#even if you live in the reddest or bluest

[ifitistobeitisuptous]

#vote my Americans #even if you live in the reddest or bluest #it matters #if you don't vote you can't complain #my wife just filed out her ballot and I'm going to fax it in tonight from work #california #uber alles

[abigailzimmer]

Favorite Reads of 2023

As a reader, I think of myself as slow to turn toward fiction, but this year started off with stunning story after stunning story, thanks to writers like Emily St. John Mandel, Rivka Galchen, Amal El-Mohtar, and Max Gladstone. Miriam Toews' Fight Night made me weep on a train from Edinburgh to Glasgow; Josephine Tey's mysteries made me chuckle from Glasgow to Edinburgh. I wandered slowly but steadily with Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell throughout the year and I read Timothy Moore's short stories in one sitting and then started them over the next week. Grateful for these writers who move me in so many ways, and of course I have some poetry and nonfiction favorites!

1. Timothy Moore's exciting debut short story collection, I Will Teach You Retribution, is perfection. Its humor and absurdism and poignancy remind me a bit of George Saunders (CivilWarLand in Bad Decline), a bit of Aoka Matsuda (Where the Wild Ladies Are), and excitingly and obviously of Tim. If you aren't moved by the plight of a people-eating giant's quest for justice against himself, or a side character/ex-lover's desire to have her own transformative character arc, or a girl's use of social media to be popular, even though dead—or at least by the empathetic way Tim writes these characters and the wonderful crafting of his sentences—your heart may have stopped. An unexpected love-at-first-paragraph. Ten out of ten best use of exclamation points.

2. In Scared Violent Like Horses, John McCarthy writes about childhood in rural Illinois, absent parents, fistfights with friends, and flyover states, but mostly he writes of people in a way that sees their empathy and value. I read this while feeling a little lost and heartsick, and these poems wrapped around me and reminded me of what I love best. This is not to say that I saw my journey reflected back at me, but that lyric can offer the comfort of a song, that poetry lets you sit in a space of experience not answers, and that you can endure so much hardship and still emerge with tenderness. John’s writing is thoughtful and vivid, graceful and grace-giving. “But I’m not sure why we would expect dreams to make sense, when our waking lives so often fail to observe narrative convention,” he writes. And later: “No place is sad if you stay long enough.”

3. How to Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is an abundantly written book, composed of letters between Red and Blue, two agents on opposite sides of a time war, one side more organic and one more tech-driven. It’s surprising and inventive in its world building and sweet on the act of letter writing. A love story that gushes to the beloved, overflowing without feeling cheesy. I read this on a beach in Mexico, against the bluest backdrop with the reddest sunrises.

“I want to tell you something about myself. Something true, or nothing at all.”

4. Emily St. John Mandel’s Sea of Tranquility was satisfying and unexpected, even up to the last line. As in her other books, she weaves together stories of multiple characters, gently nudging them more and more into each other’s orbits as the book draws to a close. This book feels higher stakes or maybe has more imaginary elements than The Glass Hotel, which I thought was nice but forgettable—I prefer the bigger “what ifs” in my fiction. But her writing always feels like a gliding, with these lovely details that linger. Here, there's an untouched forest in Canada and a shabby moon colony with a river reflecting the darkness of space. A writer of post-apocalyptic fiction, now a mother and turned off her own ideas. (It’s interesting to hear from an author who wrote a wildly successful novel about a global pandemic, then lived through one, and wrote a second pandemic-related novel in which much happens very differently.) The question of simulation a backdrop, the difference between knowing something in the abstract and the experience of it, how we come to the knowledge we have and the gestures we know we must make. All of it so well done and a pleasure to read.

5. The overarching frame of On Dreams by Maureen Thorson is the author's diagnosis of a rare eye disease that causes blind spots and some of Aristotle's absurd theories, such as how a mirror turns red when a menstruating woman looks into it. From there, in essays composed of short, aphoristic lines, Thorson explores what is reality and truth, how we know what we know, the illusion we have of control, and why we turn to writing and narrative. It's funny and smart, weaving in notes from her broad reading, and poignant in the leaps and turns it takes from line to line.

6. Border Vista by Anni Liu is composed of these lovely memory poems—atmospheric. She writes about emigrating to the US while young and being separated from her dad and grandparents with uncertain status, about relationships and home and dreaming in her nonnative language. The poems read almost memoir-like, back to back. The settings simple: a walk in the woods or market, hearing a piece of news or sitting in a movie theater, with some startling insight dropped upon the reader, the reader unaware even that she was building toward something. The lines below have echoed in my head the whole year, naming a longing so ingrained I didn't even know it was there:

“Crossing a deer-shaped patch of earth, I come back to the edge of an ancient sadness of being just one thing”

7. I really enjoyed diving into the oeuvre of Josephine Tey this year, and in particular I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like her Daughter of Time, a unique take on both the histories and mysteries genres. Her Inspector Grant, laid up in a hospital and bored, takes on an academic investigation of the slander against Richard III, infamous for killing his two nephews—the Princes in the Tower—to remove any rivals to the throne. Despite the fact that Grant is initially driven into this mystery because Richard’s face just "looks" more like a judge’s than a criminal’s (classic Tey ridiculousness), Tey makes a compelling case for his innocence. Grant and his “looker-upper” (researcher) friend take a policeman’s approach to the unresolved mystery, looking at the whereabouts and motivations of the people involved instead of what they say, and keeping an eye out for any breaks in the patterns that suggest foul play. For a book whose main action is two men talking about historical accounts, it’s surprisingly gripping and convincing (although my own knowledge of British history is spottier than a spotted dick pudding!).

"Give me research. After all, the truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper. The sale of a house. The price of a ring."

8. When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen is a book that “wants to believe it’s always possible / to love bigger & madder” and a poet whose “job is to trick adults / into knowing they have / hearts.” There's so much unbounded joy in these poems, even when writing of the sadness of having sadness or of the painful rejection by his mom for being gay or by fellow Americans for being Chinese. He writes rooted in a strong sense of self, which means his poems overflow with brightness, humor, and triumph.

Some possibilities:

“I want to be the Anti-Sisyphus, in love / with repetition, in love, in love. Foolish repetition, / wise repetition. I want more hours. I want insomnia, I want / to replace the clock tick with tambourines.”

“I am … an elegy that has felt light, the early morning light falling / on your lovely someone’s / lovable bare feet as he walks across the wood floor to sit by the window”

“Let’s put our briefcases on our heads, in the sudden rain, // & continue meeting as if we’ve just been given our names.”

9. Serendipitously, I read Rivka Galchen’s Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch just after reading Maria Popova’s marvelous storytelling about Johannes Kepler’s defense of his mother’s witch trial in Figuring. It’s a fascinating story in that Kepler felt responsible for fueling the accusations against her due to an allegorical sci-fi story he wrote about moon people holding onto outdated beliefs despite evidence otherwise, and—small detail—the narrator got to the moon thanks to his magical mother. Kepler eventually cleared his mother’s name of charges and spent years annotating his own manuscript so that no one could misunderstand his intentions again.

Rivka’s book is a fictional telling more focused on the accused, Katherine Kepler, and reminded me of the narrative style of Miriam Toews' Woman Talking with a literate third party roped in to make a record and with the reader being told about the events conversationally vs. reading them. Around the same time, I watched the movie The Wonder (which has some tough tw content but was excellently done) which also resonates in theme, about the stories we believe and shape our lives around, and how the efficacy of religion and science is all wrapped up in story.

This was an excellent story based on fascinating history, and Rivka’s writing is both dryly funny (“A hummingbird once rested near my shoulder. It was a very ill omen. For one who isn't a flower.”) and thoughtful (“I had to say what was in my heart, which is knowledge.”).

10. I really enjoyed This Party's Dead, in which British journalist Erica Buist, to cope with her grief at the loss of her father-in-law-to-be, travels to seven death festivals around the world to learn how people in other cultures grieve.

“Whenever anyone suggests the dead are in attendance, gifts and sugar always seems to follow.”

The journey's question broadens from "how do we grapple with the reality of mortality" to the more meaningful exploration of "in what ways do we continue to have a relationship with 'our dead'"? Because we do have one, even if our culture doesn't know what to do with that relationship or provide us with outlets for remembering in community. (There's a lovely line in which someone refers to their ancestors as "my" dead.)

Some of the festivals she visits involve meals in graveyards, others take place when it's time to bury a body--sometimes months or even years after a death, and others involve exhuming bodies so that living family members can rewrap them or visit quite literally with their bones before reburying. As part of a western tradition that sees very little of and so fears dead bodies, Erica asks celebrants how they feel about the corpse of their loved one. She often assumes incorrectly a reason why something is done (perfume over the body not to hide the smell of decay for us but to show the loved one they are still cared for) and observes: “Time and again, I see fear [as a cause for a ritual] where there is only love.”

It's a moving book, written with humor and openness, and I'm very drawn to the rituals of communally remembering our dead. I wish we had something like this beyond a funeral to help us transition from having a living loved one to a dead loved one: a reason to come together often with food and sharing and to invite our dead back home, even if for a little while.

As one festival celebrant tells her, “We think about dead people all the time. We pray for all the ancestors, even the ones we don’t remember; we have a huge celebration for them every six months. They’re not lost.”

(Book buddies: Mexico's beaches and Scotland's train views.)

#endofyearlists #favorite books #2023 reads

[mldrgrl]

Broken Things 1/24

by: mldrgrl Rating: varies by chapter, rated R overall Summary: The year is 1886, William Mulder owns a horse ranch in northern Texas.  The widow of a neighboring landowner has something he wants. Notes: Please be aware that this fic will contain ‘off-camera’ references to violence and abuse of various kinds. I will not be tagging individual TWs on the chapters.

Prologue

Many years from now, when he tells the tales of his younger days, he will claim that this is the day that changed his life forever.  If that horse hadn’t thrown a shoe, well then.  His wife will roll her eyes at this, tell him that any number of events prior to that day had already changed his life forever.  The decision to leave Massachusetts for the open prairie, for example, had changed his life forever.  The fact that his father had sent him to live with his aunt in the countryside instead of keeping him in the city had changed his life forever.  The pony he received for his birthday when he was a child had clearly changed his life forever.

All of that will hindsight one day.  Right now, it’s just an ordinary Thursday, the 9th of September, 1886.  The weather is mild, almost cool compared to the heat wave that had hit in the latter half of August.  And William Mulder’s horse has thrown a shoe.

Chapter 1

Normally, Mulder (only his family ever called him William) sends his ranch hand, Melvin, to take care of small errands and menial tasks, but he hasn’t been to town in almost a month and he could use a change of pace.  He hitches one of his more reliable horses to his wagon and takes one of the ones in training as well, one he’s just broken in, to see how he handles on the hour-long ride.  Their first stop is Gray’s Blacksmith.

After tying the horses to the post, Mulder gives them both a good scratching about the neck for a job well done and receives a snort and whinny of appreciation.  “Well done, boys,” he says.  “Carrots and apples at home for both of you if you keep up the good work.”

The familiar sound of clanking and hammering and the crackle of fire greets Mulder as he steps into the open door of the blacksmith’s.  He tips his hat to the striker, who nods a greeting.  The blacksmith turns and nods as well.

“Mr. Gray,” Mulder says.

“Mr. Mulder,” the blacksmith answers, passing his tongs to his assistant and then removing his gloves to shake hands.  “What can I do for ya?”

“Faithful Jenny’s thrown a shoe.  Melvin’s fixing her up, but I figured it was a good time to pick up a crate of nails and shoes.”

“Come on back and take a look then.  How’s business?”

“Doing well.  We’re training up a half dozen draft horses for the postal service right now.”

“Is the rumor you pulled in a mustang a few weeks ago true?”

“Afraid so.”

“You ain’t got a broken neck far as I can tell, so you must be faring alright with him then.”

“You can see him for yourself when I take this cart out to the wagon.”

“You brung him with ya?”

“I did.”

“I’ll be.”

Mulder feels a surge of pride when the blacksmith comes out to admire the horse.  He slides the crate of shoes and nails into the back of the wagon and then shows off his friendship with the four-legged beast by rubbing his belly.  The horse scratches the ground with his front hoof and shakes his head.

“You sure got a way, Mr. Mulder,” Mr. Gray says.  “If you got any stock you’re looking to sell I heard there’s a new homesteader a ways south that was interested.”

“I’m on my way to the mercantile.  I’ll be sure to ask John.”

The two men shake hands once again before Mulder gets back in his wagon.  He smiles to himself when the blacksmith watches him leave.  He’s made a name for himself in the short while he’s been here breaking and training up horses.  Folks in the area have said time and again that there isn’t a horse he can’t tame, that it’s almost downright spooky the way he seems to be able to talk to them.

There’s a man being waited on in the mercantile that Mulder doesn’t recognize, probably someone just passing through.  He waits for John Byers to finish with the customer, browsing the Montgomery Ward & Co. catalog at the end of the counter.

“Mulder,” John says after ringing the man up at the till.  “It’s good to see you.”

“You too, John.”  He pulls a shopping list from his pocket and unfolds it.  “I’m sure you’re better at translating Melvin’s chicken scratches than me at this point.”

“I believe I can manage.”  John chuckles and takes the shopping list.  He pulls a crate down and begins to collect items off the shelves and William goes back to the catalogue, thumbing past the illustrations of ladies’ garments to find menswear.

“If I put in an order for denim trousers for me and the boys you think they’ll be in by winter?”

“I’d say it’s likely.”

“Mr. Gray mentioned there were some new homesteaders interested in horses.”

“He must mean Mr. Campbell.  It’s oxen he’s after, I believe.”

“If you hear otherwise, send him my way.”

“I’ll do that.  I suppose you heard about your neighbor?”

“What neighbor is that?”

“Jack Willis.”

“Haven’t heard a thing.  What about him?”

“He spent all of Saturday night at the saloon in a poker game and was found dead in a ditch just outside of town on Sunday morning.”

“Robbed?”

“I should actually say he spent all Saturday night losing in a poker game and downing whiskey like water.  I heard he stumbled his way into that ditch of his own accord and met an untimely demise.”

“I only met him the once, but that doesn’t surprise me much.  Far be it for me to speak ill of the dead, but the man had a disagreeable disposition.  He seemed like the type to get himself into trouble.”

“Well, the bank is soon to be after his widow.  I’ve heard he’s in arrears.  I’m actually surprised the Sheriff didn’t stop on at your place on his way out there to tell her about her husband’s death.”

“Didn’t know he had a widow.  And you know Sheriff Doggett, he’s all business.”

“My Susannah saw them together, he and his wife, the day they passed through looking for land, and you know Susannah, she was beside herself at the notion of another woman come to town, but then no one’s seen hide nor hair of her since.”

“I still regret having been back east when Old Man Goodwin passed.  I’ve had my eye on that land for quite some time.”

“Maybe she’ll sell it to you.”

Mulder rubs at his chin in thought.  “You say the bank is about to repossess?”

“That’s the rumor.  I don’t think Mr. Skinner would relish evicting a new widow, but there probably isn’t much he can do if the mortgage is late.”

“I suppose it couldn’t hurt to take a ride out to pay my respects and assess the situation.  Thank you, John.”

Byers nods and gestures to the items laid out on the counter.  “I’ll have John Jr. load the cart for you.  Would you like this on your account?”

“I’ll square up everything now, but go ahead and order those trousers.”

The hour ride back home gives Mulder time to think.  He’s in a position to offer the Willis widow a handsome sum for his neighboring acres.  The one and only time he’d met Jack Willis he was immediately soured on trying to form any kind of friendship with him.  The man had been downright surly and abrasive and he sure hopes the widow is more neighborly.

Melvin takes over the wagon when Mulder arrives home and shows him the new shoe on Faithful Jenny.  The older man is at least a foot closer to the ground than Mulder and proudly displays a life-long love of hearty biscuits around his middle, but there’s no better right-hand man that Mulder could ask for.  He’s foreman and farrier, counselor and cook.  There isn’t anything Mulder doesn’t trust him with.  As they unload the wagon together, he tells him about what he heard from John Byers.

“Well, there’s no harm in asking,” Melvin offers as advice.  “If’n the bank really is after her, she might be grateful for the offer.  You should probably get out there as soon as possible in case anyone else might be sniffin’ around for them acres.”

“That’s what I was thinking.”

“You know if’n I’d heard about Bob Goodwin any sooner I’d have snatched up them acres for you before I could even send a wire.”

“I know, it’s not your fault.  Do me a favor, old man, tack up Blondie while I try to make myself presentable.”

“That could take hours.  Days even.”

“Decades, in your case.  If it’s even possible.”

The two men laugh over their gentle ribbing of each other and Mulder claps Melvin on the shoulder.  He parts from his friend to go wash his face, comb his hair, and put on a fresh shirt.  His horse is saddled and ready to go when he comes back out.

“Good luck,” Melvin tells him.

A narrow, slow-moving creek divides Mulder’s property from the Willis widow’s land.  It’s one he’s crossed many times when Old Man Goodwin was his neighbor.  He knows where the shallowest spot is to lead the horse and where the shrubs are too thick and have to be avoided.  He tries not to daydream about what he’ll do with an expansion, but he passes the spot he’d like to clear out for a better corral and where he’d like to add another stable and it’s hard not to hope.

The old sod house that Old Man Goodwin had slapped together is still standing, though it looks to have seen better days.  The roof needs patching and the walls are crumbling in spots.  He dismounts Blondie when he’s still a few yards away and leads the horse over to the post he knows is at the side of the house.  The nearby trough which is usually full of water is empty.  The chickens that were usually clucking and underfoot are nowhere to be seen.

Mulder knocks lightly on the clapboard door and moments later a woman with the reddest hair and the bluest eyes he’s ever seen answers.

↭

Katherine is expecting the knock when it comes, though it’s sooner than she thought it would be.  In the days since her husband’s death, she’s racked her brain for a solution to her current predicament, but has come up empty handed.  She doesn’t delay in answering the door.  She may be on the verge of being destitute and homeless, but she’ll face it with dignity.

“Uh, Mrs. Willis, I presume?” the man asks.  He stammers a bit but he has an easy, congenial smile that catches her a little off guard.  She’d been expecting the Sheriff she’d met on Sunday, but perhaps the bank manager in this town takes care of evictions.  

“Mr. Skinner, I presume?” she finally replies.

The man chuckles and removes his hat.  “Ah, no Ma’am,” he says, running his hand through his hair.  “I’m afraid I have a bit more hair than our dear Mr. bank manager.”

“Oh.”  She should have known.  The bank managers she’s had dealings with in the past were stuffy and pinched.  This man is far too rugged and handsome to be a bank manager.

“William Mulder.”  He holds out his hand to her and when she gives him hers, he bows slightly and brings it to his mouth, brushing his lips lightly across her knuckles.  Embarrassed, she pulls her hand back and closes it into a fist to hide her dirty and calloused palms from him.

“Is there something I can help you with?” she asks.

“I know we haven’t met before, but I happen to be your neighbor just to the south.  I heard about your husband and I’ve come to pay my respects.”

“I see.  Would you...care to come in, then?”

“Thank you.”

He has to bend to step through the low-frame of the door.  She has no candles, but there’s enough light from the open door and the unpatched holes in the walls that it’s unnecessary.  She watches him look the place over and she can tell he’s not impressed by the shabbiness of it all.  

“I’m sorry I don’t have anything to offer you,” she says.

He smiles politely.  “That’s alright, Ma’am.  I came to be neighborly, but there is also a matter I wanted to discuss regarding this land.”

“Oh?”  Fear grips her suddenly.  He may not be the bank man, and he may not be the sheriff, but he could be another kind of lawman.  Even if he was telling the truth that he was her neighbor, he could still be there to turn her out, or worse yet, remove her to debtor’s prison.  Unconsciously, she begins to tremble.

“Mrs. Willis?” he asks.  “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she answers, pulling the tattered shawl draped over her shoulders a little tighter across her chest.  “A chill is all.”

He looks around again.  “You’ve no chair to sit on?”

“No.”

“Would you like to come back outside?  Perhaps it will be warmer.  You could sit on my horse.”

The absurdity of the offer makes her laugh and eases her anxiety somewhat.  He bites his lower lip almost shyly and tips his chin down as he turns the hat over in his hands again.  She stares at his mouth, thinking about how the slight overbite he has seems to suit him well.  She notes other things too, in the silence.  Like how his beard is well-trimmed and his nails are clean.  He presents himself as a cowboy, but she knows a city man when she sees one.

“Um, Mrs. Willis, I…”

She flinches at the name.  “Katherine,” she says.

“I’m sorry?”

“I’d prefer you call me Katherine.”

He cocks his head a little to the side and smiles.  “Kate, the prettiest Kate in Christendom,” he murmurs.

She can’t help but lift her right eyebrow.  It used to irritate her husband immensely when she pulled faces, as he called it.  “Rather Kate the Curst,” she replies.

His eyes widen and seem to brighten.  “You know Shakespeare?”  

“You look surprised.”

“No, no, it’s just...I haven’t had much opportunity to discuss the Bard out here.  Apologies for the Taming of the Shrew reference, but whenever I come across a Katherine, I can’t help but make the association.  Especially when it’s not altogether untrue.”

She feels the heat rise to her cheeks with the compliment that she knows is entirely unwarranted.  She was never very pretty.  Her mother used to complain about how wild and curly her hair was when she was a child, not to mention the dreadful freckles across her nose and cheeks.  It may have been quite some time since she’s been in the presence of a looking glass, but she doesn’t need one to know that her appearance is lacking.    

“I suppose I could have just as easily been a Viola or an Ophelia,” she says, avoiding his flattery.

“Hopefully not a Lady MacBeth.”

“No.”  The conversation stalls momentarily, but then she wets her lips and tightens her shawl again.  “You said there was something you came to speak with me about?”

“I was away on some business when Old Man...ah, that is, when Mr. Goodwin, the previous owner of your land, passed on.  I’d been eyeing this parcel for some time and had been planning to offer Mr. Goodwin a sum to sell it to me.  I’d like to make you that same offer.”

“Ah.”  She closes her eyes and chuckles mirthlessly for a brief moment.  “I’m afraid I can’t take that offer.”

“Have you sold to someone else?”

“No, but I’m not in a position to sell.  My husband leased this land and I have every reason to doubt he ever made good on the rent.  He drank most of the money and gambled what was left of that.”

“I see.”  

“I’m just biding my time now until the bank comes to collect and turn me out.”

“Do you have people back...wherever it is that you're from?”

“Virginia.”

“It’s not but a few days ride to Fort Worth, I could send a wire to someone for you.”

“You would do that?”

“Of course.”

“No.”  She shakes her head slowly and sighs.  “There’s no one back home, but thank you.”

He shifts his feet and tries to speak, but he says nothing.  He looks dumbfounded in a way that almost makes her feel sorry for him.

“Was that all?” she asks.

“Ma’am,” he stammers.  “Mrs. Willis...Katherine...I can’t...I can’t…”

She doesn’t know what compels her to do it, but she reaches out and puts her hand over his where it grips the brim of his hat.  He falls silent and stops his fidgeting.  She squeezes his hand lightly and lets her fingers rest against his wrist for a few moments before she takes it away.

“Since you seem familiar with the bank man,” she says.  “I’m sure you’ll get your wish soon enough.”

“But…”

“Good day to you, Mr. Mulder.  Thank you for coming.”

#i wrote this #broken things #chapter 1 #AU #MSR

[lnc2]

Flowers on the Window Sill

Summary: The first time Ladybug saw him, really saw him, the universe stopped.

A/N: Hihi we just got permission to post our pieces for @ladrienzine.  This is mine about the babes.

AO3

It started after Volpina.

A silly impulse he couldn’t resist, a silent thank-you, a gentle admonishment for Ladybug’s near-miraculous sacrifice.

The flowers sat on his window sill for days, withering away with the wind and smog and time. Plagg told him it was stupid, disappointed in his disappointment, but Adrien shrugged him off and tried again.

And again. And again.

“One day she’ll see them,” He said. His kwami wasn’t convinced.

“They’re just going to die again.”

Adrien hummed, tying the scarlet red ribbon to the posy’s stems and attaching them to his window.

He thought of his mother, sitting on a blanket in the garden grass, sun shining down on warm skin, the smell of dirt and wet and flowers filling his nose, making him sneeze, making him smile.

“For pere,” Emelie said, clipping the brightest, reddest buds from a nearby bush. “So he knows we’re thinking of him even when he’s far away.”

“Won’t they die?” Adrien asked when he was old enough to hold the clippers on his own. “Won’t that make him sad?”

She smiled, fingers dancing along his sides as she kissed his temple. “That’s what new flowers are for.”

That’s what new flowers are for.

These days there were no new flowers in the garden, another casualty of his father’s neglect, but Adrien remembered his mother’s words all the same. Like seeds planted in his heart they took root, strong and stubborn, until they blossomed like truth.

Gravity, the sun, and ladybugs.

The first time Ladybug saw him, really saw him, the universe stopped.

Eyes, blue, so blue, going from determined to shocked to soft– soft for him in all the ways she had to be hard for Paris– well. Adrien gaped like a fish– nothing at all like the cool cat he knew he could be.

Then again, Ladybug never looked at Chat quite like that before.

It was almost worth being impaled by invisible arrows to stretch out that moment to minutes to forever.

But akumas were akumas, Ladybug was Ladybug, and… well, even Adrien knew some things were too good to be true. After all, what was so special about Adrien Agreste to catch a Ladybug’s attention? Nothing. 

And yet...

His mother told him he took his first steps young.

Smile wide and proud, she talked about his baby pout and bright, bright eyes narrowed in the determination of the untried.

He had his first fall young then too.

Right down on his wobbly knees, still chubby with baby fat photographers loved at the time but loathed as he got older. She wasn’t quick enough to catch him but he didn’t cry. Not with Gabriel staring down at him, stoic and waiting. No, Emelie said, Adrien’s eyes watered and he sucked in a breath before bracing himself and standing up.

His first full steps were shaky, quick, and short, but they were steps all the same.

Falling for Ladybug felt a lot like that.

Adrien Agreste stepped out into an unfamiliar world of magic and supervillains and camembert and found her on the other side.  One too confident step into the sky sent him tumbling, tumbling down into the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.  With a mouth so smart it inspired a city and a heart so big he couldn’t help but covet, from almost the first, Chat Noir was stepping towards Ladybug.

Which made it all the more surprising when sometimes,

just sometimes,

he found Ladybug stepping towards him.

Nino pointed it out to him first:

“Dude. I think Ladybug has a crush on you.”

It was during Jackady, while they were running for their lives.  Not exactly the time for life-changing revelations.  Even still, the idea sent a ridiculous zing of pleasure through him. A pleasure swiftly followed by an equally ridiculous less than half-hearted denial.

“What?” He squeaked. “No way.”

“Uh huh,” Nino said, shaking his head. “Well you certainly had eyes for her. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you blush like that.”

Adrien felt heat rush to his cheeks as if to prove Nino’s point. He shoved his friend’s shoulder.

“Shut up.”

Nino laughed. “Deny it all you want, bro. But if anyone could bag the bug it would be you. Just watch out for Chat Noir.”

He made a swiping motion with his hands, an insulting approximation of cataclysm, but Adrien laughed all the same and changed the subject. None too eager to have Adrien and Chat Noir existing in the same breath.  Still, his friend’s words lingered with him for days.

I think Ladybug has a crush on you.

Hah.

Ha ha ha.

The idea was so laughable it hurt.  Hurt like a want so deep he could drown.

“She’s got your smile,” She’d said, admiring his mother’s picture.

He wished he could tell her how much it meant to him that she saw any resemblance at all. His father always said Adrien was like Emelie but he didn’t say it like Ladybug. He didn’t say it like it was good.

“Thank you,” He murmured, voice soft, heart softer.

Her answering smile, sweet, her freckled cheeks, pink, were enough to send hope spiraling. Adrien wondered if she ever blushed like that for anyone else. Hated that he might never know.

Emelie once told him, as her hands held his own, guiding scissors over garden stems, that when you loved someone you told them.

Adrien was never great with words.  Not like Chat Noir who could smooth talk his way around the Seine. Unfortunately neither of them could surface long enough to help finish his measly poem.

Bluebell eyes and strong disguise?

Who was he kidding?

Everything sounded so trite when all he wanted to say, all he wanted to tell her, fell into three words.  But words like I and love and you proved even too much for Chat Noir when it came down to it.

I hate you, Ladybug.

Plagg spent the entire afternoon laughing at him for that particular blunder. Adrien never hated an akuma more for ruining his life. Never mind that his lady was clever, she’d never think twice to see the truth of what he’d been trying to say to begin with.

And yet, somehow, her reply found him all the same:

My heart belongs to you.

“What makes you so sure it’s the bug?” Plagg asked, over it already even as he watched his charge melt against the window clutching the ridiculous valentine.

But Adrien knew. He knew it in his bones the way he knew the way she moved.

Plucked out from a pile of forgotten valentines like the way she plucked out his heart for keeps, Adrien’s hope outweighed common sense, crossed his luck against hers, and came out the other side with a determination to rival giants.

This girl.  This girl.

“It’s her Plagg,” He whispered, watching the little ladybug that graced his valentine fly lazily around the room. “I know it.”

He hoped in the same way she’d see the flowers on his window and know them for hers.  An unclaimed declaration, waiting.

And waiting. And waiting.

Chat Noir tried steering her towards the Agreste mansion on patrols, even attempted to point out the flowers a time or two.

“I wonder who the lucky lady could be.”

Ladybug stammered, blushed, and shook her head.

“Stop it, Chat,” She scolded. “It’s not funny.”

He didn’t intend for it to be funny.

Getting close to her as Adrien, outside the mask, was near impossible most days.  Between fencing and his father and superheroing there wasn’t any time to ask about valentines and lingering looks and flowers.

Riposte was difficult enough without asking her if she meant it when she said Kagami didn’t deserve him.  And even when she did seek him out after the Gorilla was akumatized it was to scold him, albeit gently.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” She said, catching him on his way to school one day. His heart stuttered at her sudden appearance, but there was a stiffness to her, a distance he wasn’t sure he could cross.

He tried anyway, reaching forward to place a hand on her shoulder. “Ladybug?”

She shrugged him off. Her eyes, glassy, were on his but she didn’t seem to actually see.

“Leaping off into nothing like that. I say jump and you just– what if the akuma hadn’t let go of me? You could have died.”

Oh. That.

Adrien rubbed his neck. “You asked me to jump.”

“Not like that.  Not like –” She stopped but he heard the lost words all the same.  Not like Chat.

She paused, sniffed, and shook her head. The shadow of every akuma he couldn’t remember reflected in her eyes.

Jump, how high, how far, say when– it never occurred to him what it must be like to be on the receiving end of that.  Chat Noir had died for Ladybug so many times who was Adrien Agreste to question her?

Guilt, swift, settled deep.

“If… if it counts for anything I had a back up plan.”

“Oh?”

“I…” He stopped. Reassessed.  His ring lay heavy against his finger.  “I don’t know.”

She huffed, an agitated little sound, and wrapped her arms around herself.

“Have a little less faith in me. Please.”

Adrien laughed, hollow. “I’ll try.”

He never did.

His mother told him love was in the moments between the Big and the quiet.  In the brushing of hands, the meeting of eyes, the sharing of secrets. In the space between wanting and being wanted in return. It was the terror of being known– hearts unfurling like tea leaf flowers, slowly in the warm.

Adrien wanted to know love like that.

But Chat Noir was Big and charm and soft and Adrien was quiet and sly and lonely and Ladybug, Ladybug…

Well she was caught up with him somewhere in the between.

He was no more one than the other just like her and Adrien spent sleepless nights wondering how much more his heart could open up with waiting for and wanting more.

To see, to feel, to know.

In the end, it wasn’t waiting that brought her to him.

On a night where the moon hung full in the sky, he caught her swinging silhouette passing by.  Through luck or chance or time she heard him calling out and changed course to land at his window ledge, eyes glittering with curiosity in the dim light.

“Adrien?”

He stared silly and stupid before fate (or Plagg) pinched him forward, forcing out his daze.

“Oh!” He said, suddenly frantic, palms sweaty and fingers clumsy as he gestured towards then fiddled with the flowers that hung from his window. “Yours.  You. For you, I mean.”

“Me?” She squeaked, pale cheeks rushing pink.  “Really?”

Adrien gracelessly shoved the flowers into her unwaiting hands.

“Yeah, um. For a while now.  Yours.”

She was a vision there, stun struck, red and black and flower blue. Blue like the posies he’d foolishly picked and plucked and placed on his window sill.

“But… why?” She breathed, handful of flowers, eyes full of heart.

Adrien wanted to drown in those eyes.  His fingers itched, so many pinpricks and jolts, urging him to reach forward, to see, to feel, to know.

He shrugged, looked away. “Why not?”

Ladybug deserved a thousand thanks yous and more.  A mere bouquet or dozen wouldn’t even tip the scale.

“I– thank you,” She said, gently stroking one of the petals. “They’re my favorite.”

“I know,” He blurted, stupid.  Ladybug startled, blushed, but didn’t ask him how.

Just as well.  The Chat in him couldn’t lie to the questions rising in her eyes. Then again, Ladybug was never one to ask a question she couldn’t answer.

Instead, she leaned forward, holding the line of her yoyo in one hand and cradling the bouquet in the other.

“Can I…?” She murmured in the space between.

Struck dumb by her nearness, too stunned to do anything but memorize the freckles on her nose, Adrien nodded.

Her lips were soft against his cheek.  Soft and brief, so, so brief.

She pulled away, just enough.

“Thank you, beau gosse.  For thinking of me.”

Adrien shivered.

Slowly, his hand reached up, hovering just above her.  She nodded, body trembling beneath his hands as they moved from wrists to elbows to shoulders to neck. When his thumb first brushed beneath the line of her mask, sensitive fingertips over red, red cheeks, Adrien felt he could collapse from the relief of it all.

Warm skin on warmer skin still, the smell of flowers and toothpaste and sweat, a shy smile on an even shyer girl hanging in the window of a boy too stupid with love to do anything but marvel. It was thundering hearts in a silent room disturbed by small words that held more than their meaning and...

Oh.  

“Hi.” He said, voice revelation thick.

Ladybug laughed, light and airy and breathless.  “Hello.”

#miraculous ladybug #lnc2 writes #ladrien #ladrien zine #a leap of faith #the babes i love them sm #i wrote this months ago but take it pls and know that ladrien owns my heart #byeee

[wearthegoldhat]

Kyrgyzstan: A Travelogue in Words

Manas International Airport has inadvertently turned into a bird sanctuary. The decibel of bird sounds when, dazed after 22 hours of travel you walk for the first time out into early morning Kyrgyz sunlight, provide a stunning first impression of the deepest part of the lushest forest at sunrise. Then you traverse the barren miles between Kyrgyz towns. So that when leaving you look up again and realize the birds have made a home not between the lush green leaves that were earlier conjured, but between long metal bars stretched across a plain awning. You chuckle to yourself for pity of those architects. Certainly they had not intended nor anticipated this secondary affect of hundreds of birds gathering to fight and sing and build and defecate above the sliding doors in and out of Kyrgyzstan.

Other first impressions: the toilet paper here is just a slightly wider and colorless kin of the crinkly stretchy paper streamers we use in America to celebrate birthdays and bridal showers and such.

Borscht soup has the redness of the reddest heirloom tomato distilled to 15 feet for purity of color. I thought it was full of tomatoes but it is full of cabbage and bits of beef, without any of the tartness of tomatoes. The red remains a mystery, but that is of little concern to me because it tastes very good. (After writing this, I learned the soup is made from beets.)

Lake Issyk Kul is blue-blue. Blue must be said twice because it is not just blue, it is the bluest blue, and the standard against which all blues may be set. And it does not want for size either—8 hours is required to travel its circumference. We could see it from our room. But at the lodge, the hallway we had to walk down to get to our room was so long it began to feel psychological. It was long and dimly lit, with no windows, just rows and rows of doors to each side, and you think you are nearly there but then you are still not. It is inevitable, even after walking up and down it multiple times a day, that you wonder if it ever ends. Walking through it feels a little like you have been plunged into an anxious dream.

An hour’s drive around Lake Issyk Kul towards the Hindu Kush mountains brought us to a little dirt road into the alleged burial grounds of St. Matthew, which turned out to be merely a small cave tunneling through a hill, with a yellowed Bible, a half-assed alphabet etched into the wall, a crumpled picture of Mary, Nestorian symbols of the cross inside an enclave, and a fistful of yellow flowers fastened above the small dark hole of an exit. It was a funny attempt to capitalize on pious tourists and the actual discovery: the divers who discovered remnants of ancient human civilization buried under Lake Issyk Kul, a shard with Armenian/Syrian language which corroborates with a 14th century map indicating an Armenian monastery at a place called “issikol,” where St. Matthew might have been as he traveled towards India, establishing little communities of believers.

Large yellow brown planes, horses and cows nibbling side by side with little nosy clusters of gossiping chickens. Chickens, when they are together in the country, are always gossiping. Cows wander freely along the single paved road, crossing it at will, knowing their right of way—if they are hit the driver is at fault and pays. By nightfall they have all headed home because if they are hit after dark, the driver is no longer at fault and the owner pays for his losses. One lamb is 100 som and one horse is 3,000 som. I’m guessing cows are somewhere in between. The road is pollarded with trees painted white on the bottom, for what I’m not sure, because the trees are all dead and dried. They burn areas of the fields before cultivation, but I am not sure if anything can be coaxed out of these miles of dry grey granules of dirt, with yellowed grass spaced out like the hairs of a balding man. What great faith these men have driving around in tractors, farm tools scattered about. Seasons are a miraculous thing when the dead of winter is really so dead. But even then, Kyrgyzstan’s main problem, it seems, is that nothing is going on. Lake Issyk Kul is a large shock of brilliant turquoise just before the rise of the Tien Shan mountains to snowy peaks, and the beauty of it seems utterly useless, because beauty is completely frivolous and indifferent when industry is what is needed, work for men to put their hands to. And you can see it in some of the men’s faces ruddy with alcohol at noon, nothing to do and no purpose aside from bottles of that great Russian export, hard liquor. A man on a horse corralling his sheep on a barren hillside here, a lone smoke stack there, and a girl sitting on an overturned bucket selling 3 more buckets of soft apples...

Their jaunty hats of embroidered creamy woolen felt seemed at first like costume. I saw them upon the heads of a group of men, old and young, in western dress waiting at the gate in Istanbul. But as our plane descended into Bishkek, the men had grown raucous (I could smell the alcohol on their breaths behind me) and they kept laughing wildly and standing up in the cabin. The stewardesses’ reprimands went from pleading to threatening until they finally sat down. All throughout that week I saw men wearing them neatly upon their heads, amidst the countryside dust and the smog of Bishkek buses. They became to me more beautiful than all of Lake Issyk Kul, because they are symbols of human dignity, handiwork, and identity upon their heads—singular and defiant acts of Kyrgyz expression amidst vast lethargic poverty. Then we were back at Manas International Airport. Missions is messy, he said as they tried to stuff a large Kyrgyz wall hanging amidst other shapely gifts into a suitcase that weighed in just under 20 kg. Earlier he had told me a story about the videographer for a group of missionaries going around Kilimanjaro. What was the hardest part of the journey? They asked him. He had lugged hefty camera equipment all up and down the mountain. After a bit of thought he said, getting all the receipts for reimbursement. So, missions is messy, and this has many meanings. Tetras-ing wall hangings into luggages under the weight limit is one of them, I said.

Later I saw two Kyrgyz infantrymen in smart Soviet-era hats and uniforms. They stopped to stand on the luggage weighing scale, in a jocular mood, perhaps ready to fill their bellies with spirit on a Friday night. I took a picture of them as they looked up at the large round clock of kilograms, laughing. We had just seen some people off, and went back out again to the deafening sound of birds.

Spaciba. I whispered many times under my breath but did not have the courage to say out loud. I started to recognize a few Russian letters. I was using a BeeLine sim card and all the messages from the carrier came in Russian.

Afghanis vacation in Tajik, Tajiks vacation in Kyrgyzstan. That is the order of wealth perhaps. We walked around the plaza, the architecture and use of space, so starkly Soviet-looking, was nothing like I had seen before. Stone monuments rose up everywhere. Lenin stood tall as a mountain, his hand outstretched, ominously pointing the way. We saw banners from the Persian New Year celebrations. We saw bottles of their award-winning white honey. They gifted me two, and a wall-hanging made of wool, before I left.

Back in the other central asian country where they worked, their phone calls were monitored by the government. They had code words for anything that might give their religion away, and while in Kyrgyzstan, they kept stiffening at words like church and missionary spoken out loud so freely between us. He acted out a phone call he once received from his dad who hardly ever called him: he heard his dad ask how is the mission doing? at the same time he heard a beep sound in the background, and he started coughing loudly, frantic to cover that forbidden word, mission. Are you ok? his dad asked. Dad let me call you back later. He hung up abruptly.

He told me about the experience of his Dutch friends. The lady was newly pregnant and earlier that morning she had broken news of it to her family over the phone. In the afternoon her husband stopped at a government office. The officials greeted him and then congratulated him on his wife’s pregnancy. He was obviously taken aback--how could they have known? And then he realized they had tapped his call. The state learned of his wife’s pregnancy at the same time their family learned of the pregnancy. Constant surveillance was a fact of life, as elementary as seasons and the color blue.

We shared immigration stories (immigration offices in developing countries always produce stories). He told me about his friend who went to the immigration office in a North African country. The windows were numbered 1-8. He went to the first one. A man slid open the window. And after an exchange of explanations and papers was done, he said, please proceed to window 2. So he went to window 2 and waited. It slid open to reveal the same man. Hello, he said, as if they had not just spoken moments ago. A twin perhaps? But no. Window after window it was the same man, running all 8 windows of immigration at the immigration office. Seven times he greeted him as if they had never spoken before.

He also told me about kidnappings. A few days after he told me about his own, he shared another one about the pregnant German woman who was kidnapped in a middle eastern country he had worked in. The kidnappers had begun to broadcast a live video of their ransom demands. But the scene quickly spiraled into a chaos that was almost comic. The woman began to shout at her kidnappers, openly mocking and shaming them in her brazen way. The kidnappers could be seen regrouping in a corner, arguing with each other over what to do, how to proceed, maybe they should just let her go? She was pregnant afterall and maybe what they were doing was unethical. He told me he never thought he could feel for kidnappers, but he did then. In that moment, they were just a group of people who were desperate and believed that this was the only way to get their demands met. They were also just a group of people who did not agree with each other and did not have a good plan in place. They eventually released the woman.

Gigi and I sat on the floor of the hotel room (because the floors were heated and nothing else), across the street from the American embassy that rose up like a fortress amidst rubble, before a beautiful alpine backdrop. It did not feel real. We talked and talked late into the night. We held onto each other like sisters who would be separated soon.

I heard many stories and shared a few of my own. After I spoke in front of a conference room of 200 people, a couple approached me. The husband used to be a professor at UPenn and now runs a social enterprise/business as mission in Kyrgyzstan. Her daughter teaches on a Native American reservation in the Southwest. The wife told me that she was very touched by what I had said. I almost laughed and began to apologize for my terrible public speaking. Speaking skills don’t matter as much, she said firmly. What I could tell was the message you shared came from the heart, and that is the more important thing. So then I n my heart I felt comforted, but in my head I said, I am not entirely convinced that is true. Several other schools and organizations also approached me, in an uncomfortably eager attempt (imagine elderly men requesting to sit with you at dinner time to tap the corners of their mouths with a napkin and share the most scintillating mission statements with a side of groveling) to recruit me because I am young and already have 3 years of experience in East Africa. I turned them all down by the end of the week. I left that path 2 years ago and I do not see myself going back. If I do go, I will go another way.

Now that it has been six months since my trip, I can hardly believe I was ever there. There are a few parts of it that I’d rather not recall. But I do have a pair of luxurious woolen slippers, deftly embroidered, with tips that curve sharply upward, that I wear around the house when I want to feel regal, to remind myself of who gifted them to me, and that I did really spend a very strange week gallivanting about Kyrgyzstan.

[igracelyn]

Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. As @KountryWayne Wayne Collie comedian says, ...just let that marinate in some neck bone sauce Becoming American as A Caribbean born and grown has always been a doubled sided sword I’m going to set myself up here for target..but why am I , you ask, posting. So it is. It’s in our face, all over social media, BLACK FACE, the distraction.. I call it, because the highest elected official in the country, seems to still be sitting in the WHITE House, callously offending all, with compunction. So we have a redress of the horrific heinous indecency of BLACK face. Because white people are intentionally demonizing their skewed perceptions of masquerade. Recently, I have sparred with my niece online and also with my own son, both 1st generation born Americans about my differential attitude and not necessarily reasoned perspective. They both were and are militant and defiant about why it should not ever be acceptable, if and when white people knowingly portray deliberate demeaning of our Blackness. I was even affronted by the idea that both my mother, myself, most of my family enjoyed singing along to Al Jolson, the Black minstrel shows, and even dear old Lawrence Welk, with the token black singer tap dancer, in our ritual sing alongs..as being in ignorance. How dare you refer to my mother as ignorant..was my feeling.. Does music 🎶 promote or incite color? When, as I have grown up, in a culture that celebrates masquerade, yuh know we have a annual festival, it’s Carnival, and we can portray any conceivable idea of the blackest black face midnight robbers, to the ghouls of folklore with blackest, bluest, yellowest, reddest, and any colorest.. you can imagine, and no one is banned from being in their choice of color, because no one is different..I have to reprocess the feelings, I am supposed to feel as a Black American. In this Saturday Night Live script..it truly is a comedy for those who think. Watch it here. http://bit.ly/2WRbwQR Now insult me by telling me this iconic picture below of my brother friend Fred, as a Black American, celebrating DC Carnival mud mas in White paint is reverse black face. Carry on,, Carry On..as only Freddie Mercury, Queen, can sing..in the opening bars to Bohemian Rhapsody via Facebook http://bit.ly/2RTbPHf

#IFTTT #Facebook

[lynchthedove]

Many times, Cal had been faced with the prospect of dying, and never had he been as terrified as he had been watching the clear liquid run through a tube into his arm. Fear gripped him in the seconds before; sweat coated his palms, his heart raced, hands shook. Tears filled his eyes and for the first time in years, he felt small. Afraid. He didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to die. Not like this. Every other time, it was on his own terms - a violent beatdown, a brawl in a bar, an overdose - but this, this, wasn’t. This was an expedited legal murder at the hands of the state, and he had never protested his sentence, but dammit, he’d killed one man who was filth, and the man two cells down had killed four innocents and robbed their dead bodies, and he had a life sentence.

There was no calm when he died. No peace, no coming to terms with the shit he’d done in his life. Just the cold burn of death in his veins, and the heated burn of tears on his face, and the darkness that took him wasn’t even bliss. Just pain. To the very end, pain.

When Cal was younger, in his mid-twenties, young and dumb, he’d get high on the beach. Groups of people whose names he barely remembered, passing around joints and drinking until their heart rates were slowed enough that they may as well be dead, except they could still fuck, and they were too messed up to know if it was good, or if it was just sand and sweat and the unpleasant mixture of alcohol and salty seaspray. But Cal remembers waking up on the beach in a tangle of limbs, the sun beating down on them all. Some of them got dressed and high again, some left to go back to their lives.

Most days, Cal would lie on the beach and squint into the sun, let the light push at the hangover hovering around the periphery of his mind, and just let his mind drift. A lot of the time, his thoughts were shallow - where was his next hit coming from, what he would do until then, would tonight end in another fistfight or would he get to midnight without adding another bruise to the litany smattered across his body. Sometimes, though, he thought about his mother. About quality of life and how easily it can be cut short. He’d thought about what she had left behind (a shit for a son with the fondest of memories of her), and the men left alive in the wake of her death. He wondered at the meaning behind it all. Why did she have to die? What did anyone stand to gain from it?

He often thought of his father’s last words to him: “Your blood is not your own.”

Sometimes, he didn’t think at all. Simply let the light of the sun blur sunspots into his vision until his eyelids closed of their own accord, protecting his eyes with the sting of tears in eyes dried from the sun and breeze. Maybe this is what death would be like: an endless oblivion of light, the fringes of pain, and questions with no answers.

When Cal’s eyes opened again, light filled them, and for a moment, he wondered if he was back on some beach, in a pile of people, the sun blinding him through his eyelids. But no, the air was still and clean, no hint of the ocean or sweat-stained skin. And the light was too white, with no edge of yellow. Unnatural and sterile, and a thought he hadn’t had in years returned: maybe this was what dying was like. Light, a bit of pain, and no answers. Maybe this was some strange sort of heaven, with white walls and a cloudiness in his mind.

And a dark haired angel who stood out from the bland background. The bluest eyes and reddest lips he’d seen, heavenly in the blurred haze slowly lifting from his vision. A hint of warmth in her smile. Lovely. As if in disbelief, he reached for her, wanting, needing, to know if she was real. If he was real. If this was some interim between the liquid filling his veins and death actually taking him. He was breathless, fingers almost brushing her perfect skin, until she took his hand and stopped him from reaching for her. Her fingers were cold in his.

“At 6pm on October twenty-first, you were pronounced dead. No one knows you are alive.”

Her voice was accented in a mix he couldn’t quite place, and it took a few seconds of wading through the lilt in her voice to really hear what she had said. Alive. The word resounded in his head - he was alive - and like an anvil crashing through the ceiling in the cartoons he watched as a child, pain filled his skull. The worst hangover he’d ever had. Except this wasn’t a beach, this wasn’t heaven, and she was no angel.

He was alive, and this as hell.

#// writings #(we're so slow at work so i managed some writing)

[patrick-watson]

Hedging the Ultimate Tail Risk: Breakup USA

Some things are so horrible, you don’t want to think about them.

Institutional risk managers think about “tail risks”—scenarios with very low probability. But should they happen, the consequences would be so devastating that you must plan for them.

Often this involves questioning your assumptions. What if things you believe will always be true, suddenly aren’t?

In the mid-1980s, people in the Soviet Union thought their government was, if not ideal, at least secure. Ten years later, it was gone. Former Soviet republics like Ukraine became independent countries. Everything changed.

Could something like that happen to the United States?

It’s not a crazy thought. We’re politically polarized and maybe, as a population, the angriest we’ve ever been.

Historically, political regimes tend not to last more than a few centuries. The US probably won’t be an exception, though we also have our strengths, so we’ll probably last a few more decades, give or take.

However, that’s only a guess. The odds that it’s wrong may be low, but they’re certainly above zero.

So just as engineers plan for once-in-a-thousand-years storms when they design bridges, investors should think about remote scenarios.

The thought exercise might reveal some design flaws.

Missing Property Rights

A few weeks ago, John Mauldin and I were on one of our frequent phone calls, discussing ideas for his annual forecast letter. We were despairing a bit over the political situation.

As you know if you read both of us, John and I disagree on some big issues. But we both love our country, and we’ve been friends long enough to respect each other’s opinions. We can talk civilly, which is often hard these days.

Anyway, part of that conversation appeared in John’s Year of Living Dangerously letter. Here it is.

I keep trying to imagine what/who might reunite Americans, and drawing blanks. As Lefsetz says, we don’t have the kind of issues that would do it. Nor do we have any elder statesmen or nationally unifying figures whom everyone respects, much less agrees with. This will make our various problems worse.

In short, I see dangerous times coming. I’d like to be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am. I think 2019 will be a Year of Living Dangerously, followed by the 2020s as a Decade of Living Dangerously. Then we’ll have a Great Reset and enter a new and better world. But we have to get there first.

I agree with this. We’re in dangerous times, and while it’s still highly unlikely, we can’t rule out a scenario in which the US breaks up into smaller sovereign countries, as happened with the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and elsewhere. It could happen violently, too.

I’ve tried to imagine, from a practical perspective, what that would mean for investors. The short answer is, “Nothing good.”

Investors succeed by either drawing income from some kind of asset they own, or by purchasing an asset and then selling it at a higher price.

The asset can be anything: buildings, raw land, stocks, loans, gold, or other commodities. But you need to own it or at least control it.

Ownership rights mean little without a government to protect them and courts to settle disputes. The US presently has both. What if it suddenly doesn’t?

Whose Assets?

Let’s imagine what this might look like.

Suppose, 10 or 20 years from now, regional divisions cause the US to break up into several pieces, each with its own government. (Protecting your wealth might be the least of your worries in that event, but let’s assume it happens peacefully.)

Further suppose you own shares of stock in a large company that does business in all those new countries.

You might have problems.

First, do you really own those shares anymore? Says who?

Second, even if you still own the shares, will the company still own the assets that give those shares their value?

Again, we don’t know. But when this sort of thing has happened in other places, those in power often seized foreign-owned assets. And if you’re in, say, Texas, then California might consider you a foreigner. Or vice versa.

Furthermore, you could find yourself disfavored even in your own home. We see the maps dividing the US into “red” and “blue” states, but they’re misleading. Even the reddest states have substantial blue populations, and even the bluest states have substantial red populations.

In the kind of bitter atmosphere that would make the US fall apart, it’s easy to imagine majority groups punishing those they perceive as “the other side.” Taking your property is one way to do it.

Local Assets

Again, I’m not predicting any of this will happen. I doubt it will. But with non-zero risk and consequences so terrible, maybe it makes sense to hedge against the possibility.

How would you do that?

Well, one way is to hold hard assets like gold, stored in places where a new and unfriendly government couldn’t reach them. But that has other risks and is probably not appropriate for your whole portfolio.

Another way is to own local assets tied to wherever you live. That could be real estate, small businesses, loans to local borrowers, or other things. The point is to remove, as much as possible, the exposure to governments that might stop defending your property rights.

If you have cash to invest, maybe do some local “angel investing” in addition to buying stocks. Find entrepreneurs in your area who need capital and offer to help them.

A local farm or ranch, for instance, should be able to keep operating even in these worst-case scenarios. People will always need to eat.

I realize this isn’t pleasant to think about. The safety briefing on your airliner isn’t fun either. It might seem unnecessary since almost every flight arrives safely.

But if yours doesn’t, you may be glad you noted the nearest exit.

Get one of the world’s most widely read investment newsletters… free

Sharp macroeconomic analysis, big market calls, and shrewd predictions are all in a week’s work for visionary thinker and acclaimed financial expert John Mauldin. Since 2001, investors have turned to his Thoughts from the Frontline to be informed about what’s really going on in the economy. Join hundreds of thousands of readers, and get it free in your inbox every week.

[junker-town]

The Patriots have a Trump problem

The Patriots have the closest connection to the Republican president-elect of any NFL team. And many of their fans in liberal Massachusetts are having trouble reconciling their love for the team with their dislike of the man.

The Clinton-Kaine signs were still up on the afternoon of Dec. 24, sagging in the snow like tombstones of hope. They flashed by the windows as I drove through my hometown of Lincoln, Mass., where 77.7 percent of residents voted for Hillary Clinton. Hanging off porches behind some of the Clinton signs were New England Patriots flags.

For over a decade now, people outside of New England have reviled the Patriots for turning winning into a science and, many believe, cheating to do so. Pats fans doubled-down in response, and a fierce loyalty took root in Massachusetts that, through the sagas of Spygate and Deflategate, seemed unshakable.

But recently, that blind faith has faced its greatest test in the form of the team’s connection to Republican President-elect Donald Trump.

The trouble began when Patriots reporters spotted Brady with a Make America Great Again hat in his locker in Foxboro in the fall of 2015 (feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?), soon after Trump announced his candidacy and called Mexicans rapists in the same speech. Over the past year and a half, the team’s ties to Trump have only grown stronger.

YouTube

It isn’t shocking that Patriots fans would have trouble with this relationship: Massachusetts was the only state in the country where every county went for Hillary Clinton. Massachusetts does have counties that tend to be larger than those of other states, and some towns went for Trump — namely a band in central Massachusetts and a cluster near Rhode Island. But even most of the working class, white towns on Cape Cod and surrounding Boston voted for Clinton. She won 60.8 percent of the state. Trump took only 33.5 percent.

In fact, all of New England went for Clinton. And yet, the Patriots are the only team whose head coach, star quarterback, and wealthy owner have such a long-running, public relationship with the Republican president-elect, who’s one of the most divisive and fear-inspiring figures in the history of American politics.

Not all Massachusetts fans are bothered by the team’s Trump connection, of course — the Pats are still wildly popular. They were playing the Jets as I drove through town on Christmas Eve, and the streets were that particular kind of empty that falls over the state when a game is on. Driveways held extra cars. TVs flickered in windows.

But no matter how you feel about Trump or the Patriots, the truth is that one of the bluest states has the reddest team.

* * *

I was working for Boston.com when Deflategate started in early 2015. It felt like the non-scandal was all we wrote about and all anyone in Boston talked about for months — even obscure figures like U.S. District Court Judge Richard Berman, who ruled in Tom Brady’s favor, became heroes, supporting protagonists in a very boring sports thriller. I once overheard a few guys in a Boston bar raise their beers and toast, “TO JUDGE BERMAN!”

That righteous indignation only fueled the Pats-fans-against-the-world mentality that began to take shape after Spygate in 2007, when the NFL disciplined the team for videotaping the Jets' defensive coaches. Since then, it’s seemed like everyone outside of the L.L. Bean Boot-heavy (a company currently struggling with a Trump problem of its own) states thinks the Pats are cheaters. No one likes cheaters who win all the time.

Speaking badly about "Tommy" in Boston is like trashing the Pope when you're inside the Vatican: At best, sacrilegious. At worst, a death wish.

Patriots fans have therefore spent the past 10 years defending Brady, Belichick, and Kraft, the region’s holy trinity. Brady’s been a god since he and his chiseled jawline stepped onto the turf at Gillette Stadium almost 20 years ago and started proving all the haters wrong. Speaking badly about “Tommy” in Boston is like trashing the Pope when you’re inside the Vatican: At best, sacrilegious. At worst, a death wish.

And then came Trump.

I remember the shock that went around the internet when the hat pictures surfaced. Trump was largely still a joke then, so some thought that maybe Brady was just messing with the media. Others hoped someone had given the hat to him ironically and he hadn’t gotten rid of it yet.

That thinking turned out to be wishful: Brady went on to say it’d be “great” if his “friend” Trump won the election, and then later walked those comments back. Trump told The New York Times shortly thereafter: “Tom Brady is a great friend of mine. He's a winner and he likes winners.”

Getty

In the NFL offseason, Bill Belichick’s girlfriend Linda Holliday posted an Instagram of herself and Belichick with Trump (she also posted a photo with Kid Rock, but I digress). This fall, Brady refused to denounce Trump’s “locker room talk” in a press conference, leaving the stage instead of addressing a reporter’s question regarding the tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” Brady then spoke about how Trump has been his friend for 16 years (the two are golfing buddies) on Boston sports radio.

Brady declined to say who he’d vote for, but his wife, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, denied on Instagram that she and Brady would vote for Trump. The quarterback himself never went public with his choice, saying instead at a press conference that his wife told him not to talk about politics anymore.

The night before the election, Trump said that Brady and Belichick supported him, and read out loud a letter that Belichick wrote him — in which Belichick commended the candidate for doing doing a “tremendous” job — at a rally in New Hampshire. When asked about the letter, Belichick said that it was not politically motivated. On Nov. 16, a few days after the election, Kraft was seen entering Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The Patriots aren’t the only figures in the NFL who’ve buddied up to Trump: Rex Ryan (R.I.P. his career with the Bills), for example, introduced the president-elect at a rally. There were many pieces written this fall about how many white players supported Trump.

But the Patriots’ relationship is different: It’s been the most public, and the team is one of the most popular and most successful franchises. They have, arguably, the most respected coach, a quarterback who is heading for — if he hasn’t already reached — G.O.A.T. status, and probably the second-most powerful owner in the NFL. They also have one of the top-five biggest fan bases in a top-five media market.

That media market also happens to be one of the most liberal. And the candidate the team is so connected to ran with the most non-liberal (and racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, Islamaphobic, etc.) rhetoric.

“It will forever color my opinion of the team. I will not watch, I will not buy any more jerseys. I’m done.”

Being a sports fan often means turning a blind eye to the political opinions and occasionally abysmal actions of your athletic heroes. Being a fan of any celebrity demands this — just ask anyone who listens to Kanye West. The 2016 election cycle, however, was decidedly not politics as usual. Trump’s whole campaign was littered with revelations — such as his refusing to rent apartments to black tenants decades ago, posting anti-Semitic memes, proposing a ban on Muslims from entering the country and forcing them to place themselves on a registry, bragging about sexually assaulting women — that would’ve prompted other politicians to withdraw from the race.

In the past, if a team’s politics didn’t align with those of its fan base, most fans could live with it. But the game got way uglier, and many people seem to be struggling: Fans flocked to Brady’s Facebook page the day Trump read the letter in New Hampshire to leave comments about how disappointed they were. Countless New England loyalists I’ve talked to over the past two months have told me that their idols are wobbling on their pedestals.

For some, they’ve shattered.

* * *

I was at a neighborhood holiday party in Lincoln a few days before Christmas, talking to the parents of several friends I grew up with. They asked about my job, so the conversation turned to sports. And then, naturally, to the Patriots. And then, naturally, to Trump.

“Oh, Susan Pease won’t even watch anymore,” one of my friend’s moms said. “She used to watch every Sunday with her family, and now she just can’t do it.”

I called Pease a few days later to ask her if this was true.

“Yeah, I just will not watch,” she said. “I really enjoy watching the game with my family. I like what it means for my family to sit down and talk and laugh and watch and snack and now ... I just, it’s just ruined for me. It’s not the worst thing about this, of course — this whole thing stems from my tremendous disappointment over this election and country. But it will forever color my opinion of the team. I will not watch, I will not buy any more jerseys. I’m done.”

Over the course of reporting this story, I’ve received countless emails and Facebook messages from people in Massachusetts telling me how disappointed they are in their team. Writing those letters almost seemed like catharsis for many: Several ended with sentiments along the lines of “it feels so good to get this off my chest,” and “I’ve been thinking about this so much.”

Some of these notes I got were filled with anger. People wrote things like “Fuck Brady,” and “I used to think Belichick was a genius and now I hate him,” and “I actually take delight when they lose.” Pease isn’t alone — at least six other people told me they can’t bear to watch Pats games anymore, either. A few told me that they were looking for a reason to give football up already because they find the NFL immoral and what it does to men’s bodies indefensible. Trump was the final straw that eliminated any feelings of loyalty.

Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Many fans, however, are still watching games and rooting for the Pats. Joe Martini, who lives in Boston, grew up an ardent Patriots fan in Arlington, Mass., and voted for Trump, told me that Brady influenced his positive opinion of the candidate.

“I look at Brady's endorsement of Trump a little differently,” he said. “Some people who do not support Trump look at it as a knock on Brady, but I look at it as a great sign for the person Donald Trump is. If you look at the man Tom Brady presents himself as, and the values he tries to instill in teammates, many of them minorities, and his family, his wife is a Brazilian immigrant, I would have to imagine he sees those same values in Trump to support him.”

Even if, unlike Martini, fans were horrified by Trump himself, many told me that they respected everyone’s right to their own opinion. They worried that if they started holding Trump against Brady, they’d be going down a path of dividing an already divided country even more.

What most people on either side of the aisle did have a hard time stomaching, however, was Belichick’s violation of his own strict media policy. Even though we don’t know who Belichick voted for — or if he voted at all — some fans saw his letter to Trump as a blatant violation of the one rule he’s always preached: No distractions.

“When Belichick takes a stance on the need to be focused, on ‘doing your job,’ and then when it’s convenient for him to do something that serves him and a friendship with Donald Trump, he does it? That’s a betrayal from a fan’s perspective.”

In fact, the language in the letter seemed so out of character that people had trouble believing it was real at first. I certainly did — I made a joke on Twitter that Belichick wrote all of my college letters of recommendation when the story broke because I found it so strange. My phone blew up as friends texted me that they were sure Trump wrote the letter himself. Belichick, they reasoned in a panic, is famously gruff and short. He wouldn’t use Trump-specific words like “tremendous,” nor would he dare break his own ethos.

But Belichick did. He wrote the letter, doesn’t appear to have told Trump he couldn’t read it out loud (Brady, however, implied at a press conference that maybe he hadn’t given Trump permission to speak about him that night), and then defended it.

Enjoyed dinner at Mar-a-Lago this evening with our good friend Donald Trump

A photo posted by Linda Holliday✨ (@lindaholliday_) on Mar 5, 2016 at 8:25pm PST

Fans found this situation wildly hypocritical. Jeff Kirchick, a die-hard Pats fan from Massachusetts who now lives in New York City, took the letter particularly hard.

“In their personal time, a lot of these guys probably do a lot of things I don’t agree with,” said Kirchick. “That’s not my business. But what they do on the field is my business. It’s what I watch.

“So when Belichick takes a stance on the need to be focused,” he continued, “on ‘doing your job,’ and then when it’s convenient for him to do something that serves him and a friendship with Donald Trump, he does it? That’s a betrayal from a fan’s perspective. When it serves him, he can do that, but when the media has questions about relevant things to the game he dismisses them and shuns them because we need to ‘stay focused on the next opponent.”

The distractions, Kirchick believes, hurt the actual game the Patriots were playing: The week of the election, the team lost to the Seahawks. It was close, but New England’s defense couldn’t stop Doug Baldwin and Russell Wilson in the fourth quarter and also couldn’t answer with points of their own. It was one of only two losses in the regular season, and the only game Tom Brady failed to win in 2016.

* * *

It’s hard to have a conversation about the Patriots without talking about Trump anymore. The connection reverberates far beyond the place I grew up.

I watch it happen online all the time. I’ve written about the Patriots a fair amount in the past few weeks as the NFL playoffs got underway. The piece that got the most views was about how I hope we have a Patriots-Cowboys Super Bowl. I looked at the article a few days after it published and saw it had 235 comments. Even though I didn’t mention Trump at all in the piece, before I scrolled down to the read the comments, I knew they’d be about the team’s connection to him.

They were. Some people were defending the Pats, saying everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. Others declared they hated New England even more now because they were aligned with a monster. Others were saying, “who cares?” Most of the comments quickly derailed — as comments are wont to do — into a fierce debate about politics with very little mention of football.

No matter how anyone feels about the team or the president-elect, the two have become as woven into each other’s histories as Trump’s hair is to his head. The difference is that while the rest of the country doesn’t really have a stake in this connection, Patriots fans in liberal Massachusetts who find Trump abhorrent have to grapple with the emotional implications. Patriotism in the age of Trump, it turns out, is a tricky thing to navigate.

[junker-town]

The Patriots have a Trump problem

The Patriots have the closest connection to the Republican president-elect of any NFL team. And many of their fans in liberal Massachusetts are having trouble reconciling their love for the team with their dislike of the man.

The Clinton-Kaine signs were still up on the afternoon of Dec. 24, sagging in the snow like tombstones of hope. They flashed by the windows as I drove through my hometown of Lincoln, Mass., where 77.7 percent of residents voted for Hillary Clinton. Hanging off porches behind some of the Clinton signs were New England Patriots flags.

For over a decade now, people outside of New England have reviled the Patriots for turning winning into a science and, many believe, cheating to do so. Pats fans doubled-down in response, and a fierce loyalty took root in Massachusetts that, through the sagas of Spygate and Deflategate, seemed unshakable.

But recently, that blind faith has faced its greatest test in the form of the team’s connection to Republican President-elect Donald Trump.

The trouble began when Patriots reporters spotted Brady with a Make America Great Again hat in his locker in Foxboro in the fall of 2015 (feels like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it?), soon after Trump announced his candidacy and called Mexicans rapists in the same speech. Over the past year and a half, the team’s ties to Trump have only grown stronger.

YouTube

It isn’t shocking that Patriots fans would have trouble with this relationship: Massachusetts was the only state in the country where every county went for Hillary Clinton. Massachusetts does have counties that tend to be larger than those of other states, and some towns went for Trump — namely a band in central Massachusetts and a cluster near Rhode Island. But even most of the working class, white towns on Cape Cod and surrounding Boston voted for Clinton. She won 60.8 percent of the state. Trump took only 33.5 percent.

In fact, all of New England went for Clinton. And yet, the Patriots are the only team whose head coach, star quarterback, and wealthy owner have such a long-running, public relationship with the Republican president-elect, who’s one of the most divisive and fear-inspiring figures in the history of American politics.

Not all Massachusetts fans are bothered by the team’s Trump connection, of course — the Pats are still wildly popular. They were playing the Jets as I drove through town on Christmas Eve, and the streets were that particular kind of empty that falls over the state when a game is on. Driveways held extra cars. TVs flickered in windows.

But no matter how you feel about Trump or the Patriots, the truth is that one of the bluest states has the reddest team.

* * *

I was working for Boston.com when Deflategate started in early 2015. It felt like the non-scandal was all we wrote about and all anyone in Boston talked about for months — even obscure figures like U.S. District Court Judge Richard Berman, who ruled in Tom Brady’s favor, became heroes, supporting protagonists in a very boring sports thriller. I once overheard a few guys in a Boston bar raise their beers and toast, “TO JUDGE BERMAN!”

That righteous indignation only fueled the Pats-fans-against-the-world mentality that began to take shape after Spygate in 2007, when the NFL disciplined the team for videotaping the Jets' defensive coaches. Since then, it’s seemed like everyone outside of the L.L. Bean Boot-heavy (a company currently struggling with a Trump problem of its own) states thinks the Pats are cheaters. No one likes cheaters who win all the time.

Speaking badly about "Tommy" in Boston is like trashing the Pope when you're inside the Vatican: At best, sacrilegious. At worst, a death wish.

Patriots fans have therefore spent the past 10 years defending Brady, Belichick, and Kraft, the region’s holy trinity. Brady’s been a god since he and his chiseled jawline stepped onto the turf at Gillette Stadium almost 20 years ago and started proving all the haters wrong. Speaking badly about “Tommy” in Boston is like trashing the Pope when you’re inside the Vatican: At best, sacrilegious. At worst, a death wish.

And then came Trump.

I remember the shock that went around the internet when the hat pictures surfaced. Trump was largely still a joke then, so some thought that maybe Brady was just messing with the media. Others hoped someone had given the hat to him ironically and he hadn’t gotten rid of it yet.

That thinking turned out to be wishful: Brady went on to say it’d be “great” if his “friend” Trump won the election, and then later walked those comments back. Trump told The New York Times shortly thereafter: “Tom Brady is a great friend of mine. He's a winner and he likes winners.”

Getty

In the NFL offseason, Bill Belichick’s girlfriend Linda Holliday posted an Instagram of herself and Belichick with Trump (she also posted a photo with Kid Rock, but I digress). This fall, Brady refused to denounce Trump’s “locker room talk” in a press conference, leaving the stage instead of addressing a reporter’s question regarding the tape in which Trump bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy.” Brady then spoke about how Trump has been his friend for 16 years (the two are golfing buddies) on Boston sports radio.

Brady declined to say who he’d vote for, but his wife, supermodel Gisele Bundchen, denied on Instagram that she and Brady would vote for Trump. The quarterback himself never went public with his choice, saying instead at a press conference that his wife told him not to talk about politics anymore.

The night before the election, Trump said that Brady and Belichick supported him, and read out loud a letter that Belichick wrote him — in which Belichick commended the candidate for doing doing a “tremendous” job — at a rally in New Hampshire. When asked about the letter, Belichick said that it was not politically motivated. On Nov. 16, a few days after the election, Kraft was seen entering Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images

The Patriots aren’t the only figures in the NFL who’ve buddied up to Trump: Rex Ryan (R.I.P. his career with the Bills), for example, introduced the president-elect at a rally. There were many pieces written this fall about how many white players supported Trump.

But the Patriots’ relationship is different: It’s been the most public, and the team is one of the most popular and most successful franchises. They have, arguably, the most respected coach, a quarterback who is heading for — if he hasn’t already reached — G.O.A.T. status, and probably the second-most powerful owner in the NFL. They also have one of the top-five biggest fan bases in a top-five media market.

That media market also happens to be one of the most liberal. And the candidate the team is so connected to ran with the most non-liberal (and racist, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, Islamaphobic, etc.) rhetoric.

“It will forever color my opinion of the team. I will not watch, I will not buy any more jerseys. I’m done.”

Being a sports fan often means turning a blind eye to the political opinions and occasionally abysmal actions of your athletic heroes. Being a fan of any celebrity demands this — just ask anyone who listens to Kanye West. The 2016 election cycle, however, was decidedly not politics as usual. Trump’s whole campaign was littered with revelations — such as his refusing to rent apartments to black tenants decades ago, posting anti-Semitic memes, proposing a ban on Muslims from entering the country and forcing them to place themselves on a registry, bragging about sexually assaulting women — that would’ve prompted other politicians to withdraw from the race.

In the past, if a team’s politics didn’t align with those of its fan base, most fans could live with it. But the game got way uglier, and many people seem to be struggling: Fans flocked to Brady’s Facebook page the day Trump read the letter in New Hampshire to leave comments about how disappointed they were. Countless New England loyalists I’ve talked to over the past two months have told me that their idols are wobbling on their pedestals.

For some, they’ve shattered.

* * *

I was at a neighborhood holiday party in Lincoln a few days before Christmas, talking to the parents of several friends I grew up with. They asked about my job, so the conversation turned to sports. And then, naturally, to the Patriots. And then, naturally, to Trump.

“Oh, Susan Pease won’t even watch anymore,” one of my friend’s moms said. “She used to watch every Sunday with her family, and now she just can’t do it.”

I called Pease a few days later to ask her if this was true.

“Yeah, I just will not watch,” she said. “I really enjoy watching the game with my family. I like what it means for my family to sit down and talk and laugh and watch and snack and now ... I just, it’s just ruined for me. It’s not the worst thing about this, of course — this whole thing stems from my tremendous disappointment over this election and country. But it will forever color my opinion of the team. I will not watch, I will not buy any more jerseys. I’m done.”

Over the course of reporting this story, I’ve received countless emails and Facebook messages from people in Massachusetts telling me how disappointed they are in their team. Writing those letters almost seemed like catharsis for many: Several ended with sentiments along the lines of “it feels so good to get this off my chest,” and “I’ve been thinking about this so much.”

Some of these notes I got were filled with anger. People wrote things like “Fuck Brady,” and “I used to think Belichick was a genius and now I hate him,” and “I actually take delight when they lose.” Pease isn’t alone — at least six other people told me they can’t bear to watch Pats games anymore, either. A few told me that they were looking for a reason to give football up already because they find the NFL immoral and what it does to men’s bodies indefensible. Trump was the final straw that eliminated any feelings of loyalty.

Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images

Many fans, however, are still watching games and rooting for the Pats. Joe Martini, who lives in Boston, grew up an ardent Patriots fan in Arlington, Mass., and voted for Trump, told me that Brady influenced his positive opinion of the candidate.

“I look at Brady's endorsement of Trump a little differently,” he said. “Some people who do not support Trump look at it as a knock on Brady, but I look at it as a great sign for the person Donald Trump is. If you look at the man Tom Brady presents himself as, and the values he tries to instill in teammates, many of them minorities, and his family, his wife is a Brazilian immigrant, I would have to imagine he sees those same values in Trump to support him.”

Even if, unlike Martini, fans were horrified by Trump himself, many told me that they respected everyone’s right to their own opinion. They worried that if they started holding Trump against Brady, they’d be going down a path of dividing an already divided country even more.

What most people on either side of the aisle did have a hard time stomaching, however, was Belichick’s violation of his own strict media policy. Even though we don’t know who Belichick voted for — or if he voted at all — some fans saw his letter to Trump as a blatant violation of the one rule he’s always preached: No distractions.

“When Belichick takes a stance on the need to be focused, on ‘doing your job,’ and then when it’s convenient for him to do something that serves him and a friendship with Donald Trump, he does it? That’s a betrayal from a fan’s perspective.”

In fact, the language in the letter seemed so out of character that people had trouble believing it was real at first. I certainly did — I made a joke on Twitter that Belichick wrote all of my college letters of recommendation when the story broke because I found it so strange. My phone blew up as friends texted me that they were sure Trump wrote the letter himself. Belichick, they reasoned in a panic, is famously gruff and short. He wouldn’t use Trump-specific words like “tremendous,” nor would he dare break his own ethos.

But Belichick did. He wrote the letter, doesn’t appear to have told Trump he couldn’t read it out loud (Brady, however, implied at a press conference that maybe he hadn’t given Trump permission to speak about him that night), and then defended it.

Enjoyed dinner at Mar-a-Lago this evening with our good friend Donald Trump

A photo posted by Linda Holliday✨ (@lindaholliday_) on Mar 5, 2016 at 8:25pm PST

Fans found this situation wildly hypocritical. Jeff Kirchick, a die-hard Pats fan from Massachusetts who now lives in New York City, took the letter particularly hard.

“In their personal time, a lot of these guys probably do a lot of things I don’t agree with,” said Kirchick. “That’s not my business. But what they do on the field is my business. It’s what I watch.

“So when Belichick takes a stance on the need to be focused,” he continued, “on ‘doing your job,’ and then when it’s convenient for him to do something that serves him and a friendship with Donald Trump, he does it? That’s a betrayal from a fan’s perspective. When it serves him, he can do that, but when the media has questions about relevant things to the game he dismisses them and shuns them because we need to ‘stay focused on the next opponent.”

The distractions, Kirchick believes, hurt the actual game the Patriots were playing: The week of the election, the team lost to the Seahawks. It was close, but New England’s defense couldn’t stop Doug Baldwin and Russell Wilson in the fourth quarter and also couldn’t answer with points of their own. It was one of only two losses in the regular season, and the only game Tom Brady failed to win in 2016.

* * *

It’s hard to have a conversation about the Patriots without talking about Trump anymore. The connection reverberates far beyond the place I grew up.

I watch it happen online all the time. I’ve written about the Patriots a fair amount in the past few weeks as the NFL playoffs got underway. The piece that got the most views was about how I hope we have a Patriots-Cowboys Super Bowl. I looked at the article a few days after it published and saw it had 235 comments. Even though I didn’t mention Trump at all in the piece, before I scrolled down to the read the comments, I knew they’d be about the team’s connection to him.

They were. Some people were defending the Pats, saying everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. Others declared they hated New England even more now because they were aligned with a monster. Others were saying, “who cares?” Most of the comments quickly derailed — as comments are wont to do — into a fierce debate about politics with very little mention of football.

No matter how anyone feels about the team or the president-elect, the two have become as woven into each other’s histories as Trump’s hair is to his head. The difference is that while the rest of the country doesn’t really have a stake in this connection, Patriots fans in liberal Massachusetts who find Trump abhorrent have to grapple with the emotional implications. Patriotism in the age of Trump, it turns out, is a tricky thing to navigate.