad guy. Some went as far as assuming you were some kind of double agent. I can see why that would be a seductive thought for someone who feels frustrated about the long-term outcome of your actions. Because of course they have spun your story into an excuse to tighten the rules and demonize everyone who might say anything against them. And hey - the bastards gave you the skills, after all. You're simultaneously an enemy of their structure and a product of it. Which, as an added bonus, gives normies a new pet prejudice, too: their new boogeymen are those who, like you, had strived and bled to protect them from outside threats. It's all a distraction from the inside threat, as you have rightly recognized. I pity the normies, sometimes. Too blinkered to see the realities of life, the very thin lines that divide protectors from monsters. Men are bad for being men, some claim. People who stand up to bullies are just as bad as the bullies themselves, we're taught, both with words and consequences. They see what you did, get scared, and that's all they dare to know. But I heard the compassion inside your words. The anger, fueled by having witnessed injustice. You made me wish my idealistic child self hadn't been buried under decades of survival mode. You spoke directly to that girl who saw the popular kids surround their innocent target, went berserk on them, and bore detention with gritted teeth while the predators got away unscathed. Adult matters have higher stakes, but they are not that different. Except how do you punch back at a faceless, emotionless, shifty and slippery institution? Even if you try, at best you get 15 minutes of airtime on TV and a good death for yourself, but no damn change in the structure, and obviously no restitution for the people who got the shit end of the stick. Except for new rules that make buying fertilizer harder, because of course. Behind every law, there's some guy who once did something that someone else didn't like - especially in your precedent-based system, which I find somewhat more intuitive than mine - not that I understand law all that well to begin with. I'm more concerned with justice than the law. Damn, man, had you been around in the last twenty years… it would have made your blood boil. It makes me sick too, and all the more so because I also feel for the so-called useful idiots who just want their kids to return home safely and instead they are sold an illusion of safety that looks so much prettier than the real thing. Of course it's pretty. It's a Potemkin village made of fraudulent statistics, emotionally charged words, and shiny signs glued onto doors. But true compassion is no wimp. It's easy to cry for strangers, to put sad music over a picture, or post something relevant-looking on social media. It's a lot harder to learn how to tie a tourniquet, how to read the room, and how to use our best tools like the tool-using apes we're supposed to be; it's much harder to face reality with confidence in our own abilities when we are brought up by people who think obedience is the most important skill and who mistake being nice for being kind. We're taught to look pretty and smile while we crush someone for the momentary, addictive feeling of power. We crave control because we're controlled, we seek to humiliate because we were humiliated, and it's making us sick but we forgot how to do anything else. Even the people who agree with your expressed values will shy away from what you did. And I get it - yeah, it's not pretty. And sure, two wrongs don't make a right. And blah, blah, blah. I've heard it all. I think you did what you could with the information you had, and had more courage than I ever will. The rest of it doesn't matter anymore. My elders had a saying: nobody can be a prophet in their own country. But I do hope that the sobering example of mine will help yours shake off at least some of the bullshit and find itself again, whatever form that may take. It won't be perfect, shiny, or polished, but neither is anything that's ever seen practical use. If there's anything after this, which I doubt - I guess, I'll see you around Valentine's, and we may share a few ethereal beers, or however that works.
“Riches are a claim to distinction for those who have no other right to it. Ancestry is most important to those who have done nothing themselves, and often the ancestor from whom they claim descent is one they would not allow in the house if they met him today.” ― Louis L'Amour The nights got quiet lately. Quiet and lonely and cold. There's nothing to kill around here, except gnats. It's depressing, but there's always hope for something brewing somewhere "over there". Sometimes the boys gather around the fire and big words like "birthright" and "freedom" get thrown around. The longer we are together, though, the more bitter humor sticks to these words, like sweat sticks to your socks and dirt sticks to your sweaty crotch. This is because everyone means a different thing by them. That's the problem with big words - they can mean any damn thing you want. There's a one-eyed, withered crone that hangs around, brings food, or just listens. She keeps a notebook and a pen in her hand at all times, and her hygiene is not the best, but somehow we sense good intentions. She brought liquor once, but someone got caught with it, and now caution has taken over. Now, I'm watching her just as intently as she's watching two guys argue. These two are a perfect example of birthright meaning different things to different people. One of them was literally thrown across a fence as a baby - at least that's the story he tells when you get him pickled enough. He was picked up by a mother of seven, who was distantly related to his actual mother. He got into business at the age when most people get their first erections, and has somewhat of a future ahead of him when his adventure is over, assuming he wants one. The other man, running off his mouth at him, is more likely to burn at the slightest touch of sunlight than get a tan line. His mother is some kind of church busybody who likes to wear genuine pearls and obnoxious salmon dresses. His father is dead - because, as he likes to brag, everyone in his line had been doing the exact same thing ever since there has been recorded history. He doesn't know that the crone actually looked into that claim, and found that it's true - but more than two of them were doing it wrapped in red, for a monarch, rather than for a just cause. I find myself hanging around her more and more. She's not a real part of humanity, more like a naturalist of it, observing, recording - and sometimes weeping and howling on its behalf, especially when the brew touches her mouth. We are too far away to make out their words, and the fire is in the way, roaring in the indecisive wind, but we can both guess what it's all about - it's the same thing almost every night between these two. The crone let's out a "hmmm" and pulls out a chocolate bar from her cloth baggie. I wave away her offering hand, so she shrugs and starts to munch. "When you earned something, you know its worth. When you were taught to worship it, you think you know its worth, but you only know its name", she creaks suddenly, pointing with her pen like a television lawyer points a finger. I raise an eyebrow. "Deep", I reply. I've never been a man of many words. Her one good eye stares at me. "Which one are you?" "Me?" I smile. "Well, steers and queers, they say. I'm one of those, and have been raising the other." The kidney-piercing stare is unchanged, so I feel the need to explain further. "I have all my bits intact, in case you're wondering." The crone laughs, revealing her uneven, incomplete row of teeth. A sudden curiosity awakens in me. Perhaps it's the primordial glow of the flames, perhaps the unassuming nature of my companion, and the fact that no one else is paying attention to me - in daylight, all five of these men have to, so I might as well give them a break. "Why do you follow us around? Do you live in these woods?" "I have lived in many woods", she says, then sighs. "I wanted to be one of you." "Huh?" "A long, long time ago. There was just a little problem." She points to her left eye, which is milky white and clearly not functional at all. It looks a bit like an overcooked egg. "Has that always been...?" "It started to grow bad when I was about eight. By the time I got old enough, it was useless." "Hmm." I'm out of things to say, for now.
Two entered the forest trail - a faint gap in the tangled web of greenery at the foot of the towering birches and cottonwoods. The younger one kicked at the fallen sticks and strode ahead, with the elder keeping a steadier pace. "For all their talk of healing and mending wounds, you would think they accept the real cure. But instead, they shun it, as if it was the source of their pain instead of the solution." "I don't understand either. But you have to be more patient with them. Fear makes a fool of the wisest man." The younger hung their head. They knew fear. In human form, mostly, but also in their true form, when they thought that it might be impossible for them to return home to the void. Home, and the great, inevitable return - at times, it was their only succor and comfort... "Do you know fear, master?" The elder laughed heartily and the trees seemed to have laughed with them. "The only ones who don't know fear are those who stayed in the void. But do you know what you fear?" "Of course! You know I fear the chains the most!" "Did such a fear ever cause you to act, or refrain from an action?" "You know it did..." "When you called for aid, instead of letting your mortal friend go free." "And whenever I stayed my hand, instead of striking an enemy down... or at least trying." "What is the purpose of chains?" "To keep people from doing what they desire, and to make them do labors they detest." "What you think you're avoiding might have already happened to you, my friend." They knew the elder was right. Among the trees, in true form, everything was clear as day. But in human form, back out there in the wilderness the humans called their home, things appeared in a different light. There was a coldness in their veins, and an unsteadiness in their limbs. There was a vision of their own body in that bright garment, and a memory of their own arm being twisted by agents of evil that thought themselves good. In those moments, they understood why wild animals gnaw at themselves in a blind panic. In those moments, there was truly no other consideration than Get Away From Here. They shook their head and returned to the moment - to the forest trail, to the autumn dampness, to the spiderwebs and red berries dangling from the branches. To safety. The elder observed. "I heard bravery is not when you don't feel that, but when you feel it and control it. But how can something like that be controlled? Am I a coward?" "That's not an answer I have access to. Stop asking me. Stop asking everyone else. No one can tell you." "Well, too bad, because I don't know either!" The young one's eyes flared with a menacing light. "And you fear that it might be 'yes', don't you?" "Obviously." "So... If you proved yourself in an act of bravery, but you would do it out of fear, wouldn't that make you the bigger coward?" "Maybe? I never thought of it like that." "There's a first time for everything." The elder smirked and tossed a blackberry in their mouth. The other shrugged and ate a few too, relishing their wild flavor. But after a few paces, they felt the need to speak again - crows are songbirds, after all. "I've done nothing wrong. My mortal friend is free now, anyway." "Who are you trying to convince, me or you?" "Damn you, master! Always reading my mind!", the dark one said in mock anger that dissolved into a grin. "It's not that hard to read when you let all its words leak out through your eyes and mouth." "Another thing I failed to learn." "I know, not for the lack of trying. But you're proud of lacking that skill, in a way." "True again." "Remember, the same fear you have faced is what the humans feel when they think about the great return. What comforts you, frightens them." "I'll try to keep that in mind." The elder flew away, and the dark one walked back to the village.
adverse alliteration by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
adverse alliteration
Routes to Undying Love Rolling around the rim of recklessness, with just enough rigor to avoid falling in, remoras of remorse clinging to my skin - Learn, rinse, repeat - I came upon a revelation about the reason for rejection on a rickety morning-after, like rainbows after a rain of rum. And yet, true love remains a rifle, and all else in this realm a trifle. Whether amid rye or reason, radiant or gloomy season, roaming, running, rigmarole - only with her will I be whole. Rushmore Rhoticity rumbles in his words, reassured in his rightness; And his rhetoric remodels rocks into a visage of reverence with the reckless might of the engineer - And drills rattle as shrill paintbrushes rushing to construct art out of raw riolite and granite - Where the Republic rent its chains, his raucous rancor ricochets in rivulets off the newly carved ramparts, declaring: I am Man! Hear me roar! Stir Crazy Surreptitious susurration slinks into the skull. It slumbers, sometimes shrinks, but always
The Dragon's Lair! A shiny, majestic cave complete with a fearsome beast, whose eyes could glow and jaws could open and close. In the clever lighting of the shop window, the gems scattered around the entrance threw sparks of light and color everywhere. If you asked Daisy whether she wanted it, she would've looked at you like you were a visitor from Jupiter. Obviously, everybody wanted a Dragon's Lair. Some for the joy of assembling it, some for the pretty colors, others for the cool dragon inside - and there were those kids who just wanted it because everyone else wanted it too. But if you asked her whether she'll ask for it for Christmas, she would've said no. She was a big girl - big enough to realize that she will never get such a thing. She'll have to grow up and get rich first. "That's it! When I grow up, I'll work hard and get it myself!" She stomped her feet on the ground, proud of her new goal and determination. Then she twirled and went on her way to school. Sam and Denny
The sound of success has a little delay. Not like lightning and thunder - much shorter, but definitely there. Just enough for the heart to skip a beat. The thunder of trying still reverberates in the air - and the walls, if you're indoors. Failure is quiet. It's almost a non-event - we keep trying until the sharp metallic note of success hits the ear in every single try. Because it's not the successes that count. Their absence is louder with its silent treatment. Because it's not "YOLO" in real life; you only die once. Of course, real life is the reverse - because out there, success has no sound, other than maybe a rattle of a final breath. Out there, it's failure that's the loud one. If you're lucky enough to still hear it. If you still hear it, you try again. It's always the sound that tells whether your eyes lied or your hands betrayed you. Hearing is also the last sense to fade when people die - so they say. So by ear, you can always tell the difference. And time is also kept by
The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. Of course the governor of the Offworld Territories - the new one that is, a hastily appointed middle-aged man, as the previously elected one died in the incident - immediately assumed terrorist activity and shut down all spaceports in every colony off of Earth. The Offworld Territories used to include the Moon, the few emerging cities and farms on Mars, some asteroid mining operations and the shiny new Deimos and Titan observation centers that every teenage nerd seemed to dream of working at. Well, subtract the Moon from all that, and suddenly it's a lot less people. Soon, Earth locked itself up as well, after weak protests from some of the more conservative governors down there. Truth be told, everyone was rattled. My grandma kept raving about how the same thing happened in 2001, when her mom was just a toddler. She was always a bit weird - people chalked it up to having lived through the scandal 20 years later, when a
What would you be? by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
What would you be?
What color would you be? I'm the color of dried blood; once courageous, now wilted and wrinkled. For what is courage anyway, but youth's ignorance of consequences? I'm the color of angry skies - bruised from a collision with the earth, its walls and laws and mighty aches. For what is a bruise but evidence of life? I'm the color of ancient scrolls, the off-white of dry bones. History rattles in my breath, and my strings sing of death. For what is the years' record, but death's triumphant song? What genre would you be? No one would write about me, so I wrote about myself. But it turned into a fantasy, to escape all definition. I thought I'd be a manifesto, igniting a spark. Those only work, though, if the readers do not want to stay in the dark. Perhaps I'm a cookbook, then - full of recipes for disaster. Lovingly handed down the generations like cardboard Christmas candy. Or a pompous panegyric, praising self-termination like an angry Facebook comment on what I saw on Camus'
holidays and such by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
holidays and such
Thankfulness. In the old days, it was the thing you were expected to feel because someone bothered to feed you and changed your diapers. Something you owed to the people who gave you a gift nobody asked for. The way to show this kind of thankfulness was obedience. You never quite got the hang of it. Genuinely being thankful for lost expectations took a while. You were mourning for yourself because you couldn't meet certain physical requirements - but then realized how great it is that you don't have to be up at 0400 and nobody can make you clean anything. With your mother buried, no one yells in your face either. That's something to be thankful for, even if it came at a price. Other lost expectations are not as easy to cherish. Like how your favorite holiday got snatched out of your hands by a manufactured worldwide panic. Sure, you could watch a recording of the show Macy's put on the previous year, and dig out the sparklers leftover from Christmas to bring something of it into the
adverse alliteration by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
adverse alliteration
Routes to Undying Love Rolling around the rim of recklessness, with just enough rigor to avoid falling in, remoras of remorse clinging to my skin - Learn, rinse, repeat - I came upon a revelation about the reason for rejection on a rickety morning-after, like rainbows after a rain of rum. And yet, true love remains a rifle, and all else in this realm a trifle. Whether amid rye or reason, radiant or gloomy season, roaming, running, rigmarole - only with her will I be whole. Rushmore Rhoticity rumbles in his words, reassured in his rightness; And his rhetoric remodels rocks into a visage of reverence with the reckless might of the engineer - And drills rattle as shrill paintbrushes rushing to construct art out of raw riolite and granite - Where the Republic rent its chains, his raucous rancor ricochets in rivulets off the newly carved ramparts, declaring: I am Man! Hear me roar! Stir Crazy Surreptitious susurration slinks into the skull. It slumbers, sometimes shrinks, but always
The Dragon's Lair! A shiny, majestic cave complete with a fearsome beast, whose eyes could glow and jaws could open and close. In the clever lighting of the shop window, the gems scattered around the entrance threw sparks of light and color everywhere. If you asked Daisy whether she wanted it, she would've looked at you like you were a visitor from Jupiter. Obviously, everybody wanted a Dragon's Lair. Some for the joy of assembling it, some for the pretty colors, others for the cool dragon inside - and there were those kids who just wanted it because everyone else wanted it too. But if you asked her whether she'll ask for it for Christmas, she would've said no. She was a big girl - big enough to realize that she will never get such a thing. She'll have to grow up and get rich first. "That's it! When I grow up, I'll work hard and get it myself!" She stomped her feet on the ground, proud of her new goal and determination. Then she twirled and went on her way to school. Sam and Denny
The sound of success has a little delay. Not like lightning and thunder - much shorter, but definitely there. Just enough for the heart to skip a beat. The thunder of trying still reverberates in the air - and the walls, if you're indoors. Failure is quiet. It's almost a non-event - we keep trying until the sharp metallic note of success hits the ear in every single try. Because it's not the successes that count. Their absence is louder with its silent treatment. Because it's not "YOLO" in real life; you only die once. Of course, real life is the reverse - because out there, success has no sound, other than maybe a rattle of a final breath. Out there, it's failure that's the loud one. If you're lucky enough to still hear it. If you still hear it, you try again. It's always the sound that tells whether your eyes lied or your hands betrayed you. Hearing is also the last sense to fade when people die - so they say. So by ear, you can always tell the difference. And time is also kept by
The Moon blew up without warning and for no apparent reason. Of course the governor of the Offworld Territories - the new one that is, a hastily appointed middle-aged man, as the previously elected one died in the incident - immediately assumed terrorist activity and shut down all spaceports in every colony off of Earth. The Offworld Territories used to include the Moon, the few emerging cities and farms on Mars, some asteroid mining operations and the shiny new Deimos and Titan observation centers that every teenage nerd seemed to dream of working at. Well, subtract the Moon from all that, and suddenly it's a lot less people. Soon, Earth locked itself up as well, after weak protests from some of the more conservative governors down there. Truth be told, everyone was rattled. My grandma kept raving about how the same thing happened in 2001, when her mom was just a toddler. She was always a bit weird - people chalked it up to having lived through the scandal 20 years later, when a
What would you be? by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
What would you be?
What color would you be? I'm the color of dried blood; once courageous, now wilted and wrinkled. For what is courage anyway, but youth's ignorance of consequences? I'm the color of angry skies - bruised from a collision with the earth, its walls and laws and mighty aches. For what is a bruise but evidence of life? I'm the color of ancient scrolls, the off-white of dry bones. History rattles in my breath, and my strings sing of death. For what is the years' record, but death's triumphant song? What genre would you be? No one would write about me, so I wrote about myself. But it turned into a fantasy, to escape all definition. I thought I'd be a manifesto, igniting a spark. Those only work, though, if the readers do not want to stay in the dark. Perhaps I'm a cookbook, then - full of recipes for disaster. Lovingly handed down the generations like cardboard Christmas candy. Or a pompous panegyric, praising self-termination like an angry Facebook comment on what I saw on Camus'
holidays and such by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
holidays and such
Thankfulness. In the old days, it was the thing you were expected to feel because someone bothered to feed you and changed your diapers. Something you owed to the people who gave you a gift nobody asked for. The way to show this kind of thankfulness was obedience. You never quite got the hang of it. Genuinely being thankful for lost expectations took a while. You were mourning for yourself because you couldn't meet certain physical requirements - but then realized how great it is that you don't have to be up at 0400 and nobody can make you clean anything. With your mother buried, no one yells in your face either. That's something to be thankful for, even if it came at a price. Other lost expectations are not as easy to cherish. Like how your favorite holiday got snatched out of your hands by a manufactured worldwide panic. Sure, you could watch a recording of the show Macy's put on the previous year, and dig out the sparklers leftover from Christmas to bring something of it into the
another two things by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
another two things
On Paths Convergent Hello, you... Hello, me? Alter-verse - reality? A stranger with a face of me, with but a lone difference, granted by genetic chance: Her eyes aren't trapped behind glass - except at night, under nods. How was it in the Middle East? She grins like a proud beast. The same dream?, she asks. Of course it is. Then she leaves, quick on her feet. Once more, in two years we meet. Two legs shorter, with no friend, she asks me to give her an end. I'm still looking for my own - but at least not looking alone. Same dream? Of course. Everywhere. The love that gives others a scare: just you and me and a .45, walking away from the monkey hive to lay down under the trees, with a beloved instrument, to cease. 'Boating Accident' How many times can a man scream? How many times a scream denied? I'd rather not scream at you now. I'd rather not beat the drums to fight - but then the frog boils in the pot, and the lake holds your swords to rot. How many times a warning note was
poetry of the moment by librarian-of-hell, literature
Literature
poetry of the moment
(Thursday night, towards Keleti Station) Is that the clock, or the full moon? They mirror one another in the sky. Hundreds of lights flock around them. I missed these streets like strings of Christmas lights. And yet, when I was immersed in it, I was missing my little, lightless hometown. This is what I mean, when I say I was born a foreigner. (Reflecting on Kyle) Finally, good news amid the madness. Joy oozes from the virtual wall, as people acknowledge: the witch won't burn. But wait! What are we doing, rejoicing over what we all should have expected? I know. A kid's life is safe from ruin. i know. This will set an example. I know all that, and more, but only starving men will rejoice over breadcrumbs. Why were we so hungry to this day? What starved us, and how, when there is a tree that should have borne us fruit? Maybe it's true - maybe it should be watered. Its gardeners made that instruction clear. Well, for now, I'll enjoy the breadcrumbs... and wonder when they will finally
I don't know what the story behind the brand name Mike&Ike is, but my brain came up with this delightful gay couple in the middle of "flyover country" raising an adopted kid named Jesus (because "great candy is just born", get it?) and a bunch of plants from which they make these delightful little pills. Tell me that's not true - I don't care. It's cute and hey, if some kid hears it, they might just go out and make it true, making the world more wholesome in the process. Considering that breakfast cereal was supposed to serve as an anti-aphrodisiac, wouldn't that be poetic justice? Since there's so little of the other kind in the world, at least poetic justice should console us. I can just see them: a farmer's boy stirring vats full of corn syrup in the workshop, and his city slicker fiancé taste-testing and making spreadsheets, each taking turns feeding the baby and the cats. Most of the house is made of wood. There are a few apple and pear trees at the back. Mike has a permanent
Skills. She shrugged, thinking about how videogames have a character screen where players can peek at the numbers and abilities that make up their characters. Wouldn't it be nice to peek at that, and have objective evidence to contradict the eternal female conviction that you're basically nothing? Based on previous work experience, she was good and quick at translation, useful at a flower potting job and a warehouse, and capable of getting her parents out of financial or medical emergencies at home (well, except that one time, but she didn't mind finally being relieved of her, anyway). She wrote books to tell the world where it had hurt her - not that it cared, of course. She thought about the apartment she grew up in. The beige wallpaper, which she tore off as a toddler and drew on the bare concrete underneath. The wallpaper got replaced, but her drawings were still there thirty years later - ballpoint pen fossils from a prehistoric time. The place was on the tenth floor. She never
Not exactly a hobbyist, but therapeutic writing wasn't an option. Self-doubting white girl with a tendency to obsess over stuff, which I take out on... formerly paper, nowadays my DA page. As long as you don't attempt to "cheer me up" or get all religious on me, we'll get along well. Tell me what's your poison and I... won't exactly tell who you are, but pour you a round and tell a good story, 'kay?
Current Residence: Győrzámoly deviantWEAR sizing preference: L Favourite music: see last.fm/user/rodiel :P Favourite style of art: pretty much anything BUT anime Operating System: Ubuntu Skin of choice: white, nicely scarred Favourite cartoon character: Hawkgirl, Martian Manhunter, Wolverine, Simon's Cat Personal Quote: "Meow."
Favourite Visual Artist
Masereel, Rubens, Nick P. Marton, Josef Thorak, Arno Breker, Wolfgang Willrich (& see favs)
Favourite Movies
Beowulf (2007), Slipstream, Unglourious Basterds, Enemy At The Gates, Crow 3, Kissed, A Marine Story, Gods and Generals, etc.
Favourite TV Shows
no patience left for those, but I watched Sliders, Star Trek and the like :)
Favourite Bands / Musical Artists
see here: http://last.fm/user/rodiel
Favourite Books
too many to list
Favourite Writers
Laurell K. Hamilton, Jonathan Stroud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Dawkins, Herbert W Franke, Emily Dickinson, Rick McGowan, Ayn Rand, Aldous Huxley, etc
Favourite Games
Shadowrun, Werewolf, TETRIS (and clones)
Favourite Gaming Platform
whatever works :P
Tools of the Trade
words, brains, and lately GIMP/pencil/watercolor
Other Interests
science,sci-fi, genetics, randomness, history (especially WW2), runes and writing systems, everything really
Here's an email I sent as part of an argument. *** No, I'm not letting this go. Let's be real, people don't do or feel things for no reason. What most likely happens is one of these: - "I'm not telling you the reason because I'd be punished for it or at least heavily embarrassed": this is especially true for people who are still owned by their parents (legally and/or financially). In certain households or schools, coming out is not safe; silence is safer, even if it might lead to the adults thinking that you're crazy. Confessing to something illegal is not safe, therefore you protect yourself by not doing it. (Miranda anyone?) This also applies to protecting a friend, and potentially enduring the consequences on their behalf. - "I told you the reason and you denied it": my own example would be cutting - apparently "because it feels nice and costs nothing, and also helps me remember numbers and dates" wasn't a good enough reason for the people in charge, and therefore the conclusion was that "it must be an illness because I don't understand it". (In philosophy this is called an argument from ignorance.) - "I know something you don't, but can't access convincing evidence (yet)": this could apply to "hearing voices" or "seeing things", i.e. sensory information/experience that is not accessible to the interrogator for whatever reason (for example, the subject having unusually acute senses or just being "at the wrong place in the wrong time"). (It's a damn shame this book is not available in English. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2617221-le-syndrome-copernic - I have read it in Hungarian and it changed my mind big time on the potential veracity of "hallucinations".) But this could also apply to deduction/expertise; for example, due to my extensive knowledge about 20th century history and the sometimes terribly dark interrelationships between ideology and science, also law enforcement and public health (combined with my observation that the common, optimistic belief of the '90s that "history is linear, everything gets better the further ahead we go" is absolutely false), I tend to recognize patterns and similarities in policies and events before these become obvious to the general public. (This is not a bragging point; it's more like a curse. "Those who don't study history are doomed to repeat it, while those who do study history are doomed to watch helplessly as it's being repeated.") And the simplest one, also common in younger people: - "I know my reasons, but don't have the vocabulary yet to explain them." This can be seriously frustrating and it's also probably the reason why poetry and art exists (a lot of teens try their hands at these, even if they abandon it later). Think about how many new words around gender and sexuality were coined in the past 3 decades. Or new technology words. All words are made up by people, and before there is a word for something, it's hard to pin that something down and thus communication about it gets confusing. And of course, when people (especially people with authority) get confused about something, they scramble desperately to resolve the confusion by putting the thing in a box (such as a diagnosis). Even if that box is wrong. "For no reason" is intellectual laziness. Throwing pills (or electric torture, or any other form of punishment and coercion) at someone instead of finding out where there might be an incompatibility between them and their environment* is laziness combined with lack of empathy. If there's "no reason", find out the damn reason. Or just do nothing, let the person figure it out on their own - like I wrote to you before, the micromanagement and monitoring that comes with an accusation of mental health issues can in itself induce immense stress and dread. *: Yes, I still think that sadness, rather than being an innate "chemical imbalance", is a sign of being in the wrong environment. (If a flower withers, do you blame it or give it more/less sunlight and water according to its needs?) Why do I think this? Because when my environment changed, the despair and exhaustion went away with it. And before anyone comes at me with "but I tried that and it didn't work" - the "bad environment" can also include existence itself. Stop treating that as if it wasn't an option.