#like. mary oliver voice you don’t have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting

[qlala]

oh just cracked something WIDE open for my favorite coldflash longfic idea while waiting for IT to fix my computer at work, i would like to thank windows 7 for being a piece of trash

#it’s the ‘barry’s job is fundamentally incompatible with him healing from the deaths of his parents’ of it all #like give that man a 9-5 that he can’t skip out on or cheat at with his powers #and that he didn’t take just to exonerate his now-dead father #and watch him actually have to learn to just trust his team not to let central burn down while he’s busy for eight hours #like. mary oliver voice you don’t have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting #(you don’t have to personally save every human being in central at risk to your own safety because you couldn’t save your parents) #and when i say 9-5 i mean 7-3 because #[i yank a rope and a brightly colored ‘teacher!barry’ banner unfurls in a shower of confetti] #let barry learn he can help people and improve the world without literally taking bullets for them 2k22 #and that ​it’s okay to not be needed 24/7 and just be wanted instead… sorry to the flash writers but i can fix him #these tags are probably incomprehensible but THIS is the year i finish this fic for nanowrimo

[wehadwildflowerfever]

So it’s both “Mermaids” release day and the day I can finally unwrap my “Daffodil” tattoo.

I’m staying up until midnight to hear this last Dance Fever song, so I’ve spent a large part of today thinking about the whole album.

I’ve worked through a lot of it academically this year, but I haven’t really let myself sit down and think about what it means to me personally. I saw someone write that the build up of “Mermaids” feels like a scream waiting to be released (@veronicaofosea), and that’s so close to how Dance Fever as a whole feels to me. Listening to it has felt like letting out multiple screams that have been building up in my body since girlhood.

Florence isn’t close to the first artist to remind women that we don’t have to be good, seek approval, be desirable, and keep the peace. Within my own pantheon of favorite artists/musicians/poets, I have heard it so often. Mary Oliver has told us (“You do not have to be good / you do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting”). Tori Amos has told us again and again in more ways than I have room to write down (“She’s been everybody else’s girl/ Maybe one day she’ll be her own”). Each instance has felt like a small revelation to me. An idea I could intellectually know to be true, but couldn’t feel in my body when needing to go out into the world to assert myself. My voice is always quieter than I mean it to be. I apologize for myself when I don’t want to. I have a really hard time making eye contact. Dance Fever marked the first time that I could fully hear this truth. Right now. In my late thirties.

I don’t know what did it, exactly. I think part of it was lockdown and being on my own so much. Probably having the space to retreat into myself, being responsible only to myself and my partner. Having very few external expectations placed on us. And then coming out of that, Dance Fever was the first piece of art to shatter my grief-induced numbness.

“Oh bring your salt, bring your cigarette. Draw me a circle and I’ll protect…” The ferocity of the circle drawn in “Heaven is Here.” The dark magic and intentional monstrosity of it. How it made a protected space for our rage and mourning and reclamation of self.

The tender, funny anger of “Girls Against God.” (Which actually made me feel conflicted at first. Growing up going to an Orthodox Hebrew school, we didn’t write God’s name on anything that wasn’t sacred and meant to last, even in English. Writing down that title was literally the first time I spelled out “God” which was scary but also powerful.) The permission of being able to own our anger, even if it’s just us, in our pajamas, alone in our bedrooms.

And it took me a while to notice what was being sung during the “Dream Girl Evil” bridge, but once I figured out that it was a reversal of Yeats’ “The Second Coming,” I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What does it mean to look at our world on the verge of collapse and respond-- at least for a moment-- by essentially saying well fine, this wasn’t a world built for us. If it’s dependent on women being the world’s angels and dream girls, just let it all burn. “I am nobody’s moral center / it cannot hold.” Again, this intense permission to claim our rage and independence.

The part of the album that has probably made me cry the most is a lyric I still don’t fully understand. It’s toward the end of “Choreomania,” when the music slows down a little and Florence sings, “And do they speak to you? Because they speak to me, too. The pressure and the panic you push your body through.” I’m not sure who “they” are for her, but there is something so comforting in how the fourth wall breaks down here, how she sings “they speak to me, too.” The vulnerable confession that we all carry unwanted voices with us born of mental illness, or intergenerational trauma, or gendered social expectation, and the recognition of what those voices do to us and our bodies. The anxiety and the panic attacks.

This album feels like a release of those voices or an attempt to live with them in a way that allows us to fully reclaim ourselves.

Even just posting this feels like something I wouldn’t have done before. I would have checked with multiple people to make sure it wasn’t too much, or too pointless, or too intense, but I think of “Restraint” and post it anyway. “And have I learned restraint? Am I quiet enough for you yet?” Saying “yes, but I’m unlearning it” feels like a source of power.

#florence and the machine #music tattoo #florence welch #dance fever

[roseforthethorns]

“Wild Geese”

For the end of 007 Fest 2022 Nights are the hardest.

For James Bond, the nightmares never really bothered him. He simply accepted them as his due, a reward for being MI6’s best spy. He’d been everywhere, seen everything, done everything and (most) everyone. He had a list of kills longer than most in the business, and not all of them had been dispatched with a bullet. Sometimes, Bond would wake, body alert and mind racing, convinced he’d felt hands around his throat again, or the crushing weight of water, or his shoulder exploding in pain. Other times he would wake and have to check that he wasn’t still holding his gun.

When Bond and Vesper had been together, he’d still been so green as an agent; there had been some trauma, but nothing some Scotch and a good fuck couldn’t handle. Her death still hurt, but the dull ache of an old scar, and the nightmare of her drowning almost never happened anymore.

But when he started sleeping with Q? When the lanky boffin with a sharp tongue and a voice that always brought Bond home had found his way into Bond’s bed? When Bond had to finally begin to acknowledge to himself that he did, indeed, care for Q and was finding it harder and harder to understand what Q saw in him? 

One particularly sleepless night found Bond standing near one of the windows in his flat, wrapped in his dressing gown. Snow was falling softly outside, blanketing the streets and muffling the sounds of a sleeping London. Bond took another mouthful of Scotch, the liquor burning with a pleasant familiarity as it went down. 

“Penny for your thoughts?” Q walked up softly beside him, though not quite with the cat-like tread of a double-oh.

Bond glanced at him and then back out the window. “You should be sleeping.”

“As should you.” Q’s lips twitched slightly. “There, now we’ve both said something incredibly obvious.” He reached out and gently laid his hand on Bond’s shoulder. “You got up a while ago.”

“I thought you were sleeping,” Bond replied, taking another sip.

Q shrugged. “The bed’s colder alone.” They stood in silence for a moment, before Q spoke again. “But really, James, why are you up?” 

The silence stretched for a long time before Bond finally sighed. “Why are you here, Q? Why are you here- with me?” He didn’t look at Q, just continued to stare out the window and sip his drink.

Squeezing Bond’s arm gently, Q said, “Because I want to be.”

Bond chuckled darkly. “You make it sound so simple, like it’s easy for you to be around someone like me.”

“You mean a spy?” Q asked.

“I mean a killer, Q.” The words hang in the air for a moment, finally said, and Bond drains his glass.

Q is silent for a moment, and if Bond had looked at his face, he’d have seen Q thinking. But when Q speaks, it’s not at all the response Bond expects.

“You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.”

Squeezing Bond’s arm gently again, Q presses a gentle kiss to his cheek. “I didn’t write that, but I meant every word. I chose this, James, and I still choose to be here. No matter your past, I’m here. Now, come back to bed.”

The nightmares don’t ever end for a double-oh, but finding someone to share the burden with makes them easier to endure.

Author’s note: the poem quoted in the story is “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver (hence the title)

#007 fest 2022 #team 00 #roseforthethornswrites #poetry prompt #mi6cafe

[superscarymonster]

The Soft Animal

“You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.”

- Mary Oliver

And yet, this habit of hardening became my motto -” I can deprive”, “I can push”- I would say. “That’s stupid”, “I don’t need that”  -the soft animal was quieted to a whisper...shhhhh. 

With wild green eyes, I would look at the noisy animal of others and twitch at their weakness. Twitch at how untrained their animals could be. 

“Order!” I would cry. “Tame that thing!”

Yet, I would rage at the way others were rewarded for the absence of their animals. They always won more for their obedience. 

Hard and angled I lined up the animals of everyone I knew by their darkness. The shadowed were best - the bright, shiny and eager were an abomination. 

But at some point, this ordering became a solo mission. No one else around cared.

Medals around my neck from slaying animals were invisible to everyone else.

Everyone else who spends their time stopping and restarting. Breaking up. Changing. Sharing. They tend to their animal because what else do we have?

For a decade, I have obsessed over making it a silver lining. I wanted to redeem what happened to us by being controlled - by making it a line in a biography that would show how steel made up my core.

I wanted to even the scales - if you take this away from me, I will force giving. I will hang on the big hand in the big sky until it tips over and rains gold.

My arms became weary. My mind became angry. My voice became hoarse from screaming “tilt!”. And in some ways, all I did was suffer - the owner of these hands laughing in the sky.

----------------

Wild Geese You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting — over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

[there-must-be-a-lock]

Green (Bucky x Reader)

Word Count: ~3k

***Warnings*** : Graphic and explicit consensual non-consent. It’s all pre-negotiated roleplay, but it includes fighting, struggling, spitting, scratching, the whole nine yards. 

A/N: The companion fic to Red. You do not need to read that first; this stands on its own. However, without that as an introduction, there’s no obvious indication until about two-thirds into the fic that what’s happening is consensual. 

More on this in another note at the end, but thanks to @thoughtslikeaminefield​ @fangirlxwritesx67​ @katwillrise​ @mskathywriteswords​ @cracksinthewalls​ @littlegreenplasticsoldier​ @stunudo​ and the rest of the Slack squad for helping me sort out my feelings about “dark” fic, and for being a safe space to talk through stuff like this. This was really fucking difficult for me to write, but I’m glad I did. 

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

- From “Wild Geese,” by Mary Oliver

It’s just like any other Friday night, until it’s not. 

One moment I’m turning on the light in the entryway, hanging up my coat — next there’s a prickle down my spine, some primal reptile-brain instinct — 

Run! Now! 

— but there’s no time to recognize it for what it is. My body isn’t in the habit of being threatened; my body is tired and lazy, moving on autopilot through the comforting routine of Friday night. In the heartbeat between instinct and action, he pounces. 

The hand over my mouth is metal: unyielding, unliving, chilling me down to my core, and if it wasn’t for the heat of the rest of his body all down my back, I wouldn’t assume he was human. His right arm is around my ribs, locking me in place, and it feels feverish in contrast but it’s trapping me as securely as if it was iron. 

I can’t reconcile the cool metal against the human warmth, or the awful metallic tang mingled with the barely-there whiff of sweat. My mind is moving all jerky and slow. I can’t make sense of this. 

Doesn’t matter, though, because I’m trapped anyway, like a wild animal in a snare. Trying to make sense of it won’t change the fact that vicious iron jaws snapped shut around me. 

It was just like any other Friday night.

Panic clutches around my lungs all at once, adrenaline flooding in, and everything in me screams, fight back. 

I thrash and squirm in his grasp, but he has my arms pinned down at my sides, and I’m small and helpless against the solid wall of muscle that is his chest. My raw strangled gasps come out as tiny hitched sobs, muffled by metal, barely audible in the still half-dark entryway of my apartment. He leans back, hefting me up so that my feet don’t quite touch the floor any more, like I weigh nothing, and takes a few steps away from the door. 

“Don’t make a sound,” he snaps, before spinning me around, slamming me back against the wall and pinning me there with his metal hand at my throat. 

Panic makes everything sharper. It’s too sharp, sharp like the shadows cast by the angles of his jaw and cheekbones, sharp like the way he’s watching me with pale hard eyes. 

“Why — why are you here?” 

He tilts his head, considering me. 

“I was sent,” he says simply, in a low rasp of a voice. 

“What do you want?” 

Something cracks open in his eyes, like a tectonic shift bringing magma to the surface, and then the strangest expression spreads slowly over his features, fierce hunger and wild terror all at once. Fear splinters like lightning down my spine. 

“Take off your clothes,” he says quietly. “Let me see you.” 

I lash out with both hands, ready to claw at his eyes, but with his arm outstretched, he’s just out of my reach; when I scratch and slap at the metal wrist, he doesn’t even seem to notice, and when I strain against his grip, I only succeed in choking myself. Black spots dance across my vision, and I draw ragged wheezing breaths, clutching uselessly at the sleeve of his black leather jacket, still twitching and twisting feebly. 

At least he can’t undress me with one hand, I think, for one absurd second. 

Then his free hand twitches down to his side, and he’s raising a knife. Dark oxidized metal gleams in his fingers. I freeze, staring at the wickedly honed edge of it as he brings it closer, holding it up at eye level before lowering it slowly. 

The tip hooks under the first button of my blouse, and when he flicks the blade upward, the fabric separates like it’s nothing. I barely dare to breathe as he cuts my shirt open, one button at a time, with surgical precision. The knife is so close to my skin that one wrong move could slice into me. 

When the ruined remains of my blouse gape open, he lowers the blade, ready to cut through the waistband of my skirt, and my frayed nerves snap. 

“Don’t,” I blurt out. “I’ll do it. I’ll cooperate.” 

I unzip it, trying to step out of it without moving my head, still trapped by the constant silent threat of his fingers around my throat. 

He sheathes the knife so that he can push my shirt roughly down my arms. My bra straps follow; he tugs them down my shoulders and reaches around to pop the clasp open, and when it falls, he pauses, licking his lips as he gazes up and down my body, taking in the revealed skin. 

There’s a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes when they meet mine for a long, frozen moment. He draws a breath like he’s about to say something, and his grip loosens a fraction. 

I’m not done fighting. 

I spit in his face, and when he flinches, I wrench myself away, twisting out of his grasp, bolting down the hall toward the bedroom door. 

Just as I wonder whether he’s reconsidered, whether he’ll let me go, he snarls, “You’ll regret that.”

I go down hard and fast when he tackles me, barely getting my arms out in time to break my fall, and the impact sends a flash of pain through one elbow but there’s no time to think about that — no time to feel it — not when I’m thrashing and kicking and squirming — but he’s too strong, too heavy — I almost writhe away but then he rolls me onto my back — pins me, sitting on my thighs — and my fists are swinging, flailing uselessly against his face and shoulders, but he doesn’t even seem to notice — and I let out a desperate sob as I realize I’m helpless again. 

I want to scream, but there isn’t enough breath in my lungs. 

He shuffles up on his knees until he’s straddling my waist, looming over me, blocking out everything else, and he snatches my wrists as I beat my fists against his stomach and chest. His lip curls, baring his teeth in a feral approximation of a smile, and he gathers my wrists together so he can hold them in the bruising circle of his metal fingers. 

Flesh fingertips dig cruelly into the hinge of my jaw, forcing it open, and he leans forward to spit into my open mouth — something twists and clenches deep in my gut as I sputter and choke, skin crawling with disgust. 

“Not so nice, is it?” he sneers, sitting back on his heels. 

Worn black denim stretches over muscular thighs as he shifts, drawing attention to the fact that he’s hard — the thick shape of his cock is obvious, straining against the fabric.  

My eyes snap back to his face, but it’s too late. He chuckles, throaty and smug, and then he rubs himself through his jeans, squeezing roughly, making it impossible to ignore his arousal. 

“Is that what you want?” he asks — taunts — and I shake my head frantically, throat too tight to speak. He smirks and drops his hand to my chest, tweaking one nipple hard enough to make me yelp. He shrugs off his jacket, letting it fall, and light catches the dark metal plates of his arm. 

Hot stinging tears well up and roll down my temples, blurring my vision, but not before I see his fingers on the button of his jeans, popping it open. 

“No,” I choke out. “No. Please, please, please —” 

He has to move to shove his jeans down, has to let me go for a moment — a fresh wave of adrenaline surges up with sickening speed, and I scramble back, twist, flop onto my stomach — it’s graceless and uncoordinated but I’m not giving in, not yet. I’m army-crawling out from under the cage of his body and I’m almost free — almost — but before I can get up on my hands and knees he’s yanking my panties down. 

Panic rises to a crescendo. 

I shriek — thin and pathetic even to my own ears — too frantic to even see straight, and then my breath is punched from my lungs as his hand slams down between my shoulderblades and crushes me to the cold hard floor. I curl an arm around my head protectively, burying my face in the crook of my elbow, and I whimper into the dark space it makes, trying to hide from what’s about to happen. 

My body is vibrating with tension like a rubber band about to snap, every muscle clenched so tight it hurts, and when I feel the blistering-hot pressure of his cock between my thighs I almost snap. 

“Struggle all you want,” he growls. “Won’t make a difference.” 

And it doesn’t make a difference. He shoves, and after a split-second of resistance he’s slamming into me with skull-rattling force. He grunts as he grinds in, working himself into me as deep as he can be. 

The weight lifts from my upper back, and I suck in a desperate breath, only to sob it out again as he braces himself on his left hand and tangles the right in my hair. It stings, but somewhere along the line I’ve lost the ability to feel pain as pain; it’s only another sensation, and it’s eclipsed completely by the flint-to-tinder flare as he starts to move. 

I bite my lip so hard I taste blood, but I can’t hold back a moan. 

It’s too much, too fucking much, he’s too big, wrenching me apart, taking up every bit of space inside me and forcing me to accept the intrusion. There’s no rational thought left beyond I can’t take this. 

There’s nothing rational about it, though. 

Something catches and sparks — ignites — and wildfire licks up my spine before bursting out through every inch of me. It’s going to burn me alive, and there’s nothing I can do about it. 

There’s nothing wrong with it, I try to tell myself, but shame slithers through my belly anyway. 

I’ve never been this wet in my entire fucking life. 

I’m breathing fast and panicked, I’m naked and squirming on the gritty floor, and it’s humiliating, and it hurts… but friction is friction, and my traitor of a body is slick and eager even though my rational brain is screaming for it to stop. 

“Stop,” I choke out. “Stop, don’t —” 

“Don’t what? Don’t make you come? Don’t make you admit how much you like this? Not fightin’ back any more, are you?” 

I sob and shudder, squeezing helplessly around him. “Please.” 

“Shit, can feel you gettin’ close — gotta see this,” he says, panting harshly, and then he’s pulling out, grabbing at my shoulder to flip me onto my back. 

He hooks an arm up under my knee to open me up and drives in deep again, and I spasm around him, spine arching so forcefully my head slams back against the floor. He’s wild-eyed and wrecked, but he stops for the space of a jagged-edged inhale, pausing, slack-jawed with shock when I look dazedly up at him. 

“Green,” I breathe, and slap him across the jaw with a crack. 

He moans and surges forward all at once, hips snapping down, and the pleasure-pain coils tighter inside me, ratcheting up to new impossible heights.  

I’m not going to stop fighting — not now, not ever, no matter how good it feels. I hit and scratch and claw, and when my nails catch on his cheek he gasps, rhythm faltering for the first time. 

He’s scorching-hot, steely-hard, every thrust a solid filthy smack against my skin, a vicious stretch pushing me to my limit — and it hurts, it hurts, but the adrenaline makes the pain feel faint and distant, and the pleasure is raw and immediate and building (faster by the second) into something inescapable. 

I can feel it starting to overwhelm me. My muscles are seizing up, but I’m fighting back on pure animal instinct, still. I grab him by the throat with one hand, pull his hair with the other, and his face is the last thing I see before my world dissolves: cheek bleeding from a rough scratch, features contorted, mouth open in a wide red O that’s somehow, unmistakably, a smile. 

Bucky is breathing just as hard as I am, when I swim to the surface again.

 We’re both drawing deep wet gulps of air, gasping on each exhale. I twine my arms around his neck limply, resting one palm between his shoulders so I can measure the rise and fall of his lungs. 

I can’t bring myself to open my eyes, but I feel everything: every little tremor and twitch that goes through him, the slick warm tickle of aftershocks as he starts to go soft inside me. His face is buried against the side of my neck, and his right hand cups my cheek, so very gentle, thumb stroking my temple and wiping away tears. He kisses me softly where my pulse hammers under the skin. 

My heart is racing, beating against my ribs like a wild bird caught in a cage, but my head seems very far away from the mess of my body.

I whimper when he pulls back, but he doesn’t go far, not yet — I can hear the barely-there rasp of fabric as he shifts. 

“Can’t believe you’re still wearing pants,” I mumble, slurring like I’m drunk. 

“Wearing is a generous word,” he says flatly. 

It’s a weak impersonation of his usual deadpan snark, but I let out a cracked giggle, and for a hysterical second I’m not sure I’ll be able to stop giggling. 

Bucky whispers, “Gonna get you up now, okay?”

He slides his hand under my head, cradling the back of my skull, and kisses my sweaty forehead before gathering me in his arms. He sits up carefully, pulling me against his chest and letting me burrow into the soft cotton of his t-shirt. 

Then there’s a disorienting swoop of motion that means he’s standing up. I feel fragile and strange as he walks, like something inside me will break if it’s jostled, but I trust him to keep me safe. He nudges the barely-open bedroom door with his hip, easing us through it, and behind my closed lids the quality of the darkness changes as he steps toward the soft golden glow of my bedside lamp.

“Not going anywhere, just going to put you down for one second,” he warns me. 

The comforter is already pulled back when he settles me on the bed, and he pulls it up around me, wrapping me up. 

“Water,” he says quietly, holding the glass to my lips, and I sip carefully. “Juice? Something sweet?” 

I shake my head. “Not yet.” 

He steps back. I hear the soft thump of his shirt and jeans dropping to the floor, the click of his dog tags as he puts them back on, and then he’s sliding into bed next to me. I shift closer and trace the chain around his neck, touching the familiar imprint of letters in the metal. 

My swollen lids are heavy when I open my eyes, and they sting when I finally look up at him, taking in his puffy parted lips and the red line of dried blood on his cheek where I scratched him. It’s already healing, it’ll be gone within a couple hours, but I brush my finger over it anyway, making an apologetic face. 

“It’s okay,” he says softly. He clears his throat and swallows hard. “I’m the one who — I’m so sorry.” 

I shake my head. “Don’t apologize. You have nothing to be sorry about. It was…” 

I don’t know how to finish that sentence; I shrug, helpless, dizzy with the enormity of getting exactly what I wanted — of getting what I never thought I’d be able to ask for, let alone have. 

His lashes are wet, his eyes shining in the low light, and that’s when it really starts to sink in. I shiver, and then I can’t stop shivering, and I curl forward, burying my face in his chest. 

It’s hard to believe that the world is still turning and even harder to believe that he’s still here. 

“God, sweetheart, you were incredible,” he whispers, voice breaking, wrapping me up in his arms and kissing the top of my head. 

Shuddery, convulsive sobs wrack my body, one after another, and I don’t try to hold them back even though they’re so powerful I’m afraid they’ll crack my ribs on the way out. The tears are nothing to be ashamed of. It’s more like they’re physical evidence of shame leaving my body, purging it with each ugly sound wrenched from my throat. 

I never would’ve said it out loud if we hadn’t stumbled into his violent fantasies. There’s nothing wrong with you, I told him, and I sounded so sure, but I still had a hard time believing it about myself. My rational mind knew that it was natural… but it was like knowing that the person who grabbed me tonight was the same man holding me now — it was like knowing he would never hurt me, but feeling my body panic anyway. 

Bucky holds me, crooning nonsense fragments against my hair, until it subsides.  

I sit up enough to look at him, and I’m conscious of how blotchy and swollen my face must be, but I let him brush away my tears. I feel soft and raw inside where I’d been holding all that guilt. Everything is starting to ache. 

“God, we’re a mess,” I say thickly. He lets out a huff of laughter. 

“I love you,” he blurts out. His eyes go a little wide, like that wasn’t what he intended to say. 

“I love you too,” I say, wobbly but warm, and I duck my head again, resting with my ear over his chest to hear his heartbeat. 

His sigh is long and shaky. 

“Yeah, we’re a mess,” he whispers. “Feels good though. Feels human.” 

fin. 

N.B: If you’ve spent any amount of time around my masterlist, you probably will have noticed that one of my favorite subjects is the shame people (especially women) frequently feel about sex in general and their fantasies in particular. I also really love writing enthusiastic consent, and so in a way this is very different from anything I’ve written before. 

I have trouble with the way a lot of fanfiction seems to glorify coercive or under-negotiated dom/sub scenes, and most so-called “dark” fic is triggery for me in its oversimplification of things like rape fantasies; they’re normal and common and natural, but frequently the way they’re written has the same flat, male-gaze approach as a lot of exploitative porn, which I hate. Rape has never been a fantasy for me personally (although it has been an actual life experience) but my #1 fantasy is finding the sort of trust and partnership and support that would make this sort of roleplay emotionally safe. I also just felt compelled to tackle the challenge of writing about something that is often considered so shameful, and writing about it in a way that neither romanticizes or demonizes it. 

So. Yeah. In case you need a reminder: don’t punish your body for what it wants. 

(If you liked this, please reblog or leave a message?) 

#bucky x reader #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x reader smut #bucky barnes smut #mcu #mcu fic #tw rape #tw: rape #consensual non-consent

[veliseraptor]

Top 5 Mary Oliver poems? 😬 this is legit though, because I’m realizing I haven’t read anywhere near as much of her stuff as I should and I need somewhere to start (also “Wild Geese” has been resonating with me lately even more than usual because of some discussions with my therapist, which is really cool timing because this time of year is exactly when tons of Canada geese come through)

so I went and read a bunch of Mary Oliver poems to think about this and choose one and like. wow Mary Oliver poems. just gonna lie back and have some emotions for a little while. 

how does she do that, anyway, I’m not generally a poetry person but I read Mary Oliver and I’m just like. oh. oh thanks for taking my heart out and making me look at it, bud

anyway! here are five. links go to full text, quotes are just selections.

1. “Wild Geese.” You already know this one, obviously, but it bears mentioning anyway because it is just...truly, such a special poem.

You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

2. “A Settlement.” I think about this one a lot. Specifically the last lines of it, but I also think “look, it’s spring” to myself sometimes, as a kind of...shorthand? idk.

Therefore, dark past, I’m about to do it. I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

3. “Black Oaks.” This is a newer one I ran across more recently and it knocked me down and kicked me in the productivity jail feelings, but, like, kindly. I feel like a lot of Mary Oliver is just about...enoughness, about being and the sufficiency of being. About not having to prove anything. And. Yipes. Relevant.

Listen, says ambition, nervously shifting her weight from one boot to another — why don’t you get going?

For there I am, in the mossy shadows, under the trees.

And to tell the truth I don’t want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don’t want to sell my life for money,

I don’t even want to come in out of the rain.

4. “The Summer Day.” People quote the last line of this one all the time, for good reason (it’s lovely) but the poem as a whole is also...you know, I hate the “carpe diem” thing sometimes but when Mary Oliver does it it works for me. Maybe because it feels less “go out! do something!” and more just...”the world is beautiful. embrace it.” Again, the sufficiency of idleness.

Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

5. “The Journey.” This one was one of my first Mary Oliver poem encounters (the other was “At Blackwater Pond,” actually, which I do have a soft spot for for that reason). And it’s - different from the others, but it’s affirmative to me in some of the same way that “Wild Geese” is. 

But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do -- determined to save the only life that you could save.

#thelightofthingshopedfor #conversating #mary oliver #top five meme #quotes #god i love mary oliver

[konmarkimageswords]

The Summer Day

 Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 Last night the rain spoke to me

Last night

the rain

spoke to me

slowly, saying,

what joy

to come falling

out of the brisk cloud,

to be happy again

in a new way

on the earth!

That’s what it said

as it dropped,

smelling of iron,

and vanished

like a dream of the ocean

into the branches

and the grass below.

Then it was over.

The sky cleared.

I was standing

under a tree.

The tree was a tree

with happy leaves,

and I was myself,

and there were stars in the sky

that were also themselves

at the moment

at which moment

my right hand

was holding my left hand

which was holding the tree

which was filled with stars

and the soft rain –

imagine! imagine!

the long and wondrous journeys

still to be ours.

  Mindful

Every day I see or hear something that more or less

kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle

in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for - to look, to listen,

to lose myself inside this soft world - to instruct myself over and over

in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant - but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help

but grow wise with such teachings as these - the untrimmable light

of the world, the ocean's shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

  The Old Poets of China

 Wherever I am, the world comes after me. It offers me its busyness. It does not believe that I do not want it. Now I understand why the old poets of China went so far and high into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.

  When Death Comes

When death comes like the hungry bear in autumn; when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut; when death comes like the measle-pox

when death comes like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering: what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything as a brotherhood and a sisterhood, and I look upon time as no more than an idea, and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth, tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

 Praying

It doesn’t have to be

the blue iris, it could be

weeds in a vacant lot, or a few

small stones; just

pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try

to make them elaborate, this isn’t

a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which

another voice may speak.

  Mysteries, Yes

 Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous  to be understood.

How grass can be nourishing in the mouths of the lambs. How rivers and stones are forever in allegiance with gravity while we ourselves dream of rising. How two hands touch and the bonds will never be broken. How people come, from delight or the scars of damage, to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say “Look!” and laugh in astonishment, and bow their heads.

  Wild Geese

 You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Mary Oliver (1935-2019) has become a favorite of poetry readers of all ages for her lyrical, intimate, and sensitive poems, many of which use nature as a lens for exploring the spectrum of human emotions, from love and joy to sorrow and despair. The best Mary Oliver poems remind us to pause and take a breath, revel in our surroundings, and encourage us not to take anything for granted.

Mary received many accolades during her long and fruitful career, including the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, the National Book Award for Poetry, and a Lannan Literary Award for lifetime achievement. 

 https://maryoliver.com/

https://maryoliver.beacon.org/

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/mary-oliver

https://www.best-poems.net/mary_oliver/index.html

http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/mary_oliver/poems

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/what-mary-olivers-critics-dont-understand

[localswordlesbian]

Something There That Wasn’t There Before: Chapter 2

Read Chapter 2 on AO3

Read Chapter 1 on Tumblr

In which Martin realizes what his mother's actions mean for his future, and he finally meets this reclusive "boss" he's been hearing so much about.

Martin blinked at where the door had bin, his brain coming to a complete halt as he stared. What had just happened?

A whistle behind him shook him out of his stupor. He turned to see the two strange people looking at him. Helen looked amused while Michael looked troubled.

“Well, that was the most fun I’ve had since Mary dropped little Gerry off months ago!” Helen crooned, dropping to balance on the balls of her feet to be level with Martin – he hadn’t noticed he’d sank down against the wall, sitting on the damp ground.

“I have to say,” Michael mused. “She seemed nasty, but I didn’t expect that. Are you okay?”

Martin couldn’t answer. His mother wanted him to stay. She wanted him to stay in this terrifying castle with these weird people rather than going home with her. She no longer wanted him to care for her – he’d braved the woods, and for what? The bitterness rose in his throat again and threatened to choke him, and his eyes stung. He blinked, refusing to cry in front of these two. Whoever they were.

When he managed to look up, there was another door, this one purple, shimmering in the wall. Michael was looking at him, his expression soft. Helen had a gleam in her eye that made Martin shiver with apprehension.

At his doubtful look, Michael shrugged. “This will go to the dining room. You look like you’ve had a long night.”

Martin debated arguing, saying he didn’t trust Michael as far as he could throw him, but exhaustion weighed down his bones, and even holding his head up and eyes open was taking all his energy. So he took a step forward, opening the door and stepping through. As the door closed, he felt a pressure at the back of his head that had him groaning in pain before he stepped out onto solid ground, vertigo causing him to lean to the side before collapsing with a heavy thump.

He vaguely heard voices shouting as he drifted out of consciousness, and the last thing he heard was someone asking “Is he alright?” before the darkness took over his vision and he fell into blessed sleep.

Martin came to slowly, grogginess keeping his eyes closed. He heard several voices around him.

“He came through one of Helen’s doors. I wonder what happened.”

“I saw him when he walked in, freezing his poor arse off. Said he was looking for his mum.”

“D’you think he found her?”

“Do you happen to see an old lady anywhere around here, Tim?”

“Maybe Helen sent her through a different door!”

“Well, he’s here now, wherever his mum is.”

There was a pause in the conversation, then: “He’s pretty cute, though.”

“Oh for god’s sake, Tim–“

“What? I’m not wrong.”

Martin fought to open his eyes, bright light assaulting his senses as he took a deep breath. He vaguely saw three figures hovering over him. “Where am I?”

“Oh, good, you’re awake!” one of the figures exclaimed. Martin squinted, trying to make out any features, to  no avail. Someone must have taken off his glasses.

As if on cue, a hand held them out to him. “Here,” came the kind feminine voice. Martin put on his glasses and saw a dark skinned girl sitting on the couch near his legs, with glasses of her own and her dark, curly hair pulled back into a high ponytail. She had a kind smile on her face. “How are you feeling?”

Martin sat up, attempting a smile back. “I– I’m alright. Confused, but alright.”

The girl smiled sympathetically, fidgeting with the hem of her dark T-shirt. “That’s understandable. My name’s Sasha. Sasha James.” She stuck out her hand to him, and he shook it.

“Martin. Martin Blackwood.”

Sasha smiled at him again. “It’s nice to meet you, Martin. Welcome to our weird little family.”

Martin took another look around the room. Standing next to Sasha was the man he’d encountered yesterday, dressed in a black studded leather jacket and ripped jeans. He nodded at Martin, and Martin nodded back. “Gerard Keay, but you can call me Gerry.”

“Nice to meet you,” Martin said meekly.

Lastly, next to Gerry, there was a man dressed in a Hawaiian shirt so bright and colourful that Martin wondered whether this man was Helen and Michael’s missing third. He was broad, with tanned skin and black hair that looked like it was purposely styled to be messy. He was grinning, leaning down and bracing his hands next to Martin and leaning close to his face as Martin leaned away. “Yeah, I was right, he is cute,” the man said conclusively, and Martin could feel his face heating. “I’m Tim Stoker. Guess you’re one of us now.”

Martin chuckled nervously. “And, uh, who exactly would that be?”

Tim leaned back, crossing his muscular arms over his chest. “Archival Assistants, which basically means we laze around and sometimes fetch a file for Jon.”

“Jon?”

“Jonathan Sims,” Sasha explained. “Our boss.”

That must have been the boss Michael and Helen mentioned. “Ah. Helen and Michael mentioned him. Wondered if I was, uh, his type? Anyone know what that’s about?”

The three assistants exchanged a look, seeming to have a silent conversation that Martin wasn’t privy to.

“That’s a long story,” Gerry finally said. “If you want to stay, you can. If not, you’re free to go. You don’t have any responsibility to anyone here.”

Martin considered Gerry’s words. He could leave, try and find his way back to town, figure out what to do. What would he do? His mother didn’t want him, she’d made that perfectly clear. It wasn’t like he had friends he could stay with, and though he could live in the library he didn’t particularly want to burden Phil. He remembered his promise to Jack with a pang, wondering whether the boy was waiting at the well for him to return and read to him. “I–I don’t really have anywhere to go,” he said finally, cringing at how self-pitying he sounded. Good job, Martin.

Sasha gave him another kind smile, placing a hand on his knee. “It’s okay, Martin. You can stay here. It might even help, having another assistant.”

Martin nodded, returning Sasha’s smile shyly. “Do you guys live here? Is there anyone else?”

Tim pursed his lips. “Yeah, we live here, though not by choice.” Sasha smacked his arm. “What? Might as well tell him the truth.” At Martin’s concerned look, Tim’s face softened. “Basically, the boss pissed off a very powerful witch of a man, and we all happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. That place being here, and the time being when that bastard–

“Tim–“

“Fine, absolute piece of shit fucker–“

“Tim!”

“Oh, come off it, Sasha! You know it’s true. That asshole decided that the best punishment was to trap Jon here, turning him into an avatar of the Beholding until someone falls in love with him. So, of course, Jon being Jon just locked himself upstairs in the West Wing half the time because he thinks no one could love a monster.”

“Give Jon a break, Tim. It can’t be easy for him.”

“I know it’s not.” Tim sighed, meeting Sasha’s eyes for a moment before looking back to Martin. Gerry stood quietly off to the side. “Look, I love Jon as much as any of you guys, but this is getting ridiculous. The longer he stays locked away, the longer we’re stuck here.”

Gerry met Martin’s eyes. “Don’t take this the wrong way. We’re not asking you to seduce our boss or anything. We’re just explaining the situation.”

Sasha jumped. “Oh, of course we’re not suggesting anything, Martin!” she said hurriedly. “No one expects you to. Like Gerry said, just explaining.” Tim said nothing.

“What’s the Beholding?” Martin asked. “And who was this witch man?”

Tim sighed. “The Beholding is one of fourteen fear entities that sort of–watches over our world. Every fear is a result of these fourteen. The Beholding is the fear of being watched, your secrets being known. Jonah Magnus, the motherfucker, was an avatar of the Beholding a couple hundred years ago, and has kept himself alive by transferring his eyeballs into a host.”

Martin cringed. “Ew.”

Tim nodded gravely. “Ew indeed. Anyway, that host is who cursed Jon, because he refused to become an avatar willingly. So now we’re all fucked.”

Martin sat back, mind reeling. “Huh,” was all he managed to say.

Sasha nodded before patting his knee again. “I know, it’s a lot. Don’t worry yourself too much – again, it really doesn’t need to involve you.” She sounded genuine as she gave him a smile and stood. “Come on, I’m going to make tea. Maybe you can meet the others, too.”

Martin smiled gratefully at her as he stood, Gerry following while Tim threw his arm over Martin’s shoulder, his mischievous grin back. “Welcome to the family.”

Martin did end up meeting everyone. Daisy, with her muscular, scarred arms, freckled skin, shorn blonde hair, and clipped Welsh accent. Basira, with her soft smile, olive skin, and pale blue hijab matching her mug of tea. Georgie, with her friendly demeanour, skin just a shade lighter than Sasha’s, and kinked hair pulled back with a headband. Melanie, Georgie’s girlfriend, with her brown bob of wavy hair, pale skin, perpetual scowl, and sightless glass eyes. He even met the cat, The Admiral, a fat orange thing that purred like an earthquake in a blender when scratched behind the ear just right.

Over the next few days, Martin helped where he could, retrieving files for Sasha that were too high for her to reach, helping Basira sort through old papers and journals in the castle’s library, giving Georgie a hand with cooking. He even had some lively discussions with Gerry about books they’d both read.

Martin also learned everyone’s tea preferences, and would occasionally bring people piping hot mugs while they worked or relaxed. If he was going to be staying here, he was determined to be helpful.

That left one person he hadn’t met yet – the reclusive Archivist. Jonathan Sims. The cursed man, the man someone had to fall in love with in order to free everyone in the castle.

Everyone except Martin.

He nearly scoffed at the whole situation. It sounded right out of a fairy tale. He wondered what being an avatar entailed. Could Jonathan Sims see everything? Hear everything?

“Essentially, yes.”

The unfamiliar voice behind him – posh, deep, and smooth – made Martin jump, spilling piping hot tea over the rim of his mug and splashing his hand, causing him to hiss in pain. He whipped around, clutching his hand, to see who had spoken, and he nearly crashed into the counter.

Standing in the doorway to the kitchen was a frail man, with brown skin covered in circular scars. The man was short, the top of his head perhaps reaching up to Martin’s nose. He had a mottled burn scar covering one hand, and a line at his throat as though he’d been held at knifepoint. He had long, wavy black hair that was streaked through with gray, which he’d put in a bun on top of his head. He was dressed in a collared shirt and jumper, and a pair of glasses perched at the end of his nose.

For a moment, Martin simply stared, speechless. “I–what?”

The man walked over to him, eyes never leaving Martin’s face. Martin’s neck prickled, like he was being watched. “You were wondering if I, Jonathan Sims, can see everything, hear everything. Because I’ve been turned into an avatar of the Beholding. And the answer, essentially, is yes.”

It took Martin half a minute of gawking at this man before he could answer. “You can read my mind?”

“For the most part. I tend to stay out of people’s heads – it’s a bit of a privacy issue. But you’re new, and I was curious. Martin Blackwood, was it?”

Martin blinked. “Yeah, I– could you not do that? Look in my head? Privacy issue and all.”

Jonathan nodded. “Of course. I apologize, I should have mentioned it before. Also, you can just call me Jon.”

Martin nodded slowly. “Okay, Jon,” he said. Jon looked up at him, an amused smile quirking his lips upward. Martin realized with horror that he’d said Jon’s name just for the sake of saying it. He fumbled for something to say. “Would you like some tea?”

Jon looked up at him for a moment before nodding. “That would be nice.”

Of course, Martin thought. Of course the reclusive guy that needs someone to fall in love with him is exactly my type. Of course he’s adorable and good looking. God has cursed my hubris.

Martin tried to chase the thoughts out of his head as he got to making Jon a cup of tea, but it was no use. He was in so much trouble.

#tma #the magnus archives #jonathan sims #martin blackwood #jonmartin #au #beauty and the beast au #sasha james #tim stoker #gerard keay #daisy tonner #basira hussain #georgie barker #melanie king #fluff #alternate universe #disney au #alternate universe fantasy #jonmartin fluff

[h-e-l-l-b-r-o-k-e]

Holding Back The Fool Again [B. Hargrove x you]

Series: part 2 of Galapogos

Summary: This is Billy’s definition of extending an olive branch. Screwed and without shrewdness, kind of like him.

Inspiration: Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins (1995) in its entirety.

Word Count: 3073  Warnings: profanity, angst, and mentions of abuse.

Written Date: 07/24-31/2019  Posted Date: 8/1/2019

[PART 1]< >[PART 2]

“Hey.”

He’s not sure if the breathy sigh actually left his lips or if the rustling leaves toyed with his ears. What he does know for sure is that there’s a cool moisture on his upper lip, the impressive one-fifty he lifts is still no challenge to the old tree outside your window, and that even with sleep-mussed hair you’ve never looked better.

The rays of the sun kiss his skin, warming him up to the bone as if home is trying to plunge some needed coaxing through his thick skull. The sun knows he ran once; any discouragement will send him running again. It’s the way God carved Billy’s mechanics—inside the tough exterior is just a lost boy, a coward who’s on the verge of finally having enough of what’s been granted to him before he could even form a coherent sentence.

A reflection bounces off his Virgin Mary pendant, flashing threateningly close to your pupils. It’s the universe giving him a clue that if there’s ever the right time to make eye contact with the one you love, it’s now. Now, in what could be the final moment he has to prove to himself that he isn’t the man his father said he is and prove to you that he’s not just another copy-cat of David.

Is Billy another David? When he first came to your little town, you would have said yes. When you started riding in his Camaro and showing up to social events with his arm around your waist, David hardly crossed your mind. Now? You aren’t so sure, about anything. You don’t even know why you haven’t slammed the window on his gorgeous face. Your best friend Judilyn would have, so what’s stopping you?

Billy Hargrove has never been a perfect suitor. For heavens sake, the heroism he displayed when he saved your camera was soon followed by insulting you on your first date. And, Billy Hargrove’s relationship skills sometimes make you wonder why he’s even with you, or you with him. He has terrible mood swings, sometimes pushing you away so that he can have some time to himself to lift weights and not have a “woman nag at him all the time.” As if he’s not the one who clings onto you about seventy-percent out of a hundred.

He smokes so much that it has created a force-field around him, made up of cancerous fumes. You swear you’ve never inhaled as much second-hand smoke before getting to know him. The smell penetrates into your hair, your wardrobe, and soon your parents water bills were raising through the roof. After your parents started lecturing you and the scent of nicotine made a surprise appearance in your sheets, you had to lay down some strict rules: Billy can no longer smoke with the windows rolled up, Billy can no longer smoke half-an-hour before entering your house, and Billy had to promise to cut back. Not just for your sake, but his as well.

You’re not an unrealistic idiot though. You’ve seen this addiction before with your own grandfather. You’ve seen the continuous cycle of grandpa crushing the cigarette box in his hands and throwing it out only for you to find fresh cigarettes littered in your grandma’s rose bushes the next week. So, it’s not hard to imagine Billy sparking up an extra cancer stick before he’s supposed to meet with you. Especially when he comes over with an extra spritz of cologne and Binaca spearmint masking his breath.

But, as the breeze tickles your nose and wraps loosely around his dirty-blond curls in gentle tugs, you cannot detect the toxic bubble that embraces him. Nor the hours old musk of his favorite Pour Homme, but just the basic nature of the body detoxifying.

He’s here, without the calming of his disgusting addiction nor the courage of a strong drink on his breath.

And his voice. 

You’ve never heard it so…without its punch of beef-packed testosterone, without the fresh singe of tobacco on his vocal cords. So helpless. So vulnerable. So unlike Billy. But, it’s been inside him all along, waiting to be pulled apart by willing hands. Hands willing to tear apart his skeleton, push past the muck of sticky blood and pulsing intestines, and cradle the most important organ of all.  

And he thinks he’s felt—still feels—that pleasant pain of guts being twisted and torn apart whenever you’re around to mindlessly play with his fingers while you two watch a rented movie. To call out on his bullshit when anger either makes him too quiet or too loud. To wrap your arms around him when his father’s had swung the hour before just because Billy had forgotten to pick up one fucking gallon of milk.

Earlier that day when everyone was beginning to gather around in the school’s parking lot to see who’d win the fight between Billy and David, love’s affliction was still harshly pulling at his heart strings. And only when you’d hit the ground was it slowly being replaced by something else—a cold numbing from a lidocaine needle.

He wants to shake off this empty, suffocating, cushionless envelop made by the devil, and repent under your plum-like palms. Repent until you stop looking at him like he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

He’s Billy, and he’ll always be your Billy. But, maybe that only makes it scarier.

The telephone downstairs begins to ring again—you’ve since disconnected yours after just minutes of continuous phone call after the other. You turn to face your bedroom door in temptation, looking past polaroids and the photographs that Jonathan had taught you to develop in the dark room. Memories of you with Judilyn and your group of friends. Moments in time of you and Billy’s blossoming relationship, featuring his douchy friends. All taped along the smooth surface.

Your fingertips get ready to push off the lower sash of the window.

“Please.”

You turn your head back to Billy.

He licks his pink lips and parts them again. “Don’t leave.”

“Why?” You immediately flinch at the croak in your voice. This isn’t how you imagined the confrontation with Billy to go. Actually, you somehow just thought you’d live in your bed forever with your teddy bear and Billy would fall off the face of the earth.

Instead, he’s just outside your window with bits of bark under his fingernails and the setting sun casting a halo around his crown. The whole view is a magnificent renaissance painting; every detail crafted with expertise and purpose, such as the way pink creeps up on the clouds and how you can count every freckle on Billy’s face.

Yet, you cannot find any of this to mean something. Not when classmates you barely talk to are keeping your line busy just to check up on you while he can’t even form the words that are caught in his throat.

His eyes study the inflamed skin of your palms then cut to the smudges that trail along the side of your right thigh. Through clenched teeth, he sucks in a breath of air. “Can I come in?”

You pause for a moment, even though you hadn’t expected anything else after he decided to claw his way up your window with far less grace than Judilyn’s ladder method (or your ex-boyfriend’s favorite: pounding his fists on your front door at two in the morning and waking up the entire house). Your finger tips weigh the odds by tapping on the painted wood, and only when you take a couple steps away from the window does Billy’s glistening pecks gently deflate.

The poodle designs on your sock-clad feet are more interesting than Billy as he extends a long leg through the opening, or so you convince yourself. But you don’t have to watch him to know that Billy’s glancing around your neat bedroom, checking for ripped up photographs or thrown mixed tapes—any sign that tells him that you’ve terminated things on your end of the hemisphere.

The only thing out of place, as he’s come to conclude, are the messed up sheets. The flannel is crinkled in a way that he’s familiar with; he’d never tell anyone that he’s had his fair share of finding comfort between blankets without a girl writhing in pleasure beneath him. Billy can almost picture you on your side with your knees tucked into your chest and your chin to your neck—he’d rather not focus on that.

You’re still standing by your mirror with eyelashes hiding the prettiest pair of irises he’d come across in Hawkins.

Billy’s never understood your damn patience. There was this time when Billy had walked the couple extra yards from your locker to yearbook class to pick you up for lunch, and he’d walked in on Pam Dubinsky giving you backhanded compliments on your poster designs for the new yearbook while you had stood there without saying a word. He knew about the countless hours you’d spent on your bedroom floor sketching up clever concepts while he would drift off and on on your plush mattress, and he knew all that hard work wasn’t just for some jealous bitch to tell you that her’s was better.

He had taken some loud steps forward and his tongue had been ready to snap away at her when you calmly raised your hand at him, prompting him from getting any closer and intervening, and kindly told the girl who had slept with your ex-boyfriend that no one would appreciate an amateur design on their yearbooks, especially not after such a long school year and that Pam should think about David—mediocre head and a mediocre yearbook? Talk about heartbreak.

It took so much of Billy to keep from laughing and humiliating that bitch any further, but above that he was proud of you for sticking up for yourself without sinking to her level. Malice disguised as a sugar cane had become his new favorite flavor.

Except, he quickly learned that your patience combined with his drastic mood swings brought him an unfamiliar peace that frustrates him just as much. He knows how to spurt out insults and give and receive bruises—that’s easy; that’s second-nature. But, keeping his ears from turning red and his breath under control is a whole other field. How does anyone do that?

But then you sniffle, and he realizes your shoulders are trembling as your hands struggle to clasp together. You’re not just waiting for him to make the first move, but you’re cowering. Over the fact that Billy’s so fucking reckless. Over the fact that Judilyn and your other friends were right, that Billy isn’t capable of anything but serving you pain as dessert on a silver platter. Over the fact that Billy’s anger can blind him of your presence, and has caused him to put his hands on you. Over the fact that just his puppy eyes alone can throw out your free will, and allow him into your bedroom. Over the fact that you’re still willing to hear him out.

“Prove to her that everyone in this shithole is wrong about you.”

Max’s voice still rings clearly in his head, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget it. At least not while you shrink into yourself in front of your mirror, but he’s trying to look on the bright side for once: you’re blocking his crumbling tower.

His mouth is so parched that swallowing proves worthless, but he knows he has to keep pushing. The photographs on your door call back to him, and his head rolls on his shoulders towards them.

“Do you remember when your dad almost caught me hiding in your closet?”

Your gaze on the carpet shifts a little closer to him.

A smile almost touches his lips. “You would’ve gotten in trouble if you didn’t have that Mount Everest of stuffed animals piled in there to hide me.”

The stuffed animals from your childhood had been the last thing you wanted Billy to discover about you. You had decided to donate most of them at the local Goodwill on your thirteen birthday, but your sentimental attachment to them kept you from tossing them every time. So you kept them hidden in your closet like a dirty secret, and had meant to never let the tough Billy find them. You were mortified that he’d think you were just some innocent little girl and that he wouldn’t want to be with you anymore, but he didn’t care. Sure it was a little funny, but he revealed he still had a little brown bear of his own that his mother gave him when he was six in his underwear drawer.

“Or that time when my boxers somehow got inside your hamper and your mom washed them, thinking they were your brother’s?” Billy holds in a chuckle. “And your brother was too dumb to realize they weren’t his and wore them for like a week straight.”

A sound leaves your throat. Half-giggle. Half-sob. It’s hard to differentiate whether that’s good or bad. The back of your wrist meets your nose, rubbing softly.

“There was also that one time when no one but Max and Judy knew we had skipped town for a couple days to go see Quiet Riot in Indianapolis,” he scans a particular Polaroid snap shot that was taken at the motel pool, “All we could afford was one night in some sleazy motel room, eating greasy fast food.” He looks at you again, “It was worth it. Never thought you could make a shitty mattress comfortable.”

The corner of your chapped lips tugs up. “Your chest does makes a great pillow, Hargrove.”

The shy smile is gone sooner than it appeared.

His torso appears in front of you as his warm palms find their way to your hair. Thumbs wipe away the sticky streaks on your rosy cheeks, and then gently caresses them.

He wants you to really look at him, but he finds it a small victory when you don’t duck beneath his arms as he envelops you in a desperate hold. When you don’t pull away after he buries his face in your neck. And when you don’t push him away after you hear him suck back the gunk that’s formed in his stuffed nose nor when something wet drips onto your bare collar bones.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is muffled into your shoulder.

Billy knows that your parents have been away, and he guesses by the missing Mustang in your driveway that your older brother must be down at the run-down waterhole with a couple of pig-headed buddies, so he’d been expecting your house to be devoid of its usual mumbling and lively noises that is such an integral part of it. He’d been relieved at first because that meant he wouldn’t have to deal with your angry parents or a careless-yet-overprotective brother, but now that you are keeping quiet Billy has nothing to grasp onto except this energy that’s barely hanging onto life support between you two.

Billy squeezes you a little tighter, praying that you somehow absorb his thoughts, his guilt, his regret, his love, and his fear. “Okay? I’m sorry for…being a piece of shit. I never meant for that to happen—never dreamt of it.”

The saltiness settles on his taste buds. “I promise I’m not David—I’m not my fucking father.”

Your finger nails run up his spine until they’re digging into the curls on the back of his neck. “I know.”

After just moments of softly scratching his scalp, you pull away and bring your arms into your ribs. The apology is left in the stale air around the two of you, but Billy doesn’t blame you. Lord knows that he’d never forgive his father even if he crawled through hell and back and begged him.

Billy untangles your arms from beneath your chest and leads you into the bathroom down the hall with every intention on washing away every negative emotion down the drain, “Come on, I’m gonna take care of you.”

This reluctance that stops you from letting go of the events that transpired in the parking lot is a million time better than being left to choke on the dust of drifting tires. If anything, Billy accepts this as a start in restoring what once was. Your patience taught him that much.

As the cascading water heats up and clothes hit the tiles one by one, Billy swears to himself that the fool inside him will not be in charge of steering the outcome that involves you. And as he takes a washcloth and some Dove soap to your palms, he promises to you he’ll never give you another reason to silence the ugly snort he fell in love with.

Fin.

To everyone who requested a part 2: @whatthefuckkrichard @basic-fragment @toobsessedsstuff @nightshade7117 @banannie25

A/N: This series has quickly turned into a sort of love note to the album Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins (1995). Give it a listen; it’s so rich and poetic and fit for everyone’s tastes. And, it’s only 28 songs! Anywho, feedback is strongly appreciated. I tried to keep a similar style of narrative as the previous one but struggled to come up with something both realistic and satisfying. Hope I did it justice.

#billy hargrove #billy hargrove imagine #billy hargrove x reader #billy hargrove x you #stranger things imagine #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #billy x reader

[sibilantly]

for the ask game (because i forgot to ask actual questions like a fool): A for in the family of things, B, K, R!

(The ask game in question is this one!)

A: How did you come up with the title to in the family of things?

‘in the family of things’ is the final line from the wonderful poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. (You can read/listen to it here.)

Shortly before I began posting IFT, I was casting about madly for a title that I hoped would encapsulate the themes I was building into the story. “It has to evoke found families!” I hissed to myself. “People seeking atonement! People with vastly different experiences nevertheless finding a point of connection, and the joys and complications that brings!”

It was a lot to expect of one poor title, lol. (And probably shows you how stupidly ambitious/impatient I was, even back then.)

In the end, the main theme I focused on was that of found families, and Oliver’s poem swam up out of my memory. On its own/out of context, I found that line to be a fitting description of John, the orphan kids, Barsad, and Bane. They’re considered outsiders - less than human, things - by most of society, but they’ve nevertheless managed to form a quasi-found family.

That being said, the whole of Wild Geese encapsulates a lot of IFT’s themes, particularly the first six lines:

You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesFor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your bodylove what it loves.Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

B: Any of your stories inspired by personal experience?

Hmm, no, I don’t think so. At least, not in a direct manner. The topics/themes I try to explore (mostly in my longer works) are ones that are of intense interest to me, but they aren’t based on my personal experience. I think the closest I get is that a lot of the ‘mundane’ criminal and street life details I sprinkle through my Inception and TDKR fics come from my experience working with young and adult offenders.

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

Other than Persistence?

I once came up with this Mad Max crossover (fusion?), and I guess it could be viewed as a weird remix of Persistence. In fic, I’ve found that most people transplant the Inception characters into the Mad Max universe as Max’s contemporaries, but I was struck by this thought: what if Inception takes place before Fury Road?

What if you have an Arthur who is older, wiser, and - after many years together - still very in love with Eames. What if this Arthur - still in the illegal dreamshare game, like some founding father figure - is in Australia on a job (MAYBE EVEN SYDNEY, AY?) when the nuclear apocalypse goes down? What if he tries– God, he TRIES, he pulls every string, calls in every favour at his disposal, but the airports are closed, the ports impassable, and there’s no way out, no way for him to get to LA, or Mombasa, or any of the places Eames might be waiting for him?

What if Arthur has to come to terms with this? What if he has to learn to live with this unliveable truth, the bone-deep grief that comes from knowing that even if Eames managed to survive the bombs (he must have, Arthur tells himself, he did; Eames is, above all else, a survivor), Arthur will never see him again; he will have to go on, scrape together a new life in this barren world, because Arthur, too, is a survivor.

(And no, when they finally cross paths, Max is not Eames. He’s several years younger than Arthur, much younger than Eames would be (much younger than Eames is, Arthur corrects himself). It just fucks with Arthur’s grieving process more.)

R: Are there any writers (fanfic or otherwise) you consider an influence?

Terry Pratchett is a huge influence on my work. I’m working doggedly to develop and hone my own voice - learning when to rein in the humour and let the emotional scenes stand on their own - but Pratchett’s potent blend of humour, humanity, and pathos is basically what I aspire to. LIFE GOALS, MAN. YOU GOTTA HAVE THEM.

Kai Ashante Wilson and Alyssa Wong are two thought-provoking speculative fiction writers (fantasy/dark fantasy/horror, mostly) whose works are interwoven with sharp, sometimes disturbing social commentary. When I finally get around to writing my OTHER canon-divergent TDKR novel, it’ll be Wilson’s and Wong’s fiction that I look to as atmospheric and thematic inspiration.

Yahtzee is the fic author I look up to when it comes to plotting world-changing AUs and/or stories with epic scope and depth. *deep sigh* IFT could only hope to hold a candle to her novels.

bauble, dialogue master par excellence, is the fic Yoda to my Luke. By which I mean she sits on my back, laughs while I struggle and bitch mightily about running through the swamp how my writing ambitions outstrip my current skill level. She pushes me to do better, refuses to let me get away with being lazy, and I learn something new from her every day. Again, I can only hope my works will one day hold a candle to hers.

(Thank you so much for the questions, and I hope I didn’t bore you to tears with my lengthy answers!)

#tumblr meme #fic asks #i am not familiar with this thing called brevity #ikenew

[moonlitfirefly]

“You do not have to be good./ You do not have to walk on your knees/ for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting./ You only have to let the soft animal of your body/ love what it loves.” “I tell you this/ to break your heart, /by which I mean only/ that it break open and never close again/ to the rest of the world.” “I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable, beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” “But little by little,/ as you left their voices behind,/ the stars began to burn/ through the sheets of clouds,/ and there was a new voice/ which you slowly/ recognized as your own,/ that kept you company/ as you strode deeper and deeper/ into the world,/ determined to do/ the only thing you could do –/ determined to save/ the only life you could save.” “Keep some room in your heart for the Unimaginable” “I simply do not distinguish between work and play.” “You can have the other words-chance, luck, coincidence, serendipity. I’ll take grace. I don’t know what it is exactly, but I’ll take it.” “Sometimes I need only to stand wherever I am to be blessed.” Your words like the songs of my heart, in cadence, rhythmic, resonating. Despite the broken and between the shattered spaces that makes me who I am, your words kindly embraced me, inspired me, and lifted me when I believed I wasn’t worth the weight. Spiritual and deeply human your words are a gift to humanity. Thank you, Mary Oliver. What a blessing you will be, for always. May you rest in the gentle light of peace but I do hope that your journey continues with as much delicious fervor and wondrous curiosity into the next passage of your being. https://www.instagram.com/p/BsxAKUVF5frOTEg_xs03azGc28y6puKq1ngx-c0/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=qe0ymw3f5nm9

[kyliesolis]

Quotable Fiction

Reading is so wonderful because there are so many incredible authors that put so much time and energy and creativity and love into every book. Sometimes I just read something and I can’t resist saving it. Usually in photo that is lit only by my booklight and cropped weirdly so that only the quote is showing. 

These are quotes from fiction books that spoke to me for some reason. Usually I liked the book they were part of, but not necessarily. Do you save quotes from fiction books? I think doing that says a lot about the reader. All good things, of course.

“He was a handsome man. She was a handsome woman. I was their handsome offspring who was also too honest to understand bullshit. And I didn’t fit into any conversation I ever heard because all people talked about was dumb crap that I didn’t give a shit about. Nobody talked about art. Nobody talked about how the morning dove lied. Nobody talked about the Zone System.”

-A.S. King’s “Glory O Brien’s History of the Future”

This book was so beautifully written in the first place, but this quote just spoke to me because I was like “hey that’s me.” I often walk by groups of people and overhear what they are saying and am like “I want more friends but I would never want to have to pretend to be interested in that conversation. I need friendships that are deep and fast and weird.

“How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they’d go to and what they’d major in and how much they’d earn and what car they’d buy? They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collection of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell. And then what?”

-Laurie Halse Anderson’s “The Impossible Knife of Memory

When an author is an adult but reaches so well into the minds of the young adult like this, it’s just too much, but in a good way.

“I know you have the same voice that follows you around, that you can’t seem to get away from. The edge-of-sleep voice. The dark-and-and quiet voice.”

-Katrina Leno’s “Everything All at Once”

Hi, I have anxiety, and this is one of the most poignant descriptions of anxiety I have ever heard. I usually imagine anxiety as the grim reaper. Sometimes I am giving him a piggyback ride and sometimes he is just walking behind me. Then sometimes he gets distracted smelling the flowers, so he lets me walk away a bit. Those are the best times

“Some of the biggest things in your life and you don’t get taught how to do them. But hey, I know the molecular difference between an acid and a base. I’ve got nothing against knowing the molecular difference between an acid and a base, but how about something practical once in a while? I just want to look around in the world and not be totally baffled by it, even as I recite the periodic table, you know?”

I didn’t save the book this was in, stupid me, if you know what book it’s from please please let me know! I love this quote because it’s so true. Fucking Bismuth and Pythagorean Theorem but how many of those random health insurances are actually worth it, or (insert regular adult task here)?

“You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

-Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese.”

This made me feel nice. There are so many things people feel like you have to do to be a person, but you really just have to live the life that makes you happy because you could get shot tomorrow or all that money you saved might be needed by a sick relative, or by the time you get around to doing all those things you wanted to do someday you might be too tired or have to many pains, or not be able to walk. So just live. That’s all we can really do.

“I believe that I am unclean and will harm those I care about the most and that there is too much noise in my head and that I am so goddamned tired.”

-Teresa Toten’s “The Unlikely Hero of Room 13B”

Hello to another poignant descriptor of anxiety (that is actually referring to OCD, but these symptoms seem to cross barriers). The uncleanliness thing just refers to not being good enough with anxiety.

“Karen hated proms. She called them the devil's playground and said they tempted teens into committing sexual immorality. Because we nutty teens aren’t aware that there are another 364 days in a year in which our no-no parts fit together just fine. Clearly, we can only sex if we dance to shitty pop music first.”

–Whitney Taylor’s “Definitions of Indefinable Things”

This made me die laughing. I have never really got why people feel the need to have sex after prom. But I was a late bloomer, and didn’t feel that way about my high school boyfriend which I thought was okay at the time, so, maybe it’s just me.

#writing #writer's blog #writers on tumblr #writer #reading #quotes #fiction quotes #whitney taylor #a.s. king #mary oliver #laurie halse anderson

[superscarymonster]

A Note To Self

            Yes, I know you. You’re the type who experiences a rollercoaster of world-changing and world-ending events every 24-hours. Each piece of new news is a drug – the email about a raise – an upper. That is, until you get that text about your roommate moving out – a total downer. Your emotions are tied to the latest event and somehow also tied to the past and present. If there isn’t a preoccupying thought to ponder from the day, you’ll find one to ruminate on from last month, last year or last decade- it’s all fair game if it’s not from the present.

The problem with this way, is that you never let your nervous system relax. You’re always on high alert and, like an animal being hunted, your vision is narrowed to the width of a cotton thread.  All you can see are these peppered problems everywhere – not the sun shining, not the panorama view of the world in front of you, but just these fibered issues that make up your twisted field of view.

This constant stress- it makes you uptight. You never relax and instead, hop from problem to problem. Some would call this chronic anxiety, but such a medical title perhaps can lead one to feel as though soothing is reliant on a prescription. Solutions aside, you indulge in this way of being because you think it will help you succeed. Once you can validate the behavior, it becomes even harder to change.

However, once you decide that being a stress ball isn’t serving you, the power to improve your way of being is in your hands. You are always practicing how you are. Your brain is but a spring. It always wants to coil back into the position you morphed it into, but if each day, you spend some time with heat and pliers, coaxing the curls of the spring, it can start to remember a new shape- a less stressed way of being. How can you start to shape your spring? Here is what I would recommend:

1.)   TAKE A VERY DEEP BREATH AND CALM YOUR NERVOUS SYSTEM

Our brain takes cues from the body. A dancing body tells the brain to feel joyful and expressive. A laying body tells the brain to be calm and a clenched body tells the brain that we are being attached.

Dr. Fred Luskin explained in our LIFE 101 class that we rarely deeply breathe, largely because we hold in our stomachs as though we’re just about to take a punch. This position communicates to our brains that we are in trouble and causes us to be on high alert. To immediately calm the mind, one can simply let out their stomach and breathe deeply.

Give it a try.

All the way in and all the way out.

Tell yourself through your breath that you’re not under attack and start to feel yourself loosen. Once you do this, try a small giggle – a tiny laugh.

Laughter forces repetitive deep breath and releases endorphins, which is why the practice of Laughter Yoga, as introduced In the TEDMED Live Talk by Dr. Madan Kataria , has the word “yoga” included. Whether it’s a laugh or a Lion’s breath, take a moment to settle your mind.

2.)   DISTANCE YOURSELF FROM YOUR THOUGHTS

Once you’ve calmed your nervous system, try separating yourself from your thoughts. As you start to do so, you might notice someone rather mean talking to you. In class, we discussed this voice, identifying it as the Buddhist idea of a Mara. It’s an inner “demon” that criticizes. It clogs your mind with negative chatter, wining randomly about this and that. It’s here, it’s there. It’s now, it’s then and being tied up in your thoughts, often painful thoughts, means you are always time-travelling. Distancing yourself from your thoughts allows you to be fully present and gain back the power of your own attention. You can watch the thoughts pass by like a river, associating deeply with only those that serve you. We can understand the power of this distancing when it comes to our well-being through Jennifer Aaker’s talk, “Rethinking Happiness”. In her talk, she highlights how those who are told to be happy or feel like they *should* be happy experience less happiness. She mentions that we “overshoot” in our efforts to find joy and one might assume this is because of the self-talk that comes with expecting happiness. We expect to feel a certain way and criticize ourselves when we don’t, reducing our natural and quiet feeling of happiness. Quieting that self -talk and that inner voice allows us to experience what is, rather than our narration of what is.

3.)   PRACTICE SELF COMPASSION

We try and get an A+ in feeling happy so that we can be good. However, like Mary Oliver’s Poem “The Journey” says,

“You do not have to be good. / You do not have to walk on your knees / for a hundred miles through the desert repenting./ You only have to let the soft animal of your body / love what it loves.”

This idea that we don’t need to self-flagellate or push ourselves to be martyrs is the idea behind self-compassion. It’s simply treating ourselves as a friend. In her talk, Jennifer Aaker continues to explain that the good isn’t as good and the bad won’t be as bad as we expect. We just mostly are. We just mostly will be. This unchanging means that no matter how much you punish yourself you will not be happier later as a result of suffering now.

As we also reviewed in class, you are probably quite fine. You might even be lucky and with this said, why punish yourself so deeply for gaining a pound or failing a test?  We are human and bad things happen to all of us.  

In our lack of self-compassion, we are often being illogical, thinking these bad things mean we are bad people with bad lives. Therefore, to avoid being wholesomely bad,  we try and protect ourselves from negative events by always being on high alert. It’s a strange way of being that completely skews our view of the world. We try and avoid suffering later by increasing our suffering every day. However, it simply doesn’t protect us against anything. The poem The Dakini Speaks, speaks frankly to this confused logic.

The Dakini Speaks

My friends, let’s grow up./ Let’s stop pretending we don’t know the deal here./ Or if we truly haven’t noticed, let’s wake up and notice./ Look: Everything that can be lost, will be lost./ It’s simple

…..

let’s give ourselves to it!/ Let’s stop making deals for a safe passage: …

                       —Jennifer Welwood

This idea that we should stop bargaining for a safe passage allows us to be compassionate with ourselves when something goes wrong and it allows us to compassionate with others when luck isn’t on their side.

After all, something will always go wrong and when it does, you will handle it.

And you will not blame yourself.

So while everything is okay, you can enjoy the day.

4.)   SETTLE IN TO WHAT THIS IS

In class, we reviewed the quote by Annie Dillard that says

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. ― Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

At the moment, my friend, you are spending your life in hysterics. You are spending your life being stressed, and tired and angry and ecstatic. We sometimes think that hysterics mean we care, but this dramatic idea seems to be narrative more than anything else. To be truly present to what is and to be truly engaged in our lives is simply to be alert and observant. As a young person, perhaps you’re worried about your future, but just as we can engage fully in the now, you can engage fully in the future by being present and alert to what’s next rather than trying to control it. This full engagement and readiness – captivation with what is- is awe. Maybe like you, this surprised me.  This quiet calm is not the kind of awe I’m used to seeing when a child walks into Disneyland, or when someone proposes and the woman weeps, or when a basketball team wins, and the bar erupts in high-fives. This awe is calm.  It’s simply ready to see what’s next and open to seeing it wholly. This is beautifully put in the poem Is My Soul Asleep by Antonio Machado.

“…No, my soul is not asleep./ It is awake, wide awake./ It neither sleeps nor dreams, but watches,its eyes wide open/ far-off things, and listens /at the shores of the great silence.

-        Antonio Machado , translated by Robert Bly

Next time you hear bad news, or great news, perhaps you can take it in as a wave of life. You can see it as a new hint of your future appearing as you sail your ship instead of seeing it as a threat against which you must protect yourself, or a treat towards which you must run before it disappears. Remember that each day is yours to enjoy. This one day is the only thing that is sure for you, so spend it intentionally and in awe, rather than clenched and with a narrow view of this great big world.