#threading: there is wisdom in looking beyond our borders | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dlkardenal · 4 years

Text

Vampires of Tenebris - A brief look at

There are many a soul in the cursed lands of the Towers, yet all know who they owe allegiance towards. They all remember the name of the dreaded building that casts a perpetual shadow spinning around like a clock, always expanding its domain onto another piece of land. That is the home of the vampire families. That is the fortress of their lords.

There are seven of these cyclopean constructs of dark magic and wonderous machines. Each houses a clan of blood drinkers related by blood and calling.

Thesantei

Most pleasant of the cursed tribes are the family of diplomats calling themselves the Thesantei. They act courteously and speak with great caution because they forever dance in the battle of wits and words. Their smiles and kind invitations serve none but themselves, bettering their position while they bleed kingdoms dry without cutting a wound. Not that they are incapable on the battlefield. They lunge and pierce like an artist painting with steel, commanding birds of prey and slithering drakelings to severe a life thread by thread. Their Curse is the most clandestine, capable of snatching and twirling the very thoughts of people, reading the most hidden perversions, and planting seeds of doubt.

Nerinai

People fear even the name of the Nerinai, the vampire physicians addicted to the pain and misery of others. They march in capes red as blood to threaten all who dare look upon them. They are suffering given form to most, humans and vampires alike. They are masters of flesh, bone, and blood, their Curse can mold living matter to heal, harm, or mock life itself. Using their knowledge they create Wretches, mutant abominations serving them without a spark of conscience. That is the root of their menacing fame; the ability to create life, and the cruel intent to morph it into something hideous.

Ataris

One family is like a shadow, a whisper you barely heard on the wind. Some aren’t even sure they exist. Some hope they don’t. They are the Ataris, a clan of vampires dedicated to unraveling the Curse itself and its tendrils into reality – magic. These mages learn nothing and care for nothing but the secret, occult powers they received during the Collapse, mastering it beyond any other. Their Curse calls onto the element of umbra, the smoke-like darkness that coils around every shadowed corner, manifesting it as liquid flame or straining tentacles. They are powerful, yet they don’t care for victory. They only learn fo the sake of learning, and never sate their infinite thirst for knowledge.

Sciria

Every soldier dreads the black blades wielded by the vampire legions because they radiate cold bloodlust and contempt. Those are the weapons forged by the Sciria, the family of blacksmiths that found their calling in the ore veins running under the Shadowshield Mountains. Their Curse allows them to smelt the black iron untouchable by any other soul, as it burns and corrupts every living thing around itself. For the Sciria, it is more than a metal. It is a god, a religion, an amalgamation of all their cries. Through the flames of their forge, it seeped into their blood and now all they touch manifests as their iron god’s avatar.

Tarquin

Even the Towers had builders; the Tarquin. The stone-blooded. The vampire masons. They are like the stone they cut, rough, cold, and immovable. Their Curse tears the border between creature and creation, giving them a sliver of divine power to damn statues with life and servitude until death. Their death. They welcome none, be it man or vampire, they work unseen and isolated and once they are done, only the stone speaks of them. But it speaks. It speaks of the Tarquin’s shame, the creation of the gargoyle horde that once threatened every Tower but remains to this day, scourging the outskirts of the accursed lands. So they build, higher and higher to forever bury this shame under the stone.

Hirinia

The Hirinia embody everything humans fear about the night. They prey in the darkness, silently scouting through the shadowed forest around their Tower and hunt everything that dares to make a sound. They are feral, bloodthirsty and savage, and they heed no warning or wisdom. Because they only hear the call of the wild. No Hirinia ever snuck in the night like a rat, because their Curse makes it their castle. They hear more, see more and sense more than a hound, their dark armor makes no sound and their shape is obscured in the fog of darkness that follows them. And when you hear the silent whistle of a crossbow bolt cutting through the air, it’s done. You are their trophy.

Venetesh

When the Towers go into war, the Venetesh are the first to answer. They are brutes, heartless butchers only kept alive by their everlasting rage and their desire to maim and carve up anyone they have an excuse for. They are the bloodhounds, the mercenaries, the expendable bulk of the vampire army. Their Curse is fury unbound, dark blood that rips them from death’s clutch, straining their muscles until they tear, flogging them forward until their bones break, creating monsters that sow terror on every field of battle. That is the call of the Venetesh.

These are the monsters we fight against. This is the enemy we shall smite in the name of our Lord, and all the Angel Legions in the high Heavens. That is His will. - Alexandros, Exarch of the Divine Church of Heliogaia

#writeblr #writerblr #writingcommunity #wip #writing wip #fantasy #dark fantasy #vampires #excerpt

2 notes · View notes

wistfulcynic · 5 years

Text

Self-Promo Sunday: The Very Witching Time

Tomorrow I’ll be posting The Sleep of the Sun, my contribution for @cspupstravaganza and a continuation of The Very Witching Time, which I wrote for the Supernatural Summer this year. It isn’t necessary to read TVWT to read the TSotS, but just in case, here it is!

Though it starts in summer the main action takes place in October, and there’s an eerie, witchy vibe throughout. It’s a modern setting, because I love witch!Emma as a modern woman who wears jeans and watches Netflix and uses her magic to keep her drinks hot and make her pancakes perfectly circular. But of course when she’s threatened by ancient evil she can use her magic for far more than that. Or when she meets an injured dog in the forest and needs it to heal him.

I love this verse so much, and these versions of Emma and Killian, AND the next chapter of their lives, beyond The Sleep of the Sun, which I hope will appear next year for the Supernatural Summer! I just can’t let it go.

SUMMARY: Emma Swan is a hereditary witch, last in a long line of wise women who for centuries have guarded the coast of Maine and the small village of Storybrooke with their homemade cures and their ancient magic. She holds the delicate balance between magic and mundane, but now that balance is threatened by a new foe, one capable of bringing an end to everything Emma is and everything she loves. To defeat it she will need all her power, help from her friends and neighbours, and the loyalty of a very unusual dog who answers to the name of Killian.

Words: 35k Rating: M (for violence and mild sexy times) Tags: modern AU, magical AU, witchcraft AU, witch!Emma, cursed!Killian, witches, witchcraft, witch lore

On AO3

CHAPTER ONE:

Emma Swan lived atop a jagged cliff in a house that seemed an extension of it, rising up from the wind-hewn face into pointed towers that stood stark against the sky. The house was of the same stone as the cliff itself, great slabs of it, slabs too large to be used for construction, slabs that, observing them, one felt could have been formed only by the hand of nature and never that of man. It was a part of the landscape, that house, as old as the earth and only slightly younger than the sky, perched at the edge of those perilous cliffs in a way that made it impossible to imagine them without it.

The back of the house, or rather the front, as that was where the door was set, however, presented an altogether different aspect; one of a delightful cottage of typical grey Maine clapboard, squat and cheerful with a steeply sloping roof trimmed in white and a low stone wall surrounding a tumbledown greenhouse and a garden where bushes, trees, and flowers jumbled together and neither rhyme nor reason appeared to play any role. On the casual observer the effect was charming in an artless way, yet a keener eye would note method behind the garden’s seeming madness, an ancient wisdom in the randomness of the tumbling riots of colour that shifted and transmuted with the seasons. Where in spring it boasted bright red poppies and purple larkspur, delicate white anemones and pink blossoms on the apple trees twisting around each corner of the wall, summer brought fragrant freesia and heather for the bees, its warm breezes rustling through the tall irises and lilies. Autumn ushered in the muted oranges and yellows of chrysanthemums and the fluffy white of Queen Anne’s Lace, salvia and yarrow and berries from the rowan tree. Even in winter the garden provided: the glossy green leaves and red berries of the holly bushes brightened the snowy vista as pansies and orchids flourished in the greenhouse.

Beyond the garden wall a forest sprawled, dark and wild and perilous, from the very edge of the cliff where trees clung by their gnarled roots to the borders of the village where it dwindled into fenced yards and tidy houses. Here your casual observer would feel a shivering prickle on the back of his neck, that uncomfortable sensation of being watched by things not quite of this world that is more commonly reserved for graveyards at dusk and abandoned Victorian houses. He would move quickly through the dense woodland —yet not so quickly that he appeared to be hurrying— and upon emerging he would feel the sunshine as a balm on skin grown far colder than he’d realised.

The keen observer would, of course, not go into the forest at all.

Emma was as keen an observer as anyone could be but the forest, for all its determined menace, posed no threat to her. She relied on it, in fact, for ingredients she could not or did not wish to cultivate in her garden or greenhouse, just as it relied on her to keep a rein on its magic. Emma and the forest had an understanding.

That understanding failed to extend to the village which separated the forest from the lush farmlands which this stretch of Maine coastline boasted; the richest soil in New England it was said, guarded closely by the residents of Storybrooke who despite their distrust of it were prepared to put up with creepy forest at their backs in exchange for prosperity at their fronts. And though they rarely ventured into the woods themselves they were broad minded and mercenary enough to appreciate the labours of those who did, of Emma and the generations of witches who had come before her; wise women who kept the forest in check and the villagers placated with potions and tinctures, candles to encourage love or drive away evil spirits and balms to soothe every ailment from a bumped head to a broken heart.

And so, just as witches had done in Storybrooke from the time of the earliest settlement of her ancestors in this land, Emma kept an apothecary shop in the village, stocked with the wares she blended and brewed herself, travelling to and from it each day along the very same forest path that had been daily trodden by so many powerful women over the course of the centuries.

The path was so familiar to her she could follow it in her sleep, which she almost did on the August afternoon when our tale begins, lulled by the muggy weight of the late summer air. The sunlight that shone so brightly on the village barely penetrated here; just a few slender shafts of it reached the forest floor, encouraging the growth of the rare plants on which Emma’s livelihood relied but doing little to alleviate the atmosphere made dense by damp heat and malign magic. Emma was blinking heavy eyelids, her mind on the cushioned bench in her garden that was so well suited to afternoon naps when the sound of an animal in distress wove its way into her drowsy consciousness.

It sounded like a dog, which caught her attention. Wilder, less domesticated creatures like cats and witches may feel comfortable enough with the forest’s demeanour to venture within, but dogs, being the keenest observers of all, tended to avoid it with the same diligence and for the same reasons as their humans did.

The noise came again, one that hovered somewhere between a whine and a growl, pained and frustrated. It tugged at Emma’s mind, clearing away her sleepy haze as from the corner of her eye she caught a quivering in the leaves of a hawthorn bush that twisted up from the undergrowth to the left of the path and the flash of a black tail just beyond it.

Without hesitating Emma plunged into the bracken, drawing on her own magic and that of the hawthorn as she went, wrapping threads of both around the bush’s thorny branches and pulling them aside to reveal a large black dog crouched at an awkward angle behind it. The dog looked up and when it saw her it stilled for a moment, staring at her with blue eyes that were almost shocking in its black face, a deep, clear blue she’d never seen on a dog before, bright and intelligent. It blinked and shook its head then looked at her again this time with a plea in those remarkable eyes, giving three quick, deep barks.

{Please help me.}

An affinity with animals was one of Emma’s gifts, and she was not surprised to hear the dog’s voice in her head. She smiled reassuringly and offered her hand.

“Hey, puppy,” she said in a low, soothing voice. “What’s the matter?”

The dog sniffed her hand then gave it a lick, its tail wagging furiously. She petted its head and scratched its ears as she slowly inched closer. It seemed remarkably calm given the circumstances but Emma had seen enough injured animals to be wary, knowing how abruptly their pain and fear could overcome them. She knelt on the ground next to it, murmuring gentle words and stroking its back, and took stock of the situation.

The dog’s front right leg was deep in what was likely a gopher hole, buried up to the middle of its shin, and though the sounds she’d heard and the state of the ground around the hole bore witness to the dog’s attempts to free itself, it was clear to Emma as indeed it would be even to the casual observer that the dog was thoroughly stuck and also that the leg was broken.

“Oh, poor baby,” she murmured. “That must hurt. I can help, if you’ll let me. Will you trust me?”

The dog looked right at her and she could see her answer in its extraordinary eyes, filled with pain but also hope and what she would swear was comprehension. It whined and gave her chin a single, gentle lick, then nodded its head.

“Well, that’s clearly a yes,” said Emma. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got here.” She hunched closer and examined the dog’s leg, well and truly wedged into the gopher hole, and winced. “I’m really sorry pup but this is going to hurt,” she said, looking up to catch the dog’s gaze again, marvelling at how calm it was despite its distress. She grasped its leg as gently as she could below the break and gathered her magic. “Ready? One… two…”

On three she pulled the leg from the hole, using her magic to ease its way. The dog whimpered at the pain but did not bark or growl and when its leg was free it licked her chin again.

“Okay, that’s step one,” said Emma. “Now let’s see how bad this is.” She probed the leg as delicately as she could with her fingertips, feeling the fractured bone beneath the fortunately unbroken skin. The break felt clean, with no jagged edges. “It’s not as bad as it could have been, I should be able to heal it,” she said, wondering briefly why she was explaining herself to a dog, though the animal in question was watching her intently with those intelligent eyes looking for all the world as though it knew exactly what she was saying. “I’m gonna have to set the break so there’ll be pain again and then I’ll heal it right after. Okay?”

The dog gave a short bark followed by another nod.

{Ready.}

“Okay, then,” said Emma. She gathered her magic, pulling it from the forest flowers and the leaves of the trees for backup, then as quickly as she could she snapped the broken bone back into place and wove her magic into it, knitting it together and soothing the pain in the damaged tissues.

When she finished she sat back on her heels with a sigh and closed her eyes. That was more magic than she’d used in some time and she felt a bit woozy. When she opened them again they fell immediately on the dog, who was staring at its leg in wonder.

Could dogs stare in wonder? She frowned, realising she didn’t actually know very much about the canine species. As a witch she’d always considered herself more of a cat person.

“Give it a try,” she told the dog. “It’s all better now.”

The dog stood up and began to walk, tentatively at first and then with greater confidence. After a few loping steps it spun around and barked excitedly before trotting back to her with a delighted expression, tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth.

Emma, however, was still frowning. Despite the dog’s obvious pleasure its gait had a distinct limp and when it moved quickly it used only three legs, forgoing the left one entirely.

Its left leg… when she had healed the right.

“Hey,” she said. “Come here. Let me see that other leg.”

It limped closer and placed its left leg in her lap, a leg which she was now able to observe did not end in a paw.

“Oh, no!” she cried, bending to get a closer look at what was evidently an old injury and a badly healed one, with rough scar tissue and signs of wear where the dog had walked on it. “Oh poor you. This isn’t the first time you’ve been hurt, is it? How do you walk?”

The dog tilted its head in what was plainly a shrug.

“I guess you manage the best you can, huh? Well, I can’t give you your paw back but if you come home with me I should be able to fix you up with something to protect the end of your leg and help you walk a bit better. How does that sound?”

The dog licked her face enthusiastically and barked, and now that the press of emergency had passed she noticed the peculiar cadence of its cry.

“Aye!” barked the dog.

Emma blinked. She may not be the world’s foremost authority on dogs, but even she knew that they were supposed to say things like “woof” or “arf.” She’d never heard of a dog saying “aye” before.

“Aye?” she repeated with a laugh. “Well, I guess that’s pretty obviously agreement.” She stood and brushed the dirt and twigs from her legs as the dog stood patiently in its slightly off-kilter way. “What should I call you?” she asked it. “I don’t suppose you have a name.”

Killian.

The name sprang into her mind, though the dog hadn’t barked. “Killian?” she repeated, startled.

“Aye!” barked the dog.

“Really?”

“Aye!”

“You sure? It’s not Spot or Buster or Joe or something?”

The dog looked affronted, and she laughed again. “All right, Killian it is then. I guess that means you’re a boy.”

“Aye!”

“Well okay, Killian, let’s go. We can have some dinner and then I’ll see what I can do about that paw.”

Killian bounded in an excited circle around her, his tail a blur. He moved remarkably well, considering, she thought, even as she laughed at his antics, and soon he’d settled into a limping trot alongside her as she headed home.

When they reached her garden gate she opened it and went straight in but Killian halted with a short bark of distress. She turned in surprise at the sound to see him pacing to and fro in front of the gate, whining softly.

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

He whined louder and gave two short barks.

{Not welcome.}

“But why wouldn’t you be—” Emma frowned. The wards around her garden were designed to keep humans away, permitting none to enter without permission. But they shouldn’t have any effect on a dog.

Should they?

She really needed to learn more about dogs, she thought with mild irritation. This was clearly a gaping hole in her education.

In the meantime she called to the magic in the ancient warding spells, and spoke the age-old words to quieten them. “I see thee, Killian, and I name thee friend,” she said, in a voice that echoed through the open air. “Be welcome in this place.”

The magic of her garden surged and she held out her arms as it rippled and danced around her, ruffling her hair and gilding her skin with tiny sparks of light. Killian stared at her with wonder in his eyes again, and when the sparks faded away and she lowered her arms he cautiously stepped through the gate. The moment he crossed its threshold the garden’s magic… sighed, a soft exhale that sang of enduring hopes fulfilled at too long last, and curled itself around him, ruffling his fur as it had her hair.

Now it was Emma’s turn to stare. Her magic had never done that before. She gaped as Killian seemed to smirk —could dogs smirk?— at the unseen attention he was getting before rolling onto his back and letting the garden’s magic rub his tummy.

“Seriously?” cried Emma. “That’s enough of that, from both of you, Killian, come inside.”

She marched over to the cottage door and pulled it open. Killian leapt to his feet and ran after her, pausing just at the doorstep to wink at the garden before trotting into her kitchen.

Could dogs wink?

Emma made a mental note to dig up a book on canine behaviours later that night. There must be one in her library. Somewhere.

“I don’t have much that’s suitable for dogs,” she warned him as she opened the icebox. “But I think I’ve got some hamburgers in here if that’s okay—”

“Aye! Aye!”

“Okay, let me just heat them up.”

She defrosted the hamburgers with some gentle warming magic and put them on a plate for him. The minute she set it on the floor he dove in, gobbling up the meat with enthusiasm bordering on frenzy.

“Wow, you were hungry! How long has it been since you ate?”

He looked up at her and licked his chops, tail wagging vigorously, and barked twice before digging in again.

{Long time.}

“Well, don’t eat too fast, it’ll make you sick.”

Emma made herself a sandwich and munched it as she watched him diligently try to eat more slowly. When the last morsel was gone he lapped the plate clean then came over to her and licked her hand in thanks, wagging his tail as she scritched his ears before relaxing back onto his haunches and giving her the opportunity to observe him.

He was, as she had noticed in the woods, a large dog, though not a bulky one, with long slender legs and lean muscles. Standing, his head reached her waist with his shoulders around the middle of her thigh. His fur was thick and shaggy and a deep, light-absorbing black, though a v-shaped tuft right in the centre of his chest was bright white and fluffy and so soft-looking that her fingers itched to pet it.

He watched her examine him with a twinkle in his blue eyes that she was certain couldn’t be normal for a dog, as though he knew what she was thinking. She popped the last bite of sandwich into her mouth and when he pouted —did dogs pout?— she gave him a small smirk. “You had your dinner,” she said firmly. “You can’t have mine too. Now what do you say we go and see what can be done about that paw.”

She stood and left the kitchen, Killian at her heels, and headed past the living room and the closed library door, through a dark and narrow passageway towards the rear of the house. As she approached, the solid-seeming wall at the end of the corridor began to shimmer with the same sparking light that had surrounded her in the garden and a doorway appeared, wrought from the same stone as the slabs of the house itself, curving elegantly to form a pointed Gothic arch and frame a door of solid wood, thick and heavy and older than anything that surrounded it.

The door swung open as Emma drew near and she breezed through it without a thought. Killian, sensing the darker energy emanating from the other side, hesitated as he had at the garden gate. Emma turned, her smile understanding.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It’s not dangerous, just old. Old things are sometimes… indifferent to younger ones. But it won’t hurt you. Nothing will hurt you here.”

Hesitantly he came through the doorway, moving slowly to allow the magic there to get a sense of him. It was less welcoming than the garden had been, but not hostile. As Emma said, it was simply indifferent. This magic had seen too many mortal creatures come and go in its time to care overly much about yet another one.

Emma led him into a large stone room with no windows, the tall, thick candles lining the walls its only source of light. These she set burning with a wave of her hand and the illumination they produced flooded the room with a golden glow despite their modest number. Stone stairs curved up the walls on either side of the room, leading to the towers that flanked the house, their twin helixes twisting up and disappearing into a darkness too dense even for the candles to penetrate. A heavy and cluttered wooden table spanned the length of the far wall, and this Emma approached, producing a thick, soft blanket of deep midnight blue scattered with stars from a woven wicker basket beneath it.

She spread the blanket carefully over the centre of the otherwise bare stone floor, placing at each of its corners a small silver bowl filled with sea salt and thyme and a few dried violet leaves, murmuring a short incantation over them as she did. “Sit here,” she instructed Killian, indicating the centre of the blanket. “I’ll need a few minutes to get my things together.”

Obediently, he sat and watched her in fascination as she rifled through the jumbled collection of bottles, jars, and bags on the table, frowning and muttering to herself as she did.

“…comfrey and rosemary and a bit of peppermint, sage to infuse and to burn…” she intoned as she gathered the named ingredients together. When all were assembled she snapped her fingers to light a fire beneath her copper kettle, then carefully weighed out the herbs on her silver scales while the water inside it came to a boil. She blended the herbs in a large mortar, crushing and grinding them with the pestle to blend them well and draw out their essence before tipping them carefully into a painted ceramic pot and pouring the boiling water over them. Stirring them gently with her magic, with her fingertips she traced arcane symbols through the steam as it rose from the pot into the cool, still air.

When she judged the herbs sufficiently infused she strained their liquid through a clean cheesecloth into a wide copper bowl. As it cooled to a comfortable temperature, she removed a lump of pure silver from a leather bag, holding it up to observe its gleam in the candlelight. The lump was large but to complete the healing properly would require all of it, and it was also precious. Glancing behind her she saw Killian sitting patiently, watching her, his eyes wide and curious but not afraid. Trusting.

He was worth it. She felt sure of that, and though she had no idea why she did not vacillate. Emma had long since learned to trust her instincts.

She took a bundle of dried sage and held it up to a candle flame until it caught —some fires needed to be started in the mundane way— then blew the flame out with a quick puff of breath and waved the smouldering herbs around the blanket and over the copper bowl before dropping them into the potion. Carefully she lifted the bowl and carried it to the blanket, kneeling down upon it and placing the bowl in front of Killian. Closing her eyes she muttered a brief incantation before taking his damaged leg and bathing it in the warm liquid, her fingers gentle but thorough, making sure to clean away all the dirt and debris from the gnarled scar tissue. He growled softly, deep in his throat, and she shot him a smile, knowing it was a growl of pleasure.

“Feels good, huh?” she said. “Soothing.”

“Aye.” His bark was as low as his growl.

{Good.}

When his leg was clean she dried it with a linen cloth and set it in her lap, then took out the lump of silver, placing it at the end of his leg and cupping both loosely in the palms of her hands. Closing her eyes once more she focused her powers and drew forth the metal’s own magic, its primal properties of health and healing, her hands beginning to spark and glow with light as she kneaded the silver, stretching and weaving it back into itself, moulding the lump into the shape of a dog’s paw and then knitting it into the damaged flesh of the leg. Killian watched with wide eyes, whimpering slightly as the metal sank into his skin and fused to his bones. The light from Emma’s hands burst into a sudden blinding brightness, flickered out, and the silver paw was part of him.

Emma slumped back on her heels, exhausted. “Whew,” she said. “Done.” She patted the metal paw. “Give it a try.”

Killian sniffed the paw, licked at the seam where it joined his leg, then tentatively placed it on the floor and leaned his weight on it. He took a few careful steps followed by bolder ones, then turned to Emma with an incredulous expression. She laughed, happy he was happy. “Go on, stretch yourself,” she encouraged.

“Aye!” he barked, frolicking joyfully around the room, spinning in circles and leaping through the air. He ran to Emma and jumped on her, putting his paws on her shoulders and licking her face until she pushed him away, grinning through a jaw-cracking yawn. “I’m glad you like it,” she told him as she rose unsteadily from the floor. “I gotta get to bed. Um…” she swayed on her feet and Killian was there immediately at her side, pressing firmly against her leg and letting her brace herself with her hand on his neck as she stumbled from the stone room and out the doorway.

It disappeared behind her, the magic within whispering far more warmly than before, no longer so indifferent to Killian as it had been.

Emma sank her fingers into his thick fur, clinging to him as she made her way up the stairs to her bedroom. Her head felt heavy and woozy, her fingers and toes numb. Moving clumsily she kicked off her shorts and unhooked her bra, pulling it from beneath her tank top with jerky movements and dropping it to the floor before collapsing into bed, sinking deep into the pillows. Dimly she was aware of Killian moving around the room, his fur soft against her skin as he pulled the blankets up over her, the warm weight of him curling up at her back, his chin resting on her hip. With the last of her energy she reached up to stroke his head then fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

~~🌺~~

Some hours later Killian was awoken from his doze when the magic from Emma’s garden called to him. He lifted his head from where it still lay on her hip and gave a low growl, staring through the bedroom window into the pitch blackness of the night.

Something was out beyond the garden wall, moving around its perimeter, methodically testing the magical boundary in search of weaknesses. Killian could sense it there, could feel its cold determination and intent even without the garden’s warning.

Threat, whispered the garden magic in his mind. Danger. Stay with her.

Killian flexed his new silver paw, feeling the power that still thrummed within it, feeling the absence of pain in his left limb for the first time in many a year. He looked at the golden haired woman still sound asleep, drained to exhaustion by the act of healing him, of selflessly giving him this invaluable gift. He recalled her warm green eyes and kind smile, the strength and gentleness in her touch.

He lay back down, pressing tighter against her, curling his neck around her hip and placing his silver paw gently over her waist. He closed his eyes again and answered the garden’s plea.

{Always.}

Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world.

—Hamlet, Act III Scene 2

Continue to Chapter 2

27 notes · View notes

ethenell · 6 years

Text

Best Films of 2017, Part II

5. Blade Runner 2049 (dir. Denis Villeneuve)

“Mere data makes a man … A and C and T and G … The alphabet of you, all from four symbols.”

Making a satisfactory sequel to a widely beloved masterpiece like Blade Runner is a borderline impossible task – the weight of expectation is oftentimes simply too great. In keeping with that wisdom, Blade Runner 2049 is not at all a satisfactory sequel - Luckily for fans of the groundbreaking original, it is much, much more than that. A daringly-conceived blockbuster epic that flies in the face of today’s rapid fire genre filmmaking rulebook, 2049 is the kind of bold, visionary sequel that Blade Runner has always deserved, but most of us lacked the optimism to hope for.

With a gargantuan runtime and an average shot length dwarfing that of the average blockbuster, it’s hard to understate the sheer ambition of what director Denis Villenueve has brought to the screens with 2049. But the true miracle is that the magnitude of 2049’s ambition is matched by its achievement every step of the way, thanks in no small part to the partnership of Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins, whose Oscar-winning work (!!) on 2049 deserves consideration alongside the best of his unparalleled career. Their collaboration is central to the hypnotic mood and texture of the film – a significant departure from that of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film. It would have been easy for Villeneuve and Deakins to replicate the look and feel of the original – many have done it over the years, with varying degrees of success. But rather than do what was easy, they took the original’s oft-imitated cyberpunk world and filtered it through their own creative lens – coming out on the other side with some of the most indelible imagery the year in cinema had to offer. That the film also treads novel thematic territory in the well-worn debate on the existential border between man and machine, cements 2049’s status as one of the all-time great film sequels.

In keeping with the film’s heavy Tarkovsky influences, Villenueve focuses more on finding the right way to ask the hard questions than on constructing tricky ways to answer the easy ones. But Tarkovsky, as brilliant as he was, never made a film that looked anything like this. It’s with this delicate marriage of grand imagery and even grander ideology that Villinueve has defied the odds and done what most thought was impossible … He’s made a brilliant follow-up to an undisputed masterpiece.

In doing so, he just might have made one of his own.

4. Lady Bird (dir. Greta Gerwig)

- Lady Bird. Is that your given name?

- Yeah.

- Why is it in quotes?

- I gave it to myself. It’s given to me, by me.

All too often, authenticity in filmmaking is synonymous with directorial transparency - passive camera and observational direction have become the du jour techniques to achieve a realist aesthetic. But there is a special authenticity to crafting a film that fully and authentically inhabits a specific point of view. Greta Gerwig’s splendid semi-autobiographical debut Lady Bird is just such a special film. Far from being passive and observational, Gerwig’s distinctive voice as an actress transitions beautifully behind the camera as she bottles up all the emotional tumult of high school and unleashes it through a powerhouse performance from one of cinema’s best young actresses.

Though a realistic Oscar push never quite developed, Soairse Ronan has now delivered two performances more than worthy of the honor - at 23, she is already far overdue for greater recognition. As Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson, she works in perfect harmony with Gerwig to deliver big-time laughs and well-earned tears while casting even the most tired coming-of-age tropes in a fresh new light. And, while it’s not clear whether it’s even possible to steal the show from a performer of Ronan’s caliber, leave it to the reliable character actress Laurie Metcalf to give it her best shot. Her big-hearted but overly-critical mother is career-best work that often serves as the film’s emotional backbone. She’s the perfect foil to Ronan’s bursting-at-the-seams teenage rebel, and their fraught relationship is the crux of Gerwig’s film.

The best thing that can be said about Lady Bird – and there are more than a few great things to say – is that it simply rings true. It’s earnest portrayal of a young girl clashing against the boundaries of her world, and herself captures something deeply true about the contradictions of young adulthood. Despite it’s modest packaging, Lady Bird is a genuinely moving and supremely confident debut, bursting with creative ambition and boasting immaculately-realized characters expressing ideas that resonate with audiences beyond the film’s pointedly narrow scope. If that’s not the sign of a brilliant filmmaker, then I don’t know what is.

3. Call Me By Your Name (dir. Luca Guadagnino)

“Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot.“

On the heels of Moonlight’s stunning Best Picture win, few would have expected another masterpiece of LGBTQ cinema to emerge so quickly. But the consensus best film from the Sundance Film Festival’s 2017 iteration was just such an effort. Luca Guadagnino’s entry to the festival was immediately pegged as one of its more buzzed-about titles. His previous two films, 2009’s I Am Love and 2015’s A Bigger Splash - both featuring characteristically excellent performances from Tilda Swinton, with the latter boasting a very uncharacteristically off-the-walls and thoroughly underappreciated turn from Ralph Fiennes - established Guadanigno as a premiere actor’s director. But Call Me By Your Name showcased a newly-subdued directorial style, giving his impressive cast of players even more room to shine.

On this note, it’s hard not to point to Guadignino’s pairing with 2017 breakout Timothee Chalamet as a gift of fate. Working with Guadanigno, Chalamet is revelatory. He delivers a performance with nuance and complexity far beyond his years. As the film follows Chalemet’s Elio finding first love, he projects confidence only to be betrayed by moments of utter vulnerability, hitting those extremes – and every note in between – with absolute perfection. In this year’s Best Actor category, Gary Oldman had the perfect industry narrative, but Chalamet gave the most deserving performance – no one will ever convince me otherwise. Surrounding Chalamet’s masterful work is a stellar ensemble, of which Michael Stuhlbarg is the clear standout. In hands-down the best moment in the year of film, Stuhlbarg delivers a monologue for the ages with his voice hardly rising above a whisper. His is an absolutely brilliant performance that, like most of his unerringly impressive character work, has been criminally ignored.

Call Me By Your Name is destined to join the ranks of the all-time great LGBT romances, but it’s thematic reach and the appeal of its characters are universal. It’s a masterpiece of storytelling that perfectly captures hesitant intimacy blossoming into the kind of love that burns bright and leaves marks that last a lifetime. Guadagnino guides us gracefully through the tender connection at the film’s center without sacrificing the complexity of Elio and Oliver’s emotional journeys. These moments of self-discovery – and discovery of a part of yourself in another – are never straightforward endeavors, but Guadagnino’s warm camera conjures the melancholic beauty in every intricate detail as though he’s recalling a fond memory. Times like these call for films as tender, earnest, and full-hearted as Call Me By Your Name. It’s unmissable.

2. Dunkirk (dir. Christopher Nolan)

“You can practically see it from here ...

What?

... Home.”

Leave it to Christopher Nolan, who already revolutionized the superhero movie, to produce a war film unlike any I’ve ever seen. Like Saving Private Ryan before it, Dunkirk throws out the playbook and finds great power outside the bounds of convention. An absolute masterclass in structure and formal editing – in many ways more ambitious even than the groundbreaking structure of Nolan’s grandiose mindbender, Inception – Dunkirk juggles three different storylines, all of which occur over different timeframes, until they all converge in a breathlessly tense climactic sequence. Weaving these threads effectively is a gargantuan task, but Nolan proves himself more than up to the challenge.

From a directorial perspective, Dunkirk is not far removed from Nolan’s previous efforts. His precise technical command and vision for spectacular set-pieces is nearly unmatched in modern studio filmmaking – but this isn’t news for anyone who’s familiar with his previous work. Where Dunkirk improves dramatically over Nolan’s previous efforts – particularly his more uneven films, like Interstellar and The Prestige – is on the page.

One of the biggest knocks against Nolan as a filmmaker has always been his over-reliance on expository dialogue. (Honestly, how many different perfunctory monologues did it take for him to explain Inception’s dream-within-a-dream structure? Or wormhole travel in Interstellar?) So how did he respond when writing Dunkirk? With a ruthless editorial pen, he chipped away at each bit of dialogue until all that remained were the truly essential elements. The result is the most sparse film of Nolan’s career – it also happens to be the best.

Even with the lack of dialogue Nolan’s cast is given to deliver – or perhaps precisely because of it – Dunkirk is filled with memorable ensemble performances. Cillian Murphy’s shellshocked sailor, Tom Hardy’s steely, resilient pilot, Mark Rylance’s calmly resolved civilian, and yes, even Harry Styles’ fearfully cruel foot soldier, all leave a lasting impression despite limited screen time. It’s a testament to the efficacy to the show-don’t-tell philosophy when embraced by a director as immensely talented as Nolan.

Filling in the gaps is composer extraordinaire Hans Zimmer’s droning score, which might very well be the best, most thematically effective work of his career. Propelling and underlying the cacophonous atmospherics is the simple tick of a clock – so ubiquitously present that you only notice it when it suddenly drops away. It’s a simple gambit that makes for one of the most thrilling moments of the cinematic year. Without Zimmer’s score, it never would have materialized. His work elevates the film – there’s no greater compliment that a composer can be given.

Like The Dark Knight before it, Christopher Nolan has also crafted Dunkirk to be uniquely resonant in the present geopolitical landscape. It’s a morally resolute film, firm in its assertion that certain battles are worth fighting and unambiguously optimistic about the willingness capacity of good people to do so, no matter the cost. It’s an empowering message, harkening back to a day when Western civilization was left with no choice but to do away with equivocations and rise up to face an unambiguously evil force at work in the world. As we see hints and shadows of that same fascistic ideology re-emerging in our present politics, Dunkirk reminds us that we are capable of defeating it, but only at a terrible cost.

1. Phantom Thread (dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

“Kiss me my girl, before I’m sick.”

With each subsequent entry to his already-legendary filmography, Paul Thomas Anderson further stakes his claim as American cinema’s greatest living auteur. His latest, Phantom Thread marks a particularly fascinating step along his journey to filmmaking greatness. As with all of Anderson’s films, there’s more to Phantom Thread than initially meets the eye. What initially appears to be a peculiar period romance slowly reveals itself to be a devilishly subversive take on power dynamics and love. The film’s austerity and elegance belie it’s prickly subtext, but (of course) it is this exact contradiction that makes Phantom Thread so damn interesting ... There’s not a film this year that has more frequently occupied my thoughts.

In what is reportedly his final role, Danial Day-Lewis is as impressive as ever, doing away with the towering theatrics of his best-known performances (there’s hardly a hint of Daniel Plainview or Bill the Butcher, here) in favor of the meticulous character work that initially brought him to critical esteem. In his hands, Woodcock’s cartoonish mannerisms feel thoroughly organic with nary a false beat to be found, while bringing Anderson’s words to life with extraordinary skill. Lines that could feel like throwaways to another actor take on legendary status as delivered by Day-Lewis. If it is indeed the final time that he will be gracing our screens, then he’s picked a finale befitting his storied career.

As if taking cues from his star and uncredited co-writer, P.T. Anderson directs his latest masterpiece with an uncharacteristically gentle hand. Thrown to the wayside is the visionary flash and technically prodigious camerawork that defined his earlier greats. Instead, Anderson hones in on his unmatched sense for interweaving character and theme and lets his actors the heavy lifting in largely still frames. Unsurprisingly, the results are brilliant, the product of an assured and confident master working at the very height of his powers while refusing to lean on his past successes.

But while the continued collaboration of Anderson and Daniel Day-Lewis sits at the center of any assessment of Phantom Thread, it’s greatness is often solidified by the masterful contributions outside of this titanic duo. Another frequent PTA collaborator, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, turns in his best work since his groundbreaking score for There Will Be Blood. His lush piano work and elegant strings match the film’s beats to perfection, rooting out its subtleties and amplifying them beautifully. And Day-Lewis’ co-star, the previously unknown Hungarian actress Vicky Krieps, may well be the most exciting discovery of the year. Acting alongside Daniel Day-Lewis must seem a daunting task to even the most experienced of thespians, but Krieps fearlessly matches him step for step.

Phantom Thread, though it’s the director’s most austere film to date, is a P.T. Anderson film, through and through. By that I mean that it’s deeply strange and continually surprising, but ultimately narrows its gaze on something uncomfortably and fundamentally true about our common human condition. It’s gorgeously made and subtly provocative cinema from a virtuoso filmmaker … What more could you ask for?

#best films of 2017 #best films of the year #film review #movie review #film #cinema #phantom thread #dunkirk #call me by your name #lady bird #blade runner 2049 #denis villeneuve #christopher nolan #greta gerwig #luca guadagnino #saoirse ronan #timothee chalamet #paul thomas anderson #daniel day lewis

16 notes · View notes

supernovellass · 3 years

Text

𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗮𝘀, 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗽𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝘄𝗼.

(Click for chapter one.)

From border to border, the people of this town spoke my name. Whether they’d met me to allow for introductions or not, it seemed that everyone knew of the girl who bounced along throughout the countryside, fiery curls bouncing right along with her. Everyone had heard of her infectious laughter, her willingness to call everyone and anyone a friend, and her neverending energy.

They spoke of Nova, and the wholesome little family she belonged to. How blessed they all seemed to be, in looks, in luck, in kindness and affections. Some remarked with a sort of crooning, on how lovely it must be to live in that household, and even lovelier it was to have such people as neighbours. Predictably, the whispers occasionally veered in the other direction, sneers rolling off the tongues of envious folk, who mulled over what truly happened behind closed doors. I’d heard the comments, firsthand or otherwise, on numerous occasions, and they never failed to paint a smile across my face. What a remarkable thing, to be so wrong, yet so right, all in one line of thought.

They suspected that something was wrong within our family, that there must be a long history of infidelity, there must be hidden bruises somewhere on either mine or my mother’s body, that my father must be so deep in a pit of dependency that he comes out the other side as a functioning alcoholic. These mundane worries of small town minds, their accusations that gloom surely must hang over a family so outwardly joyful, they had no roots outside of jealousy.

We were as blissfully happy as we seemed. My father’s love of the land and its creatures never steered him wrong, the money he earned meant that my mother could freely lose herself in her artistic creations, and distribute them to adorn the walls of her own spattering of fans within the surrounding towns and counties. I found myself a perfect mix of the people who raised me, equally happy to spend my time among the wee calves that were forever stumbling around the farm’s courtyard, or tucked into a corner by the fireside with my mother, losing hours to needles and thread. We were everything we seemed — these quirky people who hugged animals and were frequently dressed in splatters of paint, rarely seen without a smile, consistently offering an embrace in place of a handshake — people far more colorful than was generally considered acceptable around these parts.

Those were the O’Sullivans, and every claim made against them had no legs to stand on.

What these simple outsiders didn’t and would never know, was that they not only spoke of me by name, but by title. A word passed through generations, known for centuries, a terror that was feared by all. A creature that could crawl into your life, your home, your family, and rob you of something so precious, yet leave you none the wiser. What was now treated as nothing more than a story to roll out to tourists, occasionally to children as we neared the end of October, dismissed as nothing but a darker take on fairy tales by everyone but the few who rightfully clung to their superstitious ways.

The dark of night washed over me, as I perched at the edge of my bed, my eyes fixed on the window which overlooked the trees that framed my corner of the house. My thoughts a flutter of reflections, images of days gone by, the sounds of my kin’s agony rippling out between worlds. Visions of loss came to me in flashes, the shine of a knife, the flicker of a flame, the chants of a familiar voice calling out for justice. I’d relived these moments a million times over, familiarised myself to the point of disconnect from the suffering. Instead, as my frame remained posed like a statue well into the early hours, the only change that broke through was the upward curl of my mouth.

My time on these grounds far exceeded any living creature in the realm, my wisdom something a human being could never know to dream of, my power extending beyond the physical in order to bewitch any who happened to be within my vicinity. I allowed my mind to float in this knowledge, soak itself in the feeling of superiority, use my favored hours to think on the ways in which my existence would bear fruit. As I honed in on the very reason for my presence here, appearing as if from sense alone, my unblinking gaze was pulled to the figures that emerged from between the leaves. The sinister smirk that had previously set up camp, gave way to something softer, far closer to the glee I wore in the daylight hours, as I rose and all but tossed myself over the windowsill.

“Brothers, what brings you out tonight?”

They exchanged a glance, a smug look evident, as if they wouldn’t know exactly what to say, as if they couldn’t exchange anything they needed without words. Teasing fools, the lot of them.

“Do not toy with me, out with it!”

The temptation to laugh at their antics was present, they were something I missed dearly in my daily life, but I knew that they would not have been allowed to visit without serious cause. I couldn’t play into their poking and extend the wait, my curiosity wouldn’t allow it.

“She wants you to come home, Supernova. We want you to come home.”

A pang. As if that wasn’t what I’d longed for every moment we’d been separated, every moment I’d been torn from my homeland and my people.

“She thinks it’s time, she thinks you’ve waited long enough. She sent us to deliver her permission, and to tell you that the time has come to fulfill your duties.”

Being breathless was not something I was accustomed to, I’d seen too much in my lifetime to be caught off guard, but this was something else entirely. A relief I’d never known, a swelling of my heart, vindication for every moment I’d exercised restraint in this personal Hell. I had a purpose here, and for what felt like an endless sentence, I was expected to create a place for myself amongst the people of this place, rather than act on my plans. I was told there would come the perfect time, the perfect place, the perfect way, and I was simply to wait until given the green light.

I had prepared for this, ready for this, long before tonight. Every minute of every hour had been spent envisioning the moment I would finally fulfill my destiny.

I was designed for one thing, and one thing only.

A Changeling was designed for one thing, and one thing only.

Revenge.

#solos

0 notes

warlock-enthusiast · 7 years

Text

Hope

day 22 of fictober

Critical Role: Basically a bit of Gilmore being a bit sad about his foolish heart

Sponsoring the rather colorful troop of Vax Machina surely had its benefits. Consumers visited from every corner of Emon and from beyond its borders. Sales doubled and Gilmore seldom found a minute of rest within in shop. He’d gone as far as to take a quick nap between talking to all too eager wannabe heroes and garish nobles. Magical items seemed to be a new show off for upper class people and he gladly provided them with trinkets.

Gilmore also faced moments of doubts, too. Sponsoring Vox Machina meant a group of loud people, and a bear, entering his facilities on a regular basis, creating unrest and chaos with every step. Not that he minded. Much. During the time of their acquaintance, he’d come to cherish them all.

And his heart had always been a soft fool.

“Ah, my favourite customers.” Gilmore opened his arms and smiled. He wore a set of purple robes, heavy and rich and with small threads of gold woven into the fabric and they rustled with every move.

Only a few of them seemed to visit him today. Gilmore saw Keyleth and Scanlan and Grog, towering above the shelves. The rest of Vox Machina were probably back at their keep or in an audience with Uriel. You’d never know with them.

“You’ve seen better days, my dear Vax’ildan.” Cuts and bruises and skin too pale, even for this half elf, spoke of some battle or another. Being friends with them also came with the hefty price of worry and fear for their safety and evil lurked in the very foundation of their world.

Vax bowed his head, hiding the laughter waiting in the corners of his mouth. “And you look dashing and handsome as ever.”

“I know.” Gilmore shrugged. “So, what can I offer you fine fellows today? Magical trinkets to defeat a god? Or maybe another dragon?”

“Defeating gods isn’t on our list.” Vax stopped and leaned closer. “Dragons, though? Been there, done that. Multiple times.” “My my, what a mighty hero we have here.” Gilmore slapped him on the back and ignored the shift in their conversation as Keyleth came forward. Vax stepped back, visible uneasy and put some distance between the two of them.

“Hello, Gilmore.” Keyleth smiled at him and waved.

And he saw why Vax had fallen for her. Her beauty and grace, her wisdom, her strong convictions, even her awkwardness added to Keyleth’s charm. Looking at her felt like seeing a thunderstorm for the first time. A princess of her people. He could never compare to someone like her.

Gilmore swore to never be jealous and still he found himself unable to ignore his heart beating a bit too fast. Such a childish thing to do and he chided himself. He’d seen too much during his life to act like a swooning idiot now.

They bought books, a piece of magical armor, a fine dagger. Everything cheaper with their special discount. Gold clinked and goodbyes were said.

He watched him leave. Slender form, black hair reaching down to his shoulders, and his steps careful and silent. Gilmore lost some of his grandeur and rubbed his eyes with a sigh. Foolish heart indeed. He’d to stop thinking about their lazy strolls through the city, drunken on some wine and the sun on their heads, every word a hint and a promise.

A small hand touched his arm. “Gilmore, why do you…” Sherri blushed noticeable beneath her glasses. “Why do you torture yourself so?”

“Hope requires disbelief.” His smile didn’t reach his eyes.

#fictober #critical role #shaun gilmore #gilmore #gilmorexvax #a bit at least #rather one sided #i am episode 41 currently #so much stuff to see #i love gilmore so much #i love them all so much #siiiigh #headcanons

16 notes · View notes

latenightwh · 7 years

Text

Trump v. Thomas Jefferson, Part II

Jefferson: “...perhaps it is well.”

Trump: “Huh? What’s--what’d you say?”

Jefferson: “Hmm?”

Trump: “You just--you’ve been staring at the wall for, like, 20 minutes--I thought you’d passed out on your feet. I do that sometimes. It looks like I’m listening, but--”

Jefferson: “Do not compare the workings of my mind with yours. My eccentricities were legion--I believe some of your present-day alienists have offered to diagnose me in absentia with various mental infirmities--a gross presumption of theirs--but I was never absent from my thoughts. I was deliberate. Always. You are never so. We are as unalike as Day from Night, and yet the same great nation, its people, in their native wisdom, chose both of us to serve the same office. This--perplexes me. Two unalike things cannot function in a like manner--yet the common perception that guides the conscience of the electorate has decided that they shall do so--is this a paradox?”

Trump: “...”

Jefferson: “You’ve passed out on your feet, haven’t you?”

Trump: “Huh? Yeah, no, totally checked out. It’s like when other people start talking, the world just stops being real to me, you know?”

Jefferson: “You are Narcissus incarnate.”

Trump: “I’m assuming that’s a compliment.”

Jefferson: “Of course you do.”

Trump: “So what were you saying.about ‘it is well’?”

Jefferson: “I was ruminating on the knowledge you and this present time have of my...private dealings.”

Trump: “Oh, you mean sleeping with the help--yeah, it’s bad when they find out stuff like that--lemme tell you, Schwarzenegger never recovered from--”

Jefferson: “Stop using what you think of as words. I have considered, and my consideration is this: It is well.”

Trump: “’Well’? ‘Well,’ what? What’s ‘well’?”

Jefferson: “That my shame be known to all. That my...conduct regarding Sally Hemmings be known--and that I be calumniated for it.”

Trump: “OK, look, we all like to make up words--”

Jefferson: “Dear Merciful Maker of World and Time, you are a trial of patience and belief. I am saying that my ownership of slaves, my use of the young woman as a concubine--”

Trump: “--we’re still talking about sleeping with the help, right?”

Jefferson: “YES.”

Trump: “Cool, cool, just making sure.”

Jefferson: “Listen to me: it is the curse of every generation to be the shame of its posterity. What one man does, another, in ages hence, despises him for--though both are men of equal conscience. Do you see?”

Trump: “Man, I wish I still had Bannon around to translate the hard stuff--maybe I can call up Miller--well, maybe not, that guy gives me the creeps.”

Jefferson: “I am saying that I failed to be what I pledged to be when I wrote the Declaration. That I set forth to my people--our people--a promise of universal equality--of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as inalienable human rights--and I then completely failed to live up to those ideals in my own conduct as a private citizen.”

Trump: “Wait...hang on...”

Jefferson: “You can do this. Follow the thread.”

Trump: “So, you’re saying, you made a bunch of promises, and then you didn’t keep them?”

Jefferson: “Crudely put, but essentially, yes.”

Trump: “Then we are just alike!”

Jefferson: “No--”

Trump: “No, no, no--we are! We totally are. Like, when I ran for president, I told people a bunch of stuff--like we’re gonna make so much stuff happen, and then I didn’t do any of it, and I’m totally never gonna--I mean, a wall along the entire Southern border?! That’s freaking insane! Never gonna do it! Said I would, but I lied. Just like you!”

Jefferson: “...”

Trump: “Going back to staring at the wall again, huh?”

Jefferson: “I cannot look at you. Because though every fiber of my being pleads, nay, shrieks at me to defy your accusation, I cannot do so. You are an oathbreaker--a traitor to the bright promise of this nation and your office--”

Trump: “Whoa, hang on!”

Jefferson: “And so was I. The more so, because I promised so much more. And that is why I say: it is well.”

Trump: “What? What is ‘well’? You are harder to understand than those generals who talk to me about Afghanistan!”

Jefferson: “When I wrote the Declaration, I made a pledge that I could not keep: a free nation, a free people. I failed--yet my words have merit beyond my own ability to abide by them. You say that I lied, but I did not lie--I told the truth, but refused to believe it myself.”

Trump: “You told the truth? About what?”

Jefferson: “About America. Not about what it was--but what it might, in time, become. That is what even I did not have the wit to see, at the time--that an untruth may, by the work of better men, be made truthful. That, indeed, has always been the best quality of America--we make promises that are impossible to keep--and then keep them.”

Trump: “Wait, so, like, the wall really is going to happen?”

Jefferson: “As I say: Narcissus incarnate. In any event, I am saying that if I am held in low esteem today--if the generation that now lives and strives forward into making that promise true--if they view me with shame, then they must do so because their sense of justice, of virtue, of equality, of human potential must have exceeded the sense of those things from my time. Don’t you see? If I am become a figure of shame, it must be because the America of today has become a better place--and that is a place that I made possible, by making a promise that others chose to keep.”

Trump: “...”

Jefferson: “I wonder if I could just go back to Hell now, and skip the rest of this nonsense.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

0 notes

theblackshit · 7 years

Photo

The exhibition THE GEO POLITICS OF MONETIZED AIRSPACE — Come Fly with Me, I Meet You by the Airside Gucci Concession at 4, Fox Fur Hat features two works by artists Martha Rosler (b. 1943, USA) and Sarah Staton (b. 1961, UK).

Rosler’s In the Place of the Public: Airport Series (1983 – present) uses installation, photo-text and video montage to look at seemingly abstract and interchangeable spaces of air travel, and at the logistics of labor management associated with them. With her SupaStore (1993 – 2000, 2014 – present) Staton examines ways of organizing labor and lives within retail, trade and network structures. Both artists connect these scenarios to the visualization and materialization of public space. The airport and its extended retail space become a showcase for the organization of production chains, in which their embodiment becomes the main cargo. Seen as a method, the airport reaches far beyond its borders, into cities, offices and coffee shops.

Structured as complex and extensive bodies of ongoing work, or as a box-in-a-box set-up, both projects are remarkable for the broad timeframe they capture. Both were started in the early 1980s and 1990s, before internet-based communication, and span through the introduction and widespread adoption of web-based tools we use every day. Continuously and at close range, these projects document the spread of these new communication structures, and allow us to reexamine how they have become embedded within contemporary culture.

Exhibited for the first time in 1993 at Jay Gorney Modern Art in New York, Rosler’s Airport Series consists of a series of photographs taken during her travels as an artist flown to inviting institutions, beginning in 1983. Through this system she became part of a traveling class which, in the 1980s, was out of the reach of most commuters or tourists. Rosler writes about the transition of her own identity from an artist of long-distance buses to one of commercial flights in an early version of her 1998 essay, In the Place of the Public: Observations of a Frequent Flyer. Here Rosler explores Henri Lefebvre’s concepts (c.f. The Production of Space, 1974) in connection to air travel and airports in matters of simulation and representation. She states that “air travel introduces a dislocation or destabilization so complete that it suppresses the realization of where one is, in favor of illusion.”

These photographs, accumulated over a long period of time, are installed accompanied by text printed in vinyl letters: single words, word combinations, short sentences, anaphoras, alliterations, and analogies. Together they generate a poetic language where there was once only an opaque one, based on the functional tone of directions, do’s, and don’ts, designed for transfer and border zones. As in Rosler’s well-known and broadly discussed The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (1974 – 1975), her text-image combinations generate awareness of these spaces as constructed ones. In 1998 Airport Series was installed at the Frankfurt International Airport by Museum für Moderne Kunst. That same year, Rosler’s essay and text-image montages from the Airport Series were published by Hatje Cantz.

1998 marked a moment when air travel first opened to widespread tourism and low-cost airlines. Seen this way, In the Place of the Public: Airport Series does not address the politics of air travel today; in her essay, Rosler does, however, use still-current vocabulary to describe the basic aspects of air travel and the way travelers cope with the spaces that surround them. After the 2001 attacks in New York and the tightening of border and immigration controls that followed, Rosler updated the installation text to focus more strongly on the politics of scrutiny and to demonstrate how they have spread beyond airports to include the spaces of everyday life. A newer reading of In the Place of the Public reaches beyond “Observations of a Frequent Flyer” into the “Observations of a life of an Artist” today. These are also the observations of a self-employed commuter, a professor, a contractor, a care worker, an Army officer, a special effects technician — the whole range of a labor force (both legal and illegal) that is in constant movement from one place to another.

The installation presented at Midway shows printed and framed color photographs from the years 1986 to 1992 and a 19-minute-long digital movie with sound and material Rosler shot from 1983 to 2016.

SupaStore Air at Midway Contemporary Art recreates the proto pop-up SupaStore: Sarah Statonʼs SupaStore 93, established by the artist in Charing Cross Road in London, in 1993. SupaStore was launched at eleven locations during the nineties — including museums, galleries and artist-run exhibition spaces — and was included in a travelling exhibition meant to explore Eastern Europe, organized by the British Council in 2001. SupaStore exploits retail processes to critique the notion of our branded age, thereby posing an ironic comment on the marketing of artistic genius, questioning notions of originality and copying.

Interested in retail as artistic practice, Staton observed the rapidly-changing function of public space within the UK in the early 1990s, marked by the introduction of shopping malls replacing the high street. Staton looked among precedents and her contemporaries for critiques of the role of the artist as unique “author” of their own work; points of reference included Duchamp’s multiple La Boîte en Valise and the Rotoreliefs (Optical Discs), multiples as artforms in general, Oldenburg’s The Store and Keith Haring’s long-running Pop Shop, and Tracey Emin’s and Sarah Lucas’ The Shop. The set-up for the various SupaStores was always the same. Sarah Staton invited artists to produce multiples and small artworks that fit in the suitcase of a traveling-artist-as-saleswoman. Staton herself worked on displays and ran the stores, which were set up as exhibitions and as spaces for exchange of various kinds, all under the umbrella of “retail”.

Prior to SupaStore, Staton formed Milch (in collaboration with Lawren Maben), a gallery space within a large, residential squat at 64-65 Guilford Street, London. They presented exhibitions and dinners and generated a social space within the loose network of the house’s squatters. The first exhibition in 64-65 Guilford Street took place in 1990 under the title Peace and anarchy & I love form but she doesn’t love me & strange flowers & homage to Schnabel equals freedom and fun forever with Merlin Carpenter, Nils Norman and Sarah Staton. In recent years, Staton has continued collaborations with other artists as an ongoing thread of her diverse practice that encompasses exhibition making, production of artists’ books and creating social sculpture for the public realm. Sarah Staton is Senior Tutor in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art.

Like Milch, Staton’s SupaStore functioned as a meeting point for a London artists’ community. Staton has described the period of this community as one where it felt like there was no outside; over one hundred artists, ranging in levels of recognition, have participated in SupaStore. In this way, SupaStore was a pre-internet hub, materialized through a collection of small objects or things with a more or less definable “use”. The accessibility and straightforward handling of artworks in the SupaStore context enabled an exchange of works primarily within the artists’ community itself.

Exhibited at Midway Contemporary Art, SupaStore takes on various forms of presence in space and meaning. On the one hand, it is a historic document as an installation, as a reflection and documentation of the past project, simultaneously updated and performed. SupaStore Air includes some of the objects originally presented at the stores from 1993 – 2000. Books and videos there suggest a meta-level notion, and provide historical points of reference to today’s wide acceptance of network-lifestyle, consumerism and “shopping” in general. On the other hand, SupaStore Air takes on a new iteration through the participation of many artists new to SupaStore.

The store display by Sarah Staton includes the symbols of Minerva, the Roman goddess of handicrafts, protector of intellectual and manual skills, and patron of warlike goods and heroes. She is also the goddess of wisdom and reason, represented through her symbols: the owl, the shield and the snake. SupaStore is a shop for the time-honoured rituals of trade and exchange.

SupaStore Air includes:

T-Shirts designed by Saelia Aparicio, Gerry Bibby and Henrik Olesen, Merlin Carpenter, Jeremy Deller, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, NSRD (designed by HIT), Ken Kagami, Josephine Pryde, Sarah Staton, Paula Linke, Demelza Watts as well as Nolan Simon for PROVENCE.

SupaStore Air includes objects such as Gamarelli stockings from Rome, artists’ books, magazines and fanzines, SupaStock: objects from the previous SupaStore iterations and other artworks by:

Agenzia delle Entrate, Tasha Amini, Fiona Banner, Ejaz Christilano, Clare Corrigan, Jude Crilly, Aaron Flint Jamison, Freee art collective, GAS (Kelsey Olson and Katelyn Farstad), Alison Gill, Chiara Giovando, Anthea Hamilton and Julie Verhoeven, Matthew Higgs, Alex Israel, Alison Jones and Milly Thompson, Steve Kado, Tobias Kaspar, Lito Kattou, Miguel Soto Karelovic, Nina Könnemann, Adriana Lara, Paula Linke, Adam McEwen, Sean McNanney, Ariane Müller, Hadrian Pigott, Giulia Piscitelli, Lesley Smailes, Gavin Turk, Nicole Wermers, Seyoung Yoon and Anand Zenz.

Many of the objects at SupaStore Air are for sale, please visit the gallery’s front desk to speak with a Midway staff member if you are interested in making a purchase.

1 note · View note

goldoanheart · 1 year

Text

Wall-E Looks Different Than I Remember [Team 7 Iron Round]

It’s like in the moment that he blinks, they are suddenly within another arena, though slightly different from the last. More metallic, more confining. And the enemies across the way are giant beasts of metal, unlike anything Kurthnaga has ever seen before. Certainly, he has seen things this large, but never any behemoths of metal, of bolts and steels.

He still has his trusty hammer within his hands - he has grown quite used to the bulky weapon and would have been sad to see it part any time soon - but another axe has found itself attached to his hip. And...

Oh.

Oh. His knees feel rather weak as he realises the type of mount that he has now. The creature seems fairly content with the situation, compared to what he’d heard about- no, it was too painful to think about. With a shaky hand, he carefully runs his fingers along the beast’s scales, allowing a moment to get used to his new mount. He fiddles with his second axe, carefully not to scrape his fingers against its purple tinted edge. It seems to be inflicted with poison of some sort. He wasn’t sure if poison worked against these robots, but it was worth a shot. Anything was worth a shot to escape whatever sort of nightmare this was becoming.

Gripping the reins with pale knuckles, he speeds over to the largest robot of the bunch, the one that seems to be their leading. He stands, patting his dragon on top of the head, a silent communication between the two of them as some sort of kin, telling it to stay put for the moment as he leaps from its back to slam his axe into the giant metal beast’s head.

Kurthnaga activates Smash using Venin Axe! Roll 1d20+3= 10! Hit! Critical Damage! (6-3=3) | Alloy Arsenal: Bipedal HP= 17/20.

Minor Poison Damage!

Stunned!

As he falls after his attack, he lands safely back on his mount’s back, and he gives it a soft, nervous pat as a reward for catching him. He glances up, realising the metal beast has been sent into some sort of state of being stunned and turns to his teammates, calling out his advice - though he couldn’t be certain how sound it was with no knowledge of these sorts of giant metal creatures.

“It seems to be stunned for the time being! I’d try to attack it now while it can’t attack back, and quickly! Who knows how much time we will have!”

to: @aimlessarchery , @carefreemonk , @ephemeralove , @valkyrrian

#ic posts #ic: i'll rely on my own strengths #thread - wall-e looks different than i remember #threading: there is wisdom in looking beyond our borders #supports: i am growing rather fond of seeing everyone #support: python #support: azama #support: katarina #support: cecilia #◟◝☆✧☆◜◞《ᴍᴏɴᴋ ᴏꜰ ᴛʀɪᴄᴋꜱ ᴀɴᴅ ᴊᴏᴋᴇꜱ | ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛ: ᴀᴢᴀᴍᴀ #*✧･ﾟ:《ꜱᴛᴇᴀᴅꜰᴀꜱᴛ ᴍᴀɢᴇ ᴋɴɪɢʜᴛ | ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛ: ᴄᴇᴄɪʟɪᴀ #༻♡༺《ꜱᴏꜰᴛ ꜱᴘᴏᴋᴇɴ ᴠɪᴏʟᴇᴛ | ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛ: ᴋᴀᴛᴀʀɪɴᴀ #»̶ ̶̶̶ ̶ ̶ ☼《ᴀ ʟᴀᴢʏ ᴅᴀʏ ɪɴ ᴛʜᴇ ꜱᴜɴ | ꜱᴜᴘᴘᴏʀᴛ: ᴘʏᴛʜᴏɴ #events: an oppourtunity not wasted!#event: winter arena #toaarena2022winter #aimlessarchery #carefreemonk #ephemeralove #valkyrrian

22 notes · View notes

browsersbooks · 7 years

Photo

(via Independent Bookstore as Essential Political Act)

I was recently in San Francisco’s Mission District with an hour to kill. In general I hate having to kill time—I never know what to do—and to make things worse I was tired and just wanted to be home with a good book. So I wandered along, trying to find something to occupy my attention, and then there it was: big glass windows with bright green trim, behind them row after row of books. Dog Eared Books. I had always heard of this store but had never visited. I smiled and made for its beckoning lights.

I have a tried and true method for testing the quality of a bookstore: how difficult is it for me to walk in and walk back out without buying something? In some shops this is child’s play: they have a sterile, corporate feel to them, and their sterile, corporate wares don’t tempt me in the least.

But my favorite bookstores are just the opposite. When I walk into, say, Moe’s in Berkeley, or Powell’s in Portland, it’s as though I’ve stepped into a unique place full of eye-catching beauty. Immediately my attention is drawn in five different directions, and before I know it I’m bending under the weight of five irresistible books. These stores cast a spell, and once I begin to hunting through their prodigious shelves I know I’m going to latch on to something and not be able to put it back down.

Dog Eared Books is not nearly as big as either Moe’s or Powell’s, but its curation and ambiance are so strong that it quickly put me into buy mode. My first stop was a face-out display of political philosophy: Benjamin, Arendt, Žižek, Rancière, Guattari, and other gems, themselves surrounded by so many more such jewels. I was seduced. From there I was hit with an international literature display: Julio Cortázar, Álvaro Enrigue, Svetlana Alexievich, Antonio di Benedetto, Basma Abdel Aziz, Magda Szabó . . . By that point I was completely taken, and somehow half-an-hour had slipped away. When I made it to the store’s history section, I was dying to find something to purchase. I immediately gravitated toward Wendy Doniger’s history of Hinduism. Did I need 700 densely printed pages on the Hindu religion? Of course not! And how could I even think of leaving without it?

Suddenly it hit me: how many bookstores could I just wander into, find a display of challenging philosophical theory, then an incredible selection of top-notch world literature, and at last an enormous history of Hinduism? Bookstores like this just don’t happen. They are only possible where the ground is fertile.

A bookstore is an embodiment of a community’s values. Looking over its holdings is as personal and intimate an encounter as walking into a friend’s home for the first time and sizing up their bookcases. (If you don’t see any bookcases at all, maybe you should reassess the relationship.) What you find in a bookstore is the food a society wants to feed its mind, the sorts of things its owners and employees (no doubt community residents themselves) hope their neighbors will support.

Out of the many millions of titles that a bookstore might stock, most will only have room for tens of thousands. The books that make it in are a direct reflection of the people around that store. Which ones will prove successful enough to be restocked and justify more such titles? Out of the thousands of new books released each week, which ones will get that coveted front table space? Will the bookstore adopt pay-to-play rules for good placement? What sorts of ideas, values, stories, and aesthetics will its books embody? What titles will the employees take the time to handsell, and will they be passionate about it or scripted? Will they see each book sold as spreading important thoughts, or just so much income on the ledger?

It is easy to see how quickly a bookstore’s profit motive can blur into its mission, and how this sense of mission bleeds over into the shop’s physical space. Is it beckoning and comfortable? Does it have that cultured ambiance that makes bookstores so charming? What kinds of people does it welcome, defend, and champion?

This of course begins with the authors, translators, publishers, and others it showcases for events, and the audiences they cultivate, but it also goes far beyond this: I think of Cody’s Books, which played a major role as a refuge and first-aid station during the Berkeley anti-Vietnam protests of the 1970s, and which in 1989 was firebombed for pointedly supporting Salman Rushdie’s right to free expression when a fatwa was leveled against him for his novel The Satanic Verses. (This was at a time when then dominant chain bookstore, Waldenbooks, with 1,200 nationwide locations, had bent to the fatwa by removing Rushdie from its shelves.) Or I think of the massive Seminary Co-op in Chicago, often referred to as having the greatest collection of academic titles on Earth, and which is a member-owned cooperative with 50,000 US participants and thousands more around the world. Matthew Keesecker’s description of the bookstore, collected in an enterprise called the Seminary Co-op Documentary Project, is worth quoting at length:

When you arrive, you won’t think you’re necessarily at the right place. Then you will see a little sign that guides you to the catacombs of this enchanted world of words. You will descend a set of stairs, and then you will simply stare. Books. Endless row upon row of books. You will duck pipes, dodge faucets, and squeeze between shelves and working furnaces, and you will love every minute of it. It’s as if the books were already there, firmly planted in their rightful spot, and suddenly a building erupted around them. But rather than supplant the books, the building decided to work with the books and have a symbiotic relationship. It’s as if it grew around the tomes of knowledge, integrating itself by weaving and threading its way through the volumes of pulp and ink. They co-exist in harmony, waiting to be discovered by us.

Who can read that and doubt that any good bookstore represents a unique, highly cultivated space that must be carefully tended in order to continue existing? Spaces such as these are only moderately compatible with capitalism, and they are not at all compatible with monoculture, restrictions on free thought, imposed uniformity, intolerance, and least of all authoritarianism. As institutions that need pluralism as much as we need oxygen, they cannot avoid having a de facto political stance.

Even if a place like Dog Eared Books or Seminary Co-op never declared a position for or against Donald Trump, certainly their very way of being makes a statement about their compatibility with the man who cannot name a single book he has ever read, who pledged to ban an entire religion from the United States, and who endlessly demonizes information that runs counter to his beliefs as “fake.” The values these bookstores embody constitute an indispensable rebuke to the sort of governance that President Trump has endorsed through his conduct, his allies, and his words.

Perhaps that in itself is enough, but I am very proud to say that many bookstores in our literary community have done far more than just exist: they have chosen to resist, finding their place in what is popularly called “the resistance” as it pursues its defense of American values and institutions against the wrecking-ball Presidency of Donald Trump. The New York Times has reported on the ways in which indie bookstores across the nation have responded to the President’s actions (pointedly, Barnes & Noble has chosen not to be among them), and Publishers Weekly has also reported on many others. Closer to home, I can say that City Lights Bookstore has opened a new section titled “Pedagogies of Resistance,” and Booksmith co-owners Christin Evans and Praveen Madan have established a new monthly series called “Booksmith Resists.” In my own neighborhood, Diesel, a bookstore that long predated the Trump resistance with numerous politically orientated book displays and events, and it has redoubled its efforts post-Trump.

I will predict that exactly no one is surprised to hear any of this. When hailing from a foreign country is grounds for suspicion, when know-nothing-ism is a core value of the nation’s highest office, when lies are passed off blatantly (the bigger the better) and “alternative facts” are the order of the day, the very act of spreading the information, telling crucial stories about the lives of others, and providing a meeting place for all kinds of people is necessarily a politicized gesture. Bookstores are one of the most politicized businesses we have. They have been the traditional home to the misfit, the free-thinker, the person who prizes knowledge above money and who aspires to wisdom. They are one of the easiest places for diverse cultures to intermingle and forge an understanding. They are a crucial repository of a nation’s ideas, narratives, and lives. Knowing this, it makes me proud to live in a place where the bookstores compete to challenge their audiences with the most intelligent, sensitive, beautiful thoughts they can find. I cannot think it is any coincidence that the places where you find many such bookstores are also places where virtually nobody votes for the likes of Donald Trump.

If independent bookstores really are a key component of a healthy democracy, then we should feel hope, for as I write this they are in the middle of a renaissance. The 1990s and the 00s were a bad period, as the rise of chain bookselling put many indies out of business, and over a thousand of them closed down. But now the business models of Borders and Barnes & Noble have proven short-lived, and once again indies are appearing in communities that prize the qualities a good bookstore brings to a neighborhood.

To take just one example: this is precisely why many of us in my community have invested nearly $200,000 in the future of our own neighborhood bookstore, as Diesel makes the transition to East Bay Booksellers. We are committed to seeing this retail space remain an intelligent, opinionated, very independent bookstore, and to we are ensuring that it remains under ownership that we trust and admire. And we are not alone: such community investment plans are becoming more and more popular as the next generation of bookstore owners takes over. In addition, more than 250 new independent bookstores have come into being since 2009, representing growth of 30 percent. And the US Census Bureau has found that bookstores sales have grown the past two years, reversing seven years of decline as more and more consumers are realizing the benefits of shopping at their local indie.

Books are different from other consumer goods—they contain facts, thoughts, and stories that help shape who we are—and so bookselling is different from other kinds of retail. When I think of bookselling, I think back to something that my friend Brad Johnson, the future owner of East Bay Booksellers, said about the name he chose for his store. He said that he wanted it to represent the fact that bookselling is an art, even at times a calling. Now, while all of us in the literary community have to make ends meet—and no one understands this better than the manager of a bookstore—I think that we are more fundamentally here because we want to see our literary vocation in those exact terms. And our vocation becomes very much a calling when our nation needs the help of our bookish culture to protect it from those who would destroy our civic values. So the next time you are in an independent bookstore, take a moment to think about why it is there, and why you are in it—think about those things, and ask yourself how you will pay those beliefs forward.

Books About Bookstores and Other Book Havens

Upstairs at the Strand: Writers in Conversation at the Legendary Bookstore, edited by Jessica Strand and Andrea Aguilar * Sixpence House: Lost in A Town Of Books by Paul Collins * Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach * My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop, edited by Ronald Rice * The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop: A Memoir, a History by Lewis Buzbee * The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky * Phantoms on the Bookshelves by Jacques Bonnet (tr. James Salter) * With Borges by Alberto Manguel * My Life in Middlemarch by Rebecca Mead

#books #bookstore #social act #social justice #political act #reading #independent bookstore #bookshop #browsersolympia #olympiawa #browsersbookshop

0 notes

meditationklaus · 7 years

Text

6 Steps to Build a Meditation Practice

Meditation can be one of the most challenging pieces of the yoga practice. As a culture of doers, we often struggle with the simple act of sitting still. In our daily lives we prize fast-paced environments, we’re constantly submerged in a barrage of quickly changing stimuli. Most of us have no idea how to slow down and tune out. These six steps will help you to build up a meditation practice that leaves you feeling calmer, centred, and more capable of dealing with the stresses of modern life.

1. Show up.

As Woody Allen says, “Showing up is 80 percent of life.” Simply committing to getting onto your meditation cushion every day is the most important, and possibly the most difficult step.

A few tips to help you arrive:

Clear space.– In order to start reducing the mental clutter, we must first remove some of our physical clutter. Find a space at home or at work that you can keep relatively clean and clear of furniture. Turn off your phone and email notifications and, if possible, place electronic devices in another room.

Carve out a time.– A meditation practice thrives on consistency. Create a habit of practicing at roughly the same time each day. Start small—commit to 15 minutes a day for a few weeks and slowly increase your time from there. A meditation timer can be a really helpful tool in keeping you on track.

Make it a ritual.– Find ways to make the practice beautiful. Setting up a simple altar with a few precious objects or photos, lighting a candle, or chanting a simple mantra to start your meditation are ways to transform a dry habit into a treasured part of your day.

2. Surrender.

Once you’ve found your way onto your meditation cushion, arriving at a comfortable posture is key. It’s perfectly fine to sit in a chair if needed. Start to bring your awareness to points of contact with the floor. Notice how the legs and hips root towards the earth.

If you’re sitting in a chair, notice the weight of the feet on the floor, and your pelvis as it settles into the chair. Continue to move your awareness through the body, looking for a sense of ease in the knees, spine, hands, eyes.

Stay alert in your posture without creating stiffness. Your hands may rest on your knees or in your lap. The eyes may be closed, or open with a soft gaze. The key is to release any patterns of tension or holding in the body. Allow yourself to relax into the meditation pose.

3. Stabilize.

Bring your attention to your breathing. Travel with the breath through the inner spaces of your body. Begin to notice more specifically how your breath feels: its rhythm, speed, temperature, texture.

Notice if the breath is deep or shallow. Notice where the breath moves easefully in the body and where it encounters blocks or tightness. Start to look for a more even sense of breath throughout the body. See if you can invite breath into the spaces that feel closed.

As you become more finely attuned to the pattern of your breathing, begin to use your exhales to gather strength or energy from the base of the body up towards the navel. Find a sense of core stability in each out-breath, while continuing to soften around the hips, shoulders and face.

4. Lighten up.

Allow the breath to become slower and fuller. Continue to stabilize and soften on your exhales, while using the inhales to create lightness in the body. See that each inhale lifts and expands the ribcage. Feel as you’re inhaling that you are radiating upwards and outwards from your centre.

As you grow taller and wider with each inhale, allow yourself to take up the space that you deserve. Feel that you begin to breathe beyond the boundaries of your skin, that the breath dissolves the border between where you end and where everything else begins.

5. Listen.

As you continue to focus on your breath, notice what thoughts arise. Try to observe the thoughts without attaching to them. Notice when you get caught up in a story that leads you away from your breath.

In the course of meditation, we often get distracted many times. Don’t berate yourself for losing the thread of concentration, rather gently guide your attention back to your breath. Once we dismantle the stories that tend to create noise or distortion at the surface of our consciousness, deeper wisdom can arise. Listen for any revelations and discoveries that may bubble up.

6. Integrate.

Take a few moments after you come out of your meditation to write down what you noticed or felt. Meditation can be a very ethereal experience, and journaling may help to solidify the process.

As you practice over weeks and months, notice the shifts that arise in your everyday life. Perhaps you find yourself pausing before you react in stressful situations. Perhaps you feel less frazzled by the pressures of your life.

Observe how your meditation practice allows you to let go of patterns that no longer serve you, while creating a space to invite new possibilities in.

The post 6 Steps to Build a Meditation Practice appeared first on DOYOUYOGA.COM.

#Yoga #doyouyoga.com #Health

0 notes

wistfulcynic · 5 years

Text

The Very Witching Time (1 / 4)

Here it is!

I am so excited to post the first chapter of my @cssns fic! Last year at this time I was reading all the brilliant stories to come out of this event and wishing I could be a part of it and now tadaaaa! Thanks to @kmomof4 for inviting me to join and also to her and the other mods for managing it all!

Another HUGE thank you to @gingerchangeling for the brilliant art and @katie-dub for her lovely feedback, and of course to @thisonesatellite for being the other half of my brain.

This is genuinely one of my favourite things I’ve written so I really hope you all enjoy it! Updates will be every Wednesday (I hope!)

RATING: M, mostly for future violence

AO3

TAGGING: @thisonesatellite, @stahlop, @mariakov81, @kmomof4, @snowbellewells, @jennjenn615, @resident-of-storybrooke, @teamhook, @thejollyroger-writer, @winterbaby89, @darkcolinodonorgasm, @captainsjedi, @ultraluckycatnd

(if you’d like a tag, please let me know!)

CHAPTER ONE:

The keen observer would, of course, not go into the forest at all.

{Please help me.}

An affinity with animals was one of Emma’s gifts, and she was not surprised to hear the dog’s voice in her head. She smiled reassuringly and offered her hand.

“Hey, puppy,” she said in a low, soothing voice. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, poor baby,” she murmured. “That must hurt. I can help, if you’ll let me. Will you trust me?”

On three she pulled the leg from the hole, using her magic to ease its way. The dog whimpered at the pain but did not bark or growl and when its leg was free it licked her chin again.

The dog gave a short bark followed by another nod.

{Ready.}

Could dogs stare in wonder? She frowned, realising she didn’t actually know very much about the canine species. As a witch she’d always considered herself more of a cat person.

“Give it a try,” she told the dog. “It’s all better now.”

Emma, however, was still frowning. Despite the dog’s obvious pleasure its gait had a distinct limp and when it moved quickly it used only three legs, forgoing the left one entirely.

Its left leg… when she had healed the right.

“Hey,” she said. “Come here. Let me see that other leg.”

It limped closer and placed its left leg in her lap, a leg which she was now able to observe did not end in a paw.

The dog tilted its head in what was plainly a shrug.

The dog licked her face enthusiastically and barked, and now that the press of emergency had passed she noticed the peculiar cadence of its cry.

“Aye!” barked the dog.

Killian.

The name sprang into her mind, though the dog hadn’t barked. “Killian?” she repeated, startled.

“Aye!” barked the dog.

“Really?”

“Aye!”

“You sure? It’s not Spot or Buster or Joe or something?”

The dog looked affronted, and she laughed again. “All right, Killian it is then. I guess that means you’re a boy.”

“Aye!”

“Well okay, Killian, let’s go. We can have some dinner and then I’ll see what I can do about that paw.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked him.

He whined louder and gave two short barks.

{Not welcome.}

Should they?

She really needed to learn more about dogs, she thought with mild irritation. This was clearly a gaping hole in her education.

“Seriously?” cried Emma. “That’s enough of that, from both of you, Killian, come inside.”

She marched over to the cottage door and pulled it open. Killian leapt to his feet and ran after her, pausing just at the doorstep to wink at the garden before trotting into her kitchen.

Could dogs wink?

Emma made a mental note to dig up a book on canine behaviours later that night. There must be one in her library. Somewhere.

“I don’t have much that’s suitable for dogs,” she warned him as she opened the icebox. “But I think I’ve got some hamburgers in here if that’s okay—”

“Aye! Aye!”

“Okay, let me just heat them up.”

She defrosted the hamburgers with some gentle warming magic and put them on a plate for him. The minute she set it on the floor he dove in, gobbling up the meat with enthusiasm bordering on frenzy.

“Wow, you were hungry! How long has it been since you ate?”

He looked up at her and licked his chops, tail wagging vigorously, and barked twice before digging in again.

{Long time.}

“Well, don’t eat too fast, it’ll make you sick.”

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “It’s not dangerous, just old. Old things are sometimes… indifferent to younger ones. But it won’t hurt you. Nothing will hurt you here.”

Obediently, he sat and watched her in fascination as she rifled through the jumbled collection of bottles, jars, and bags on the table, frowning and muttering to herself as she did.

He was worth it. She felt sure of that, and though she had no idea why she did not vacillate. Emma had long since learned to trust her instincts.

“Feels good, huh?” she said. “Soothing.”

“Aye.” His bark was as low as his growl.

{Good.}

Emma slumped back on her heels, exhausted. “Whew,” she said. “Done.” She patted the metal paw. “Give it a try.”

It disappeared behind her, the magic within whispering far more warmly than before, no longer so indifferent to Killian as it had been.

~~🌺~~

Threat, whispered the garden magic in his mind. Danger. Stay with her.

He lay back down, pressing tighter against her, curling his neck around her hip and placing his silver paw gently over her waist. He closed his eyes again and answered the garden’s plea.

{Always.}

Tis now the very witching time of night,

When churchyards yawn and hell itself breathes out

Contagion to this world.

—Hamlet, Act III Scene 2

#cssns #cssns19 #magic au #witchcraft au #witchcraft #witches #DID I MENTION THE WITCHES? THERE WILL BE SOME #cursed!Killian #witch!Emma #cs fic #cs ff #cs ff au #captain swan #the very witching time #profdanglaisstuff #gingerchangeling

82 notes · View notes