#how am i going to eat my cake at desert in these conditions

[fudge24-7]

Tis my birthday today

#fudge does a talky talk #woohoo #another year on this earth #i had two waffles woth wip cream and strawberry syrup on each #and chocolate syrup on the 2nd #it was tasty #...but at what cost #i can feel it in my chest i have consumed way too much suger #how am i going to eat my cake at desert in these conditions #i geuss i basically got all day until then maybe my body will have worked through this suger by then

[habla-memoria]

Easy Vegan Carrot Cake Recipe

I've been vegan for almost 2 years now. If someone were to ask me why I went vegan, the response I have stored in my brain is "for the animals". It's obviously more complicated than that--the environment is another big factor. But what pushed me into this ideology wasn't methane emissions or deliberate deforestation, it was a video, a short video of a pig inside a truck sticking his nose out and smelling the cool morning air. The description of the video read something like "Pig experiencing the outside of his pen for the first time before being taken to the slaughterhouse."

It wasn't the footage of the actual slaughter, nor the brutally cramped conditions of his pen, that horrified me. It was the thought of those five minutes of joy that this pig got to experience in his entire life that shook me. I never needed to watch Dominion or Earthlings. This recipe calls for one and a half cups of brown sugar, but I find 3/4 cup of regular sugar to be better, as too much sugar obscures the flavor of the other ingredients.

Carrot cake is my favorite dessert, as it gives you the impression that you're eating healthy despite the very apparent reality that you're just eating cake. It's only been a couple years, as I said earlier, but I feel like I've already given up on convincing other people. It's hard to continue trying to even suggest veganism to someone when phrases like "animals belong on my plate" or "I'm gonna have an extra serving of bacon for you today" keep bouncing back at me. Not to mention the several cascading scenarios which all spell doom for the earth, the scorching crops, the lack of water, the forever plagues which are almost always caused by animal exploitation, the tiny particles filling up our lungs and giving babies cancer from the womb. Speaking of, I would only use one and a half carrot, as produce these days is filled with microplastics. These things won't be stopped by my regime of chickpeas and tofu, I know that now. I may be saving a handful of animals' lives, in the realm of abstraction, but my eating and shopping habits won't convince any CEOs to stop violating the earth. Some of them will start selling almond milk in addition to cow milk. Others will sell lentil burgers next to the cold cuts section. That's about it.

Sometimes I look at my nephew, he's 3 years old, and I think "what is going to happen to you? How am I gonna help you in the coming... years? Months? Weeks? When will we run out of water to put in your little blue cup? Please laugh now, don't save a single smile for tomorrow, please do it now." It's 32c in the Arctic. Storms of arsenic dust are on the brink of raging. Millions are being displaced as I type this delicious recipe that will leave you full of carroty goodness. For years I imagined how life on earth would end, mistakenly thinking we would all go together in a massive global panic, but now I see that the end will protract itself for years and those of us left alive will start wondering when it will hit us, or feeling relieved that it hasn't hit us, and then it does, and maybe we'll have enough time to know that this desert surrounding our puddle just moved a few inches in our direction. This desert that has no idea that we feel pain and loss and is not supposed to. Actually, I'm very much sure that we'll have just enough time to suffer that thought.

So I will sit here and have my black beans and turmeric rice and the arid winds of the desert will blow through my brain, and maybe I'll take some of that free sample of klonopin I found laying on the street last week, which will either calm me down or make me more suicidal (70/30 odds from what I read) and go sit on my porch and look at my cats play and my breathing will be heavy and fast, but I'll feel relieved that my neighborhood doesn't have many tall buildings and my oven runs on electricity and not gas. If you also have an electric oven, I would recommend leaving the cake in for an extra 20 minutes, just make sure to check on it periodically and doing the toothpick test.

Vegan Carrot Cake

Prep time: 30 minutes

Cook time: 30~ minutes

Servings: 10

Calories: 673kcal

Ingredients

- 2 cups All Purpose flour

- 1 tsp baking powder

- 1 tsp baking soda

- 1/2 tsp salt

- 2 tsp cinnamon

- 1 tsp nutmeg

- 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar or 3/4 granulated sugar

- 2 medium sized grated carrots

- 2 flax eggs (2 tbsp ground flaxseed meal with 6 tbsp water)

- 1/2 cup canola oil or vegetable oil

- 1 tsp vanilla extract

- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar

- 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Instructions

- Preheat the oven to 350f (180c). Spray two 7-inch cake pans or two 8-inch cake pans with non-stick spray and line the bottoms with circles of parchment paper.

- Sift the all purpose flour into a mixing bowl and add the baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Mix together.

- Add the sugar and grated carrot to the mixing bowl.

- Prepare your flax eggs by adding 2 tablespoons of ground flaxseed meal to a bowl with 6 tablespoons of hot water. Let it sit for a minute to become gloopy.

- Add the flax eggs, oil, vanilla extract, apple cider vinegar and chopped walnuts to the mixing bowl.

- Mix everything together. If it seems like it won't come together and the mix is too dry then step away from the bowl for a couple of minutes and then come back to it. The carrots will have released more moisture into the batter allowing it to come together into a thick batter.

- Divide the batter evenly between the two prepared cake pans.

- Bake for 30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted into the center of one of the cakes comes out clean.

- Allow the cakes to cool in the pans for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.

Notes

- Make sure to grate the carrots yourself. If you buy pre-grated carrots you will find that they're already dried, and you need the humidity of fresh carrot for the mix.

- For a gluten free option, simply switch the all purpose flour for gluten free flour

- The recipe adapts to 12-18 cupcakes depending on how full you make the cupcake liners.

- The walnuts are entirely optional but I find that they add so much to the texture, it makes the cake much more enjoyable.

- The cake can hold up to a week in the fridge and 0 months in the freezer.

[evolutionsvoid]

For a lot of the hybrid species of dryads that have emerged, their origins make sense. With populations growing and mobility getting easier and more prevalent, we are seeing many territories starting to merge. Impassable areas are starting to vanish, and populations that have been isolated for decades are now being visited by the outside world. The chances of seeing Desert Dryads or Marsh Dryads outside of their usual habitat back then was rare, but now it is becoming more commonplace. With such mingling of the different dryad species, it is inevitable that crossbreeding will occur. Relationships can develop anywhere, and love knows no borders or bounds. In the end, two beings who once were oblivious to each other's existence now join together in an unbreakable bond. That is usually how hybridization occurs. In some cases though, you just look at the family tree and wonder "How the heck did that happen?!" One of the hybrids whose lineage brings much confusion is the Mangrove Dryad. They are a hybrid species that is found in warm coastal waters, and whose populations can create living amphibious forests. Compared to other hybrid species, they are also some of the most extreme when it comes to anatomical deviations. Plenty of hybrids share obvious characteristics of their parents, and is usually easy to see the combination that birthed them. In this case, though, Mangrove Dryads have taken on a form that at first seems quite alien compared to their parents. They are quite tall in size, and they also hold quite a bit of mass. Their upper bodies are elongated and stretched out, which hints at one of their parents. Their lower half, however, is where things get really interesting. Instead of having the usual two walking appendages of other dryads, theirs bear more in resemblance to actual tree roots. It is almost the total opposite of what we have! While we have legs that are shaped out of roots, they have roots that are shaped out of legs! Despite its tangled and chaotic appearance, these limbs are indeed legs that the Mangrove Dryad can walk upon. It just so happens that these legs grow in a ridiculous amount and don't restrict themselves to the torso. You can see appendages branching off from other limbs, adding more to this bizarre look. It turns out, this wild growth isn't even restricted to their legs! Upon closer inspection of their arms and shoulders, you can see where a number of branches and arm-like growths have developed. These growths seem much slower and stunted compared to what is occurring downstairs, but it is still a sight to behold! This constant sprouting and growing is believed to be a result of their hybridization, much like how other hybrids possess unique characteristics and features. Speaking of hybrids, I have yet to reveal the parents that result in Mangrove Dryads. Now I am not one to judge relationships or those who partake in certain pleasures, but this is one of those cases where I am baffled about how things came to be. Like, how did these two happen to cross paths, and how did they even pull something like this off? I am not being crude, I am just confused! You see, Mangrove Dryads are a result of a Conifer Dryad and a Kelp Dryad, which is a situation I have yet to fully wrap my head around. If you are wondering how a giant arctic forest dweller and a tropical oceanic swimmer came together to raise a family, then you are in the same boat as the rest of us. I can understand Conifer Dryads migrating to warmer climates, but we are still dealing with a saltwater environment and an aquatic lover. Relationships can indeed happen anywhere and love has no limits, but still! If this was a single incident, I could accept this much easier, but there are entire colonies of these hybrids! Along coastal waters, you can find large populations of Mangrove Dryads dwelling in the swamps and tides. So this pairing had to occur quite a few times for there to be such a healthy number! Sure, they can breed with Kelp Dryads and still result in Mangroves being born, but there are still populations that are miles from one another that had to start from somewhere. It is a mystery to this day on how or when these hybrid colonies were established, and I am not sure if we will ever really figure it out.

Now I think we have spent enough time talking about their conception, so it is time to move onto the usual stuff. Like I mentioned before, Mangrove Dryads inhabit the coastal waters and swamps in places with tropical climates. As a result of two parents from the land and sea, they have wound up being somewhere in the middle. I would say that they are amphibious, but that still doesn't seem like the best term. They don't split their time between land and water, they just have half of their body in the water and the other half out. Well, it is more of a 75% out of water and 25% in. What I am trying to say is that they spend most of their lives standing in shallow saltwater. Their many branching legs allow them to stand comfortably on the muddy bottoms, which holds the rest of their body above the surface. Now most dryads do not tolerate saltwater, as it can be dangerous in large doses. Mangroves, however, are totally fine with it. Thick bark helps prevent the salt from getting in and the water from leaking out. Their many legs also help keep a large portion of their body away from the salty water, where they can also bath in fresh rainwater. Even if they do absorb a bunch of salt, special glands in their bodies absorb it and force it out of their bodies. These glands appear to be located around and under the head cap, mainly where their "hair" is. You can see salt crystals slowly build up on this vegetation, eventually dispersing when the dryad shakes their head or when they do some grooming. I have heard some humans jokingly compare this to dandruff, which isn't the worst comparison I have heard. If you do hang around Mangroves Dryads, be sure to watch out when they do this. This head-shaking technique they use to get rid of the salt buildup is used pretty commonly, so they don't think twice about doing it. If you happen to be near them and have your mouth open when they do this, well, lets just say you better have a full canteen handy. Life in the shallows for them is quite different from what other dryads experience. Due to their large size and location, they do no construct any buildings or structures. Their thick bark and many limbs allow them to weather practically any conditions. Rain is a welcome thing for them, as they can bath in the falling freshwater and hydrate. Storms that blow in can create powerful wind and rough waves, but they can still endure these. Their root-like legs can burrow into the muck and anchor them, making them almost impossible to dislodge. Huddling together as a colony, they intertwine their limbs and pack themselves in tightly to create a formidable living fortress. The saplings will be moved to the center of this mass, where they will hide underneath the adults. The young will be shielded by a wall of wrapped roots, protecting them from the rough weather. While in this state, hardly any storm can affect them, so much so that other life has taken notice. Birds, fish and other small critters will flock to these colonies during rough weather, knowing that it will provide sanctuary. Stories even tell of fishermen being saved by Mangrove Dryads when their boats were swept away in the storm. Studies and observations have also found that these colonies, mixed with the surrounding mangrove trees, can actually create barriers that protect many ecosystems from the brunt of the storm. So while these dryads may appear lax and peaceful, they can be forces of nature when they come together! The everyday life of a Mangrove dryad is a rather simple one. Most of the time they remain nearby others of their kind, socializing and resting in the calm waters. Individuals may go out to gather food, slowly wading through the shallows in search of fish and other snacks. With their many roots and constant exposure to the sun, they get a huge portion of their nutrients by just standing still. When they travel through the surrounding swamps and shallows, it is usually to collect meat, fruits and nuts to supplement their diet. By using nets woven with vines and spears fashioned with old branches, they can hunt fish to bring back to the colony. Edible vegetation is easily picked from the surrounding trees, or dredged up by their many legs. Though they eat most of their food raw, there is one instance where they may actually craft a dish. It is called a "Mud Cake," and it is almost exactly what you think it is. It is marsh mud that has ground up fish parts and seaweed mixed in. The resulting mixture is formed into flat discs, which are then left to bake in the sun. It is mainly made as a treat, and apparently their saplings love it. I myself have tried this dish, and I must say it is an acquired taste. To me it tasted like someone made fish-flavored chalk and then dropped it in the sand. Regardless, the food they collect on these excursions is shared amongst the colony, and most of it goes to the saplings. To ensure their young grow big and strong, they are given hefty portions, as the adults can easily get their nutrients from the surrounding soil. Due to their location on the coasts, these colonies tend to interact with nearby villages and ports. Other dryad settlements near these waters are happy to welcome their fellow sisters, and the two usually work together to hunt and survive. Since saltwater is bad for most land dryads, Mangrove Dryads will aid in fishing and collecting coastal foods. In return, the land dryads will provide terrestrial food and medicine for the colony. Healers who work in these towns will often have monthly checkups arranged with the Mangrove colony, paddling in by boat to see the saplings and deliver medicine. Non-dryad settlements may also find similar help from these colonies, that is if they are willing to work with them. Sometimes human ports and towns may disturb the surrounding area with harmful fishing and practices, and this doesn't please these colonies too much. They care very much for the waters they live in, so such destructive things are not taken well. Since Mangrove Dryads don't move all that fast and aren't really fighters, many don't see any danger in angering them. However, some villages have learned the hard way that Mangrove Dryads can retaliate. When the next big hurricane blows in, they may be surprised to see that the mangrove barrier that protected their town has mysteriously vanished, leaving them exposed to the full force of storm. After the waves and winds tear their settlements to pieces, they may have a newfound respect for the Mangrove Dryads. Chlora Myron Dryad Natural Historian ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- This was an old dryad species that got themselves a good reworking and update. My old version was way too bland and I easily forgot they even existed. So I turned them into a hybrid and gave them a better look!    

#dryad #plant monster #plant creature #mangrove tree #mangrove #art #drawing

[enchantedamusedslightlyconfused]

73 questions.

I was tagged by @wescoasts @machine-gun-casie (BABES)

Almost all my friends have been tagged and I don't wanna be that asshole so ill try not to be. I tag @awkwardrocker @backoftheroomandnotbelonging @trixiehoe @she-who-is-timey-wimey

On a scale of 1-10, how excited are you about life right now?

Well it’s finals week so about -864. After that I have two weeks of legitimate nothing where I will bake my heart out so we’ll see

Describe yourself in a hashtag?

#yikes #ughshesinherfeelsagain 

If you could do a love scene with anyone, who would it be?

Milo Ventimiglia, Kells, Rook.....being a music video love interest is only my life’s pipe dream 

If your life was a musical, what would the marquee say?

And that’s on daddy issues and no supervision...

What’s one thing people don’t know about you?

I used to model like went to modeling school and got paid for it type shit

What’s your wakeup ritual?

get woken up by my dog tired of hearing my alarm, walk said opinionated quadruped, feed quadruped, get dressed, COFFEE, then take life as it comes

What’s your go to bed ritual?

melatonin gummies (gotta make anxiety fun), skincare when executive dysfunction will allow, brush teeth, fight dog for my spot in bed (moving a 90lb animal is no joke), turn on my sleep playlist or use my ambient noise app, stare at ceiling

What’s your favorite time of day?

witching hour followed by golden hour

Your go to for having a good laugh?

lately tiktok and Kellyvisions, previously vine compilations or Netflix specials

Dream country to visit?

Ireland. I NEED to go to the motherland. My families castle is still standing and I get in for free. its on my bucket list FOR SURE. 

What’s the biggest surprise you’ve had?

getting into nursing school and chiropractic school. I’m a loser and I’ve never had a surprise party. I’d melt in puddle of love tbh

Heels or flats/sneakers?

Flats 98% of the time. Heels are reserved for business casual necessity, Halloween, or if I’m feeling myself 

Vintage or new?

both, depends on the item

Who do you want to write your obituary?

Amy-Sherman Palladino 

Style icon?

lmao a what? on the real though catch me fucking with those eco-friendly kitchen witch vibes. All the dainty jewelry, linens and converse/docks fam

What are three things you can’t live without?

my dog, my family (found and blood), healing people however I can (medicine ruined me for any other career and its sucks you guys)

What’s one ingredient you put in everything?

tbh salt, I question a recipes validity if salt isn't involved 

What 3 people living or dead would you like to make dinner for?

Kells and the band (I'd be too nervous for a one on one), a dinner party with my MGK fam, Elvis

What’s your biggest fear in life?

Failure, not accomplishing anything 

Window or aisle seat?

window all day everyday, on the wing preferably cause I like to feel the landing gear #pilotsgranddaughter 

What’s your current TV obsession?

Roadies forever, pry that series from my cold dead hands (also Gilmore Girls and Criminal Minds)

Favorite app?

tie between Tumblr and Pinterest (im an aesthetic slut)

Secret talent?

I am bomb at disney princess songs, the girls I babysit for treat me like a jukebox at bedtime, cutest thing ever

Most adventurous thing you’ve done in your life?

delivered a baby has hands down been the coolest thing I’ve ever done

How would you define yourself in three words?

I fucking hate this question. always have. empathetic, resilient, intuitive 

Favourite piece of clothing you own?

overall: my senior prom dress. its emerald green, backless, with a slit to upper thigh chefs kiss 

everyday wear: Colorado sweatshirt

Must have clothing item everyone should have?

I second Jude: over sized hoodies

Superpower you would want?

nonspecific healing powers so they aren't limited to physical ailments

What’s inspiring you in life right now?

Colson

Best piece of advice you’ve received?

HA. probably that the body remembers more about trauma than the mind and your seemingly irrational physical reactions to things are your brain’s attempt to protect you

Best advice you’d give your teenage self?

his mistake does not define your worth. I went for a variant of these boys aint shit don't judge me cause she needs to hear it

A book that everyone should read?

Harry Potter series (yes the whole thing), Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson, The Giver by Lois Lowry 

What would you like to be remembered for?

empathy, the way I made people feel

How do you define beauty?

FOR THE LAST TIME ITS SUBJECTIVE, things that give you peace, it could be a song, a person, a sunset, a scone, a leaf. If it makes you stop a second and exhale then its beautiful to you

What do you love most about your body?

holy trigger question Batman...my eyes, my hair color, texture, and its ability to grow

Best way to take a rest/decompress?

drive with the windows down and blast music while singing at the top of my lungs

Favorite place to view art?

unexpected places, like street corners, carnivals, just somewhere it takes you off guard and makes you stop and pay attention

If your life were a song, what would the title be?

it’d be one of those crazy long 2000s fall out boy titles for sure, subject matter yet to be determined 

If you could master one instrument, what would it be?

violin hands down, it hits me different

If you had a tattoo, where would it be?

I have a bunch planned, plane on my right shoulder, Kells related between 3rd and 4th ribs (maybe lower in case I ever need a chest tube), watercolor portrait of my dog at some point location TBD

Dolphins or koalas?

dolphins are stoners and they're super smart, but koalas cause they’re grumpy af and honestly same

What’s your spirit animal?

again Jude and I are vibin: I've been identifying with a phoenix as of late. according to pottermore im a greyhound though (yes a patrons is a wizarding spirit animal. fight me)

Best gift you’ve ever received?

seven year old me was stoked to get a functional microscope and metal detector, I was in my egyptology/archeology phase, I still have them lmao

Best gift you’ve ever given?

oh hell idk...I made my cousin cry once cause I made cupcakes for her birthday party, they were cherry limeade flavored and had little straws and everything. that was pretty cool, granted she was seven. I also made my teacher cry cause I made sea salt caramel chocolate cupcakes for her going away party. I guess my baking brings people to tears

What’s your favourite board game?

candy land, battleship, cards against humanity even though there isn't a board

What’s your favourite colour?

forest green atm

Least favourite colour?

bright yellow/orange, its offensive to my general The Dirt Mick Mars disposition

Diamonds or pearls?

pearls (actually opals though)

Drugstore makeup or designer?

not picky provided they are evironmentally friendly. I really like Besame Cosmetics though

Blow-dry or air-dry?

air-dry, I don't have the patience for blow drying

Pilates or yoga?

yoga

Coffee or tea?

COFFEE, im still learning to like tea

What’s the weirdest word in the English language?

holy shit how much time do we have, my favorite weird word to say is fistula or omphalocele (they're medical conditions, don't goole it unless you have a strong stomach) 

Dark chocolate or milk chocolate?

dark chocolate

Stairs or elevator?

stairs 

Summer or winter?

neither FALL BITCHES   winter if I had to pick cause I love Christmas 

You are stuck on an island, you can pick one food to eat forever without getting tired of it, what would you eat?

burgers

A desert you don’t like?

red velvet cake....just why is it a thing that exists 

A skill you’re working on mastering?

baking scones or shit that’s flaky in general 

Best thing to happen to you today?

being tagged to do this twice, I felt special for a hot second (thanks babes)

Best compliment you’ve ever received?

that I would make a good doctor (I handled a scary pt situation like a champ, they didn't know I threw up after I made sure my pt didn't die. puking in a foreign country on the download is a skill in and of itself)

Favorite smell?

bergamot, baking bread, baking spice cakes at Christmas

Hugs or kisses?

HUGS CAN SAVE THE WORLD

If you made a documentary, what would it be about?

gifted kid fall off

Last piece of content you consumed that made you cry?

In These Walls - Machine Gun Kelly

Casual Sabotage - Yungblud

genius assholes...

Lipstick or lip gloss?

lipstick for special occasions but actually tinted chapstick or lip stains 

Sweet or savoury?

savory to eat sweet to make for someone else

Girl crush?

Brittney Furlan Lee, Alexis Bledel, Lauren Graham 

How you know you’re in love?

you look at them and just say yep. them. usually while they're doing something stupid 

Song you can listen to on repeat?

imma out myself but Swing Life Away - Machine Gun Kelly

If you could switch lives with someone for a day who would it be?

the grass is not greener ya’ll. id rather go back and relive days 

What are you most excited about at this time in your life?

hopefully passing my first trimester of chiropractic school. fingers crossed pls

#quarantine games #don't come for me people #if you identify with this stuff hit me up #I can always use more quarantine buddies #love and good vibes to you all

[langwrites]

LUMINA, ARNO, AND NAVIYD DISCUSS SEX, SEXUALITY, AND FAILED MARRIAGES

Side note: All of the adult characters here are sort of in their mid/late twenties. Naviyd is the oldest, then Arno, then Lumina.

Khalil is about five-ish and Lumina is pregnant with the twins Alastair and Oriana.

Lumina’s office, despite its overladen shelves of books and comfortable furniture strewn all around, lay in complete disarray. The three occupants had long since pushed all the chairs and the meeting table against the walls and spread rugs, blankets, and pillows here and there, resulting in a wide, flat meeting space inside of another. Though the rest of the decorations were still hers, the arrangement was more like a comfortable gathering inside a desert-living Mishik tent than a Kaltekan solar. 

The reason for this was lying sprawled on the floor, feet close to the fire to stave off the Gabilan winter chill, and under at least three blankets. He was facedown in the gap between two pillows, arms pillowing his head as he buried his face against the rug. He was probably breathing.

It had been six months since Zahara and Naviyd’s marriage dissolved into bitter recrimination and hate. She and little Mitra were long gone. Shadows, really. Memories. 

Naviyd coped in cycles. The ups and downs ran long, but not so long that there was no pattern. Naviyd could stave off the worst extremes by distracting himself with hobbies—architecture, astronomy, horseback archery, and more. Whenever he had the time, at any rate; raising his son, even with Arno and Lumina’s help, often left him asleep on top of whatever flat surface he found first. 

Tonight was a… night. 

At least Khalil was asleep on Arno. Lumina might have volunteered her lap on any other evening, but the twins she was carrying seemed determined to eliminate it from existence. Khalil gave up on that refuge weeks ago, once he realized he couldn’t fit no matter how he contorted. Besides, sitting on Arno meant the five-year-old could grab all the tiny honey-cakes whenever he wished. 

He still had sticky fingers wrapped around one last, uneaten crust. When he snuffled in his sleep, Arno had to keep his hand from applying the sugar to his face. 

“At least you took your shoes off before doing this,” Lumina said, because there didn’t seem much else to say into the silence of her best friend’s sulk. She nudged his side experimentally, but Naviyd didn’t budge.

“What do you take me for, a barbarian? I have standards,” Naviyd grumped. 

“Do tell,” Lumina said, raising one skeptical eyebrow. 

He grumbled into the pillows and didn’t answer. So much for an articulate evening, though Lumina frankly hadn’t expected much. She’d just have to be patient and outlast his moping. 

It didn’t take very long. Arno had just finished putting together a pot of tea—without disturbing the sleeping Khalil—when Naviyd finally said, “How did you know?” 

“How did I know what?” Lumina responded. She’d been occupied by shifting the pillows around her to more adequately support her back and wasn’t in the mood for guessing games.

“Or, I suppose—when did you know we would not be together?” 

Hardly clearer. “You and I, or you and her?” 

“Both. Either.” 

“Naviyd, as generous as you are, I would prefer not to share in your headache.” Lumina sighed, because it was already too late. The slight throb at her temples was bound to get worse as soon as she sat up properly, and cursing Naviyd for giving it to her was akin to closing gates after all the sheep were long gone. 

“A burden shared is a burden halved,” said Arno, in the light, mild manner of someone paying no mind to the meat of the discussion. His attention was wholly occupied by trying to drape a blanket over Khalil without waking him. 

Lumina threw a pillow at him before she could think better of it. 

Arno caught it with his forehead, which meant it bounced off toward the bookshelves. With no beading, it neither left a mark nor made a sound. He shot a look at it over his shoulder, then said firmly to Lumina, “You will not be getting that back until you learn to treat it with respect.” 

Lumina pursed her lips and tried to look dignified, knowing she’d fail even before Naviyd started snickering into his arms. Still, the tension in the room was neatly broken. She turned her attention to her best friend instead of her distracted husband, saying, “Did you want an answer to your question or to laugh at me?”

“Can’t it be both?” Naviyd wondered as he pushed himself up on his elbows, and mockingly quailed under her glare. “I surrender! Genuinely!” 

Lumina held her glare for a split second longer, then snorted. There was no point in pretending to be angry. Still… “You had a question.” 

“I did.” Naviyd sobered. He ran a scarred hand over his face and then his head in one neat sweep, which sent his curls into disarray. A few dropped far enough to block his left eye from view. As he settled again, he said, “You and I—I think, from the moment we met, neither of us were interested in the more physical pleasures. Unless I am wrong.” 

“I almost split your skull with a spear. I should hope not.” But still, Lumina humored him. “No, you have the right of it. There is and was nothing between us. Inarguably less, then—we hated each other.”

“Perhaps ‘hate’ is a strong word. I thought you harmless, then reckless and dangerous together.” Naviyd shrugged, smiling faintly. “And then, later, admirable for your strength. Beauty came in a very distant fourth.” 

“Rearrange the details several times, and you have my thoughts,” Lumina said. She rearranged the blankets next, covering her slightly swollen ankles. She was tall, and her twins carried low, but her center of balance was off and her joints knew it. “Apart from our friendship, none of it was beyond the bounds of my feelings toward any other man I’d met before.”

“Likewise,” Naviyd muttered. He rolled over with some difficulty, entangled in blankets and unable to quite complete the motion. Finally, he managed to get his shoulders flat against the floor, then went on, “Before meeting her, I never seriously contemplated taking a woman to bed.” 

“And no men?” Arno asked, while pouring tea for each of the adults. Khalil could go without. 

“No men,” Naviyd confirmed. He put both hands behind his head and said, “No one, really. Even when I was as grateful as I’d ever been to the both of you, for giving my life back to me when I’d assuredly lost it—no.”  

Lumina eyed him. “So, your flirtations—” 

“Sleeping with someone in a transactional sense is not difficult, especially for men,” Naviyd countered, “and the act itself is enjoyable, but that hardly makes it necessary. Most luxuries are the same, so…” He trailed off, gold-green eyes still fixed on the ceiling. “It never seemed important.”

Lumina and Arno both nodded along as he spoke. Since Arno went back to trying to pry the forgotten honey-cake from Khalil’s fingers, Lumina said, “I never felt I was denying myself anything. Did you?” 

“No. I knew, broadly, that there were celibate orders and solemn vows for this or that,” Naviyd said. He sighed. “But I thought only that the people who took them were far too serious. It was like being asked to give up cream buns or peaches. Irritating in the moment, but otherwise easily ignored.” 

Arno snorted with suppressed laughter, and Naviyd grinned at the joke landing where it was intended. 

“You see? I can mock the entire edifice.” Naviyd’s expression settled into a smile, though faint. “Really, the amount of time people spend eroticizing food is just ridiculous. I can hardly help mocking it all.” 

“I always thought of love as more… Oh, working together, appreciating each other,” Lumina cast about for an extra word, and ended up with, “raising a family. Love and being loved. I never especially thought of the process of making love as all that interesting once I understood what people meant. We raised pigs.” Her nose wrinkled and both of her companions laughed. Arno at least avoided the belly-laugh for which he was famous, which would have sent Khalil tumbling to the floor. “Hardly the subject of romantic poetry, but very educational.”

“Horses, for me,” Naviyd admitted, once he recovered.

“Goats,” said Arno. “And helping the nannies deliver many, many kids.” 

Lumina covered her mouth to hide her laugh, but it failed. “The lessons of the farm are truly wide-reaching.” 

“Best schoolroom I ever had,” Naviyd agreed, showing all his teeth. “Milking, too. Gods, we really are too practical for nobility. I can’t imagine what those would-be kings and queens think of us upjumped muck-rakers.”

“You needn’t wonder if you read more of my letters,” Lumina said, gesturing at the almost-forgotten desk at the far wall. “As is your supposed job.”

“I have yet to see a single wooden penny for it,” Naviyd sniped back. eHe threw his arms out, like an overturned turtle. “I cannot work under these conditions!”

“You live in my castle.”

“Which I designed and built!” 

Arno laughed again, drawing their attention. “You two are quite the pair. A pair of thundersnows, perhaps.”

“Bright, flashy, loud, and unstable? What a compliment,” Naviyd replied snippily, but he was smiling still. “All lightning seeks the ground, Arno.”

“And I am as much earth as the mountain.” Arno tapped the stone floor—what was visible of it—with his knuckles. His hands, unlike Naviyd’s, were neat and unmarked. “Personally, Naviyd? Had you asked at the right moment, you might’ve been able to steal a kiss—but not my heart, I think.” 

“I would hardly know what to do with it, besides frantically try to fit it back in your chest by force,” Naviyd said. He peered up at them, smile fading a bit. “Hearts are such slippery things.” 

Lumina rolled her eyes. “It helps if you clean the blood off first.” 

“And do what? Eat it?” 

“Bait bears,” Arno suggested. Khalil drooled onto the blankets and rubbed his face, smearing honey despite Arno’s best efforts. He looked down with false dismay. “At least there are no more of the white beasts.”

“Would one of those eat someone?” Naviyd asked. He sounded morbidly curious.

“I’ve been told so.” Arno rolled one shoulder until it popped. “Back to the topic at hand, though. Or something like it.” He rubbed at his beard thoughtfully, then said, “Your wife.”

“No longer mine,” Naviyd corrected, more dull than defensive. He sighed. “Now, I can hardly name a thing I miss about her. My love died after hers—a single stroke instead of a thousand bleeding cuts. So she says.” He got one hand out from under his head and clenched a fist. Beneath them, the castle rumbled faintly. “I’ll never forgive her for taking Mitra from Khalil. They were born together. How could she tear them apart?”

“I don’t understand,” Lumina said, frowning. 

“Call it a superstition. Twins—or triplets, even—ought not be separated by anything but fate or their own choices,” Naviyd said, shaking his head. “Had the two grown together and drifted apart like all siblings, I would not—I could be upset, but not like this. They come into the world together by the gods’ will. What they do with the bond is not for the hands of mortals.”

“Did Zahara know that?” Arno asked.

“I had hoped so,” Naviyd growled. “But what do I know of the Mishik who live and breathe Kaltekan influence? Less than I know of spite, apparently.”

Arno nudged Naviyd’s elbow with his foot. “Well? Out with it. What made her so angry that she would drive the knife in like that? Why would she spite the gods?”

“…It was my fault,” Naviyd admitted. His voice was low with shame. “I was just too thoughtless to understand before it was too late.” 

Lumina and Arno exchanged looks, as long-standing friends could. Husband and wife were secondary roles. Then, Lumina said, “I can believe that. You have a long history of behavior that could anger any wife.” 

“You could stand to develop some convenient forgetfulness.”

“Never.” 

Naviyd sighed. “Fine, then. If you want the sordid detail, I suppose you can stand to hear it. You’re old enough.” 

“I am four years younger than you are, old man.” 

“Neither of you are thirty,” said Arno, “so kindly shut up.” 

“It was slow,” Naviyd said, as though the other two hadn’t spoken. “I didn’t notice at first. Everything was so busy—the twins were born, we were still putting Gabilan together, the Tear was vomiting monsters all the damn time. I never did thank you for keeping me alive then, did I?” 

“You did,” said Lumina. “But generally while half-asleep or very distracted.” 

“Oh, good.” Naviyd nodded to himself, then went on, “And I didn’t—we came here with nothing but the clothes on our backs and your sister’s goodwill. And gold, I suppose, but you can hardly eat it when winter rolls in.” 

“True,” said Lumina. 

“But the difference was that I had you two. She had no one, because Lucky wouldn’t hear of leaving the capital or her…second? Whichever lover she’s on now, subtracting one.” Naviyd’s fist tightened. “No Ismene, who disappeared before the war was over. No Fiamma or anyone else. There were no Mishik besides us, even, until Keyah arrived. And Keyah does not count herself.” Naviyd blew out a harsh sigh. “She hated you, Lulu.”

Lumina frowned. “Because I was the one who chose to leave Celeste?”

“Because I followed you,” Naviyd corrected, “and separated her from everyone who made any sense to her.” 

“Then she should have left you,” said Arno, quite sensibly. 

Naviyd’s laugh was bitter. “She should have.” 

Arno frowned at the agreement. He patted Khalil’s curls, even as he said, “It sounds to me like Zahara would have been happier somewhere else. As much as I love your children, no woman ought to put love—even capped by great sex—before her happiness.”

“So, that was a poor start. I still thought you were both very much in love,” Lumina pointed out, folding her hands over her stomach. If she pressed, she could almost feel the two heartbeats under hers. If she didn’t, she’d still be kicked in the kidneys on occasion. 

“We were,” Naviyd readily agreed. “Caught up in each other. In being in love, I suppose. Passionate lovers, numb to all else.” 

It was all gone and dead now, but Lumina remembered that first year or so. The two of them had been wild during the early days of their marriage. 

“But none of it changed how little she talked to anyone besides me. She needed more,” Naviyd said. “And I could never give that to her. Nor could you, Lulu.” 

Lumina shook her head slowly. “I…never did like her.” 

Truth be told, Lumina’s unsociable nature never made her many friends, and Zahara shouldn’t have been forced to fight her way through that barrier at all. There ought to have been other options. Gabilan’s steady trickle of veterans, mages, and old soldiers hadn’t arrived then. Luxana was always better at the bright smiles and smooth words, even if she didn’t feel them. Even if she couldn’t spare any for her twin sister.

“Oh, she knew. We argued about you. Not at first, but later.” Naviyd scrubbed at his face again. “But, again, I spent almost all day with you, or Arno, or whoever else needed something when no one could be in three places at once. We were a triad, were we not? Corners to a triangle, lending stability everywhere we went.” 

Lumina frowned again. “Yes…?”

“And then she carried the twins, and things were different.” Naviyd’s eyes gleamed faintly in the firelight. “She and I were always together. Prying me from her side would take a pickaxe, and I would fight the entire way. We were starting a family of our own! How could anyone not be as excited as we were?”

“I trusted children more than you with tools during those days,” Lumina agreed. “I remember.” 

Arno’s silly little smile was fond. “You learned to play the lute for her.” 

“And she laughed at me! Often. I was never good. My best songs are shouted.” Naviyd’s face softened with the memory. “Scouring the land for whatever she craved. Not well, but I found those godsdamned olives all the same.”

“Too bad she hated the pickled kind,” Arno put in.

“You don’t, though, so I call it a success.” Naviyd shrugged. “And the twins were born, and everything was perfect.” 

Lumina thought back to the comment about Zahara’s hatred and had a guess where the story would lead. Nowhere good. 

“But… After the flurry of the first two years—infancy, toddling, and then Khalil learning to speak—work demanded more. And I could hardly say no to more responsibility. If I turned you down, you would have had to deal with all of Lucky’s demands after her ascension…” Naviyd pinched the bridge of his nose. “And the ones after. I think this would-be emperor might actually last. Radovan can hardly kill someone when exiled to the frozen nethers of the world.”

“Personally,” Lumina put in. “Or for a second time, come to that.” 

“He might try.” Arno didn’t look happy about the idea. 

“And so, four years.” Naviyd reached out with one hand and grasped Lumina’s. “And all the venom came out in one burst.” 

“Naviyd?” 

“A thousand slights. A thousand missed moments. How many times did I turn her away because I’d been run ragged by the demands of governing a province? How many times did I come to you instead, because we worked shoulder to shoulder in everything?” Naviyd squeezed her hand. “By the end, she thought the only reason I was here—the only reason I’d trap her here—was because of you, Lulu.”

“She thought I’d stolen your heart from her,” Lumina concluded grimly. 

“And so she’d tear mine out.” Naviyd closed his eyes. “If I’d been a better husband, I could have seen it and soothed her. I could have done so many things differently. But here we are. When she realized she could threaten me all she liked, and I’d not budge, she broke us both. Seemed…right.”  

Lumina said, after letting the statement sink in, “She threatened to slit you open from navel to nosering in front of twenty witnesses.”

“And that failed. How about that.” Naviyd huffed. “Besides, divorce is supposed to involve at least three witnesses, a threat of violence, and at least one god. She got it over with quickly.” 

“Did she really?” What little she knew of Zahara’s movements since leaving Gabilan did not paint a lovely picture. She seemed to spend more time with her rising band of pirates than with any child. It was more in line with those last few, bitter days than the years before. 

Naviyd couldn’t know if Mitra was even still alive. 

“No. But publicly, yes.” 

Lumina frowned. “And the twins?” 

Naviyd grimaced and tried to pull away, but Lumina’s grip was too strong to escape. “She’d have been within her rights to take both. She’s their mother. But…” 

“Come on, up,” Lumina insisted, hauling Naviyd upright with leverage and her uncanny strength, present even with her twins weighing her down. 

Naviyd grumbled, but it stopped when Arno handed over both a teacup—somewhat neglected and now lukewarm—as well as the fur-covered bundle containing Naviyd’s sleeping son. All bitterness bled out of him faster than winter ice melted in the sun. He stroked his son’s face with the back of one hand, eyes downcast. “I should have fought.” 

“Could you have?” 

“I don’t know. Could have destroyed us, possibly.” He tucked Khalil against his chest, where the boy snuffled in his sleep. Lumina didn’t even want to think of the possibility of two masters of mind magic deciding to murder each other inside of a city. Legal recourse wouldn’t matter. Everyone would claw their own eyes out. “Khalil will chase Mitra as far as his legs will take him. It won’t happen soon if the gods are kind, but it will happen. I could never stop him.” 

Lumina stored those words in a chest in her heart. Though she didn’t know when, Naviyd’s tone made it clear this prediction was as close to truth as he considered possible. For a Mishik, he generally put little stock in most of the religious practices—barring swearing by and at their gods—but this sounded as real as the power crawling beneath their skin. 

“Sky-Mother above, I would keep him safe here forever if I could.” Naviyd nearly bent double so he could rest his cheek atop Khalil’s head. His son drooled on, undisturbed. “But…”

“He would climb the walls and drive us all to drink,” Arno suggested, but fondly. The first children born in this castle could only inspire fond feelings, even if they were the kind of avatars of chaos Khalil aspired to be. 

“Neither of you can crawl into a bottle until I can join you,” Lumina told them. Lumina scooted across the floor with neither dignity nor ease, but managed to reach Naviyd and Khalil in decent time. “And it is well past this little one’s bedtime.”

“And not a drop of coffee,” Naviyd said. He caught Lumina’s eye, then added, “Not that I need it.” He sipped at his tea instead, which was herbal and not likely to keep him awake.

“So defensive,” said Arno. He got to his feet with only the slightest delay, as though his legs were numb. “I can put him to bed if you like.”

“No, no. I have him. He should stay with us tonight.” Naviyd set the teacup near the fire instead of within kicking distance. He coiled around Khalil and started shifting blankets, then settled on his side. Before he fully considered himself comfortable, he wedged himself up on his hand and said, “Lulu?”

Lumina nudged him with her foot as Arno picked up his entire pile of pillows and started transferring them to her side of the fire. “I can handle myself, Naviyd. Even when I cannot see my feet while standing.”

“I imagine you will never miss this part of the experience, even after the twins are as old as Khalil is and causing trouble. Speaking of, do they have names yet? I have ideas,” Naviyd remarked. His head dropped to the pillow beneath it almost on its own, and his voice came out a little muffled as he added, “Not that I want to impose.”

“No, Naviyd. Not until they’re ten days old,” Arno said. There was a hitch at the back of his voice, just barely audible as he curled into Lumina’s waiting arms. “I wouldn’t risk it.”

Black brows pulled together in a frown. “Why?”

“It is as bad luck as separating twins.” Arno hooked his arm around Lumina’s shoulders. Standing, he was shorter than she was, but lying down made no difference. “No names until we know their spirits are settled.”

Naviyd made a thoughtful noise, but it was clear he had no more interest in diving into cultural differences tonight.

“Sleep well,” was the wish around the solar, even with no beds to be found.

Khalil started snoring just as Lumina finally relaxed enough to sleep.

#terramir gang #lumina #naviyd #arno #khalil #my ocs

[snowbatsims]

Post 20: Strangerville, part 1

So, before I really start, Kvikindi grew up.  

I’m not sure what happened here. Her RNG outfit had short pink hair, so I messed with that aspect a little. The whites in her eyes went fully alien black, while she kept the pink slit pupils (that the game kept removing for some reason. let’s just pretend they stayed pink the whole time). A few alien skin spots may have appeared as well. As it turns out, alien and vampire puberty are happening simultaneously.

And the cake, as beautiful as it is, remains untouched. Nobody is around to eat it anymore.

It’s still winter, so they figured they might as well all take their free trip to Strangerville on the other side of the planet. Sure, why not. They expected to stay at some hotel, Father Winter said so, but…

It’s just a dinky old motel. (built by @legasimmer; it’s on the gallery) RUNE: HE LIED TO US!!! BAT: Duh, it’s Father Winter. What, did you expect an entire hotel complete with swimming pools and that kinda nonsense? Come on. BAT: Working for Santa Claus obviously means you cannot get put on the naughty list, so he gets away with this shit! MORTEN: Well hey, we can still stay here. We’ve come this far. Maybe take a look around.. see how this small town lives up to its name? Like, I do see a couple of glowy plants here and… oh, what’s that over there?

MORTEN: Holy heck, I can’t believe this is still open at these hours! ERWIN: Yup! Staying open until like 3 AM means I have a great excuse to watch all the potential weird activity going on here at night! ERWIN: Hey… Wait a minute… ERWIN: Are you guys vampires? ERWIN: Is that an alien with you??? ERWIN: YOU’RE ALL REAL?????

ERWIN: THAT IS PERFECT. I decided a while ago that any supernatural folks would get a huge discount here, but I never saw any of you until now! ERWIN: Please, have a look around, I’m sure there’s something ya’ll might enjoy. EINARR: Why, thank you.

Mort grabbed some posters, a lava lamp, and a toy, Einarr got a few books, neither Bat nor Kvikindi were particularly interested at the moment, while Rune…

RUNE: Dude, I think this might be a foreign plasma fruit. Look how it’s pulsating. It’s red like blood… MORTEN: Ooh, let me try!

MORTEN: Oof.

RUNE: Yikes… I don’t like this side effect.

MORTEN: Ⱨł. RUNE: H-hi?? MORTEN: ₮ⱧɆ ₥Ø₮ⱧɆⱤ ₴ɆɆ₴ ₳ⱠⱠ. RUNE: Oh no…

EINARR: What just happened here, Rune?? RUNE: O-oh, uh,, they just ate a strange fruit. It looked like blood! EINARR: Blood??? You thought that was a foreign plasma fruit??? RUNE: Y- yeah. I- EINARR: Child, no, foreign plasma fruits are much closer to a crimson shade of red. Not.. veiny and circular like this bizarre alien fruit!! RUNE: I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T KNOW!! EINARR: Okay, FINE! But if they’re stuck this way from now on, that’s entirely on you. RUNE: B-but!! They just grabbed it! I– EINARR: You’re the one who offered it, you infant. RUNE: Okay, true… I didn’t know it would–

MORTEN: ฿Ɇ₵Ø₥Ɇ Ø₦Ɇ ₩ł₮Ⱨ ₮ⱧɆ ₥Ø₮ⱧɆⱤ. RUNE: yAUGH,

EINARR: …Hey, Erwin, do you happen to know if there’s any way to cure this condition? ERWIN: I dunno dude, you might wanna have to ask around. I’ve seen a lot of weirdos in military uniforms and labcoats in the daytime.. which might be a little inconvenient to you nocturnal people. Look in the library, maybe? ERWIN: Also, how did you know my name? Do vampires read minds? EINARR: Well, yes, some of us can, but you just so happened to wear a rather convenient name tag. ERWIN: Oh. Right. ERWIN: Well. Uh, wow, would you look at the time. I should really close up shop. Good night, folks.

MORTEN: ɎɆ₴. ₳₦Ø₮ⱧɆⱤ ฿₳฿Ɏ ₣ØⱤ ₥Ø₮ⱧɆⱤ. MORTEN: ₲ⱤØ₩ ₴₮ⱤØ₦₲, Ⱡł₮₮ⱠɆ Ø₦Ɇ.

EINARR: Such strange plants.. is that where these noises are coming from? EINARR: Hm. I see Erwin is heading this direction. We need to talk.

EINARR: One more thing, mortal. ERWIN: Wha-

EINARR: Tell me, why were you selling those weird fruits in the first place when you didn’t even know the effects? ERWIN: I.. I dunno?? EINARR: That is so incredibly irresponsible of you, child!!! ERWIN: I– I just found a couple of them scattered around! I just thought, since they were so peculiar, they would fit the theme of my Curio Shop very nicely- EINARR: And you needed money? Is that it? Is money on your mind??? Those weirdo fruits made my grand-offspring act all possessed!! And your excuse is money? ERWIN: I’m, I’m just trying to make a living! Is that wrong??

EINARR: A living, huh??? Better be careful, or else I might just have to make you unlive instead! ERWIN: Wh– Okay, I’m going! Please don’t eat me, mr. vampire man. I really didn’t mean to get on your bad side… EINARR: Alright, human. You do seem like a good person, so I’ll let you go, but please use better judgement and get rid of those fruits until next time. ERWIN: Y-yeah, alright. I’m really sorry for this inconvenience.

Looks like someone is back to normal.

MORTEN: …What just happened? MORTEN: Where am I? Where is everyone? MORTEN: Last thing I remember was.. Rune gave me a blood fruit? MORTEN: …that wasn’t really blood at all, was it. MORTEN: Hm.. come think of it, I… actually don’t feel blood hungry right now at all. Weird. Is it a blood fruit or not???

MORTEN: Huh. Another one of those glowy thingamabobs.

MORTEN: Might as well snap a picture of it for the memories. I’ve never seen any of these at home… MORTEN: I’d better head back to that motel.

———–

…

EINARR: Are you aware of what happened to you last night? MORT: …not really. All I know is I woke up in a desert. And I stopped being thirsty. EINARR: Well, I am fairly sure you got possessed by that fruit you ate. MORT: O-oh. Possessed?? EINARR: Yup. MORT: But it’s all okay now, right? The possession is over…right? EINARR: It has been less than a full day since it happened. For all we know, this might just happen every night. MORT: D: EINARR: And actually… I think I do hear some odd whispers here and there when I look into your mind now… Those really do not seem like your own thoughts. MORT: Wh– what… ₵Ø₥Ɇ ₮Ø ₥Ɇ, ₵ⱧłⱠĐ MORT: Oh my god. I hear them too now…. EINARR: Honestly, you should go ask Rune, he got you into this mess in the first place. It wouldn’t seem right to leave before we’ve found a cure for this condition of yours. ₮ⱧɆⱤɆ ł₴ ₦Ø ₦ɆɆĐ ₣ØⱤ ₳ ₵ɄⱤɆ MORT: SHUT UP, YES THERE IS. GET OUT OF ME. ₦Ø EINARR: So, it has started talking to you now. I’m really sorry I brought that to your attention. MORT: Ugh.

Meanwhile, it’s actually overcast outdoors. How handy. RUNE: Hello? Anyone in there..?

Something is obviously very off about this place. LESLIE: ₩₳₮ɆⱤ ł₴ ⱠØVɆ. RUNE: NOPE.

RUNE: Hrm.. this is useless. I should really ask around.

SCIENTIST 1: Yeah, we just recently had to evacuate the secret lab in the crater! SCIENTIST 2: You know that’s supposed to be a secret, right. SCIENTIST 1: Who cares! It’s not really safe to go there anyway anymore. Best to stay away, am I right? RUNE: Any idea what this has to do with the weird plant pod things around town? SCIENTIST 2: That is classified information. Sorry. RUNE: Dangit.

MORT: Well, hello Rune, I think might need a cure for whatever the hell just happened to me last night. RUNE: I’m… working on it. MORT: I heard something about a secret lab? SCIENTIST 1: Yeah!! We left in such a hurry! I think there’s something really nasty going on there now. MORT: Wow, okay. ₵Ø₥Ɇ ₮Ø ₥Ɇ, ₵ⱧłⱠĐ. ł ⱤɆ₴łĐɆ ł₦ ₮ⱧɆ ₵Ɽ₳₮ɆⱤ. MORT: …

RUNE: Man, I don’t know… is it really that urgent? MORT: I dunno, I just think it would be great to get rid of the strange plant whispers in my head. They’re starting to bother me. A lot. RUNE: ….

RUNE: Do we even know where that crater is? ⱧɆ₳Đ ₦ØⱤ₮Ⱨ. MORT: Augh, it’s that freaky voice again… RUNE: Wait, voice?? MORT: Einarr pointed it out to me this morning and now it won’t shut up. RUNE: Is it from that whole possession thing? Did it tell you anything?

MORT: It wants us to head north??? RUNE: Is that where the crater is?

ɎɆ₴ MORT: Y-yes.

RUNE: Well. Alright. RUNE: I got you into this mess, I’m gonna get you out of it. Go find the others. I think we should try going there. Maybe there’s a cure. MORT: But the warnings??? RUNE: Screw those warnings, we can probably handle it anyway! What’s the worst that can happen? Death? We can’t die. We’re vampires, remember? MORT: I literally got possessed by a fruit last night. We’re not that immune to otherworldly nonsense. RUNE: Well, you still want to get rid of those whispers, right? We’ve got to find you a cure. ₦Ø!!! MORT: Yeah…. RUNE: Let’s find the others, alright? MORT: Alright.

They let the others know, and headed for the lab…

BAT: Wait, why am I here again? She was right, this place is super boring.

BAT: Bye, losers.

MORT: Huh. Something about a meteor impact? No wonder we’re in a crater. ⱧɆⱠⱠØ, ₵ⱧłⱠĐ. ł ₴ɆɆ ɎØɄ'VɆ ₵Ø₥Ɇ ₮Ø ₥Ɇ. MORT: Argh, shut up!

Back at home, Kvikindi decided to help out a little too. There are so many of these plants…

Einarr went to the motel as well, and managed to break into a certain locked room at the motel. Vampiric entrance and all that, you know.

RUNE: …we gotta figure out what’s behind this door.

#vampire thread mirror #strangerville spoilers #long post #mags' bat sims

[colitisandme]

The health assessment paperwork from the DWP arrived a few days ago because just in case I didn’t have enough pain in my life, I am being assessed to see if I am just ill enough to qualify for a PIP. This was my doing (stupid past me) but it was necessary, as I am poor and stringy and jobless due to ex work cutting my probation short after being signed off sick and ultimately because I couldn’t work due to extreme ill health, sending me on my merry way. So short of selling my organs, (which I didn’t think anyone would want) I need some financial help. I must admit that I was dreading the form arriving as I hate filling out health/medical forms. I hate that someone who has no idea what the hell its like to be living with a condition makes a judgement on your illness. It’s like when you used to go to the fair and you play the game where you have to smack the big red button with a hammer to see if you can ring the bell at the top to prove you are indeed the strongest of them all, and win a prize and if you can’t hit the bell then you get nothing.

In my imagination, this is what my PIP assessment will be like. Some cruel lab of torture equipment and experiments designed to push my sanity and health to breaking point, to ascertain if I reach the correct level of illness needed to meet their impossible criteria and get some pennies. Maybe I will be asked to eat an entire chocolate cake with my hands tied behind my back, desperately trying not to swallow the key they have hidden at the bottom of the cake, that once I have found by using my face to dig through all the folds of deadly cream, jam and chocolate, will allow me access to the bathroom. Then 6 medical doctors and DWP officials will crowd into a glass sided booth as they all watch me flop about like an angry walrus, desperately trying to open the door to the bathroom with my teeth, trying not to explode or fart due to ingesting some of said cake. As a tiny woman in an oversized white, medical coat times me with a stop watch, and measures my pain on a barrometer of bowel distress, and a wiry gentlemen with spectacles collects my sweat in a jar to see if it reaches the desired amount to qualify. Or maybe they will bring out Colin the ‘colonoscopy chinchilla’ complete with camera, to perform an on the spot surprise colonoscopy and, with the help of treats and moral support, (all 6 Drs will encourage him to be a good fellow) he will be cajoled to take a quick run up my colon to inspect my digestive system and report back his findings.

And if the medical assessment doesn’t bring me out in a sweat, hives and ensue a barrage of colourful language, the paperwork has done.

40 pages! 40 pages? Seriously??? I was under the misapprehension that pips are small annoying, but innocuous things, found in fruit that get discarded before you put them in a pie or desert. But not this one. When it arrived it nearly knocked me out, as the postman pushed it with such force through my letter box it nearly careered into my head. Whilst being thankful a government document hadn’t caused me concussion, I wondered how many trees were felled in order to make this booklet. It was heavy. I groaned. I procrastinated. I did everything I could think of doing before opening it. When I did get up the courage and flipped through the pages. I got angry. Really angry. In my opinion this was designed by a very disgruntled, Demon or group of Demons who spend their eternity coming up with new pays to torture, annoy and otherwise hack people off by designing horrendous health, medical, disability financial assessments. These arsehats then get infinite pleasure watching people swear, cry and pull their hair out over completing these blasted things whilst we poor sods, curse the very day someone came up with the infernal idea.

These gargantuan sized documents are sent to the most vulnerable. Those who who live on their own, who are isolated, who have a multitude of illnesses, those who are penniless, crying out for help, who are at their wits end and they have to sift through 40 intimidating looking, cocking pages, fill in all the nitty gritty about their disability, gather evidence, and then after all that, after probing through every aspect of their illness, writing down how it effects them, how it effects others, if they can toilet, dress, eat, which is upsetting at the very least, and humiliating at most, they will then be told to appear at a time and place to be assessed by a DR they do not know, answer more questions then wait for god knows how long for an answer. And even after all that they could be told they are just not ill or disabled enough to qualify but thanks for playing anyway! Is that helping the vulnerable? Really?

I haven’t completed it yet. I am nervous that because I am not answering ‘yes, I get this with the most degree of severity every millisecond of every day’ to every question then it’s just going to be laughed at and chucked in the shredder. Because here’s the thing. There are days and moments and seconds where I don’t chew my fist in pain, there are times when I can eat without hurling a plate across the room because the pain of eating has literally taken my breath away. There are days when I can do housework, tidy up, cook, go out, socialise, manage a few days without extreme joint pain or fatigue taking over my body, making me feel like I have run a marathon underwater. And sure not every single day I stagger to the kitchen to fill up yet another waterbottle as it’s the only thing that will help my belly. However there are also days when I am in so much pain my husband has to help dress me/ undress me because I can’t move, there are days when I can’t eat at all because it feels like there are boulders in my stomach. There are seconds I want to cry with the frustration of not being able to go out, there are moments when I am so tired, all I can do is crawl to the sofa. There are minutes when i am cursing the fact my immune system is so low I am battling another cold and wondering how long this one will last. There are hours I spend on the loo either going too much or not at all, desperately trying to breathe through the discomfort. Because one minute, hour, day, week, month is not like the other. So how is illness or disease or disability quantifiable or justifiable in their eyes? What measurement of pain is enough to get help? What level of health is perceived as the right level to govern some kind of support? How high does the metal strip need to travel on the strong man game to let us hit the bell and win the prize?

Pain is pain. Disability is disability. Chronic long term illness is Chronic long term illness. I have a disease. Thats it. Who can judge what’s acceptable for help and what is not? But in the end despite my anger and misgivings I have no choice but to fill it out and send it off because, I like many others, need the help and financial support. So even though I am being forced to jump through hoops, like a fat seal at a circus, it’s the only thing I can do, so I will do what they want. They will judge me, they will scrutinise what I write on this form and what I say, and I will try my best to prove how ‘strong I am to get the prize at the fair’, and continue to hope that one day, the crazyness will end for everyone.

[imaginetonyandbucky]

Murder (or a Heart Attack)

Part Two

“Steve, I’m doomed,” Bucky said. U was in his lap while he sat on Tony’s sofa, purring madly and nudging at Bucky’s hand every time he stopped moving his fingers.

“Why are you doomed this time?” Steve was heartless.

“The new book is shit. It’s total and utter shit. My career is over, I am going to starve to death on the streets,” Bucky said.

“Does that mean I actually get to read the new book now?” Remarkably unconcerned at the prospect of Bucky starving to death. Some best friend Steve was.

“Mrrrp?” U stuck in her opinion, but Bucky wasn’t sure how to interpret it. The cat got up and stuck a cold nose in Bucky’s ear, which was kinda sweet and a little distracting. Bucky stroked down her back a little more firmly, which got her to settle back into his lap.

“No,” Bucky exclaimed. “Why would I let you read it, it’s complete shit.”

“Um, because I’m your agent, in addition to being your best friend, and you’re contractually obligated to let me read it once you finish a draft.” That had been Steve, putting it into the contract, otherwise Bucky might sit on most of his novels forever. It had been a distinct possibility before Not Without You was ever published, and then, despite becoming a New York Times bestseller practically overnight, Bucky had sat on the second book, End of the Line, for almost eight months before submitting it.

After that, Steve had forced the contractual obligation; Bucky had to let Steve read the draft as soon as it was finished.

Five books later, and Bucky still didn’t feel like a real writer.

He wondered sometimes if this was a problem other people had. Did insurance claims adjusters wonder if they were real claims adjusters? Did real estate agents get concerned as to whether or not they’d arrived?

“It’s shit,” Bucky insisted. “I don’t know why you want to read shit.”

“Because, Jaime Buchanan,” Steve said, using Bucky’s pen name as a particularly harsh epithet, “what you call shit, most people call a fifty-thousand dollar advance. One of these days, I’ll get you to write something that’s not shit and we can all retire to Tahiti.”

“I hear it’s a magical place,” Bucky said. U batted at his hand again and issued a meowing complaint.

“Did… did you get a cat, Buck?”

“No, this is Tony’s cat,” Bucky said, cheerfully. He’d much rather talk about Tony’s cat than his shitty excuse for a novel any day of the week. “Say hi to my horrible agent, U.” He held the cellphone out to the cat, who mewed as if on command and then rubbed her chin against the corner.

“Who’s Tony?” Steve sounded suspicious.

More below the break, or you can read any of tisfan’s stuff on a03

“Neighbor,” Bucky said, trying to sound casual. He hadn’t mentioned it, but cat-sitting for Tony had become one of the highlights of his life. This was the fourth time; Tony kept getting called out of town for business and, as he said, “you’re right here, so I don’t have to ask Pepper to come all the way from Midtown, so you know, as long as you don’t mind…”

Bucky didn’t mind.

After realizing that Bucky would eat leftovers, Tony left the fridge full of stuff in neatly labeled tupperware and Bucky stopped looking like a refugee from a crash diet camp. When Bucky had attempted to protest, Tony explained that while he always packed the leftovers, he rarely ate them, and besides, it made him feel better about imposing so often.

“You have a neighbor?”

“Well, as a matter of fact, I think there are eleven units aside from mine in the building,” Bucky said. “I’m not entirely sure how many--”

“All hail Lord Pedantic,” Steve said, so dry he could qualify for desert-in-training. “You have a neighbor that you talk to. That you know his name. Bucky… you haven’t spoken to anyone new that you didn’t have to…”

“Can we not talk about that, Steve? Look, Tony’s nice. He has a nice cat. And he asks me to look after her once in a while. So, it’s okay. Let’s… just not make a big deal out of it? Right now it’s not a big deal, and I don’t want it to be a big deal.”

“Tell you what,” Steve said. “You let me come over tonight and give me your manuscript, and I won’t say another word about your neighbor or his cat, okay?”

“Deal,” Bucky said. He was not an idiot, no matter what Steve thought sometimes, and he heard the sharp inhalation that Steve made. Never, ever in their history of Steve being Bucky’s agent (they were best friends first, and Steve was really only Bucky’s agent out of sheer necessity) had Bucky ever turned over a first draft without several weeks worth of begging, pleading, and threatening.

“Maybe you should think about getting a cat,” was all that Steve had to say. And then he hung up. He was probably going to come over in a few hours, and Bucky might want to take a shower and try to clean up a little bit before that happened. Not that he was having as much trouble with the pretending to be human thing. The thought that Tony might knock at any moment and want to bring Bucky a casserole, or ask for cat-sitting, or just to say hi, had kept Bucky mostly clean, occasionally dressed, and less distracted than he’d been in years.

“Don’t be silly,” Bucky told the phone. And the cat in his lap. “There’s nobody quite like U, right U?”

U agreed with that assessment.    

“Hey,” Bucky said. He was shaking so hard that he had to stuff his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie to keep himself steady.

“Hey, Bucky,” Tony said. His whole face lit up with a smile, his eyes did that wonderful crinkle thing that Bucky just loved. “What are you… it’s good to see you!”

First time for everything. Tony hadn’t been out of town in weeks and while he dropped in from time to time to bring Bucky a coffee cake, and one time a whole batch of homemade strawberry jam, Bucky hadn’t gotten to see him much. So, he’d taken some initiative and knocked on Tony’s door.

“I… uh…” Bucky started, feeling a blush creep up his neck. God, he used to be smooth, he used to be a flirt, and it had been forever since he’d talked to anyone but Steve, and sometimes Steve’s boyfriend, Clint. “I was…”

“Yrrrple!” U came trotting toward the front door and Bucky was already twisting into a squat to catch up the cat and cuddle her against his chest before he knew what he was doing.

“You wanna come in and have dinner? We could watch a movie and hang on the sofa or something? I think someone’s been missing U.”

“Was that a pun?” Bucky squinched up his eyes at Tony.

“Only if you think it was funny,” Tony said. “Come on, come in. I cooked more than I can eat, anyway.”

“You always do,” Bucky pointed out.

Tony had been making vegetable primavera, the garlic sauteed vegetables were just the right amount of tender, the noodles firm, the wine and basil sauce sharp and delicious. Tony scooped up two bowls and they sat on his couch and watched a movie. Bucky wasn’t even sure what the movie was; about halfway through, U climbed into Bucky’s lap and stretched out and Tony was absently petting her until she fell asleep. And then his hand just… lingered there. Resting on the cat, which was resting on Bucky’s thighs.

Which should not have been getting Bucky aroused.

Except for all the ways that it was.

Shit.

“OMGSTEVE!”

“Are you even serious, right now?” Steve asked. “It’s three in the morning.”

“U is gone, Steve, ohmigod, what am I supposed to do?”

“Bucky, what?”

Bucky stared at the hole in the window screen, barely big enough for the cat to slide out, but apparently she had, because she was absolutely nowhere in Tony’s apartment. He’d taken his laptop over while he sat with the cat in the kitchen. Tony’s left a note, some pot pie, and some homemade baklava, and Bucky had eaten dinner. Then, rather than leave, he’d sat on the sofa and worked on the new book -- a minor miracle in and of itself, because Bucky never worked on a new book before the old book had gone through at least three of its minimal five revisions before he’d let Steve actually send it to the publisher -- and talked to the cat in between paragraphs.

It was hot in the condo, but nice outside. Nicer outside than inside, really, so Bucky had opened the window a bit. Seemed silly to turn the air conditioning on, and even if it wasn’t, Bucky wasn’t sure if Tony would approve of that, so he didn’t.

And he’d fallen asleep.

Which apparently had been the signal for U to do something she’d never done before.

Exit the building.

Bucky had already been outside for over an hour, looking for the cat, calling her softly, because he didn’t want to wake up the neighbors.

“Just put food in her dish, she’ll come back when she gets hungry. It’s just a cat, Bucky, Jesus, I thought somebody died.”

Bucky nearly dropped the phone, pulling it away from his ear and staring at it. “U is not just a cat, Steve,” he said, firmly. Then punched the disconnect button because obviously Steve was not going to be of any help whatsoever.

Steve called back and Bucky did something he almost never did. He clicked Steve over to voicemail.

And looked for the cat.

He did not find the cat.

Steve called back four times and left voicemail.

to be continued 

#winteriron #prompts #tony x bucky #tony stark #bucky barnes #tisfan #cat goes missing #Tony has a cat #but bucky has kittens #PTSD!Bucky

[riting]

Johanna Hedva and Lucas Wrench on the durational performance of Machine Project

When Machine Project closed a year ago, on January 13, 2018, we wondered: what if what just ended was a show that was fifteen years long? Perhaps a bunch of artists had visited there as unwitting collaborators in, and audience to, an ongoing performance disguised as discrete events? We asked a couple Machine regulars to write about the show and reflect on how it might help them think about issues specific to performance.

Johanna Hedva: If Machine Project wasn’t a big ol’ performance, what was it?

Was it a science-fiction movie? It had (was) an imaginative concept that foregrounded innovation and exciting technologies, and was entirely populated by extraterrestrials.

Was it a catering service? When I worked there, every day we’d scoot the tables together and squinch our IKEA folding chairs in close and eat the takeout lunch Mark Allen had bought for us out of company funds, and this is the number one reason, of so many reasons, why it’s still the best job I’ve ever had, and I imagine I can speak for my fellow colleagues in saying that it’s one of the best jobs they’ve ever had, simply because eating together day in and day out for several years builds community and trust and friendship like nothing else.

Figure 1: Claire Kohne as Kalypso the vengeful sorceress who chases after Odysseus as he is being rescued in the VONS parking lot. From Odyssey Odyssey (2013).

Was it a really long Vine? ‘Twas a zany goofball slapstick premise exceptionally executed in an unfathomably pinched amount of time, and also served as a vessel for cultural criticism and commentary, while birthing a zillion trends.

Was it a tabletop role-playing game? Maybe not exactly, but in essence it was a bunch of people who could be called players rather than competitors, creating their own characters who participate in a collective narrative within an agreed-upon (fictional or non) setting, which follows guidelines and rules of that agreed-upon world, but which is not necessarily and probably quite different from the rest of the world, and which is great fun and probably addicting. Also, once they got that great website, they sort of became a MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game), because of those brilliant animated avatars (drawn by Tiffanie Tran) of an octopus (representing the artist), a cactus with a beret (poets), and a pineapple with a mustache (representing the public).

Was it a Hollywood blockbuster? Because it pretty much fits film critic Tom Shone’s definition of a blockbuster being “a fast-paced, exciting entertainment, inspiring interest and conversation beyond the theatre (which would later be called ‘buzz’), and repeated viewings,” and, for a nonprofit, it was pretty damn financially successful.

Was it a book of aphorisms? Fits the Online Etymology Dictionary’s definition for aphorism as “a concise, terse, laconic, and/or memorable expression of a general truth or principle,” and it would be more than just one aphorism, more like a book of them, a very long book, because there were way more than just a few.

Figure 2: Joe Seely as Clay, an old bitch who's been waiting in the desert for 100 years to see the symbol of her desire again. From Ancient Monuments to What (2015).

Speaking of books! Was it a cookbook? Chock full of recipes that simultaneously include careful measurements and room for error, for how to make various dishes, from soupy liquids to layered cakes to multi-plated entrees?

Was it an example of magical realism? Political critique folded into phantasmagorical otherworldly otherworlds, with intricate metaphors, animals, witches, forests, and shipwrecks, and strange objects and doorways that may or may not take you to another dimensional realm that may or may not be 100 years from now or in the past.

Was it a PhD thesis on how certain forms of sociality feel better than others, but strangely it’s hard to articulate why?

Was it an attempt at utopia? Isn’t utopia inherently a failure? Then, but, so, didn’t it succeed?

Was it a puzzle that refused to be solved?

Figure 3: Nickels Sunshine as Yama-uba, a crone with mouths under her hair who feeds on young girls. From Ancient Monuments to What (2015).

Was it a distant island that we tried to voyage to, but alas, our ship ran aground and our beards grew wildly and became entangled in the rigging and, thin with scurvy, we watched the sun go down as the skies roared with thunder and some of us howled at the future while others listened to the wind?

Was it a petition or a vow?

Was it a love letter? It loved me. I loved it. Am I the only one, I don’t think so.

Should these questions be answered? Can they? But why would we want to?

Was it a promise covered in tiny musical notes that when all played together made the big, resounding chord of curious joy?

Was it a dream? It was one of the best dreams.

Johanna Hedva is a fourth-generation Los Angelena on their mother’s side and, on their father’s side, the grandchild of a woman who escaped from North Korea. Hedva is the author of the novel, On Hell (2018, Sator Press). Their fiction, essays, and poems have appeared in Triple Canopy, The White Review, Black Warrior Review, Entropy, Mask, 3:AM, Asian American Literary Review, The Journal Petra, DREGINALD, and Two Serious Ladies. Their works of performance, design, and sound have been shown at Human Resources LA, PAM, the Getty’s 2013 Pacific Standard Time, the LA Architecture and Design Museum, and the Museum of Contemporary Art on the Moon. Most of their performances in Los Angeles were hosted by Machine Project, including The Cave series and Odyssey Odyssey, their adaptation of Homer's Odyssey, which was performed in a Honda Odyssey being driven down the freeway. 

Lucas Wrench: Notes on Vermin

The Machine Project Mystery Theater was originally built in 2013 for Chris Weisbart’s Alvarado Caverns project - which transformed Machine Project’s storefront into an amalgamation of a 99 cent store, gas station bathroom, hologram-laden indoor cave, and a faux-victorian seventeen seat basement theater, replete with velvet curtains, gold foam molding, and clamshell stage lights. Most importantly, Machine Project’s Mystery Theater featured a drop-tile foam ceiling, painted gold, leaving a ten inch gap between Machine Project’s rapidly deteriorating ground level floorboards and the precariously adhered foamcore below. Due to Machine Project’s penchant for spontaneous trapdoor construction, by the time I arrived in the summer of 2014, this once benign buffer zone had transformed into a kind of snack graveyard, home to pretzel crumbs, gummy bears, stray popcorn, spilled Tecate, and several bags of chips.

I’d like to examine the multi-year rat infestation that followed through the lens of what our founder refers to in donor presentations as “grass roots porosity”. It’s the philosophy that a small, nimble art space like Machine Project can be host, partner, and collaborator with a wide range of fellow art spaces, community groups, and institutions, creating a network that’s arguably more generative than those of better funded, but less porous institutions.

Figure 1: “Pro-Porosity / Grass Roots Culture”

Porosity is a liability for museums. While Machine Project’s vermin offerings were limited to Snyder’s pretzel rods and various gas station snacks, the sustenance provided by collecting institutions is far more valuable. Anthropological materials offer a protein rich food source, full of keratin, wood proteins, and plant matter. Works on paper can be considered simple sugars - easily digestible starches beloved by louse and silverfish. Painting offers a mixed diet - glues and varnish, wood and canvas. In anticipation of these threats, the borders of the institution are vigilantly policed. Giant freezers inoculate unseen intruders. Inspections and traps hunt for “visitors” like lady bugs and house flies, that can indicate a breach in security and become food for more malevolent vermin. Black lights scan for eggs and insect trails that warn of pending invasions.

Figure 2: Document Freezer at the Gilcrease Museum - Tulsa, OK

Figure 3: Insect trap collection at Gilcrease Museum - Tulsa, OK

To be clear, i’m not advocating for more rat-infested art spaces. Machine Project’s infestation was traumatizing. It demanded weekly visits from Karl The Exterminator to remove glue traps from the drop ceiling. I had a rat chew its way through the secret trapdoor in the upstairs apartment and fall some sixteen feet into the storefront. I saw rat tails dip low between the foamcore tiles, nearly brushing the heads of unsuspecting audience members below. Mice crawled over my feet as I attempted to run sound from the back of the theater. More traumatizing still was the constant, audible scurrying, the threat that at any moment the flimsy tiles would fall, unleashing the barely contained plague above.  

Figure 4: Diagram of Machine Project Rat Migration

But with a year and a half of distance between me and the rats, I recognize that the conditions that enabled this gnawing torment are the same conditions that made Machine Project such a valuable resource for artists. It was a space where you could cut a trapdoor in the ceiling without hesitance, and install gold foam tiling without concern for the ensuing trash accumulation. Where a temporary basement theater could stay up for a few more years so other artists can use it. Where the solution to a three year rat infestation was removing the floor of the storefront entirely, then reinstalling it at a 30 degree angle to present a play.

I’m now living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, working at a museum with a giant freezer and insect traps, in an office that requires key-cards to access, where no food is allowed, and the trash is dutifully removed every night.  I am protected here - a beneficiary of the museum’s commitment to preserve their collection in perpetuity, and a casualty of the fact that crumbs in my office could spell disaster for some Xth century manuscript stored a floor below. But from a public programming perspective, tasked with bringing the outside in, I can’t help wondering what it would look like to create some space here where a bit of infestation is tolerable. The only problem is how to keep it from spreading.

Lucas Wrench is a 2019 Tulsa Artist Fellow. He was Machine Project’s operations manager (2014-2017) and associate curator (2015-2017).

Machine Project was a place for artists to do fun experiments, together with the public, in ways that influenced culture. It happened at 1200 D North Alvarado, Los Angeles, CA 90026, and elsewhere, from 2003-2018.

Photos by Laure Joliet and provided by the artists.

#machine project #Long Riting #johanna hedva #lucas wrench

[aveyondwinterexchange]

BlackPrincess from the Aveyond Kingdom forum’s gift for Rosetyler aka @rhendarzon!

A White Surprise

Part 1

White. Everything’s white. White snow. Its cold. I’m cold. But still its beautiful. How funny. Sitting in a cold room, shivering, yet, looking at the snow, I can’ help thinking its beautiful. It really is funny……

“Rhen, wake up.”

“Mmmm, 5 minutes more, Pa.”

“Rhen, get up. It’s Dameon.”

Rhen’s eyes shot open,”Huh what? Did I sleep in?” She looked outside her window.”But, its still dark outside.”

“Rhen, that’s….”

“Wait,” she got up and moved to the window. “Why’s there water on the window.” She wiped it and was shocked to see….What? Why’s everything white? Snow? But  we  were in Sedona!”

“Rhen, we’re still in Sedona. It’s Christmas.”

“Christmas?”

“Yes, that’s why I came in early to wish you.”

“But everything was normal just yesterday!”

“Yes, that’s the specialty of Christmas in Sedona. Just before the day it gets covered in white.”

“Already planning on going out you two.”

Rhen and Dameon turned to see the speaker leaning on the door.

“Lars, I was getting her to come down.” Dameon responsed calmly.

“Yeah sure, you do that cause everyone’s waiting for someone.” Lars rolled his eyes and went down.

“Rhen, why don’t you come down and join us?”

“Hmm? Yeah, you go ahead.”

Dameon nodded and left the room.

“Christmas, huh?” her thoughts drifted in the white city.  

“You know about Christmas?” Lars raised an eyebrow.

“Of course I do. You are amusing human.” Te’ijal chuckled.

“What happens in Ghed’ahre then? Red snow and Blood tree?”

“Your imagination is very amusing.” The vampress laughed.

“I’m intrigued, vampress. What do you do?” Elini asked.

“Well, nothing special just hunt down some food and decorate the tree with the remainings. It looks like the dolls in yours just a bit livelier.”

“………”

“Did she just say they decorate the tree with the corpses?” Lars whispered to Elini. She only shrugged.

The party were playing cards at the dining table while sharing they’re experiences.

“Elini, you live in the desert which means you have a ‘hot’ Christmas? It must be comforting than this shivering cold.”

“True, sorcerer. But I find the snow quite interesting.”

“What about the tree if there is any?”

“Of course we have our tree, how idiotic. We make a special one.”

“Special one?”

“A tree made of sand.”

“…………”

“What? It’s interesting when you see it. Well, sometimes the huge amount of sand does result in a sandstorm. But then again, its interesting to see people scattering around from the top of your tower.” She laughed.

“Ya’re the only one who could find that amusing, crazy woman.” The pirate said.

“And what about you then, darling?”

“Huh, mine’s something like ya’ve na’er seen,” John stated.

“Yeah sure,” Lars rolled his eyes.

“Such days are good for the business, specially the merchant ships.”

“You steal? Isn’t that against the ‘Christmas spirit’ or something?”

“Nay! We do show mercy on this day, letting them have their dress. And then we have a blast at the sea. Ah, you na’er now the fun in the sea.”

“Does that mean normally you take their clothes too?”

“Ya, everything belongs to a pirate wance he has his eyes on it.”

“Hmm well, that’s true,”Elini purred closing the minimal distance between them.

“Watch it, crazy woman!”

“I’m curious to know how you celebrate it, crumpet?”

“I do not owe you any explanation, demon spawn!” Galahad said in his usual attitude. “But since everyone is sharing I may as well participate.”

“Seriously, cut the lecture and get started already.”

“Patience, boy. It is not good for a young boy to be always on temper.”

“I’m not a-“

“As I was saying, there is nothing noble than to serve my kingdom as a gallant knight.”

“So, you do the same thing as you do everyday?” Elini asked

“Well, I do extra rounds of the city and ensure that every citizen is safe, that is how I spend the noble day in a noble way.”

“as expected.” Lars sighed.

“this drink is quite good, miss Marge.” Dameon said.

“It’s called eggnog. But I suppose ‘The Priest’ doesn’t have time for such things.” Lars said having his drink.

“And of course you have the right to decide about everything about everyone,” Rhen said sarcastically.

“So, ‘she’ finally speaks to defend her knight.”

“Rhen, you’ve been quite this evening. Is something bothering you?” Dameon asked ignoring Lars.

“Yes, Swordsinger that is true. You are not even doing your usual bickering with the sorcerer. I was missing it.”

“I don’t bick-“

“That’s why the human’s winning,: Te’ijal said cutting off Lars.

Everyone noticed then noticed that with the flow of their conversation, they gave the wrong cards.

“It seems that its just the Sorcerer and the Swordsinger then.”

“That’s not fair! This is my game and I’m supposed to win!”

“Calm down, pirate. Enjoy the fiddling of these two with me.”

“You’ve been winning because the others weren’t paying attention. You’re never going to  win against me.”

“Says who, the idiotic snob.”

“If you’re so confident then let’s make it  a challenge. The loser has to do whatever the winners says till the next morning.”

“Fine then.”

After ten minutes…………

“Told you I would win.”

“But, how did this happen……”

“Huh! You should learn from the master. According to the condition you have to do whatever I say.” Lars grinned.

“Whatever……what do you want me to do then?”

“Not here. Lets go outside.” Saying so Lars took her out of the manson.

“The fun’s over I guess. Let’s do something ourselves too, John.”

“As if I’d agree.”

A White Surprise

Part 2

“What do you want now?”

“Just keep walking.”

“Yeah right, it’s cold out.”

“Why were you so quiet back in?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t say what you did?”

“Oh you want to what’s Christmas is like to me? Fine then. I used to be so happy when I saw the snow out of my room in my village. I’d have snowball fight with my friends, make snowman with Pa, Ma’s cakes; everything was so special to me. But then suddenly I became a slave and it ended. After that, Christmas meant cold days locked in a room to me. I didn’t have anything to wear or eat or do anything I did. I could only stare at kids by my window. I felt so lost and lonely because of-”

“Me?”

“I……” Rhen stared at him.

“It’s okay, you can say it. let it out. It’ll be good.”

“Lars, I-“

“Well, we’re here.”

Rhen looked at the tall building before them. “We go in?”

“No, we go up.”

Saying so Lars teleported them on the roof.

“Ahh, you could’ve at least warned me. Don’t just suddenly poof us anywhere.”

“Sorry,” Lars chuckled.

“So, what do we do now?”

“Sit, there’s something I want you to see.”

“Huh? Ok.”

“Rhen, when I apologized to you, I did it sincerely. Do you believe that.”

“umm…… I do.”

“You should. I was, I am serious. I know I hurt you a lot of times that I can’t change. But I do want to mend what we have.

“Lars?”

“So, here.” He pushed an object in her hand.

“What’s this? A gift? For me?”

“It is Christmas, after all.”

Being curious she unwrapped it to find a beautiful silver mirror.

“A mirror? And what am I supposed to do with it?”

“Did you actually think I’d give you an ordinary mirror?”

“Then what does it do?”

“Close your eyes and think of the person you want to see.”

She did as was told.

“Now open them.”

Upon  opening her eyes, she saw her parents in the mirror. “What?”

“It’s a mirror that lets you see the person you want to no matter wherever they are. Of course that person has to be someone you interacted with.”

She wasn’t paying attention to him as she was busy watching her beloved parents with eyes full of emotions.

“Careful, you wouldn’t want to let an idiotic snob to see you cry.”

“I’m not crying, you idiot. What’s that?” Rhen pointed to the sky where colorful patterns started to appear. “Fireworks? But they are not coming  from the ground. Wait, are you?”

“hey, I wanted to see the fireworks but it got cancelled. How stupid. So, I made my own. They should be thankful to me.”

“Yeah right,” she rolled her eyes. “It’s beautiful.”

“Was that a compliment?”

“I guess it is.” She smiled looking at the colorful night sky. “oh look, its snowing.”

“……its getting cold. Lets go back. I’m going to teleport us just so you know.”

“Yeah……” Rhen replied.

They were back on the ground, walking towards he mansion.

“Lars?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you for the gift.”

“You do know that it means you owe me one.”

“I guess I do then.”

“Well, then you’re allowed to serve me tomorrow as well, consider it a bonus.”

“Lars,” Rhen came in front him from his side. “Is that really what you want?” she spoke leaning closer to him.

“What are-” Lars started but got caught up by those amethyst pools, coming closer and closer. He was breathing in her breath. A mix of mauves and oranges fooled his vision. A soft warmth brushing against his lips.

“You really think I’m that dense?” Rhen whispered in his ear and placed another soft kiss on his cheek. She twirled and walked away. Looking over her shoulder, she watched as Lars slowly touched the recently wounded area, still dazed. She smiled with a blush and hurried back.

“Crumpet, I’ve brought a gift for you.” Te’ijal said to Galahad in a singsong voice.

“I will not fall for your evil schemes, demon spawn!”

“Trust me, it’s something you always wanted. Look,” she swayed the soul pendant in front of him.

“You are giving it to me?” He took it, still confused. “You are returning my soul to me?! The gods have finally lighted your senses.”

“Who said anything about returning your soul? I’m just giving you the pendant you wanted me to give you back.”

“What games are you playing at?”

“I just happened to stroll around the market where I found a witch selling some quite interesting collection of spells. Among which caught my attention was a ‘soul binding spell’. Now, our souls are eternally binded together and I don’t need a pendant. So, I thought of giving it to you.”

As soon as Te’ijal finished, Galahad landed on the couch, unconscious.

“It seems he couldn’t contain the joy, how amusing.”

“ ‘joy’, huh. He sure did.” Elini commented. “Where are you headed at this time, Sun Priest?”

“Don’t you think they’re taking too long? I’m going to look for them.” As he touched the door handle, he was pulled backward by a force.

“Sorry, Priest. But unfortunately for you, I’m going to have them they’re time.” Saying so she finished her remaining job.

“You are one particular amusing human.” Te’ijal grinned watching her.

“I know, right?”

Just then, Rhen entered the house.

“Well well, back from your small trip, eh?”

“What is that on your head, human?” ”Huh?” ”Let me see,” Elini got it out from her hair. “You might not recognize this. It’s mistletoe. These have special attraction here on this occasion, specially among young people. Am I not right swordsinger?”

“Ah well…….”

“But the question is how did it end up on you. Have you been experimenting the little tales, I presume.”

“You look quite strange, human. Your face is going red.”

Realizing Elini’s indications, Rhen went up to her room, abashed.

“Ah, young love,” John mused.

“You sound like an old man.”

“Well I-“ he was interrupted by Lars’ arrival, more like slopping.

“How did things go?” Elini inquired, being the only one to know about Lars’ plan.

“… I need something from the storage room,” ignoring Elini’s question, Lars opened the door.

“Human, wait!” What the!” and it was too late. He slammed the door as soon as he saw, “Elini, care to explain, why a red demon has gagged Dameon and holding him?”

“To avoid unnecessary interruptions.” She shrugged. “You should be thankful to me, boy.”

Lars stared at her for a few seconds and sighed, a smirk crept upon his face. “well, it was one heck of a Christmas.”

#Aveyond #aveyond winter exchange #rhen/lars #rhendarzon

[fudge24-7]

Tis my birthday today

#fudge does a talky talk #woohoo #another year on this earth #i had two waffles woth wip cream and strawberry syrup on each #and chocolate syrup on the 2nd #it was tasty #...but at what cost #i can feel it in my chest i have consumed way too much suger #how am i going to eat my cake at desert in these conditions #i geuss i basically got all day until then maybe my body will have worked through this suger by then

[tuellertrails]

Sunday, June 6 2021

This is an Adventure!

It’s been several weeks since my last blog post, and a lot has happened in that time! It’s exciting to see our progress and the miles that we have walked so far. At this point we are 652 miles into our journey, only 50 miles until we enter the Sierra Nevada Mountains and leave the desert behind. We’ve slowly built up our endurance and become stronger and stronger, able to complete over 20 miles per day on average over the past two weeks, minus a few days of extreme heat where our mileage was less. But no one wants to hear about that! As hikers, our conversations seem to revolve around how many miles we plan to go, what the weather is doing, the difficulty of the terrain, where the next water source is, and what kind of food we’re eating. To regular people, this must seem quite boring! To us, it’s as normal as talking about football around the water cooler with coworkers (or in Landon’s case, talking about Columnar Basalt for 10 minutes with other hikers around the pool).

Despite hiking longer days and doing higher miles, we always seem to be stiff and sore! Especially after waking up in the morning. A few weeks ago, we met another hiker couple who actually met hiking the Appalachian Trail a few years ago and ended up dating on trail and then got married earlier this year. Having done a thru hike before, they told us that this is normal! That we will still feel aches and pains throughout the trail, but we will do so having done more miles and harder terrain as we progress. I have found this to be true! It truly is very rare to wake up and feel excellent. Generally, every day feels rather tough to get moving, and we are very tired when we finally do stop hiking. Our physical and mental fortitude continues to be tested day after day, especially in this last 100 miles of hiking.

Leaving Tehachapi, we entered a heat wave in a rather barren and exposed section of trail. I think of all my time on the PCT thus far, this past week tested me the most. Hiking in 90 plus degree heat climbing up hot, sandy slopes with the blaring sun overhead was one of the hardest physical and mental things I have ever done. We pushed ourselves to either wake up incredibly early (around 4 AM) or hike in the dark in the coolness of the descending sun (until 10 and 11 pm). In the hottest part of the day, we would try to find some shade (not easily found sometimes) and take a rest for several hours. Not even the rest came easily though, as the shade proved to be little relief from the sun, and it was too uncomfortable to sleep much. Water sources were few and far between as well, about 20 miles away from each other (and only that close together due to the kindness of trail angels who maintain water caches for the hikers). We would sit at the water caches and drink several liters of electrolytes to “camel up” before heading out again, carrying 5-6 liters apiece (and sometimes still not having enough). The water weighs your pack down quite a lot, but we have discovered that we prefer to hiker with heavy packs than run out of water. This was another reason for our midday rests, we simply did not have enough water to hike in the extreme heat (nor did it prove to be very efficient). You tend to have to ration your water to a certain extent. Landon and I would set up our tent at night, and have conversations like “if we use 500 ml to make dinner, we can drink 500 ml of electrolytes and that will leave us 1 Liter apiece for the next 7 miles to the next water source. If we wake up at 4, we should be able to make it there with that amount of water before it gets too hot.” Logistics and planning are incredibly important out here. I cannot imagine how much more difficult it would have been to hike the PCT pre internet, pre Guthooks (the amazing app we use that has our maps, shows our water sources, etc). I’m so grateful for modern resources to help us plan our days safely out here!

To those of you like my good friend Tayler, who consistently tells me that I do a poor job convincing her that anyone should ever do this, let me talk a little bit about how incredible this experience is despite the hardships. First of all, the community on the PCT is wonderful. I joke that being on trail is a lot like being back in high school with your friends. You’re all sharing very similar experiences that bond you in a way that only other hikers can completely understand! My best example of this was earlier this week, when we set up a tarp at one of the water caches with our friend Jim. Jim is a lovely person, so friendly and fun to talk to. He is also the dirtiest hiker I have ever seen. He sleeps in the same clothes he hikes in and consistently has thick dirt absolutely caked to his legs. As such, I gave him the trail name Dirtcake, which he seems to have accepted (you can accept or reject a suggested trail name). As we lay under the tarp in our makeshift shade, the temperature being clocked in at 99 degrees by Landon’s fancy watch hanging from his trekking pole, we all laughed as we talked about how miserable and absurd this moment was! The wind was blowing fine grains of sand into us, which clung to our sweaty bodies. I looked down at Jim to see clumps of dirt not only clinging to his legs, but also to his chest hair and speckled across his face as he took a feverish nap. As we drank our hot Propel Watermelon water, we all laughed because this is our life right now, and there is no way around it, only through it, but at least we’re going through it together. At least in these less than ideal circumstances, we can talk and laugh and tell stories and experience life in a way that few people ever do. We can reminisce about having awakened to a beautiful morning in a pine forest just that morning, having filtered cool, clear mountain spring water, and that stark contrast that a few miles and 1500 feet of elevation descent can make. We can tell stories about the worst jobs we ever had and laugh about so and so’s crazy manager, or that one Karen customer that threw a fit that one time 10 minutes before the end of a shift (or about how Jim used to eat leftover food from customers at his high school food service job. He was truly meant for the hiker trash life!) It’s the contrast between these experiences that make little luxuries feel so much sweeter and more appreciated than I ever would have been able to know in my rather comfortable pre trail life.

Our 3 hours of tarp hell, suffered together at least.

Here are some things that I am immensely grateful for currently

- The hospitality of friends and strangers. We stayed for free with two friends in Tehachapi, Mitzy and Kristy, both of whom opened their homes to us to rest, shower, watch movies, soak in a hot tub, enjoy a meal, etc. We’ve also had complete strangers show us great kindness! Two wonderful women gave us a ride from Walker Pass into town yesterday, offering us charging cables for our phones, air conditioning, food in the car, and lovely conversation and company. Even the women running the motel we are currently staying in have been exceptional. They allowed us to do our laundry in their motel washer and dryer, fed us snacks poolside, gave us a discount and opened up an extra room (that is normally withheld) because all the rooms in town were booked. If you are ever in Kernville, CA, please check out Piazzas Pine Cone Inn, it’s an absolute oasis! And I would be remiss to not mention the trail angels who maintain the water caches in the desert. These people spend their own time and money (though we always donate if they have a donation box) to buy and transport water jugs back and forth to these remote dirt roads in the desert, just to help out PCT hikers that they don’t know and have never met. Isn’t that the kindest and most incredible act of service?

Being on trail with these other hikers, the most interesting and dynamic people, surrounded by the beauty of the natural world, is the best cure for cynicism and and upsetting news stories and angry political internet arguments. We’re all working toward a similar goal, supporting each other’s journeys, commiserating and laughing together, learning and growing and hurting and hiking. It’s so hard but it’s so wonderful. A couple of weeks ago, my mom made a comment to me that I couldn’t help but laugh at. She said “You know that you could take all of the money that you saved up for this hike, and just go spend a month or two on the beach in Aruba instead, right?” Ha! Yes Mom, I know. We could do that, and it would be much, much easier. A section hiker named Prospector gave us a button that says “This is an adventure.” And no one remembers vacations the same way that they remember adventures!

So as I sit writing this in the soft and very appreciated bed of our small town motel room, I can’t help but feel extremely happy. I know that in a few hours, I will leave the comfort and air conditioning and replace my heavy pack on my sore shoulders. I’ll put on my extremely worn out shoes that will surely leave my feet sore and give me some new blister or two in the coming days (unfortunately my new shoes never arrived due to a shipping mishap, and I’ve had to wear these about 200 miles past their ‘best use by’ date). I’ll sweat through my clothes and collapse from exhaustion and curse the day I ever decided to hike the PCT. But this is an adventure! You can’t ever lose sight of that. And we’re already 650 miles into this adventure! 25% of the way through! I’m so proud of that. Only 50 miles from the Sierra Nevada’s! Where we will enter a while new set of beauty and challenges, embracing it full on, grateful to leave the desert behind.

Here is my Mantra for the PCT, taken from one of my favorite books (recently read in my pre trail book club) The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd


"Then I would rise, my legs snarled with cramps, my stomach panged with hunger, blisters on my heels—oh, but the world was large and mysterious and I was far from home, journeying with my beloved."

Thanks for reading, see you up the trail!

- Joscelyn

P.S. - I finally got my trail name! I am now AC/DC, which actually has nothing to do with any love of the band or 80s music (though I can get down to Highway to Hell as much as the next person). I was named by another hiker named Southern Hospitality, who gave it to me after hearing me blow up my pad with a miniature air pump that I have carried for the entire trail. As an ultralight hiker, he found it absolutely ridiculous and incredibly funny that I have chosen to carry this. It takes 45 breaths to blow up my pad! I hate it. The air pump is the best luxury and absolutely worth the 3 ounces. Landon’s trail name is Outlast, which he received several hundred miles ago actually. We were sitting in a shelter at a wind farm outside of Palm Springs, waiting out the heat of the day with some other hikers. Someone mentioned that the shelter seemed like a hut that would be built in the Reality TV show Survivor, and Landon told them that he had watched all 40 seasons of Survivor over the course of the pandemic. We spent the next 15 minutes talking about Survivor strategy, with Landon giving his expert tips as a student of the show. Our friend Tidbits told him that he needed a Survivor trail name, and so he was given the name Outlast (Survivors motto is Outwit, Outplay, Outlast). It also seems fitting because you truly have to Outlast the difficulty to be a successful thru hiker!

#pct2021 #tuellertrails #pct #hikertrash #pacificcresttrail #pctclassof2021 #thetrek #fuck the sun #womenwhohike #optoutside #thisisanadventure

[lindoig8]

Wednesday - Saturday, 26-29 May

Wednesday, 26 May

I seem to have lost a day. I have no notes from Wednesday, but no photos either so I am sure we stayed in camp all day. I do know that we had showers (we do shower reasonably often, but not necessarily morning and night every day) because we went to the Camp Roast at night all togged up in nice clean clothes. I recall that it was cold and very blustery all day and we wondered if the Camp Roast may have been cancelled with rain threatening, but as I was told, it often threatens but nothing ever happens.

Thursday, 27 May

Not sure if anyone noticed (if anyone is actually looking at my blog) but for the first time in human history, the blog was up-to-date as at late afternoon on Tuesday. Alas, it didn’t stay that way! With time being (for all practical purposes) mono-directional and linear, it soon became out of date as events interposed my ability to log them in real-time. So, to catch up again…..

It didn’t rain during the Camp Roast Dinner – and we got our bottle of red wine without any hassles. But the wind kept blowing and the mercury kept falling and most people were choosing their table positions to take advantage of the roaring fires surrounding the area. Of course, being so chilly, they lit the fires early and we all huddled around them until dinner was served – and the fires were seriously on the wane by the time we had eaten. Only one fire had an adjacent stack of fuel so that one became the de facto meeting point for a chat after the meal. As usual, the main topics of conversation were ‘where have you come from?’ and ‘where are you going?’ with an occasional ’but where is home?’ or ‘how long will you be away?’. It is not always scintillating repartee, but at least most people get a chance to check out what the road conditions were like 6 months ago (or yesterday) and we spoke with a couple of women from Gove so sussed out a little of what it has on offer because we are toying with trying to go up there later in the trip. Most people imagined that snuggling into their blankets might prove warmer than rotisserie-ing in the freezing wind so the crowd thinned pretty quickly and we headed to the van for a hot cuppa and a DVD in bed.

Heather had been commenting that she could small fuel in the car for the past couple of days but I couldn’t. Perhaps not that surprising because she can just about smell things that aren’t there and I can barely smell things right under my nose. I had looked in the back of the car where our spare fuel is stored a couple of times and I couldn’t see anything amiss and certainly couldn’t smell fuel, but today I could. The breather had come loose on one of the jerrycans and spilled a couple of tablespoons of diesel. Fortunately, the jerrycans are in a larger plastic box so only a few tiny splashes got on anything else – only the tailgate and the handle of a sealed drinking-water container as far as I could see. Hopefully, all is now right again, but we will need to watch that on the rough roads.

We went to explore some more fossicking sites on Thursday. We had been told that on the opposite side of the road from our fossicking expedition last Friday, there was another place where people had been picking garnet up off the ground so we went to explore. It had been the site of a road-gang's camp and it looked like a lot of the area had been turned over with some sort of shallow ripper exposing minerals that had previously been underground. We spent ages hunched over looking for colour but really just getting sore backs. Heather found some very tiny bits but we picked up some small conglomerates that appeared to have tiny red specks embedded in them (according to Heather – my colour-blindness defeated me) and they were subsequently confirmed to be very small garnets.

I gave up searching before Heather did so I collected quite a bit of firewood to take back to camp – I wrapped it up in a tarpaulin and put it on the back seat of the car.

We had seen the sign for Mount Riddock so we decided to try to see it a bit closer. Unfortunately, the road, although quite good, didn’t take us to Mt Riddock itself, only to the station homestead and related buildings (the original homestead of which is now heritage-listed and relocated near the shop in our caravan park).

Returning to the Highway, we drove back to the entrance to Cattlewater Pass and drove in to where we had explored a few days ago. This time, we poked around looking for gemstones – now having a slightly better idea of what we were looking for. We spent quite some time bent over peering at the ground, increasing the risk of spinal soreness. Heather found a few small chips and then I found a small area with lots of tiny garnets, mostly on the surface. Within an area of about one square metre, I reckon we collected about 100 small garnets, from very small chips to pieces 3-4 times the size of the best ones we collected during our official fossicking dig. None of them were worth anything because they all had internal fractures, but at least we felt we had our own little Eureka moment out in the desert.

Where the track into Cattlewater Pass leaves the Highway, it bifurcates with a sign indicating a fossicking field 3 kilometres in on the right-hand track and another field 4 kilometres in on the left-hand one. We solved our quandary of a few days ago when we followed the left-hand track in, only to find ourselves on the right-hand track out. There is effectively no right-hand track! It also branches in a couple of places and we explored all the alternatives only to find that they all led back to the left-hand track – either in or out. We never found any apparent fossicking fields either 3 or 4 kilometres in, but we found our own little Bonanza area well off the track a bit more than 4 kilometres in.

The map shows two roads several kilometres apart, both accessing Cattlewater Pass off the Plenty Highway and we eventually found the second one. The map indicated that it eventually joined up with the first track about 5 kilometres in. We were well aware that we could not get near the Pass because it is now closed, but in view of our history on the Track, we decided to explore. Once again, the map was wrong. We drove a bit over 10 kilometres in on an exceptionally good gravel track to a big cattle-yard, loading ramp, two very large dams, a windmill and a huge tank – but no homestead. The road simply stopped there. There was a locked gate into a property but that was all. We simply drove back to the highway and home again.

We took our treasures up to the Gem Room for identification and evaluation, and were distinctly unsurprised to learn that we had not joined Australia’s Rich List as a result of our explorations – at least not the section of the Rich List that makes it to the Press each year. Nonetheless, we purchased a bottle of bubbles and took it back to our campfire, pretending that we had struck it lucky on the day. We used up some of the firewood I collected, but the wind was still strong and very cold so after an hour or so, we retired to our mobile mansion and ate like kings and queens instead of braving the cold outside.

Friday, 28 May

We spent most of the day in the van, but went up to the shop late in the morning to collect the pies we had ordered the day before. They bake a few things each day, including a tray of 24(?) pies that go like hot cakes (hot pies!). They are not cheap at $9 each, but people had raved over them and we decided to give them a go. They had reserved two for us (we paid in advance the day before) and they are worth every cent of the $9. Chunky beef pies, bursting out of their high domed crowns, as much or more over the top of the flan as in it, and absolutely delicious. Better than I could have imagined – and we struggled to eat them all for lunch – even had some left over for Happy Hour around a roaring fire. It was still quite cool with a cold wind, but we kept loading fuel onto the fire and we enjoyed it for an hour or two before retreating to the more general warmth inside the van.

Late in the afternoon, I went out trying to photograph and identify some birds that seemed to frequent a patch of bush not far from the shop and was doing OK until one of our neighbours spotted me and decided she wanted to chat. By the time I had escaped, it was almost too dark for photography, but I identified some Spiny-Cheeked Honeyeaters and some Brown Honeyeaters in addition to the ubiquitous Magpie-larks, Budgies and Zebra Finches.

Saturday, 29 May

We had a relatively easy day, but a very enjoyable one. We drove back to the Mad Russian’s Copper Mine and followed the track past it for another few kilometres before coming to a gate with a bunch of cattle in the adjacent stock-yard. Just as we were approaching, another mob of cattle came running in from the west and seemed quite excitable so rather than stop and spook them further, I simply turned the car around slowly and quietly and returned to the mine-site. We spent an hour or two picking up pretty stones from the tailings left behind from the refining operation and ended up with several small bags of treasure. We then walked further up the track and found the site of the actual mine and saw where the side of the hill had been excavated to collect the ore. We walked a bit further up the riverbed and then all the way back to the main track to the car and a late lunch.

We drove several kilometres further south exploring all the side-tracks (none of which led anywhere) before hitting the Garden Road again where we had driven a week or so ago. We just returned to camp along the same track, stopping often to identify birds or plants. We sat outside the shop again to take advantage of the slightly better signal there and dealt with a few emails and other bits and pieces. We also purchased a vanilla slice to take back for supper. They were recommended to us and although very nice, they were really not in the same class as the pies we ate yesterday.

I have referred to ‘the shop’ numerous times for convenience, but it is not quite a shop in the normal sense we use it. The building houses the Caravan Park Reception, the Gem Shop, the private residence of at least the owners and their partners, some store-rooms, a kitchen (they offer takeaways and a form of room service at quite moderate prices) and the shop. As for stock, they have what they cook on the premises, soft drinks and a bare minimum of essentials such as toothpaste, and very little else. They also stock a few, very few, souvenirs – the main one seemingly a book about the pioneers in the area and Heather purchased that.

Back in the van, we washed all our collected rocks very carefully and examined them in detail to identify some that we could live without – otherwise the caravan suspension would have been at risk of collapse. I guess we are now down to only 4 or 5 kilos of treasure – 20 grams of which might be garnet.

[adambstingus]

Puberty Sucks But Second Puberty Is Just The God-Awful Worst

As you somehow keep holding on when the rodeo horse of life tries to buck you off so it can face its ultimate foe (the rodeo clown of life), you’ll eventually reach a kind of second puberty. The first time, you transformed butterfly-like from child to slightly grosser child. Once all your body’s jagged edges and weird lumps settle into place, you enjoy a prime that’ll last about eight minutes, and you’ll be too drunk or high to remember it.

Second puberty will hit between 28 and 33. The physical changes you’ll undergo — the ones I’m experiencing now — aren’t too dramatic, but are different enough to be unsettling. It’s a harbinger of horrors to come. It’s like Batman getting that vision of the Earth reduced to a dusty wasteland controlled by Darkseid in Batman v. Superman. I want to be Batman in that scenario, but it’s become increasingly apparent that I am the wasteland. As evidence of my physical dilapidation, I present the following.

5

After 9 I Can — And Will — Fall Asleep Anywhere

I’ve been afflicted with a punctual form of narcolepsy. No matter how caffeinated I am, I will fall asleep instantly if certain easily met conditions are present:

1) I have recently eaten dinner after having made dinner, which I do every night.

2) Most of my weight is heaped onto something comfortable. The definition of what can be comfortable is wide enough to include leaning on a wall coated with satin paint (the most comfortable of paints).

3) It is at least 9 p.m.

When those three elements combine, I involuntarily enter, exit, and then reenter a deep state of unconsciousness that I will deny having entered if caught in the act. Vehement denial, punctuated with wild fits of slurred vulgarity, is another symptom of this recently acquired disorder.

g-stockstudio/iStock When one of my molecules touches one couch fiber after a late dinner.

If left untreated, the debilitating sleepiness can lead to waking up in a frightened daze at 3:30 a.m., not fully remembering how I got onto this comfy thing from wherever I ate dinner, be it the dining table in my apartment or the Five Guys a mile away.

Falling asleep early sounds great, but not when I have a wife whom I’d like to remain conscious enough to hang out with after work, because like an idiot I married someone I love and want to be around. Boy, I’m really paying for that dumb mistake.

4

I’m Suddenly Allergic To Life

To my recent unpleasant surprise, allergies aren’t something you’re stuck with your entire life. They are for some people, and my heart goes out to them. I don’t know why we don’t have annual telethons raising money to help lifelong seasonal allergy sufferers pay their Claritin and tissue bills. My mom’s side of the family is where this new nemesis of mine comes from. They didn’t feel the torment of allergies until well into their 20s. I followed a similar path.

Twenty-eight is when things started to go awry. Scratching one small eye itch could trigger an itch that could go on for days and stop just before I took a back-scratcher to my corneas. Things have ramped up since. One sneeze within 10 minutes of waking up is my body’s way of telling me I should sprinkle some blueberries and Benadryl on my morning oatmeal and call it a day. I don’t know what it’s like to breathe through my nose without fear that if I inhale too vigorously I’ll set off a chain reaction of sneezes lasting hours that very well could blow my brain out the back of my skull.

c8501089/iStock Why does this frighteningly appropriate stock photo even exist?

There’s such a wide variety of allergy pills and nasal sprays that finding the one that works best for me is nearly impossible. Once swallowed, some pills will take one look at your genetic makeup and go full diva as they refuse to work with that clown show of body. Have you ever torrented a band’s entire discography, only to realize you don’t have the time to listen to 73 albums, so you delete everything but the greatest hits? That’s shopping for allergy pills. One of the brands I’m not immediately familiar with might be a gamechanger, but I can’t risk blowing my life savings on an absurdly priced pack of pills with a brand name I didn’t see advertised during an award show or an NBA game. I’ll stick with the hits everybody can sing along to — Claritin, Zyrtec, Benadryl.

Xyzal.com They ran out of nonsense letter combos for pills halfway, so they restarted from the beginning of the alphabet.

Sorry, Xyzal, but I don’t know you, and I get the inkling that saying your name out loud summons a long-dormant demon. I just can’t take that risk.

3

I Can Drastically Change Pants Size In The Blink Of An Eye

Technically I’ve worn the same pants size since middle school, but that’s a little disingenuous. I’m a first-wave millennial; we were some of the last kids to think tripping over our very baggy pants was the first step to cultivating an air of supreme dopeness. If I go about my normal diet, everything will be fine. But one Taco Bell pig-out session, or more than one slice of pizza, or more than one beer, and soon I’ll reach the full potential of my middle-school-era JNCOs.

It’s so drastic that I want to take this show on the road. I’ll wow skeptical crowds by swallowing a slice of chocolate cake, and with a magician’s dramatic wave of my hands make any discernible separation between jawline and neck disappear before their eyes. They’ll be looking around for the wires or prosthesis, but they won’t find any. Some will call me a simple trickster; others a heretic. But the truth is that my metabolism is shit and I have to eat like a bird so I don’t look like a boar.

To make sure it wasn’t just me, I asked around. John Cheese told me that once he turned 40, his weight started fluctuating 30 pounds in both directions. He seriously has to keep two wardrobes: one for the fall when he shoots up to 235 pounds, and one for the spring when he drops back down to 200. If you’re thinking that weight change happens over the course of six months, think again. He gains and loses 30 pounds in a matter of weeks, changing absolutely nothing about his diet or exercise routine — the one he has aptly named “I Don’t Exercise, Ever.”

Please, if you’re in your early 20s, listen to me: Enjoy eating however much of whatever you want while you can, because within a handful of years, every ounce of junk food you eat will be converted into a pound of fat in the exact spot that determines your clothing size. Have fun jogging the width of Texas to burn off one bite of donut. When you’re young, your body is a furnace that instantly incinerates whatever you put in it. Eventually it will be a landfill where things slowly decompose over centuries, poisoning the groundwater.

2

My Shit Literally Never Stank Before I Hit My 30s

I don’t want to brag or nothing, but for a long time, I could’ve taken a hearty dump during a crowded house party and no one would’ve been the wiser. I left no odor behind. My body converted the stink into pure energy. I believe there was a point in my life when close study of my body’s internal workings could have led to the design of a more efficient internal combustion engine, thus slowing climate change, thus making my ass the savior of the human race.

And then I got older and my dookie stench roared in with the fury of a long-dormant demon named Xyzal awakening for the first time in centuries. I just wish I’d been able to appreciate what I had before it was gone. Hypothetically, if you and I were in the same room, and I were shitting in that room, you wouldn’t have known it until you heard the plop plop of the water, because I could never figure out how to muffle those. But by scent alone? Nah. Too ninja for you. You’d never know it.

I’m just happy my stink powers activated in the same era as the advent of Poo-Pourri. I don’t want to turn this column into an ad for a bottle of essential oils you spray in a toilet to conceal your turd funk, but that stuff is amazing. If I made the smells I do now 10 years ago without Poo-Pourri, I wouldn’t have friends and I wouldn’t be married. I’d be living in an adobe in the desert, where there’s nothing alive to offend.

1

My Teeth Are Sensitive Little Snowflakes

Every new transformation in second puberty comes with a small shame. Parts of your body are losing function and you can’t do anything to stop it. You can iron the wrinkles out of your balls to make them look 20 years younger, but you’re just filling pot holes in a road as it’s being carpet-bombed. All I can do is accept it. I’ve only just begun accepting every unfortunate transformation I’ve already mentioned. But my sensitive teeth and I will be locked in a mythical eternal battle between good and evil so grand it will one day inspire the creation of a religion. Wars will be fought in its name.

When my teeth suddenly became sensitive to cold temperatures, I felt I had fundamentally failed at being alive. I can’t belt out an “Aw fuck!” when I lick an ice cream cone without ceding some confidence. I can’t feel like I’m in the prime of my life when I double over in a blinding-white flash of pain because I made the fatal mistake of eating cold salami slices straight from the fridge.

It’s stupid to say I like eating, because if I didn’t like it, I’d be too dead of starvation to say it. But I’m certain I like eating a lot more than you do. Anywhere between 50-65 percent of my day consists of grunting orgasmically as I chew. So you have understand how crushing it is to have something that makes me so happy cause me so much physical pain. It got so bad that at one point my teeth would leave me screaming in pain if a cool breeze wafted across them when I smiled. My teeth were training me to fear happiness. That’s the psychical damage you lay on the person you’re keeping the pit you’ve dug in your basement.

There are toothpastes that help. But brushing too enthusiastically is one of the things that caused the sensitivity to begin with. I’m trying to mend a gunshot wound by shooting it. And that’s a good summation of the state second puberty has left me in. I’m just fucked forever, so I guess I should try to look at the bright side: I’ll get to watch my body spontaneously do weird things for the rest of my life, like I’m a living video game glitch.

Luis is perpetuating the cycle as he digs into a pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

For more, check out 7 Creepy Physical Changes Your Mind Can Make in Your Body and 6 Freaky Things Your Body Does (Explained by Science).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why ‘Big’ Is More Terrifying Than You Remember, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. You’ll be alright.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/puberty-sucks-but-second-puberty-is-just-the-god-awful-worst/ from All of Beer https://allofbeercom.tumblr.com/post/180632214782

[allofbeercom]

Puberty Sucks But Second Puberty Is Just The God-Awful Worst

As you somehow keep holding on when the rodeo horse of life tries to buck you off so it can face its ultimate foe (the rodeo clown of life), you’ll eventually reach a kind of second puberty. The first time, you transformed butterfly-like from child to slightly grosser child. Once all your body’s jagged edges and weird lumps settle into place, you enjoy a prime that’ll last about eight minutes, and you’ll be too drunk or high to remember it.

Second puberty will hit between 28 and 33. The physical changes you’ll undergo — the ones I’m experiencing now — aren’t too dramatic, but are different enough to be unsettling. It’s a harbinger of horrors to come. It’s like Batman getting that vision of the Earth reduced to a dusty wasteland controlled by Darkseid in Batman v. Superman. I want to be Batman in that scenario, but it’s become increasingly apparent that I am the wasteland. As evidence of my physical dilapidation, I present the following.

5

After 9 I Can — And Will — Fall Asleep Anywhere

I’ve been afflicted with a punctual form of narcolepsy. No matter how caffeinated I am, I will fall asleep instantly if certain easily met conditions are present:

1) I have recently eaten dinner after having made dinner, which I do every night.

2) Most of my weight is heaped onto something comfortable. The definition of what can be comfortable is wide enough to include leaning on a wall coated with satin paint (the most comfortable of paints).

3) It is at least 9 p.m.

When those three elements combine, I involuntarily enter, exit, and then reenter a deep state of unconsciousness that I will deny having entered if caught in the act. Vehement denial, punctuated with wild fits of slurred vulgarity, is another symptom of this recently acquired disorder.

g-stockstudio/iStock When one of my molecules touches one couch fiber after a late dinner.

If left untreated, the debilitating sleepiness can lead to waking up in a frightened daze at 3:30 a.m., not fully remembering how I got onto this comfy thing from wherever I ate dinner, be it the dining table in my apartment or the Five Guys a mile away.

Falling asleep early sounds great, but not when I have a wife whom I’d like to remain conscious enough to hang out with after work, because like an idiot I married someone I love and want to be around. Boy, I’m really paying for that dumb mistake.

4

I’m Suddenly Allergic To Life

To my recent unpleasant surprise, allergies aren’t something you’re stuck with your entire life. They are for some people, and my heart goes out to them. I don’t know why we don’t have annual telethons raising money to help lifelong seasonal allergy sufferers pay their Claritin and tissue bills. My mom’s side of the family is where this new nemesis of mine comes from. They didn’t feel the torment of allergies until well into their 20s. I followed a similar path.

Twenty-eight is when things started to go awry. Scratching one small eye itch could trigger an itch that could go on for days and stop just before I took a back-scratcher to my corneas. Things have ramped up since. One sneeze within 10 minutes of waking up is my body’s way of telling me I should sprinkle some blueberries and Benadryl on my morning oatmeal and call it a day. I don’t know what it’s like to breathe through my nose without fear that if I inhale too vigorously I’ll set off a chain reaction of sneezes lasting hours that very well could blow my brain out the back of my skull.

c8501089/iStock Why does this frighteningly appropriate stock photo even exist?

There’s such a wide variety of allergy pills and nasal sprays that finding the one that works best for me is nearly impossible. Once swallowed, some pills will take one look at your genetic makeup and go full diva as they refuse to work with that clown show of body. Have you ever torrented a band’s entire discography, only to realize you don’t have the time to listen to 73 albums, so you delete everything but the greatest hits? That’s shopping for allergy pills. One of the brands I’m not immediately familiar with might be a gamechanger, but I can’t risk blowing my life savings on an absurdly priced pack of pills with a brand name I didn’t see advertised during an award show or an NBA game. I’ll stick with the hits everybody can sing along to — Claritin, Zyrtec, Benadryl.

Xyzal.com They ran out of nonsense letter combos for pills halfway, so they restarted from the beginning of the alphabet.

Sorry, Xyzal, but I don’t know you, and I get the inkling that saying your name out loud summons a long-dormant demon. I just can’t take that risk.

3

I Can Drastically Change Pants Size In The Blink Of An Eye

Technically I’ve worn the same pants size since middle school, but that’s a little disingenuous. I’m a first-wave millennial; we were some of the last kids to think tripping over our very baggy pants was the first step to cultivating an air of supreme dopeness. If I go about my normal diet, everything will be fine. But one Taco Bell pig-out session, or more than one slice of pizza, or more than one beer, and soon I’ll reach the full potential of my middle-school-era JNCOs.

It’s so drastic that I want to take this show on the road. I’ll wow skeptical crowds by swallowing a slice of chocolate cake, and with a magician’s dramatic wave of my hands make any discernible separation between jawline and neck disappear before their eyes. They’ll be looking around for the wires or prosthesis, but they won’t find any. Some will call me a simple trickster; others a heretic. But the truth is that my metabolism is shit and I have to eat like a bird so I don’t look like a boar.

To make sure it wasn’t just me, I asked around. John Cheese told me that once he turned 40, his weight started fluctuating 30 pounds in both directions. He seriously has to keep two wardrobes: one for the fall when he shoots up to 235 pounds, and one for the spring when he drops back down to 200. If you’re thinking that weight change happens over the course of six months, think again. He gains and loses 30 pounds in a matter of weeks, changing absolutely nothing about his diet or exercise routine — the one he has aptly named “I Don’t Exercise, Ever.”

Please, if you’re in your early 20s, listen to me: Enjoy eating however much of whatever you want while you can, because within a handful of years, every ounce of junk food you eat will be converted into a pound of fat in the exact spot that determines your clothing size. Have fun jogging the width of Texas to burn off one bite of donut. When you’re young, your body is a furnace that instantly incinerates whatever you put in it. Eventually it will be a landfill where things slowly decompose over centuries, poisoning the groundwater.

2

My Shit Literally Never Stank Before I Hit My 30s

I don’t want to brag or nothing, but for a long time, I could’ve taken a hearty dump during a crowded house party and no one would’ve been the wiser. I left no odor behind. My body converted the stink into pure energy. I believe there was a point in my life when close study of my body’s internal workings could have led to the design of a more efficient internal combustion engine, thus slowing climate change, thus making my ass the savior of the human race.

And then I got older and my dookie stench roared in with the fury of a long-dormant demon named Xyzal awakening for the first time in centuries. I just wish I’d been able to appreciate what I had before it was gone. Hypothetically, if you and I were in the same room, and I were shitting in that room, you wouldn’t have known it until you heard the plop plop of the water, because I could never figure out how to muffle those. But by scent alone? Nah. Too ninja for you. You’d never know it.

I’m just happy my stink powers activated in the same era as the advent of Poo-Pourri. I don’t want to turn this column into an ad for a bottle of essential oils you spray in a toilet to conceal your turd funk, but that stuff is amazing. If I made the smells I do now 10 years ago without Poo-Pourri, I wouldn’t have friends and I wouldn’t be married. I’d be living in an adobe in the desert, where there’s nothing alive to offend.

1

My Teeth Are Sensitive Little Snowflakes

Every new transformation in second puberty comes with a small shame. Parts of your body are losing function and you can’t do anything to stop it. You can iron the wrinkles out of your balls to make them look 20 years younger, but you’re just filling pot holes in a road as it’s being carpet-bombed. All I can do is accept it. I’ve only just begun accepting every unfortunate transformation I’ve already mentioned. But my sensitive teeth and I will be locked in a mythical eternal battle between good and evil so grand it will one day inspire the creation of a religion. Wars will be fought in its name.

When my teeth suddenly became sensitive to cold temperatures, I felt I had fundamentally failed at being alive. I can’t belt out an “Aw fuck!” when I lick an ice cream cone without ceding some confidence. I can’t feel like I’m in the prime of my life when I double over in a blinding-white flash of pain because I made the fatal mistake of eating cold salami slices straight from the fridge.

It’s stupid to say I like eating, because if I didn’t like it, I’d be too dead of starvation to say it. But I’m certain I like eating a lot more than you do. Anywhere between 50-65 percent of my day consists of grunting orgasmically as I chew. So you have understand how crushing it is to have something that makes me so happy cause me so much physical pain. It got so bad that at one point my teeth would leave me screaming in pain if a cool breeze wafted across them when I smiled. My teeth were training me to fear happiness. That’s the psychical damage you lay on the person you’re keeping the pit you’ve dug in your basement.

There are toothpastes that help. But brushing too enthusiastically is one of the things that caused the sensitivity to begin with. I’m trying to mend a gunshot wound by shooting it. And that’s a good summation of the state second puberty has left me in. I’m just fucked forever, so I guess I should try to look at the bright side: I’ll get to watch my body spontaneously do weird things for the rest of my life, like I’m a living video game glitch.

Luis is perpetuating the cycle as he digs into a pint of Haagen-Dazs chocolate-chocolate chip. In the meantime, you can find him on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

For more, check out 7 Creepy Physical Changes Your Mind Can Make in Your Body and 6 Freaky Things Your Body Does (Explained by Science).

Subscribe to our YouTube channel, and check out Why ‘Big’ Is More Terrifying Than You Remember, and watch other videos you won’t see on the site!

Also follow us on Facebook. You’ll be alright.

from All Of Beer http://allofbeer.com/puberty-sucks-but-second-puberty-is-just-the-god-awful-worst/

[carolinaforte]

7 weeks had gone and although there is still a lot to explore in Riyadh, as a sea lover I knew it would not take me longer to get on a flight and land in neighborhood Jeddah.

It’s definitely not a hidden gem for us Saudi expats, actually extremely popular within the borders of the kingdom but still hidden from the eyes of the world. Take the opportunity now to experience it before tourist visas start to be issue in Saudi. You certainly want to taste it raw with its strong cultural identity without being disrupted by fast globalization process introduced by international tourism. Don’t miss its authenticity!

Located in the center of the west coast of Saudi Arabia, Jeddah also known as Bride of the Red sea is home for some of the most beautiful beaches in the Red sea. It is also a massive urban center, with 4 million people is the second biggest city after Riyadh and Saudi Arabia’s commercial capital. It is also the principal gateway to Mecca and Medina, two of the holiest cities in Islam.

What to do in Jeddah ?

The Corniche

I am sure if you are in Jeddah you will be looking for enjoyment, water sports activities and a little bit of a more touristic feeling than you can find in most of the kingdom. If that’s you Cornish is the place to be. With more than 120 km of coastal area, Corniche has a lot to offer!

From Al Hamra’a district, the King Fahad Fountain in the south to the most exciting beaches, water activities in the north don’t be surprised if you end up in road trips throughout the coast at least once.

The true is if you want to get the most out of your stay in Jeddah you will be forced to travel up and down the coast but stick to it and take the opportunity to enjoy the great diversity of monuments, malls as well as international artwork and sculptures alongside the coast. Every few meters you will see a masterpiece and every roundabout will come with a great piece of art. Although the art industry is not yet well developed in Saudi you can tell by the Corniche how much Saudis appreciate European art with some big names behind the scenario such as British artist Henry Moore, as well as work by Spaniard Joan Miró, Finnish artist Eila Hiltunen and Frenchman César Baldaccini.

South Corniche

Al Hamra’a district is where you can get the real sense of Old Jeddah. It is never quit but gets crowded after sunset prayers and doesn’t seem to get any less congested as the night goes by. Slowly the small groups of men gathering and students stooped over books are taken over by families and more female groups. Saudis have a bit of a different life style to what I am used to, although it makes totally sense considering the weather condition I could not stop to find impressive to see families heading to the park at midnight to share a picnic with their families. The younger are not excluded from this family activity, after all Saudis are very united as a family, regardless their age anyone is left out and all the activities they do have to be inclusive for all the family members no matter what!

Alongside the coast there are a few fancy restaurants with rooftops and a great view over King Fahad Fountain. Hopefully if you are luckier than us it won’t be close and you will be able to watch the biggest and apparently most impressive fountain in the world. Head there a bit before the sunset to get a good spot and watch the fountain coming to action as the sun goes down while drinking a cup of Arabic coffee, or nibbling some food. Among your options the one I tried was the Culture Cafe & lounge that I highly recommend. Although the food menu is not the spotlight, there is a great selection of coffees, teas and milkshakes as well as cakes and ice creams. The Location, lighting, decoration and spacing combined creates the perfect atmosphere to enjoy the moment!

If you are willing to hang around a bit longer after dinner you will be able to witness the invasion of cats coming to the park to eat the leftovers, people fishing along the shore, as well as the kids enthusiastically running around, riding bicycles and playing games well passed 1 am. Feels like as the night goes by the district gains more and more life and diversity.

If you want to get a closer contact with ancestral Jeddah and contemplate the exquisiteness of its historical heritage head to Al Balad Historical district, also known as Old Jeddah. It is been considered a UNESCO world historical heritage site since 2014. Here you can experience the authenticity and integrity of the traditional old economic market, from retail shops, traditional souks, small cafes, popular restaurants, and street food vendors. This is a surprisingly rich human and material environment place where Yemeni, Sudanese, Somali, Pakistani and Indian migrant workers purchase and market their products in crowded traditional souks. The simplicity of life, the tangible heritage from its history and unique architecture, as well as the multi-cultural social framework where Muslims from all over the world live and work together make it a real travel time experience!

My best advice here is really to go in mind that there is no way you could get lost as it is hard to know exactly where you are.  Just wonder around the narrow streets while contemplating the old and distinct architecture of the buildings, engaging with the locals, appreciate the different specs of colors, smells and artwork. Go to the souk and don’t be afraid to ask, try, touch and engage with the sellers they won’t force you to buy anything just practice kindness and they will be grateful for you to stop by. Also, visit the Naseef House museum and head to the top floor for an overview of the city. Although I have not personally done it is supposed to be magic to go there during Maghrib prayer, and listen the call while watching the sunset.

There is also Matbouli House Museum which is a small house where you can visualize and get the feeling of what life was like centuries ago. It is a bit imperceptible as it is just a random house. We were taken there randomly by a friendly local who speak no English but had the kindest smile ever.

North Corniche 

The journey on masterpieces continues, laying over both sides of the roads, alongside with fancy malls, huge compounds contrasting with some substandard houses and dry land field where you can see the young generation playing football on bare foot.

It is very popular and ‘’touristic’’ due to its fancy beaches, boat trips, diving, jet sky and many other water activities.

North Cornish was the start point for our diving experience, if you are a newbie in the field of diving and you would like to start by a discovery experience before investing time and money on obtaining a license, here is a great place to start. Desert Sea Divers offer a Dive Discovery Experienced in sea water, an entire day of fun on a boat with all meals covered, great company, good music and highly qualified instructors that will ensure your safety. Just make sure you do not go on a big group of newbie divers as you will need a personal instructor for each one of you and there is just a limited number of them. But do not hesitate to contact them, they are very attentive and I am sure they will do what it takes to accommodate your needs.

To visit desert sea divers and all the offers available go to: https://desertseadivers.com/

Even if you are not keen to dive, the red sea is great for snorkelling. There are tons of corals that you can touch by the reach of a hand with a variety of ocean life than you can witness passing by right in front of your eyes.  I personally have done snorkelling in many different countries and continents and so far the red sea offer such an incredible ocean landscape in such clear waters that is impossible not to love above all of the previous experiences.

I doubt you won’t fall in love as soon as you dive into this fantasy-land of vibrant colors, shapes and life. The Red sea is indeed house for surreal stunning coral gulleys and valleys with a wide variety of ocean life.

As it is not advised to flight within the next 24 hours post diving you will certainly be left with a day in hands to enjoy and relax in the beach. Silver Sand beach was the most recommended by friends and another travelers we met on the way. Although I can’t compare to any other private beach in Jeddah, it is indeed a little gem. It is a little oasis of simple beach perfection. If you want to enjoy its tranquility head there early in the morning. It does not ever seem to get crowded but as the day goes by more people come to enjoy this little paradise.

It is a bit tricky to get there as there is no signs indicating it but make sure you follow the GPS (see the link bellow), it will take you to a compound with a big white gate, there will be a window with a security on your left hand side just stop and ask, don’t waste your time trying to find any sign or indication. Private beaches are a bit costly but it is indeed worth the money you pay for it!

Google maps location of Silver Sand Beach: https://goo.gl/maps/f156qEZ2i8U2

If you are a lover of locals’ dynamics take some time to contemplate the life of the public beaches. It can get extremely crowded and is a totally unlike experience!

My last piece of advice, do not leave Jeddah without a great sea food meal. There are plenty of offers alongside the coast. We tried Twina Al-Hamra’a branch, it is a chain of seafood restaurants in Jeddah. As a sea food lover and coming from a country that has more water territory than land it’s hard to impress me when it comes to sea food. But I will give it credit by the restaurant experience on itself. It is well decorated, good service and helpful staff. I personally enjoyed the Arabic coffee they offer at the end so if you are there give it a try but be ready for an intense flavor of cardamom!

Find more information about the menu and locations of Twina restaurants: http://twina.net/

Hope you enjoyed this quick overview of what to do in Jeddah in a short weekend. Although the time in hands was not much to get to know this truly amazing city into details, was enough to experience its beauty and get a sense of its identity. If you would like to know more about Jeddah just drop a comment or email me.

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  A getaway to Jeddah 7 weeks had gone and although there is still a lot to explore in Riyadh, as a sea lover I knew it would not take me longer to get on a flight and land in neighborhood Jeddah.