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bvccy · 3 years

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Tenderness and Ferocity | 1. The First Day

Pairing: Winter Soldier!Bucky Barnes x Hydra!Reader Fic Synopsis: The Winter Soldier is starting to make stupid mistakes in the field, which is Bucky's way of trying to wrest back control and sabotage his handlers. Hydra brings a new doctor to figure out what's wrong with him and fix it. As she spends time with him, she becomes fond of the Winter Soldier, and he becomes fond of her. Bucky has other ideas. Or, a fic in which the Winter Soldier is the good guy and Bucky is actually the bad guy. Inspired by two imagines [1] [2] from @hushyourimaginationistalking (can be spoilery). Warnings for this chapter: None Word count: 2386 Read on AO3: [link] [Fic Masterlist] [Next Chapter]

"There resides infinitely more good in the demonic than in the trivial man." — Kierkegaard

Away from the world and beyond the scrutiny of common knowledge, secreted away into a methodically manufactured nothingness, in a damp room in a concrete fortress, a flock of doctors busied around the returned Soldier — The Asset. Or, today, the Problem.

As they performed the standard tests and checks and tinkered at the dents in his mechanical arm, he sat quietly, personless. Underneath all that, he was expecting another "corrective calibration", another session where everything hurt until it went blank. His whole body was expecting it, tight with muscle-memory that ran deeper than his own with horrors he no longer had access to.

He had almost failed his mission, he completed it by dumb luck alone. He knew it, and his handlers knew it. What was left of his ego had bitterly learned long ago that his successes were due to the brilliant doctors, but the failures were his own.

Nevertheless, there was no fear in him — at least, not at the level that was present, that watched the doctors taking readings off the machines, recording his vitals in their notebooks, checking his restraints against the cold metallic chair. But there were parts of him where the real fear still lived. He could not bring it up, and examine, or control, but he felt it stirring in the pit of his mind.

At the periphery of his consciousness, he knew what they were thinking: those failed parts of himself had gotten in the way, had compromised his mission; like a bad reflex in the wrong direction at the worst moment. So they were going to try harder this time, keep trying, keep trying, until they cleaned up all that was left of his dissenting self at the bottom of his brain.

The Soldier waited for them to begin, like last time, and the time before that. But some were talking to each other, some were sitting down and waiting, others were drinking their coffee... They were doing things they weren't supposed to do, and the part of him where the fear settled was starting to itch. What was different about this time?

Get out get out get out.

When he heard the echoes of a walking pair come closer, saw their shadows licking up the wall beyond the foggy lab door, and saw them stop to talk right outside, the Soldier didn't think, nor feel, nor react, and for once it wasn't because the Soldier didn't do that, but because he made a conscious effort not to.

He didn't miss the guarded gaze shared between the nurses securing his legs, but then they got up, and with the rest they gathered their gadgets and scopes and manila folders and ambled out of the room. The pair outside waited for them all to leave, exchanged some parting words, then one of them went inside with him and the other closed the door with a hiss and a click: locked.

The Soldier had never seen this doctor before. Was that what she was? She did wear a lab coat, with the Hydra insignia pinned to her lapel, a standard issue name tag, and had in every other way the look of all the rest of them.

The way she looked at him that first time, scanned him from a safe distance as she clung to her folders like a lifeline, told him she had never seen him before, at least not up-close. But her eyes didn't linger on his metal arm — so she knew about it? They didn't stay anywhere very long, though she did direct a second's worth of a frown at his naked chest — oh, were they supposed to have dressed him up for her?

She took a deep breath, thinking so loudly he could almost hear it, then took a solid step forward in a straight line toward him. Her scent could reach him now, a sweet and stinging perfume that was familiar but now unrecognisable, with fresh notes on her throat and warmer aftertastes lingering in her hair, which was clasped back in a tight French twist. Underneath that, soap and bitter coffee, the sterile air of the facilities, and freshly ironed cotton. She looked right at him, and through him. Perhaps she did not like how his eyes followed hers. She seemed afraid, but of him?

Of failure.

She came to a stop at the table by his side and busied herself arranging her files. Her shirt looked standard issue: white, pressed, keeping its form rigidly while her tight chest fluttered underneath. Her waist held her up stiffly, unmoving, as she bent slightly forward. Her straight black skirt went down to her knees. Her legs were clad in imperceptibly thin stockings, tapering in black doeskin shoes.

The Soldier's gaze caressed its way back up to her face to find her disapproving look waiting for him. He looked back without shame, taking in her elegant little features gentled by large eyes, a soft mouth, lashes that left spiderweb-shadows on her cheeks under the clinical light.

She kept her eyes on him unwavering as she stepped back and around to face him, to look at him from the other side, then closer, then back again. She was examining him like all the others did - like an object - but he didn't mind. Her attention melted the fear away.

Finally, she got closer, and with a touch made to gentle a wild animal tilted his head back and up. She stood to his right where his flesh arm was, checked his pupil dilation with a little light, checked his pulse with her fingers, his blood-oxygen with a pinch at his thumb — he could have told her the other doctors already went through this with him.

But why tell her anyway?

And just like that, she was back to not looking at him. She finished her check-up and turned briskly back to her papers. He noted her face had moved first and her body followed — disgust, avoidance; ah, did he smell? They never did prioritise cleaning him after a mission.

"Can you speak?" she asked, looking straight at him again.

"Yes."

"What are you?"

"Soldier."

"What am I?"

"Doctor."

"Sit up straight... Now close your eyes."

He heard her step closer, heard her stop right in front of him, between his spread legs. Her voice was so close now, and much too soft.

"I'm going to touch the sides of your face. You will tell me if it feels the same."

She lightly ran the tips of her fingers from his temples, down his cheekbones, down the hollowed stubbled cheeks, ending at his chin, then back up and down again.

"Same?"

"Yes."

"Keep your eyes closed. I'm going to make small sounds with my fingers next to your ears, you will tell me which side it's on."

"Right. Left. Right. Right."

"Open your eyes now."

He caught sight of her just as she stepped back.

"Did they finish the repairs on you?"

He looked at his left arm and saw everything was closed back up. "Yes."

"Alright. Make fists with both of your hands, and hold them up, like this. Alright, now keep them steady and don't let me press them down."

She tested his right fist, then his left, her hands barely covering the span of his knuckles. Both fists were steady as rocks against her efforts.

"Now, close your eyes again. Can you touch your thumb to your index on your right hand? Good, now go through all the fingers, touch the thumb to the fingertip... then back to the index. Good. Now your left hand, keep your eyes closed."

He could hear her throat work to swallow at the clink-clink of the metal digits.

"Alright, stop."

She stepped back to the table, picked up a little silver hammer with a rubber head, then came back to his side. "Keep your right arm relaxed, I'm just going to check your reflex."

She pressed her dry, cold thumb to the inside of his elbow and tap-tapped against her finger, his arm bouncing slightly in its confines.

"Alright, now I'm going to do something a little silly. But you won't laugh at me, will you?"

"No." His dry delivery didn't put her much at ease.

Moving to his left side, she did the same thing to his metal arm. She tapped the little hammer over her thumb, where the inside of the titanium elbow was, and tapped and tapped.

"Makes sense I guess..." she said to herself when nothing happened.

As she ran her tests on him, he could feel her relax, noticed her start to speak not just at him but to him, like other people spoke to each other. The Soldier wasn't sure it was smart of her to drop her guard like that, but he couldn't begrudge it. He wanted to speak to her like a real person too, but the want knocked itself against a wall.

She worked her way around him, back to a desk, sat down primly, opened a folder, crossed out some boxes on a yellowed piece of paper... He watched her openly, sliding his gaze down to her tightly-crossed legs and back up, but was not too fixated on the ornamental parts of her to not notice her swallow hard and squeeze her pen as she became instinctively aware of being looked at.

"I'm going to ask you some questions." she said without looking up. "Do you know where we are?"

He had to think for a second for this one. "Headquarters Alpha 3."

"What's the nearest town?"

"I don't know."

"What country are we in?"

"I don't know."

"What day of the week is it?"

"I don't know."

"Do you know what year it is?"

"No."

She wrote something down and sighed — she wasn't disappointed, was she? After all, he didn't need to know those things. But when she looked back up, she didn't seem upset with him. She even smiled at him a little, he almost smiled back.

"There are some more tests I want to run, but I can't do that with you tied up. We'll have another session, if it's approved."

He didn't nod, didn't blink, didn't betray the hope he felt at the anticipation of being trusted. Even untied, she would be safe with him, he wouldn't hurt her. Did they know that? Did she know that?

A knock on the door grabbed her attention. Too eagerly for his liking, she jumped up and opened it.

"Done?"

"Yes, I'll just get my things."

Standing just a step inside the room, the Director looked straight at him, then turned his attention back to her, waiting.

They stepped outside together, but by negligence or uncaring left the door ajar. He listened on as they whispered to each other.

"So?"

"Both hemispheres seem very well coordinated, as well as I can tell considering the arm... There seems to be no... leakage of anything from one side or the other, or from previous missions. To me, the Asset seems fully functional. But I need more tests to assess the state of his memory."

"What's the problem?"

"As I suggested in my proposal, Sir, the methods used in the Project affect his explicit memory, but the implicit memory isn't really addressed. I need confirmation."

"And what does that mean?"

"It means we should probably schedule..."

"No, what you said about his memory."

"Oh, well... As I wrote to you, Sir..." She took a pause to swallow her words. "Explicit memory is... the things you can bring forward in an instant, that you can talk about. But if you were to... if you were to smell a perfume, for example, and you suddenly remembered it because it was what your mother wore when you were a child, that's implicit memory. It stays in the brain but you don't know it's there unless there's a stimulus. And because it's there, it can still influence what you do, even if you don't realise it..."

"I see. Couldn't our equipment fix it?"

"I don't think it can be calibrated for something like that. Such memories are usually connected to real functions, like muscle memory or the senses. And besides, wiping him repeatedly probably resets his integration level, which can be counterproductive... especially if he was predisposed to higher disintegration before the serum."

"So what do you need?"

"First of all, he might need to be kept... er, thawed, at least for a while."

"If your little experiment is a failure, we're gonna waste valuable time on him."

"It's just that it isn't good to freeze and unfreeze even an ordinary slab of meat, let alone a complex animal like that. It could be connected to the malfunctions they're reporting with his behaviour. Not to mention the lack of REM sleep, which makes it even worse for stabilising his thinking, his reflexes..."

"Alright, we have empty cells we can keep him in."

"And for the next session, if it's approved Sir, we should maybe have a brand new room. Not this lab, and not somewhere where he's locked down. Subjects usually form underlying associations with common environments, it impedes the process."

"I fear we might be spoiling him, you know. His own 'suite', his own lounge now, no more cryo, and I don't know when the last time was that he saw a woman..."

"Certainly he sees them all the time on missions, Sir."

"Yeah, through a scope. Will that be all?"

"One more thing... if it's possible, to not have surveillance during the sessions, Sir..."

"And why would you ask for that?"

"In case I need to apply unethical methods."

"'Though I can respect that, don't you think you're asking for a bit much?"

"Oh, please Sir."

The Soldier could hear the smile in her voice, the deliberate lightening of the tone to something girlish, and through the fogged glass he saw her brush a hand over the Director's elbow, just quickly enough to stay professional. The armrest under his bionic arm started creaking in his grip.

"I'll keep it all under budget, I promise. Oh, and could we maybe arrange to have him washed more often?"

"I'm going to leave before you ask for dessert. You better deliver."

"Yes, Sir. Hail Hydra."

"Hail Hydra."

#Bucky Barnes imagine #Bucky Barnes x reader #Winter Soldier x reader #James Buchanan Barnes #The Winter Soldier #Bucky Barnes fanfiction #will develop into a very angsty fic with some smut #but not yet #so the fic is written in the 3rd person but that's just because I'm uncomfortable writing in the 2nd person #and telling other people what they think and what they feel #but the character is basically nameless and not described much physically #so I just don't use the Y/N convention but that's it #Tenderness and Ferocity #bv;fanfiction #Bucky x reader #Bucky x you

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calacuspr · 3 years

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Calacus Weekly Hit & Miss – Simone Biles & Rassie Erasmus

Every Monday we look at the best and worst communicators in the sports world from the previous week.

HIT – SIMONE BILES

Simone Biles has been the superstar of gymnastics - if not female sport - since she burst into global consciousness by winning four gold medals at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

With 19 world championship gold medals as well to her name at the tender age of 24, expectations were high at Tokyo 2020.

Not content with leading the world in gymnastics, Biles showed remarkable strength from one so young by putting her mental health ahead of the attention and anticipation of her performances at this year’s Olympic Games.

After pulling out of the women's gymnastics team final. Biles explained: “I have to focus on my mental health. I just think mental health is more prevalent in sports right now.

"We have to protect our minds and our bodies and not just go out and do what the world wants us to do.

"I don't trust myself as much anymore. Maybe it's getting older. There were a couple of days when everybody tweets you and you feel the weight of the world.

"We're not just athletes. We're people at the end of the day and sometimes you just have to step back.”

The Olympic Games may be one of the biggest stages in world sport, but Biles showed remarkable poise to withdraw given her unofficial role as the symbol of Team USA.

It is further proof, if proof were needed, that sports stars now feel empowered to stand up, not only for social justice but also for themselves, as we saw with Naomi Osaka withdrawing from the French Open in much the same way earlier this year.

Michael Phelps, himself an Olympic phenomenon, defended Biles after previously revealing his own struggles with depression. He said: “This is an opportunity for all of us to really learn more about mental health, to all help each other out.

"For me, I want people to be able to have somebody that can support them, who’s non-judgmental and who’s willing to hold space. There’s a lot that we can do to help one another and we have to start. We can’t brush it under the rug anymore.”

Biles, remember, has spoken out about the sexual abuse she and many others faced at the hands of the former U.S.A. Gymnastics doctor Lawrence G. Nassar and the devastating effect it has had on her life.

She has also spoken out about racism, which she has encountered in life and in gymnastics competition; She said: “It happens every day, and I feel like every Black athlete or colored athlete can say that they've experienced it through their career.”

Biles has had to watch as her brother Tevin Biles-Thomas was accused and then recently acquitted of 15 charges including murder related to an incident three years ago.

The gymnast later withdrew from the final individual all-round competition, with USA Gymnastics stating: “We wholeheartedly support Simone’s decision and applaud her bravery in prioritizing her well-being. Her courage shows, yet again, why she is a role model for so many.”

There have been accusations that she let down her team by walking away, that she displayed an appetite for ‘losing, quitting and failure’ rather than seeing the bigger picture of fighting through adversity.

American conservative activist Charlie Kirk was also quick to criticise, saying: "We are raising a generation of weak people like Simone Biles. If she's got all these mental health problems: don't show up."

“She's probably the greatest gymnast of all time. She's also very selfish, she's immature and she's a shame to the country."

Those opinions were echoed by other right-wing activists and yet US newspapers such as USA Today called Biles’ decision “important” and a “powerful message.”

The New York Times lauded the 24-year-old for putting her “mental health first and the expectations of others, at best, second” and after Biles spoke about the mental exhaustion endemic to being the best, the Washington Post asked, “What are we doing, breaking our athletes?”

Mental health organisations such as The Rethink Mental Illness charity praised Biles and said: “Everyone needs to prioritise their mental health, even the best athletes in the world.

“Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from an Olympics final will not have been taken lightly, and it’s great to see the support she received from her teammates.”

Mind also congratulated Biles on her bravery and posted on Twitter: “Working in elite sports like gymnastics comes with unimaginably high levels of pressure, perfectionism, scrutiny, and comparison. Simone Biles is incredibly brave for speaking out, and highlighting the importance of looking after your mental heath.

“Simone is a role model for women and girls everywhere. She deserves our applause, respect, appreciation – and above all our support right now.”

MISS – RASSIE ERASMUS

Rugby union prides itself on respect and one of the most fundamental aspects of game is based on how referees are treated.

It’s common law within the sport that players and coaches accept refereeing judgments without abusive disagreement but in recent times, the game has been caught up in controversy due to reactions over refereeing decisions.

During the 2021 British and Irish Lions and South Africa test series, South Africa head coach Rassie Erasmus has taken the disrespect of officials to a whole new level, as he openly criticised the officiating of the first test match between the two sides.

In an hour-long video, Erasmus let out his fury towards Australian referee Nick Berry in which he analysed 26 clips from the game of incidents which he believed were blatant mistakes.

In the video, he said: "It's comical the respect the [officials] showed towards the South African players compared to the Lions players.

"Let the Springboks and the Lions have an equal chance on the field when it comes to laws, respect, the way players are treated, what is said in the coaches' pre-match meeting with the referees, how they give feedback post-match and how things are said in the media.

"When Siya [Kolisi] spoke to the referee and when Alun Wyn [Jones] spoke to the referee, I just felt the reactions on how they treated both those players, there was a vast difference between who he was taking serious and who he wasn't taking serious."

Erasmus ends the video by saying that he recorded the video “in my personal capacity, and not as part of the Springboks”, even offering to quit his position for the remainder of the series.

But when you’re the head coach of the world champions in any sport, let alone rugby union, recording a video criticising a referee is entirely inappropriate.

Despite his claims that neither Nick Berry nor World Rugby provided feedback on the officiating during the first test, Erasmus raised his complaints in a totally unprofessional manner.

In response to the video, Rugby Australia defended Nick Berry and deemed the comments from Erasmus as "unacceptable", while World Rugby reacted by saying they would be taking up the matter with the South African Rugby Union.

Erasmus has never been afraid to speak out, but his comments towards referees has cast a shadow over the already disrupted Lions Tour in South Africa.

In the week running up to the first test, Erasmus refused to disassociate himself from a burner Twitter account named “Jaco Johan”, which carries video clips of controversial refereeing incidents for the previous games of the tour.

“When something makes sense to me I like to retweet it,” Erasmus said. “If you do analyse the things that he is supposed to see, then you are actually spot on with the integrity of the game.”

It’s also not the first time that the Springbok head coach has been caught up in controversy regarding the officiating in rugby.

Back in 2019, the then New Zealand head coach Steve Hansen accused Erasmus of trying to pressure referees into preferential treatment towards his team, after the South Africa boss suggested that the All Blacks had for years received soft officiating during matches.

Debate surrounding refereeing decisions has been a constant theme of the Lions series, with the tourists also raising concerns regarding the appointment of a South African television match official in the first game.

With South Africa going on to claim victory in the second Test, Erasmus could claim that his mind games paid off, especially considering several decisions went the Springboks' way.

Regardless, raising concerns about refereeing in rugby should be done in a respectful manner and in that regard, Erasmus missed the mark completely during the 2021 Lions tour.

#Tokyo Olympic Games #Tokyo 2020 #olympics #mental health #Simone Biles #Team USA #USOPC #USA gymnastics #Larry Nassar #Michael Phelps #New York Times #Rassie Erasmus #Springboks #British and Irish Lions #Siya Kolisi #World Rugby #Rugby Australia #Conor Murray

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atopearth · 5 years

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Shall We Date? Destiny Ninja Part 1 - Hattori Hanzo Kazemasa

So, I started playing this one since it’s about the ancestors of the characters in Destiny ninja 2? I’m not sure but I assume it is hahaha. Anyway, Hanzo seems like the cold type but probably fluffy lol. So, we’re starting off with a heroine that has lost her memories on a battlefield and so the guys pick her up under their care because according to the hem of her kimono which shows an emblem of who you’re affiliated to, she’s not an enemy. Rude of him to touch her kimono just like that but still better than him killing her lmao.

Kinda shows how thoughtful of a guy he is to shout at her to not push herself and let him carry her when she felt dizzy after recovering a bit of her memory about the sacred treasures. It was so hilarious but creepy when she was putting the clean dishes away in the kitchen and Hanzo came in out of nowhere just to tell her that the food she cooked tasted fine since she was feeling down that he had no reaction, I think I would fall down the ladder too, it was so sudden😂 Not surprised the heroine is the type to protect an assassin that wanted to kill her lol, happy that Hanzo wanted to prioritise her safety and so wanted to get rid of the assassin though. He may be rough around the edges but everything he does is what he thinks best to do to protect the people important to him. He won’t care if you end up hating him as long as you’re fine.

Hanzo is so cute when he blushes and lolol when he thought the heroine was making sweet red bean dumplings to eat all by herself so he gave her some indigestion pills😂😂 They always bond when the heroine nurses the guy’s wounds hahaha. Him patting her head was cute. But what’s even cuter was when Yoshitsune forced Hanzo to take the heroine out to the city and buy her a present as thanks for taking care of him. It was so funny when she got him to choose something since she couldn’t decide and he got her a headband and even put it on for her😊 So funny when he said it looks nice and the heroine said thanks and he was like I’m referring to the headband, but you look nice too🤣 He’s so not honest loll.

Just like the doctor, I was so happy to see Hanzo be in such a frenzy when he carried the heroine to a clinic after she lost consciousness staring at a mirror that brought her memories back. It was nice to see how concerned he was and how he tried his best to comfort her when her condition was unstable. I’m glad that she finally has her memories back though! I want to know her story! Ooh, so she is the ancestor of the heroine in Destiny Ninja 2 since she is the only daughter of the Kushinada family who protects the three sacred treasures. Her family was killed by the Heishi clan for not telling them where the treasures were and she was sent off on a horse by her parents so that she could survive to protect the treasures. Really though, the heroine doesn’t even know where the treasures are since her father didn’t have time to tell her, so yeah… As a parent, of course he wouldn’t let her die, but couldn’t he at least tell her where they were when they were running together? And why did the Heishi clan kill them instead of torturing them to know the whereabouts of the treasures? I’m sure it’s much more beneficial to torture the wife and daughter to get it out of them?

Well, the mirror was easy to find! LOL at the heroine lifting up the hem of her kimono to show Hanzo she can climb a tree, so gentlemanly of Hanzo to close his eyes and to tell her that he’ll be able to see up her kimono. Lmao when she was startled since she didn’t realise all that and Hanzo caught her (when she fell) with his eyes closed, he’s very adamant about that🤣 Lolol, never thought Kazemasa (Hanzo) could be so romantic that he’d say she’s much more beautiful than the moon hahaha. It was so cute when she kept calling him Kazemasa after he told her she can though, he’s warming up to her so much loll.

The enemy clan got the last treasure~ What to do~ It must be so difficult for Kazemasa to stay with Yoshitsune and the heroine and fulfill his duties when his father is ill. Even though his father was the one who told him to not come back to the Wind village to see him since his duties should take priority, it must be hard for him to really do that… Since Kazemasa has always been a guy living for his duties and nothing else, it must greatly confuse him to have fallen in love with the heroine since it’s something he never expected to experience or think that it would possibly change him so much. Uhhh, what? Did the leader of the Heishi clan just throw himself into the sea? He doesn’t fight??? Okay.. and Yoshitsune has to kill himself for losing the treasures even though he defeated the Heishi clan??? Sounds unreasonable to me… I feel like everything is suddenly moving so fast because it’s nearly ending lol. And it ended with them getting married! A lot of things happened in the span of like 10 lines LOL but all good, they’re happy hahaha.

Overall, I quite liked Kazemasa’s route, he never really knew what it meant to fall in love but despite that, he did show moments where he loved and cared for the heroine, so even though he thinks he feels nothing for her, you can tell that he does, and I guess seeing that progress to him voicing these emotions out loud was rather sweet and nice to see. Tbh, although I feel like story is rather lacking in various areas, I did like their relationship since they were pretty cute. As for the comparison with Ayu in DN2 (since Kazemasa is his ancestor), even though Ayu is super popular, I have to say I like Kazemasa much more in terms of personality and looks🤣 I’m satisfied with my green hair boy🤣 (P.S doing the sweet love endings since most of my answers seem to align with that)

#destiny ninja

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rebeccadunne · 7 years

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Your Chroma

by Sinead Gleeson from the latest edition of essential Irish literary journal Gorse

How does it start? The black of pre-consciousness, the pink

of uterine breaths, the red highways of arteries, splayed.

The beginning is red.

Fly over

This country

Of the body.

A spy photographer

On an aerial loop.

There is

breast and

brain and

bladder and

bowel.

Begin the descent to bone.

Dive into fissures of marrow,

To the source,

The red and white cells

of the blood.

Canada,

Japan,

Poland,

Peru.

Venal Vexillology.

III

To put down words about the body—medical, biological,

anatomical—is to present the body as fact. Its being in the

world—a being ‘being’—is irrefutable.

There is a photo of you. Your child body in a red dress at

a trout farm, the brown glitter of a fish wriggling on the

end of the rod’s line. You smile for the camera, and avoid

looking at the bubble of blood at its mouth. Its red gasps.

‘Colour is consciousness itself, colour is feeling,’ said William

Gass, who prioritised blue above red. Blue, he writes, is ‘most

suitable as the colour of interior life.’ Blue, above corporeal

red? What was he thinking?

How do we decide this interior colour? We are one colour in

life, another in death; one in youth, another in old age; one

in sickness, another in good health. We channel Yves Klein

and create a new shade for the interior. A born again hue.

VII

Because of his synaesthesia, Wassily Kandinsky associated

colours with shapes, and sounds. For him, red was a square,

the ‘sound of a loud drum beat.’

VIII

Repeat red over and over—red red red red red red red red

red red red red red red red red red red red red red red red

red red red red red—and it’s a hum, a drill, a drumroll. It is

also not-blue, not-green, not-black, not-white.

In the Tate, Rothko’s reds are dreamlike, hazy around

the edges. Are they on the canvas or under it, bleeding

through?

In an old cinema, long closed down, we watched Derek

Jarman’s Blue. I’m curious about his choice of colour, but

don’t question his motivation to use blue. In his book Chroma,

he says: ‘I know my colours are not yours. Two colours are

never the same, even if they’re from the same tube.’ I think

of his eyes and his failing sight. To be a person who has

spent their life looking, photographing, regarding—and

now cannot see.

You are both redheads, and tell me you like to mark this

by taking photos of the backs of your heads. You do this

in special places. Howth pier, the Cliffs of Moher, various

lighthouses.

XII

There is a black and white photo in a local newspaper,

dating from the 1930s. It’s creased, and heavily pixelated,

with that old photo blur. But it’s him, Red Con. This is the

only photo we’ve tracked down. I’ve never met him, nor has

my father, but we are related. I descend from red hair.

XIII

If blue, as Gass argues, is the colour of interior life, this

makes red a colour of the exterior. But red is the body. Red

is blood, organs, tendons, the red elements:

Rashes

Hives

Sores

The raised bridge of a new scar

Platelets working on the crust of a cut

The speckle of heat rash, like pebbles on the bed of a

stream.

XIV

Driving over the Golden Gate Bridge in a convertible,

sucking in cool Californian air, they argue about the shade

of the steel. Red. Scarlet. Terracotta. Red again, some

consensus. Circular talk of colour under the shadow of

heavy cables, but he knows the bridge’s shade is officially

called ‘International Orange.’ The company that makes the

paint sells a cheaper version called ‘Fireweed.’ He takes this

as a sign to roll a joint and tells his friends that 98% of

people who jump into the bay don’t survive. Those who do

always have the same injuries: broken vertebrae, smashed

ribs, punctured lungs.

You say tomato

I say blood

You say traffic light

I say muscle

You say fire engine

I say vein

XVI

LITTLE

Across the woods, basket swinging on a girlish arm, she

weaves off the path to pick flowers. Hood as protector—

stay hidden, girl, cover yourself up—in a tocsin shade of red.

Anti-camouflage. Here I am, come and get me! it says. And so

the wolf did.

RED

Get up! Her mother pulls the blanket off her teenage bed.

Take this to your granny, and wear your hood, it’s cold. The girl

is menstrual, cramped, innards torn. Her mother relents,

returning with a hot water bottle, and a box of Feminax.

There is a wolf in her womb, and she placates it with hot,

vulcanised rubber and codeine.

RIDING

The girl remarks on the size of her grandmother’s ears, eyes,

and teeth, failing to notice the lupine mouth, the rich pelt,

the cross-dressing, the anthropomorphic imposter in the

bed.

HOOD

In the belly of the wolf, she is safe. She cannot be eaten again.

Consumption saves her from more (male) consumption.

Stay hidden girl. Belly as cave.

XVII

Fairytales are always about women’s bodies. Rapunzel’s hair

and Sleeping Beauty’s somnolent face and Snow White

choking and Cinderella dancing with glass-slippered feet.

XVIII

Not glass slippers, but her aunt buys her red clogs, the first

shoes she ever loves. The heavy wooden stomp on the

concrete of the street, the scarlet curve of the leather a

possibility. She learns that women are meant to wear heels;

that heels appear to lengthen a woman’s leg, to accentuate

her calf, to make her more attractive. She decides she will

only wear clogs, or no shoes at all.

XVIX

Four women in black body con dresses gyrate to a 1980s

song. Robert Palmer, dressed like someone’s office manager

dad rolls through Addicted to Love. The women are heavily

made up, their eye shadow a palette of storm-cloud colours,

but it’s their lipstick I’m obsessed with: my mother’s matt

pinks and creamy browns having nothing on this. This red is

a declaration of war. The gloss is so high it looks like glass.

I practise on my lips with saliva. The models are arranged

democratically, two either side of Palmer. The only contrast

in uniformity is their faces and length of their dresses. Their

whiteness is a shock, the scraped-back hair severe. These

porcelain-faced, storm-eyed she-tomatons are part homage

to Art Deco painter Patrick Nagel’s women. The shock and

sheen of their scarlet lips is the only thing that interrupts their

monochrome faces. Is it because it’s the ’80s that the scene

is so homogenous, so lacking in multiculturalism? White

bodies the epitome of capitalism, even in pop music.

How should we present our face to the world?

How should we present our (female) face to the world?

Make-upped, pore-blocked in shades of ivory and sand.

Brow-arched, lash-lacquered, glitter-lidded. Branded by

brands.

XXI

We used to paint our lips with whale blubber, but now it’s

mostly wax and oils. I have yet to find the perfect shade of

red lipstick. Too orange, too ephemeral, too knife slash.

XXII

I once worked as editor of a spa magazine. I wrote dull

copy about acrylic nails and Glycolic peels, and was sent

endless products: emery boards and seaweed unguents,

poultices and tanning sprays; exfoliation aids in wood and

sisal. I interviewed a woman who gave facials with coloured

oils selected for a person’s mood and personality. Part spa

treatment, part mystical woo. In her tiny salon, above a pub,

she told me about oneness and inner beauty, self-examination

and higher powers. After a pause in her well-rehearsed pitch,

she pointed to a fleshy bump on my forehead and said:

Would you not get that removed?

XXIII

In 1967, Irish-born writer Lucy Grealy moved to the US

with her family. Life opened up with possibility, but aged

nine she was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a rare facial

cancer. Grealy endured thirty operations, radiation and

chemotherapy. In Autobiography of a Face, her novelistic

memoir, she writes: ‘This singularity of meaning—I was

my face, I was ugliness—though sometimes unbearable, also

offered a possible point of escape. It became the launching

pad from which to lift off, the one immediately recognisable

place to point to when asked what was wrong with my life.

Everything led to it, everything receded from it—my face as

personal vanishing point.’

XXIV

I have never broken a limb, even if my bones are

troublesome.

I have never needed stitches because of a cut.

I have never exposed my insides except for surgical

wounds.

My skin resealed with metal, paper and thread.

XXV

When my teenage hip started to disintegrate, baffled doctors

kept asking increasingly random questions:

Did you fall?

(Who doesn’t?)

Have you ever been knocked down by a car? (Once, but the driver

was going slow and we lived in a cul-de-sac.)

Have you ever had a tropical disease? (Can you get one from

going to Spain?)

Have you ever been bitten by an animal or strange creature? (I tell

him about Lough Derg.)

XXVI

At Dromineer, Lough Derg was like a beach. I swam out

far from the shore to float in the navy current that skirted

the lake like isobars. Swimming back, I stood when the

water was knee high, and felt a sharp pinch on my foot. It

wasn’t glass, and felt more like a bite, but I couldn’t see what

lurked beneath. I thought of monsters and sea demons, the

creature of the lake. There are not enough horror films set

underwater.

XXVII

A hotel exterior, painted walls, a fleeing woman in a scarlet

coat, the vertical lines of blood on a hanging woman’s legs, a

nosebleed, a trickle from a mouth. In Suspiria, Dario Argento

reminds us that we bleed; that the body is vulnerable—not

just to psychologies and fear—but to knives and violence.

The body is the ultimate horror setting.

XXVIII

I look at the mottled skin at your back as a forensic scientist

examines blood splatter.

XXIX

After major surgery:

I wake up to find my skin yellow and assume this is iodine

or antiseptic used to prep the body for being opened to the

elements.

I wake up to find that this yellow is not an ointment, but

bruising, from the pressure of knives, the kneading of

hands.

I wake up to red and yellow patches, pools of colour, the

body’s semaphore.

I wake up during hip replacement surgery and feel strong

hands shoving, the weight of arms, a rearrangement.

Who’s pushing me? I ask, before the anaesthetist tops up

the spinal block, shoving me back under the waves.

XXX

Arthritis and surgery withered my bones. My left leg is

thinner than the right, full of metal and scars. Frida Kahlo’s

right leg was thinner than her left, a result of childhood polio.

Kahlo painted not just her body, not just pain, but body and

pain united. Exposed spinal columns, a womb that triggered

miscarriages, herself pierced by nails in multiple works. In

her diary, she wrote: ‘I am DISINTEGRATION.’

XXXI

Eventually Kahlo’s leg was amputated below the knee and

in 1953, a year before her death, she had a prosthetic limb

made. A laced-platform boot with Chinese embroidery in

red leather. Red as defiance, and for the body and for all the

blood she’d shed.

XXXII

For nearly three months, I wore a cast that covered most

of me. When it was removed, the skin had piled up, and

looked like wax. The sediment of immobility. Removing it

was like rubbing smudges on a windowpane. I felt like a

snake shedding its skin.

XXXIII

Bones are hard as rock but our edges—skin, lids—are not

shores. The body is an island of sorts, containing several

isthmuses, in the throat, fallopian tube, prostate, thyroid,

urethra, aorta, uterus. Body as outpost, as tidal island.

XXXIV

In Northern Ireland we pass bays and inlets, but also red

phone boxes, red postboxes. Imperial, post-Colonial red.

The red stripe of St George’s flag, many Red Hands of

Ulster.

XXXV

I think of you as though you are a map. Of the contours of

your jaw, the hill of your back, the compass of your arms. I

see them now, at 10 and 2, an almost-Jesus on a cross. I try

to imagine your body at 11:11, or 12:34.

XXXVI

We play The Alphabet Body game and you laugh when I get

Z. What about Zinn’s Zonule? I offer, but you think I’m making

it up. The suspensory ligament holding the crystalline lens

of the eye in place. It’s not immediately tangible; there are

no children’s flash cards like there are for eye or mouth.

Zygomatic Bone you say, and ask me its location. It sounds like

zygote, so I guess it is uterine or cervical. I’ll answer by kissing

you there you say, and brush your lips against my cheekbone.

XXXVII

After the birth of my daughter, by C-section, my husband

said he looked up at the wrong time and saw my intestines.

The operating theatre floor looked like a murder had been

committed. And you were red too on the outside, viscous

and slippery as albumen, but your skin was blue, your lungs

working to inflate.

XXXVIII

After the birth of my son, he weighs no more than a couple

of bags of sugar, but I cannot pick him up. A new pain

in my wrist is intense, and feels close to the surface, like

someone tipping a scalding cup over it. I take a glass lift five

floors to see a man who will fix it. De Quervain’s Syndrome,

he says. Can you get it from lifting babies, who are light,

almost not there? Two tendons wrap around each other in a

red embrace. One surgical slit with a scalpel, like a ribbon-

cutting ceremony and it will be free. This injury is also called

Washerwoman’s Sprain (not Washerman’s).

XXXIX

The patron saint of childbirth, St. Margaret of Antioch, was

a committed virgin. Tortured for her faith, her flesh slashed

with nails, she was given the title after an encounter with

a dragon. The creature swallowed her whole, so Margaret

made the sign of the cross and promptly burst out of its

stomach, Alien-style. (Film critic Mark Kermode once said

that Alien is a film about male fear of childbirth).

I know a girl with Rosacea, which makes me think of

‘Rosary,’ not red. The skin is affected with papules and

pustules, reminding me of holy beads. I love these words

for awful things, and the galaxy of red under the moons of

her eyes.

XLI

You do not own your body if you live in this country. Your

womb is not under your control. Legislation owns your

ovaries. Lawyers lay claim to your fallopian tubes. The

government pays stamp duty on your cervix.

XLII

Tick tock, women’s body clocks.

Have a baby even though you’re not ready.

Have a baby when you can’t afford a home.

Have a baby when you’ve been raped.

Have a baby because you can’t afford the airfare to London

or Liverpool.

Have a baby between twenty and thirty-four, it’s the optimum

fertility window, they

keep

reminding

us.

The ticking of ovaries, your body as timepiece, swinging on

a chain.

XLIII

Heads, shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.

HIPS! TITS! LIPS! POWER! (REPEAT)

XLIV

Once you enter the medical system, there are rooms and

hospital numbers, blue disposable gowns and Styrofoam

cups. There are people speaking—always speaking—asking

questions, taking details. The body you think of as yours

is not private. It is in the system, on charts, in operating

theatres. Your body needs to take the lift to x-ray. Your body

needs to drink more fluids. Your body needs to come back

in three months. Your body is ours.

XLV

Just before her lumpectomy, photographer Jo Spence wrote

on her left breast: Property of Jo Spence? The question mark is

defiant and panic-stricken. The need to hold on to this part

of herself. To assert autonomy, even over the toxic growth

in her chest. To have a say in her own medical life. Later,

post-lumpectomy, Spence is photographed in profile, breast

puckered and scarred. Wearing a crash helmet, the image is

uncompromising. Come at me, it says.

XLVI

In the hospital, you are not supposed to use your hands.

In the bathroom, toilets flush and taps spill and blue

paper towels dispense with the wave of a sensor. Germs,

cleanliness, DO NOT TOUCH. The ward is a bubble,

confined and contained, and I feel like Margaret Atwood’s

‘Girl Without Hands.’

No one can enter that circle

you have made, that clean circle

of dead space you have made

and stay inside,

mourning because it is clean.*

XLVII

He used to give himself stigmata. Burning the hollow of his

hand with cigarettes. Pressing the red sieve tip into his heart

line, head line, life line. This is for you, he said, but I know it

connected him to himself.

XLVIII

The Catholic Church’s list of notable stigmatics is comprised

mostly of women, including St. Catherine of Siena. Born in

the mid-fourteenth century, she believed she was married

to Jesus, and that her (invisible) wedding ring was made of

his foreskin. Her stigmatic wounds were visible only to her,

and she suffered from anaemia. Every day, she fasted and

engaged in self-flagellation until she drew blood. In one of

many letters to her confessor, Raymond of Capua, she spoke

of a vision where she leads her followers into the wound in

Christ’s side, guiding an army into his blood.

XLIX

My birthday is the anniversary of the death of St. Ignatius

Loyola. Once a soldier, he was shot through the hip,

shattering his leg. I’ve never gone to war or been beatified.

There is no redness in death. Maybe this is where William

Gass’ interior blue comes in. But the body turns many

colours at the end: white, grey, blue, purple, a tinge of green.

The body spent and stopped and still is not red.

But when will the red stop?

When will I die?

When will you?

#sinead gleeson #gorse #literary journal #writing #new irish writing #irish #your chroma #red

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gaiatheorist · 5 years

Text

A letter to...

(The therapist is going to start work with me on exploring and expressing the emotions I classify ‘unsafe’ soon. One of the previous assessors had been concerned that I don’t recognise my own emotions, and that the therapy wouldn’t be effective. I do recognise, I just don’t always respond appropriately, there’s a lot of repression, I’ve trained part of myself to ‘set aside’ some emotions. There’s an ironic smirk, here, I’ve effectively implemented a strategy that professionals might suggest, I’ve just done it in a very ‘me’ way. *Emotion* *Can I fuck it, fight it or eat it?* *No, well I’ll piss on it and walk away.*.)

My last surviving grandparent died this week. I mentioned it to the therapist, who asked me how I felt about it. Relief, and closure, finality, that she can’t place any more children in harm’s way. Pointless anecdote, I’m the only member of my generation of siblings and cousins to have a son, everyone else had daughters. The actual paedophile, my maternal grandfather, died in 1992, but, in my skewed mind, if she’d put her own daughter, and me, as the eldest granddaughter in his bed, there was a perceived-risk that her second husband would be the same, and she’d do it again.

There’s the anger, and no doubt the reason for my mother’s considered-but-clumsy Facebook ‘drama’. Older people don’t ‘get’ social media, my mother has posted that she’s having a clear-out of Facebook friends, to ‘reflect changing priorities’, I’m stealthier than that, I used ‘hide all posts from’ years ago, to screen-out the few family members that stayed in contact with my grandmother. I didn’t want that jolt of occasionally seeing a photo of her, and feeling angry that she was enjoying life, after what she’d done.

Ripples on a pond. One of my cousins posted on Facebook on Monday that ‘Nanny’ had died. Once I’d stopped doing imaginary air-punches, and cheering, I wrote a very brief private message to the group-chat of my mother, her brother and sister. “Just seen the news. Condolences on your loss.” My aunt and uncle responded, my mother didn’t. I can only imagine the shit-storm she’s going through right now, I’m ‘the missing sister that nobody mentions’ at family events, and her slightly over-dramatic exit from some Facebook friendships will place her in a similar position. (There’s also the side-slant that my step-father tends to police who she’s ‘allowed’ to communicate with, so her support-networks will be even smaller now.)

I’m snort-laughing at myself, my ‘homework’ from this week’s therapy session was a booklet of ‘unhelpful thoughts or behaviours’, scaled frequently/sometimes/rarely, and I’ve just ‘caught’ myself doing two of my ‘frequently’ ones: deflecting emotions, and prioritising others over myself. I objected to a lot of the phrasing on the sheet, some of the thoughts/behaviours seemed perfectly rational to me, and some were confusing, because the example thought-cycles given seemed ‘wrong’. (People don’t fit neatly into boxes, some of my thoughts and behaviours are very atypical.) It’s ‘easier’ for me to consider the practicalities of my younger half-sister being advised that her grandmother has died AGAIN, and my mother using her broken hip as a reason not to travel to the funeral. Practicalities and processes are tangible-linear, emotions are a messy tangle, especially on that side of the family, which is built on a complex foundation of lies.

I was the one accused of lying, when I disclosed the abuse, to protect my half-sister and female cousin, but the wider family were the ones who colluded to occlude the truth. I couldn’t make sense of it at the time, the whisper-hissed conversation in my grandparents’ kitchen about not calling an ambulance for my grandfather, because that would mean the police would come. My grandmother had phoned my mother “She says he’s been interfering with her.” All hell broke loose, my mother and grandmother had known for years what he’d been doing, he’d done it to my mother, when she’d disclosed to her mother, in an attempt to shield her younger sister, my grandmother had told her never to mention it to anyone, because the children would be ‘taken away.’ (Part of me genuinely wishes I had been ‘taken away’, to avoid what followed my disclosure. Systems and processes have changed since then.)

Whether my step-father knew before that night, I don’t know. I do know that he believed me, enough to ‘do something’. The ‘something’ was dragging an old man out of his house, and beating him severely on the street. They left him bleeding on the pavement, while they had their little family meeting about not phoning for an ambulance. Snatches of conversation, about my stepfather already having a criminal record for violence, and the fact that he’d be asked for a reason for the assault. They were all trying to protect themselves, not one of them gave a thought to me, the child, lapsing in and out of consciousness halfway up the stairs. A neighbour took the decision out of their hands, and phoned 999, I honestly think that the three of them would have ‘left it at that’, and there might have been a conversation about me never mentioning it, on threat of being ‘taken away.’ I would still have disclosed, I might not have hung up the phone on one of my occasional calls to Child Line, or I might have told a teacher, but I would have told, so he couldn’t start with my half-sister, or cousin.

Some people didn’t believe me, my mother was subjected to verbal abuse in the street, and there was a stream of threatening phone-calls to the house, calling me a liar. My mother knew I was telling the truth, I think she struggled more with believing I HAD told it. She didn’t cope well, none of us did, she’d sporadically physically attack me, and rant at me for ‘breaking the family apart’, for inconveniencing her in terms of having to find childcare for my half-sister because I’d made my grandparents unavailable. I know, wrap your head around that, she would have given them my sister as well. I don’t think there ever was a conversation about not-mentioning-it, it just happened that way. Processes and procedures were followed, my grandfather was sent to prison, and there was an expectation that everyone would just ‘get on with it.’ I still believe that the reason my mother withdrew me from the initial psychology appointments was to prevent me from disclosing her complicity.

Life went on. Some people believed me, some believed my grandfather’s insistence that he’d done nothing wrong, and nobody really spoke about it. My stepfather forbade my mother from speaking to her brother, my uncle initially couldn’t believe my disclosure, and ‘sided’ with his father. The family, such as it was, fragmented, my mother’s two younger siblings maintained contact with their mother, I’m fairly certain that, somewhere along the line, my half-sister was told that both our mother’s parents had died. (They probably had to unpick that one, when social media came along, and the cousins and such started posting about Nanny being alive and well.) There was some unpleasantness as my grandfather died, with people on ‘his’ side stating he’d been acquitted and released from prison. He hadn’t, he’d been taken to hospital after the brain haemorrhage that ultimately killed him. My mother had red eyes when she told me he’d died, but when *I* started crying, she demanded a reason. It was relief, that he would absolutely NEVER damage another child, but “What are you crying for?” threw me, so I told her it was period pain. (Funny the little details I remember. She let me have the day off school, and managed to get me in at the doctors, the doctor prescribed Ponstan Forte.)

In their own ways, my mother and grandmother were as bad as each other. I chose a different path, but I’m still very badly damaged by what happened. My mother and I are more alike than I care to admit, in many ways. We can both be cold and calculating, and we both project as indifferent and insular. That’s my armour, my ‘strength’, built on a foundation of being told I didn’t matter, having it proven, and the response to any display of emotion being either ignored, or “I’ll GIVE you something to cry about.”

I saw my mother in the supermarket on Friday, as she’d blanked my Facebook message on the Monday, but before she staged her Facebook-flounce on the Saturday. Our usual behaviour with each other is a brief nod of acknowledgement, or pretending not to have noticed each other. Enter, stage right, Little Miss I-should-say-something.

“I wasn’t being off with you when I sent that message.”

“I know. You know why I didn’t reply.”

“Yes, I do. I just wanted you and the others to know I’d seen the news, to acknowledge it. It’s no loss to me.”

We are profoundly dysfunctional, but that’s how we function. I can’t tell her that I’m glad her mother died, but I effectively did. She said she’d done with her grieving years ago, but I can see through that false-front, especially in light of her Facebook-flounce. She doesn’t want to deal with the platitudes from distant relatives, and she doesn’t want to wade through dozens of posts saying what a brilliant woman her mother was. She wasn’t. Social media, and societal expectations are going to make life difficult for her for a while, there’s a fair chance of unwelcome memories being triggered, and I can’t help her with that, I choose not to.

It’s possible that other-cousins might post pictures or memories of Nanny on Facebook. I’ll have brief flashes of rage, that there was no criminal charge against her, for her complicity, that all the photos will be of her laughing, and enjoying life, while what they did ruined mine. She moved away, she re-married, she still had contact with some of her grandchildren, and their children. That seems unfair to me, but life isn’t always ‘fair.’

A letter to my grandmother,

Good riddance, I’m pleased that you’re finally dead.

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