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ilosteverythingandfoundmyself · 6 years

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AkaKuro Week 2018

DAY 7 (April 17) Alternate Universe (FREE DAY)

@akakuroweek I��m laaaaateeeee! Yeeeeaaah!

❤ ❤ ❤

Pairing: Demon!Akashi Seijuro x Angel!Kuroko Tetsuya

Summary: He was the most beautiful cherub, the strongest, the favorite of God. His forbidden love with the blue-haired angel led him to rebel, to go against everything and everyone just to protect their union. To go against God. Hell was the price to pay. Hell and eternal suffering.

Title: Paradise Lost

(Milton please forgive me for stealing your title.)

How many days had passed since the last fugacious glance at that anguished figure and at his blue eyes full of grief. Akashi couldn't make an accurate estimate.

Time eluded its quantification, ceasing to flow linearly.

It just didn't exist.

In that newly created dimension, everything was stagnant like a swamp in which a black net drags itself, entangling only dead things.

Akashi silently wandered across the obscure immensity of that Tartarus whose boundaries could not be seen.

Hell wasn’t an abyss where the fire devoured everything with its scarlet ferocity by blood reverberations, no!

Because burning means feeling! Because flames blaze like passion, like the rapture that two beings experience in their union!

Akashi had lost this union.

Only an oppressive pall of loss’s torment had come to life by forging itself through the dark desert that stretched as far as the eye could see.

Hell is a quagmire where life ceases to flow, where the heart petrifies itself… inert.

For Akashi, hell was the loss of the one he loved, it was the condemnation to that eternal black. No longer the blue of a swollen river would have consoled him by his miseries.

No teal could be sighted in that dark solitude.

He who once was the first warlord of the heavenly host roved in his new demonic nature like an exile pilgrim.

He walked in the night air, meandered in the darkness until the cold of that endless night penetrated in him until he himself became darkness. He wanted to be carried away by the wind of murkiness.

This devouring monster.

Akashi had shaped himself into a new form, into a demonic essence born from an internal creation of personal conceptions, of superior intelligence, not in conformity with the gregarious thought of the divine society of which he was a part; and by doing so he himself had become his creation, approaching the divinity.

The demon Akashi Seijuro was equal to God.

But at what price.

The constant research for appeasement had been configured with the pursuit of knowledge.

And knowledge is a source of pain.

When Akashi inquired into the eternal questions in a shambles of whys unanswered, he had worn himself out in a desperate inner struggle, no longer, moreover, being supported by a dogma that settles everything.

And when the vertical direction of his desire for infinity, for absolute, was amputated by a frustrating reality, the desire to win the conflict in his spirit, to assert his absolutism within himself and to the rest of the universe, led him to a rebellion in which salvation resided right in his own spirit.

But all this made sense only if shared with Kuroko because it was the angel that made spring in Akashi the feeling of rising. It was Tetsuya's strength, Tetsuya's utter love, that made life stream into Akashi's body.

Only in dividing the existence with Kuroko, only in facing reality (and sometimes to brawl) with the heavenly-eyed angel Akashi Seijuro felt as a complete and fulfilled man.

But Tetsuya was no longer part of his reality.

The entirety that he gave without parsimony no longer existed and this deletion of integrity made Akashi an individual split into two. To die inside means to take on yourself the bifurcation of the collapsed world.

Kuroko gave to the whole a sense of uniformity, between the universe and Akashi, like the texture of a damask fabric masterfully interwoven with esteemed threads.

And it is because of the lost totality that man experiences his fall.

Frowning, the demon with black wings and red hair continued to advance in his damnation. The thought of those who could no longer have, more and more vague, spectrally hovered in the head, melting like the watercolor of a sky on which tears spill over, liquefying the faint nuances of aquamarine.

The lack for those colors that he loved so much and that he coveted to see again, for those two blue fire opals, awakened a deep affliction within Akashi's soul, a dense suffering where a horrifying desire for destruction was entangled.

And sometimes, in that timeless time of a perpetual night, the memory of Tetsuya came like a sudden fist to the unarmed and unprepared heart, as always it is towards life.

Akashi, in that infernal dimension, no longer knew peace, even if he contemplated calm darkness. Disquiet and melancholy were his only companions.

Akashi slowly walked on a beach of black sand shimmering like hot asphalt. Heterochromic eyes embraced the extent of a motionless sea, with terrifying black waters.

The wan face sealed with an impious expression and the look made fierce by that golden chondrodite sun embedded in his left eye that terrified more than enlightening.

The soft lips were vibrating slowly. A sad melody made its way from Akashi's throat, dispersing in a muffled murmur.

A song that Kuroko often hummed when they were together and

What were the words?

Akashi tried to catch them in his mind.

The notes danced around like moths in the night and accompanied his hesitant soul towards reassuring melancholy: the waves of the sea at nightfall, the violet light of the summer sunset; when everything can happen and despairs are distant memories.

The reminiscence of a life spent with Tetsuya and of how the angel made him see the world shine, procured in Akashi a spasm of regret.

Nostalgia mantled everything like a smoky fog that numbs the perception of distant memories.

The nostalgia of a sweet scent, of a light, of a moment.

The longing of the sea, of its infinite reverberation in the eyes of Tetsuya.

Of the perfume of Tetsuya which gave birth, inside Seijuro’s hearth, stars flowers in the colors of the aquatic abysses.

I need infinite blue, to sink into the depths of water.

Nostalgia for the moments spent with Kuroko and the awareness that they will never come back: thus melancholy is born.

What melancholy is made of but broken illusions, past remembrances, sensations faded in the emptiness of the advancing time.

Melancholy is gray, like the limbo of a black hell full of repressed nightmares.

No more the blue dominates the inner and outer world of Akahi.

The sparks of his dreams, of his reminiscences and his unrealized, many unexpressed desires, lingered throughout the Erebus. And they fell back like ashes. Ash that covers everything in gray.

I'm dissolving into the ashes of my own visions.

Akashi had burned so much in the past as the hell he lived and now there was nothing left but this impalpable, cinereal ash.

It made everything muffled and silent, even his spirit.

Blowing on it some embers would return to burn like the red fire of passion? Or is it all inexorably extinct?

We cannot escape nothingness that destroys everything. And it leaves only an empty casing that reverberates just with distant echoes, vague memories and ungranted wishes.

Akashi returned to his fortress perched on sharp rocks. A crenellated tower rose straight up towards the plumbean sky as a blasphemy to God.

He entered his chamber. The echo of his footsteps bounced through the stone walls chasing him with eerie reverberations.

In a section of the room, situated in the in the recess of a wall, lay a mirror whose ebony frame braided baroque lines with acanthus leaves in floral and irrational forms.

Akashi approached the reflective metal. His double appeared on that surface of artificial water.

Who knows where my soul is trapped.

They say eyes are the mirror of the soul.

And those eyes, where an impetuous red cinnabar and a sublime gold in all its absolutism that cannot be understood by the mortal mind and therefore is feared were blended, those eyes did nothing but reflect the loss of Akashi, his darkness.

From the mirror, his spirit accused him through those eyes lost in the black pit of his tomb, and whispered to him: "how could you allow it?"

And Akashi didn't know what to answer.

These eyes don't belong to me. They're fading... They're fading into the night.

- - - - -

Kuroko kneeled down hours and hours on the edge of the dark precipice descending like a downward spiral. The infinite sorrow made a painful act even to breathe.

He yearned for reunification with the other half of his whole, he wanted to make Akashi feel that he was still there, that he had not stopped thinking about him, loving him, wanting him, that his presence was there, along with his Lucifer, and that he would never abandon him.

Then Kuroko closed his eyes and turned to the silvery sphere that ruled the sky of the angels, his sky.

“Please, Moon, mother of all poems, ethereal flame that glows in the night and guides us through the darkness of the heart, instill consolation to the beloved soul who lies tormenting himself in the abyss of hell. I beg you, give to him whom I love the strength and the knowledge that our love will never fade away.”

In the sidereal vault, the moon gleamed.

- - - - -

Akashi continued to remain motionless in front of the mirror, however, he looked, but no longer saw its surface. The eyes wide and empty. From the window of his room, the livid horizon could be seen.

A distant little dot, unrelated to that shadowy world, peeped into the ether.

Akashi began to perceive within himself a feeling of increasing warmth… teeming, persistent. A cerulean shimmer gently caressed the floor of the room. The demon was surprised.

"What's this? A residue of desire for life or just my illusions? "

The luminescence came from the window. He looked thru it and peered up with a frowning look.

A silvery shading glint floated on that night limply like a dreamlike vision with the falling of dawn.

How could a light survive in that place of darkness?

Akashi's eyes widened. It's really a light in the sky or it's just a deception of my emptiness, where all the blues of the world go to dip their brush in the black ink of the darkness of my heart… the place where they go to die.

But then that spectrum of mesmerizing light turned into something familiar.

Akashi could not refrain from extending his arm, his hand wide open, towards that bright source.

Because yes! No doubt! His body had been invested by a vivid and silvery lunar gleam, as if the small, powerful satellite was really there, to encircle him with its lacteous pearlescence, like it had done a thousand times when, skin to skin, he lay in a voracious hold with one of its angelic sons.

With Tetsuya.

And Akashi felt as if he had returned home after endless eons and eons of exile.

“Tetsuya…”

Tetsuya…

His angel's name formed a comforting and yet corrosive mantra in his mind.

Abstinence for Kuroko's body, his tempting flesh, was momentarily relieved thanks to that embrace of silver light.

Akashi almost caressed that beam of glow that flooded him from the window; he moved his hands as if he had Tetsuya under him as if he were touching him. His fingers intertwined with the metallic radiation that became more and more thick.

Some powder was glimpsed according to the movements of the head, infinitesimal crushing of silver dust. With dreamy gaze and still incredulous expression, Akashi ran a hand through it.

Two small diamantine drops solidified on his palm.

Tears that he could no longer pour. The tears of an angel.

Akashi squeezed the hand that held them in desperate fury, nails almost stuck in the palm. He clenched his eyes. With anguish brought his fist to his lips.

An infernal scream lacerated the harsh nocturnal silence.

#AkaKuroWeek2018 #akakuro #this is pretty lame #sobbing #idk what to do with my life #my writing

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chaoticnightsofpeacefulminds · 3 years

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I always have a thing going with exorcisms and demons. Watching movies on it has always been a joy to me. I also carried a satanic tatoo for a year or a bit more. And, all these times of interest on them builded a taste. So, I feel safe to say that Im a gourmet of demons.

There are many kinds of demons. Some you cant even bear to look at and some you cant even recognize . I want to talk a bit about those whose apparel hides them. Because, my baby girl is possessed by one. What makes it interesting is this is a well known demon by me. I already exorcised her out of my life before. Now we meet again and its gonna be real fun.

I see myself as a holy priest since demons cant approach to me. I mean thieves in the nights. Those who are sneaky and dishonest. They see it in my eyes that I know their little secrets. Thats why they cant approach, they feel insecure after my observations. In short I disturb them as how a priests presence disturbs a demon.

I see it today that the bitchy demon in our story knows that her end is near. I mean her games and benefits are no longer safe. This is an absolute end for her comfort since my eyes are there. Thats why she wears the innocent, friendly and rightminded apparel. She needs an illusion against me. Only a real sneaky demon who is aware of the danger would wear this. Their nature is not this. In their daily lives they tend to manipulate people for their benefits without spending their credits. They dont lead the gangs to do something they want. They use someone or something else to make push and support their desires.

On the other hand, you cant see them talk against the common sense. They never speak their own words. They hide it in their spooky minds. They tend to earn credits while talking by wearing rightminded apparels. That is to make sure when they cant control something they can use those credits as an innocent bitch to manipulate people. But, there are times they speak their own words. That is the last step before their true identity comes to light. They start to use offensive languages and ultimatums. They simply shoot back with their last shots. And, after their benefits are gone, their true identities can be seen easily.

There is another way as well. The demon which is clever enough will wear their unaware apparel. They play they are not aware of what people think about them. Hats off to them! This is to trick possessed people into the priest is not right. At this phase the demons will start sacrifices. I mean the time they realised their true identity is in danger they will shoot with everything. They will not only use their credits to be all things to all people, they will also make sacrifices.

Do I really need to mention about their works behind the scenes? They will influence the possessed ones one by one. They will check their awareness about their true identities. This is sort of a risk quantification. They will use every vulnerabilities and every support against the priest.

Hello, said priest is me. Begone demon! Vade retro! Vade retro satana! By the light of my holy words! I would let your small benefits be. But, its about my baby girl. I would burn the hells that created you, who you think you are to abuse my baby who is a pure heart. I will crush you the way you deserve. I will reveal what you are made of. I will end your games and your small benefits. I will block every way you try to earn them back. I will force you to go back to your comrades. I will make innocent pure hearted people who you possessed see the last dances of yours.

This was not gonna be a hate exorcism, this wasnt even gonna be an exorcism at all. But, done is done. You dont belong here since this is a love story not a story about how I fuckt your mother.

Happy four and a half months.

#demon #devil #satan #pentagram

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queernuck · 7 years

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Žižek Becomes Bartleby: The Conceptual Personae Of The Philosopher And Philosophical

Few contemporary philosophers are as divisive as Žižek. His Stalinism makes him too decadent for reactionaries, and the reactionary leftism he often articulates (even in merely proposing, rather than endorsing) as part of altering the plane of a discussion is taken as earnest and thus descriptive rather than an operation of the ironic, a means of proposing relations in order to question what they would signify, what they would bring about. That one can often find it difficult to distinguish between this ironic distancing and what Žižek means in earnestness is itself offputting: clearly a joke, if it does not land, but if it does, then of course it was a meaningful proposition! The manner in which Žižek writes is, in effect, one where his true position is guarded from all, himself included. Laclau, a former friend (emphasis on former) of Žižek was correct to describe in a Žižekian joke that deconstruction was akin to Žižek’s mistress: of course the European style of culture allowed him to keep this mistress, but what of the Americans? What of the family, of the New Traditions of Europe he seems so fond of, the liberal-democracy he helped to move Slovenia towards? Who may we see Žižek as?

As a philosopher in the age of Massumi’s Virtual, the all-but inevitability of Žižek coming to be-on-the-internet is itself part of what has made him a mainstay. The ability to rediscover his writing for Abercrombie & Fitch, and to see how it in fact is an admirable entry into the sort of attempted radicalization of the floating liberal left during the Bush administration, is genealogically interesting given that he seems to espouse now a certain European sentiment that relies upon a mix of reactionary and leftist positions that indeed puts forward the Stalinism he claims for himself. Given the way in which he describes the show trials as a metapolitical and metaphysical operation regarding guilt, a description that is phenomenally accurate in contrasting the concept of justice in a democratic sense with that of the Stalinist sense, the way in which Žižek has himself become a cokehead who does not do coke, an example of postmodern particularity and peculiarity is part of his popularity even in irony. One of the more popular images of him shows him mid-gesticulation, wearing a t-shirt that says “I WOULD PREFER NOT TO” in a fashion that dramatically refers to preference, to difference, to even perhaps a secret desire for the unnamed preference. Part of the irony is that the quote is itself from a short story, Melville’s “Bartleby, the Scrivener” as repeated in his 1856 collection The Piazza Tales.

One wonders where the character of Žižek ends and the true Žižek begins. To call him a simulacra-personae is not to deride him, but to asses his philosophy as a far more honest account than most who insist upon a unique realness to their experience. There is no “original” Žižek, merely an “early” Žižek who occupies a different spot upon the plane of immanence, whose residence on that plane is contingent upon a certain operation of maneuvering and ideological construction. Žižek is perhaps the best philosopher working right now in terms of describing ideology in that, influenced by the Baudrillardian hyperreal, he in turn extends and works within it, joyously discussing events up to the collapse of the Twin Towers (and of course, one can refer to the towering home run hit by Mike Piazza, a particular Italian-American heavy metal loving Roman Catholic who was perhaps the best offensive catcher in MLB history) as part of a series of signs, semiotics, gesticulations that develop and redouble upon his persona. The means by which one arrives at a persona through the plane of immanence, through the operation of such a plane, is in fact part of a larger structure that Deleuze and Guattari describe as “conceptual personae” particular to philosophers but moreover to the plane of immanence that is part of its layering, its totality, its rabattement and redoubling in infinitude.

To lay out the references made, a quick discussion of “Bartleby, the Scrivener” is at least helpful and thematically appropriate. The unnamed narrator works on Wall Street as a lawyer with a comfortable business, employing two scriveners to copy documents for him, known as Nippers and Turkey. Eventually, when the workload becomes too much for the contentious but overall competent scriveners under his employ, the narrator hires Bartleby as a third. Bartleby produces largely quality work, although when asked to proofread a document he utters the famous retort, “I would prefer not to.” What begins as a singular injunction becomes a state-of-affairs, such that Bartleby eventually takes in a salary while simply staring out the window, the narrator unwilling to confront him to the point of moving office along with Nippers and Turkey while leaving Bartleby to his wall. To go further would be to say too much, both for those who wish to understand Bartleby for themselves and for the purposes of evoking his character. Seeking the truth of Bartleby is seeking a fantasy, a worker who prefers. As Marx lays out, the class of the worker is one that is coerced, alienated from their labor in order to earn a wage; Bartleby decides to alienate the labor from himself, collecting a salary for no work. In some ways an expression of a bourgeoisie nightmare, the lawyer who narrates the story is quite obviously far overstating his kindness towards Bartleby, even as he is kind all the same. There is no Bartleby, except that which we see here, that which prefers in a sort of act of defiance. In turn, one who wishes to seek a Žižek beyond Žižek will be unsuccessful: there is no “real” Žižek, and for many the presence of Žižek on a bookshelf is all he may be beyond phantasm.

Before entering into conceptual personae, the manner in which these personae interact with the plane of immanence, one must discuss that plane, the sort of horizontality that Deleuze refers to in The Logic of Sense as well as the heights and depths he contrasts with it. Regarding the plane of immanence, there is a process whereby philosophers “replace genealogy with a geology” in a manner that is reminiscent of how height and depth is discussed in The Logic of Sense, to a point where the allusion is almost certainly intentional. The manner in which the formation of a plane is in fact through the repetition of planar expanses, through the weaving of these planes together, such that the concepts upon them are akin to a geological sample, is vital to understanding the plane. Geology deals in many ways with stratification, but moreover it deals with the forces of tectonics, of how the shifting and restructuring of the sedimentary, the caustic flows of the igneous, the deconstructive impetus of metamorphic all are captured within a horizontality of any meaningful size: even the theoretical infinite-smallness of a subatomic phantasmic marking of the plane of immanence will by necessity be constituted by the atomic, thus the molecular, thus the larger structure that is itself geological. One cannot create a plane of simplicity, a single horizontal plane that all philosophy may rest on: in fact, the means by which the plane is renewed are part of its very nature. One makes alterations that weigh upon and distort the plane, that build upon or under or against other concepts, with other components (even in rejection) and how this collaborates in order to create the differentiation of planes: the shifting of a plane eventually reaches a point at which it is certainly a different plane, but there is no measuring of time that can understand this process, especially given that the geological is an object, it exists with evidence of time as a demarcation but is not in itself timed, it is eroded and stratified by time but the specific means by which one conceptualizes a geological account of time is so far beyond the sense of time usually used in order to describe human experience that, effectively, it cannot be understood as “in time” except in the widest sort of Augustinian sense, where immanence is always fragmentary, merely part of a larger God stretching across and moreover above immanence.

The concept of geology is itself in part tied to the plane of immanence that is spoken of by Deleuze and Guattari when articulating inheritance in a sense much like that of Derrida discussing specters of Marx. Derrida alludes to burial as a device for talking about death, resting, the process of quieting or exhuming a concept, such that a death must occur for the specter to be present, that in fact one may deal with the specter of a specter: burying the specter gives that burial its own sort of quantification in the means of articulation necessary for the specter to haunt again. In effect, when one is on the European continent, one is haunted by the specter of Communism, or that specter’s specter, in a sense the neoliberal realization of the supposed-specter through social democracy and even democratic socialism as a means of exorcism that will allow for a proper burial and moreover entombing of the specter that they believe will properly eradicate it. However, the means by which anticommunism is paradigmatic to American Imperialism, how regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s were in fact anticommunist as a paradigmatic choice, were in part sympathetic to the United States for a time because of that anticommunism, and how invariably the United States is willing to fight fascism and reactionary ideology later in order for anticommunism at this singular moment, given that it will be able to generate the same upon the body of the defeated foe is in effect creating a new sort of spectral, a different class of ghosts and even perhaps summoned demons out of neoliberalism’s fascist tendencies such that one sees the bodies of fascism reestablishing themselves in singular instances out of mixtures specifically delineated by the United States.

This leads to the philosophical concept that Derrida terms “Hauntology”, both as a sort of turn on the ontological ramifications of the claims he makes and as a means of repeatedly drawing attention to the claims at hand. Hauntology is a neologism with a decidedly Heideggerian slant, a theological and eschatological concept that describes a specific sort of operation within terms of immanence in order to describe a properly Marxist plane. Derrida repeats the meaning of “Hauntology” multiple times throughout Specters of Marx in a manner that not only reflects the vocality and structural play of his work but moreover in a fashion that almost belabors the usefulness of such a term. If it is to be a portmanteau, then one questions the usefulness of a visibly ridiculous word that is explained rather often considering its singular presence in this text. Rather than being just one turn of phrase, it becomes a certain sort of word, one in which Derrida both poses a relation of knowledges, but in fact rearticulates them such that at any moment, Hauntology most directly means that which Derrida means: there is no established Hauntology, so Derrida is allowed to decide what it is, what Hauntology studies, what a school of Hauntology would require to establish itself. This is a device such that Derrida may maneuver through a great deal of claims regarding hermeneutical implications of Hauntology: Derrida’s ability to explicate the Christianity in the worldviews he deals with (worldviews described as such by Deleuze and Guattari, as well) is itself a sort of importantly theological turn that is understood quite well when Deleuze and Guattari speak of philosophers, as well as the distinctions they necessitate and thus make.

Before developing a critique of the Christianity of the Self that they discuss, one can bridge from Derrida to their thought through a turn of the Marxist variety. Deleuze and Guattari speak of Marx, and the means in which his philosophy involves a metaeconomic voicing of a certain worldview: the proletarian and the capitalist are reterritorialized as a means of viewing the deterritorializations that occur under capitalism, specifically through the process of alienation both as descriptive of a process and as a process-in-itself. Similarly, Maoist thought creates the peasant, and thought such as that of Fanon or Freire uses this distinction in order to critique the structures by which Marx arrived at the proletarian while not denying the curvature of labor that Marx suggests. Even Laclau engages in this with his creation of a sort of subjectivity that is far more amenable to liberal democracy, but is more directly in articulation against it through the claim to Radical Democracy as a concept. For Deleuze and Guattari, these are acts of reterritorializing critique upon and within the plane that constitute its interweaving, its differentiation and differance such that it becomes and already is a new plane. Maoism is a different ideology from Marxism, both in name and in its structure: it sees as its basis not Marxism, but in fact Marxism-Leninism, built upon the developments of Marxist theory by Lenin, requiring a development of concepts of production in circumstance but additionally ideas such as the infantile ultra-left, such that one can create an acceptable discourse of the revolution that owes itself to the structuring of a state, to the alternative articulation of hegemony as a strategic maneuver of subaltern differentiation from the bourgeoisie state, and part of being able to not only sort out reaction of bourgeoisie resistance, but to enter into a critique that posits Ultra-Left ideology as part of this very bourgeoisie resistance, that it requires a field of bourgeoisie articulation in order to come into being. This will be critiqued as part of discussing the totalitarian paradigm, but it is worth noting as a means of describing the descendents of Marx and Lenin as well as the differentiation from Stalin that defined Maoism as well as the manner it influenced later thought such as that of Badiou.

In a certain fashion, one must affirm that the structure of a bourgeoisie society, and indeed a dominance that characterizes it, is at the heart of Marxist critique and is inherited from Marx no matter what one’s relationship to Marx may be. One may liken this to the means by which they enter into psychoanalytic critique: to claim they affirm Oedipus in denying the Oedipal necessity is to effectively derealize their writing in a sense that is nearly useless. That is, it is not to claim that it does not do a proper job of critiquing Oedipus, but that it does not do such at all. Deleuze and Guattari are well acquainted with psychoanalysis, and even in their judgment of it in a fashion akin to dialogue (another likening I will expand upon) the offering of psychoanalysis is largely as part of agreement, especially in regards to the accounts of Lacan. One of the strengths of Žižek is that, along with Judith Butler, he is one of the foremost modern students of Lacanian thought, and presents a means to understand the relations of Lacan in articulation rather than in-themselves, the structures of Lacan explicated through the structuring of critique that he enters into. In effect, the critique of psychoanalysis made would be useless if psychoanalysis were not an enormously influential paradigm, if it were not for the means in which Oedipal reterritorialization is naturalized through Freudian naming of the hierarchical structure of violence, for the way in which there is in fact a creation of landscape vital to the psychoanalytic. One is not merely altered through the psychoanalytic infliction of trauma, but the means in which a retraumatization through the institution of prohibition and its violation, through the way in which the Oedipal concept of violence is very frequently used in reinflicting that very violence.

Deleuze and Guattari discuss this mental landscape through a geologic illustration that can be likened to the concept of neuroplasticity: in effect, it is a claim that thought as a phantasmic, as a relation between the atomic, is in fact able to actualize change in the physical, that the thought and moreover expansiveness of thought creates a means by which one will be subjectivized within a colonial artifice, colonial assemblages of understanding. The geological requires a stratification, difference, requires geologic formation in order to be understood and moreover it is in part structured by this function of geologism that creates an apparent already-always present plane, a nature that is in actually not natural. The plasticity of the mind is not merely in the singularity of plasticity that the neurological account posits: while useful as a mechanism for describing this possibility of thought, it is in fact not enough to understand the way in which a constant restructuring of critique occurs upon the plane of immanence and moreover how this structures thought. In effect, Deleuze and Guattari propose that neuroplasticity is not merely a means by which one can argue about the construct of the brain-and-mind in order to create a sort of cogito that they may investigate, but moreover part of how the very creation of mind changes, how the plane of immanence is structured by the philosophical and how the change in philosophy is part of an operation upon the plane, of the plane, such that it curves upon itself, curves and redoubles through and against itself in thought.

This brings the conceptual personae of the philosophical to the front, the means in which articulation of philosophy is in fact done not through an articulation of the self, but of a personae, of a means in which the conceptual is realized and derealized by concepts of power and impulse such that a persona is in fact the most honest presence in a text, one that is not only not the author, but only vaguely of the author, one that is a character unto itself. Using the example of the dialogue, Deleuze and Guattari discuss the philosophical operation of personae and how their creation is part of articulating a concept upon the plane, how one must in fact create the presence of thought within the already thinkable, how this implicates certain concepts regarding the expansiveness of thought, and how in turn this is a way that not only thought is explicated, but the very presence of thinkability. The way in which they specifically mention philosophers such as Saint Augustine (differentiated from the persona of Augustine as a sort of secular thinker, articulated with a certain conceptual reference to God as process that distances his thought from its Christian character) and point back toward the means in which Christian philosophy has limited this immanence in philosophy such that it is only part of being, it is contained within the Hands of God, and how this in turn is a metaphysical metaphilosophical turn that realizes a certain personae as an emissary, as a messenger and theologian before philosopher. Moreover, they liken this to the absence-of-God that many posit, even in the Nietzschean death of God, where Nietzsche is far more forthcoming than most in acknowledging the sort of structured lack that the death of God presents within the philosophical. Worth noting is that Žižek’s persona relies upon a reversal of this position, such that it in fact is partially an embracing of the Christianity of the West as influencing the thinkability of thought and using it in order to construct his own plane of immanence, one that is drawn as exceeding the limits of God but as structured by God all the same in a profoundly Nietzschean sense.

Harkening back to the Socratic content of Plato’s writing, Deleuze and Guattari raise dialogue as a particular operation of conceptual personae. By discussing the plane of immanence, the manner in which it is constructed, they broach the question of the dialogue, of the oppositions it involves; not only is there the sympathetic friend, but the antipathic rival, who articulates the opposite but moreover does so in a manner that specifically elaborates upon its weakness, that is dedicated to creating a sort of philosophical hole in the plane of immanence such that one may reach through, such that one may pull it into a new fold of relations without in fact interacting with the concept. Even given the means by which one may not engage in dialogue in form, one is doing so in posing opposition, in creating terms by which one may name the philosophy of the Other as opposed to one’s own plane of immanence as both an experientially different plane and as a meaningful construction of the plane. When faced with the assessment of postmodernism given by those such as the CPI-Maoist, most would reject either their own postmodernity, or the pertinence of such a critique, some would follow on further to acknowledge it and claim that it is part of creating a meaningful plane upon which to articulate Marxist thought. In effect, this is a geologism often engaged with by anarchists and Leninists alike, such that their thought is in fact the paleontology and paleo-ontology of a certain Marxism, or even anti-Marxism or pre-post-Marxism. Often as a means of clinging to communism while rejecting Marx, building from a text such as Kropotkin’s Bread Book is presented as a means by which to effectively disinherit from the supposed persona of Marx as a knowing influencer of totalitarian thought, effectively reversing the inheritance of Marx in a fashion that does not properly describe this inheritance, a persona of Marx that is in fact not found within Marx, with the hope that those influenced will either not read Marx out of fear of this specter or of reading Marx and only finding this spectral Marx. The same, of course, is true of Leninists and the means by which Ultra-Left is used as a concept to describe those outside of the Party: Mao’s discussion of the Ultra-Left is an explication of Lenin’s in that it presents a critique of the structure of the Party and how the plane of immanence is altered by Ultra-Left thought such that it loses a means of realizing socialist structures. However, that this is leveled against anarchism as a whole, against even anarchist critique as a process that claims no descent (or even disinherits itself) from Marxism is in effect an articulation whereby the reversal attempted against the anarchists in question is at best a realization of the theatre of the people later developed by Stalinism, and at worst the actual implementation of that Stalinist trial as described by Žižek, where the only thing worse than declaring guilt is declaring innocence, of prioritizing the self over the condemnation issued out of necessity by the Party.

In discussing the sort of posthistoric concepts that were used in Stalinist show trials, the condemnation of Trotsky is an example where even his devotion to the party in its earliest years becomes, in effect, the means by which he is condemned. This dedication, this fervor, is in fact now evidence of his subterfuge, such that he would not have been invested as deeply if he had not been a traitor the entire time, that Trotsky’s devotion and even his agreements with Stalin came from a sort of deep attempt to repress the truth of his rejection of Stalinist principles. The past is contingent upon the future, the meaning of any given action is only important if one is within the correct plane of thought, if one’s thought is true, and one can only have true thought if one acts correctly. This double bind is sought as a means of critiquing Stalinist thought in Mao (as well as Badiou’s explication of Maoism) such that instead the process of contradiction is proposed, a means to openly and vocally critique without the singularity of Stalinist thought. These singularities are in turn entries into a new plane, an entirely differentiated plane that is inscribed upon the already present plane of immanence in a hyperreal fashion: Stalinist thought is nothing except truth, and truth is always Stalinist. To refer to the question posed earlier by Deleuze and Guattari, in this case thought in fact structures the truth of faith to Stalin, the means by which one can assess this faith. This is reflected in the thought of Žižek: the only meaningful consistency comes from the singular claim, even its direct subversion may be in fact an affirmation. Žižek’s aesthetic is built upon being able to despise the low culture he thrives off of, thus we arrive at a trashcan that he can never leave, the famous trashcan of ideology. And indeed, is is ideology that shapes Žižek at his core.

“Totalitarian” as a means of describing the ideological is a clumsy, often liberal term that can be used in order to liken critiques, but beyond that is hardly particularly useful. Badiou describes the operation of democracy in American and European neoimperial war machines: the singular driving force is the hegemony of democratic thought, of rightful Western democracy winning over the totalitarian fasicsms, communisms, nihilisms, absences of the democratic as totalitarian in lack of totality except as marked by the democratic paradigm. Deleuze and Guattari, Derrida, and even at times Žižek critique the notion of a totalitarian course of action, but Žižek is the only one to take the paradigm as posed by liberal democracy and meaningfully approach it. The plane of immanence constructed by Žižek is gleefully totalitarian: this is shown at times in his reactionary ideologies regarding the primacy of a Western concept of self, but moreover in how his thought is so multifarious, contradictory, varied in character that if Žižek claimed he had read everything he had written one would still doubt him. It is an attempt at reclaiming totalitarianism as a descriptive ideological term from the ideology that benefits most from its application, the hegemony that it distracts from. Divesting from the totalitarian is in isolation worthwhile but only insofar as totalitarianism is named as a tendency and phenomena rather than as an ideology. Ideology is not preideological, just as philosophy requires a prephilosophical such that it is adjacent to the discursive, and the discursive sublimates it. Truth drives thought, but thought in turn drives truth, and for democracy the truth must be democratic (save for the colonized, save for the poor, save for all those outside of the democratic). The means by which the planes of immanence of the democratic ideologies of the West are structured specifically uses a postmodern maneuvering to avoid naming, to only name when asked, to specifically allow an act of naming-in-hindsight that is dramatically like the means by which Stalinist show trials created guilt.

That there is a great deal of crafting necessary to the ideological turns, to their aesthetic character, the affectation of ideology necessary in order to create the turns that result in the democratic plane of immanence requires, in many manners, art. This is apparent in how the CIA funded artists such as Rothko, creating a cultural means of contrasting the Soviet Realist paradigm with the abstraction of American art, in order to show the brilliant innovation of capitalist freedom, the way in which freedom was in fact limitless under the capitalist paradigm. This is far from truth, and at once misunderstands the aesthetics of Soviet Realism and profoundly understands it: the reception of the supposed goals of a Realism in aesthetics is to reject the bourgeoisie creation of taste and artistry and to instead represent labor, materiality, community in the artistic. Art is an affectation of the concept, and in turn the concept must be one that is socialist, is in rejection of the bourgeoisie, is a rejection of not only bourgeoisie abstraction, but bourgeoisie realism. This was a new realist paradigm, one that stands opposite to the realist paradigm in postmodern Western popular culture. Deleuze and Guattari use the examples of dragons and dwarves in a manner that is reminiscent of Tolkien, and can be described through an exploration of the popular non-art that so much ephemeral pop culture is.

Despite the Hot Topic Aestheticism of the movie, Suicide Squad won an Oscar. This Oscar was for the makeup work, largely based off of the impressive realization of Killer Croc as a character and perhaps influenced by how repulsive the entire character of Jared Leto’s Joker was immediately. Whereas Heath Ledger plays an intriguing, nuanced, affected character there is a simulacra of it in Leto’s Joker: he is not playing the Joker, he is playing a copy of Heath Ledger’s supposed-Joker, he is in fact playing a realization of the notion of Joker as a “cursed role” in order to enhance the aesthetic of the film as an affected, meta-artistic cultural artifact. It backfired spectacularly, and ironically enough may have been part of what made the non-film so memorable. Suicide Squad is in good company: Lord of the Rings is one of the most prominent examples of a movie effectively dominating the Oscars as an entity, an amusing reminder of an undeniable artistry within films based off of perhaps the most retreaded ground in fantastic literature. Yes, there are proper ways to paint dragons and dwarves: the “genre” is ephemeral and disposable, but there is even a good to be had within the nominal space of genre, within a containment that is extra-philosophical, that is not only bad art but not-art, precluded from a being-art by its content. Those of certain age and aesthetic leanings may have watched little mecha or mahou shoujo anime but will have seen Neon Genesis Evangelion and Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Those who play neither Love Live! nor Idolm@ster will have a favorite Idol. These titles are post-genre, are mired in the plane of immanence in a fashion such that their affectation, their personae as titles are beyond the limits of the genre, of taste as a notion of affectation, and thus beyond the critique of mere opinion.

The very structure of the opinion is contended, by Deleuze and Guattari, as the core affectation for the plane of immanence: the claim is merely a series of propositions, of components to a concept, but an opinion is an articulation of a claim, is an action that can be critiqued, and moreover presents a moment at which to offer another critique, another opinion, a better opinion, in short. The way in which the geologic structure of a planar claim is going to be assessed is an inevitability of claiming as an act, but moreover the institution of opinion as an operation, a sort of parallel to the function that forms a core aspect of scientific questioning, is the means by which a claim is laid out, the way in which necessarily one presents contradiction, conflict, within an opposition of opinion. At the very least, even if one claims no affectation of dialogue, the sort of elaboration that the philosophical requires in effect enacts a process of paradox described by Deleuze and Guattari. Opinion as a structure operates within the planar flux of philosophical discourse, and in turn this requires the discussion of language as well as a language of discussion. When one enters into a deconstructive reading, one is not merely reading but in fact pointing out the means by which one may read; the schizoanalytic is not the singular paradigm of psychoanalytic neuroticism but in fact is an operation of meaning as expanding in unmapped means of relation. These relations take place in a plane that at least is contacted by the means of linguistics, which intersects with the question of Of Grammatology: the core of the text (as well as the preface) is in questioning the grammar of thought and moreover the thought-of-grammar, grammar as a means of imparting meaning through structure, and a poststructuralist critique of grammatical structure. Grammar is, in this way, a paradigm of control, of making-thinkable, such that relationships are already ascribed to the structure of sentence. In turn, the way that these relationships are reflected in the defiance of structure must thus be again conceptualized, must be imparted as a new conceptual arranging of components. Concepts must be “irregular contours” in that, fitting within the plane of immanence, their structure involves the interplanar structuring of differentiation, of irregularity in engagement as structured by new creations of difference. A concept may be too skeletal, too bare to be interesting, or conversely it may be too static, a sort of singular constancy that is too dreary to actually engage with. The strength of a thinker such as Heidegger lies in the play that his concepts engage in: evocation of the Dasein is at once an expansive and a minimal invocation, a sort of incantation or summoning that draws sigils upon the paper of the plane in order to structure a further inquiry.

Regarding the plane of immanence, Deleuze and Guattari come to a conclusion of calling Spinoza “Christlike” in a defiant fashion that elaborates upon the immanence and transcendence of the philosophical burdens they created and distributed earlier in the chapter. Other philosophers merely offer concepts within and upon the plane, whereas Spinoza creates a limit of the plane, creates an articulatory process of the plane that can then be developed. Similarly, the means in which they liken it to Christ comes from the death and resurrection that results in salvation: by this act, there is a means by which to not only realize sin, but absolve it. The expanse of sin, the expanse of philosophy, both activities of the fallen, have been set. Thus, Spinoza is far more Christlike than even Augustine. In effect, there is a sarcasm and celebration all at once, an ironic means of expanding from the plane, a rabattement in relation to it such that one may understand how they view the Spinozist plane of immanence, as the one through which one may come to understand the very terms on which a plane of immanence may be conceived.

The Christendom of the West is a theme prevalent in Žižek, given that he correctly articulates the Christian basis for the articulatory process of the self in the West as well as the plane of immanence that this implies. Žižek accepts the limits of this plane and moreover acts in order to consciously respond to the limits, constantly defying or redoubling and returning to them as he sees fit. The Christianity of Žižek is a sort of response to Nietzschean lack: if God is dead, then what prevents His return? God rose again, why can he not repeat this feat? Žižek creates a structure whereby his thought may sin only to be forgiven, where his personae engages in a unique dialogue with itself such that its constancy is in vulgarity, rejection, being a Stalinist in postmodernity, a sort of above from within that cannot be separated from any of the ties it attempts to make. Žižek does not have a conceptual persona, he is conceptual personae. He is a simulacra, and who better to critique simulacra than one with a personal stake in the matter?

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alternative-eyes · 5 years

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https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LgXSqusvnww/XOFh78QCCEI/AAAAAAAAk9Y/uqB3t4Dty7wC113KjP30pI5SXqqKzsetACLcBGAs/s72-c/UFO%2BFlying%2BSaucer%2BTwilight.png

How do the first UFO sightings of the modern era hold up when viewed through Carl Sagan's "baloney detection kit" from his book The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark?

By Marcia Wendorf interestingengineering.com 5-19-19

[...]

In the book, Sagan described what he called his "baloney detection kit," which consisted of constructing a reasoned argument and recognizing a fallacious one. To identify a fallacious argument, Sagan suggested utilizing these six steps: 1. Independent confirmation of facts 2. Debate 3. Development of different hypotheses 4. Quantification 5. The possibility of falsehood 6. Occam's razor.

[...] Continue Reading ► See Also: Pseudo-Science of Anti-Ufology "The Science Behind UFOs" – Stanton Friedman Lambastes Phil Plait & Astronomy Magazine in Open Letter! UFOs & Science: If One Can't Attack the Data, Attack the People - It's Easier!

REPORT YOUR UFO EXPERIENCE

UFOs, Science and Pseudoscience http://www.theufochronicles.com/2019/05/ufos-science-and-pseudoscience.html

#May 19 #2019 at 03:17PM

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cahwyguy · 7 years

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A collection of food related links: (1) the best oils to use for frying, health-wise; (2) the demonization of gluten; (3) quantification of food waste; and (4) another effect of climate change - less nutritious food. Good thing I wrote this up last night -- bad headache this morning, it's gone, but head is a little fragile. Now it is time to go off to Nottingham Festival 5th Anniversary - Opening Weekend!.

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urbanfriendden · 7 years

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Minoes makes the most of it

The first denial the young prince had ever received was, “Don’t open the door to the dungeons”. So unsurprisingly, the first thing the prince did when opportunity presented itself, the universe’s way of saying ‘teehee’, was to insert and turn a key. But to do so, the pampered royal rascal had to elude his caretaker’s ever-watchful gaze, a retired military scout once known as The Cat in part due to her sharp senses, and even now she retains that title, but only because she enjoys taking catnaps in her rocking chair.

Children will cause trouble without ever understanding why, the prince was told no, after all, and that is enough for most to seek out the forbidden. Curiosity, however, this drive shaped like a key, is superstition’s pendant, a force which pries open mountains and poisons goblets just to see what happens, and what happened was that the young prince opened the door and was never seen ever again.

We can say he shouldn’t have done this, but this is a hindsight, a wisdom that catches up too late, a friend tapping on your shoulder to warn you about the paint bucket on a wobbly ladder one unfortunate dye-job too late. Simply put, to forward ourselves, we must accept that he is no longer needed, but his actions stand at the precipice of events we could never prevent, motion creates motion, and loathe as we are to admit but quick to realise, nothing is without consequence.

For it was the caretaker who took the blame for this child’s derelict behaviour and for the nastiness which ensued, but we won’t blame her, not an inch or iota or other quantification one might use for culpability, as it is fear together with the mechanism of the unknown which becomes a justice that demands a scapegoat, never a justice to begin with. She was locked in the darkest dungeons for this, for the crime of being herself a circumstance and a subject.

But what is a subject without a name, no one should ever be just a referential! The name she is with is Minoes, and her cell is quite alright. She was branded a witch, a demoness, an arcanist, conspirator with the dark, she is rather fond of that title, agent of the Brim Dividing; these nominations have their benefits, because no one with a soupçon of superstitious sense will ever think to disturb her. Or execute her, for that matter. Death, who welcomes all strangers, but who is always personal, we are never true strangers to them, should never be made to host a true stranger in their halls. Minoes is exempted from even this.

There is another boon to this ordeal: this dungeon is the biggest home she’s ever owned, wooden walls became stone, metal partitions to give her rooms, plural. Middle-left will be my gallery, she thinks, Bottom-right has the most hay so that is where I will sleep, upper-right can be my own little dining hall. There is nothing we could consider furniture but this is where the theory of forms picks up. The far exit of the dungeon remains locked, separated from the castle proper with a thick wooden door, wrapped in chains and padlocks plus a sliding grate for the convenience of eye-contact, to deign dignity and courtesy for a context where there is none. Nevertheless, Minoes makes the most of things.

Before you ask, no, she does not have a surname, an inheritance common to her bloodline, which makes birth a spectacular event: parents, uncles, aunts, nephews, and cousins, even friends are invited to deeply consider together what special name to give to the new-born. Beer is brewed and herbs are smoked, it must be exemplary and magnificent, suggests tipsy cousin Wilhelmina, recognisable and grand, yells the undulate uncle Armand. Then father Swit interjects, it must fit her and only her, there is no blood to make her special, only one word, let her decide it when she is old enough. Minoes picked this name five years ago.

Most days, Minoes simply eats bread upper-right. On the scratched metal tray they slide through the viewport is fresh bread and a relatively generous jar of pickles, but you see, she cannot open the jar, she has no strength in her hands, sometimes she curses these vestigial things, but what she lacks in physical strength can be found in her resolve, patience, and respiration. She makes due with just the bread, she calls her meals a latecomer’s banquet. The jailor knows about her condition, yet spares her no cruelty, morality is an objection saved for humans, so he chooses to see a monster.

A monster that came from the dungeons, of course. It hid the entrance to the Brim Dividing, a dark dimension where demons roam, if the old and corny legends are to be believed, and they are by many, perhaps that is why a simple door could for the longest time stave off this invisible threat, one needs only peer inside to let our worst nightmares out, yet it is the door that keeps us up at night.

But as it stands, no terrible demon army or rain of fire has come pouring through the portal, desecrating our symbols, burning our farms and fortunes, committing the massacres which are clearly a fantasy, in both senses of the term, that which is unreal and that which is a desire, but no king will address that everything might actually be alright. In the dungeon, there was a woman, no more, far from less.

This woman, it must be stated, is neither demon nor apparition nor delusion of a lonely woman, she is simply there, a being-there, Minoes calls her Daar, an old word meaning ‘there’, because that’s where she is. Daar is happy to provide, she is younger and healthier and can glide between worlds with relative ease, she even goes so far as to remove her feet with a comical plop, because that’s customary for guests, right?

Minoes, used to and even familiar with the bizarre, or perhaps there truly is no place for suspicion when under suspicion yourself, there are no pretenses for solidarity, appreciates Daar’s company, the only thing she provides. No greetings or thank-yous, no whispers or rumours, no conspiracies or conversations about the difference between their radical worlds and the funny fact that all life everywhere contains more questions than answers but this is distinctly not a bad thing. Hardly ever a word about Daar’s transparency or the occasional cough of Minoes, not everything lends itself to exposition, not every meeting requires words, the coward’s language.

They dance through the rooms, familiarised with the subtleties native to bodies, Daar offers Minoes the things she asks for. A rug please, she begins, My knees are quite sore, Then I would like an oil lamp and some blankets, perhaps a jar opener. Bring me a mattress and many chickens for filling, she chuckles a joke, Then a bookstand, two quills, one swan and one goose feather, their thicknesses differ and that difference is valuable, some parchment and ink if it’s not too much of a bother, you are such a dear.

The chickens announce another daybreak, this is the only time Minoes knows, wasting away takes so long, but when the sun is your clock, it swings by faster than before, no pesky minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, clothes, letters, crows, deaths, geriatrics to subdivide time into frustratingly-present minutiae, pieces of the past that keep stacking with each new experience.

Minoes receives a platter of things she can only eat one half of, even equipped with a jar opener her grip fails her. Daar, unprompted, opens the jar of pickles for her, with no twist or turn of the wrist, no second attempt after great exertion, the lid simply comes off, vertically. She mentions how olives are stored much more practically and are much more delicious, too. Minoes agrees, but doubts any funds would be spent on providing such lucrative fruit to a witch. She then discovers she does not enjoy the taste of pickles. Finally, she chomps down on the loaf of bread only to hurts her teeth on something hard, a cruel prank by the guard, she concludes, and tosses it away. No food today, it seems.

However lovely this arrangement seems, its paranaturality cannot go unnoticed by way of its own nature, it escapes the conventions we’ve been taught to recognise and normalise and has fled into, created a new modality of comfort, a love that’s better than regularity, loud in its weird and new silence, therefore horrific. It doesn’t help she was already branded an evil woman.

The first pair of eyes to take note is the torturous guard who is normally stationed fifteen superstitious steps away from the door, only closing in when the overworked chef hands him the food tray. Today of all days he has reason to exert a supernormal amount of cruelty; we might empathise with that and attempt to scrutinise what’s got him feeling prickly, for we share that base humanity with him, but how about instead let’s not.

He yells a dehumanising word, hoping to draw attention, for what is power without a subject which acknowledges and which despairs, but he receives none, and it his attention that fixates on Minoes and her silly expression instead. Sour pickles will crumple the most statuesque of faces, and he only knows her through death-wishing glares.

It takes him a second to realise this, that she is eating pickles, and demands to know how that is possible, not out of curiosity or wonder, and an old woman who overpowers vacuum packing is deserving of praise, but moreso out of panic at losing control over the one cruelty to prove himself with. He spots a feetless ghost and scampers off to call for help, but not before tripping, the echoes of his armour fill the dungeon. The ladies laugh; the prisoner’s victory comes small and easy.

What are you making, May I know more about you, two questions like kisses on the left ear of Minoes, inflections audibly added to the end like Daar was taught is the custom when asking questions.

Curiosity, as we know, is not only a tool for scrutiny but is often a question behind a question, wanting to keep words dear, wanting to fill in the blanks together. To figure out the legends to navigate your maps with, what words are your roads, what nouns line out the mountains and the malpaises, what verbs show where the winds are fiercest, a remark in your throat that tells if this river can be forded or must be caulked, dotted silver phonemes for cities, towns, borders, places we named together, red squares for the landmarks around which memories are built, monuments to what two people share. The brass plaque reads and a pair of lips speaks, I will keep your secrets safe.

Minoes replies, quilling down a last word before tickling Daar’s nose with the feather, their mattress feels warm, A memoir. Daar repeats this as a question, Minoes lets her know it’s a simple piece of evidence that she has been here, a being-here, in the cell, in this life, in anyone’s life.

Why do you need to write it down when I know you have been important, this emotional declaration coming from a quasi-physical being, it must be noted, unfalsifiable words we pitch against a background of metaphysics, love as we might call it, means more than words, hers or these, can convey. Minoes chuckles and snuggles closer to the woman, her body incorporeal but the intimacy is there.

Do you have to die here, there is a height in the breath of Daar’s question that feels cold, No, dear, but I am an elder and a prisoner, and what they have in common is that both have to wait for freedom to come, Do you have to be, No, dear.

In the ensuing embraced silence, where language piles up in minds and gets stuck in throats, everyone resorts to their most personal selves, personal in the individual and independent sense, tiny habits become havens, each idiosyncrasy a pub, a bar, a quiet pier, a leaf-green bench beneath a lantern overlooking a cold and smelly promenade crowded with sailors making the most of it. Daar does something inscrutable, Minoes gnashes her teeth, remembering the exact hardness of the loaf she tried to eat. She lets her eyes wander as if a tourist inside her own awkwardness and spots a key sticking out of the bread.

You see, there was a second pair of eyes to take note of the extraordinary fate Minoes had been subject of: the overworked chef in charge of the meals of prisoners as well as the custodians, the servants, the knights, the advisors and ambassadors, the halberdiers stationed in the courtyard though not Clarice because she is allergic to nut oils and buys her lunch in town instead, and, of course, the undeserving royalty. Every very early morning, Antoin waits for the steward who unlocks the kitchen and the pantry to return to his tiresome job of saying yes sire and promptly heads out to the markets carrying a satchel of saffron, which he trades for a jar of pickles.

The guard had never known the pickles aren’t a part of the prescribed meal, but conversely, because everyone has their own tasks, Antoin means well but seeing as the entire day he must cure meats and bake breads and baste pheasants and broil soup and remember each royal member’s favourite combinations of herbs, he spits on the king’s pork, he could not have been aware of his refusal to perform the base courtesy of twisting the lid for Minoes, the sliding grate evidently only there for show.

He figured the delirious guard running up the stairs, falling back down the stairs, and running past him meant that his plan to free Minoes had worked. A monster without a cage to him, but to Antoin, she was a woman he had served with half a lifetime ago, who told him five years ago, Let’s change our name together, But we’re so old, he had lied, Age is no objection, Antoin. He had snuck in the key, a shape that spells curiosity as well as freedom, and there is only one possible outcome, really, the one where Minoes is an ex-prisoner.

What Antoin hadn’t accounted for was that she would be having company. Oh dear, I didn’t want to believe the story of your incarceration, but this ghastly girl here is damning evidence you are in some faint way conspiratorial with demons, he shrugs, Anyway, did you like the pickles?

Oh no, not at all, an honest lament, but a chef knows they cannot please every palette, their art the art of necessary destruction, after all. Minoes continues, So you were the kind soul who expanded my meals, is it too late I trouble you for olives from now on?

Yes, actually, all-considering. The two friends pause and laugh, Daar joins in, drawn in by shared amusement and the weird elation of freedom. Antoin conjects it is likely our friend the guard is screaming for reinforcements and Minoes laughs again, a beautiful sound, So having a girlfriend was the last drop, was it? Daar’s face flushes at the statement. Antoin, knowing there is no time left to ask who Daar even is or where she came from — does it matter? — or what the deal is with all those chickens, instead makes a suggestion which sets into motion events we could never prevent: escape.

Where there is a captive, escape is always at the horizon, where there is love, there is an unfathomable weirdness that is good and that tickles, where there is a prince, there is an incredible lout of a person, where there is motion, things will never be contained. Daar asks Minoes, they are in the back of a wagon, and outside in farthest possible distance there is a city with a castle, Let me hold your face, her rough hands on her dark cheeks, she feels warm and hers, what a strange meeting, so of course they kiss, of course they do.

In the cell, the fuddled guard scratches his head as his retinue attempts to catch the mysterious chickens. He finds a piece of parchment.

It reads “I will make the most of it.“

#my stories #my writing #fiction #writers on tumblr #surrealism #fantasy #queer fiction #hey i still write sometimes #this was a month-long project and i'm v. proud of it

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