theleakypen

[theleakypen]

Reflections on hod and yesod of chesed, for my mishpocha who are counting with me… Thank you so much for supporting my work! patreon.com/kimchicuddles

The Omer is counted every nightfall starting the 2nd night of Passover until the night before Shavuot (marking when we received the Torah). This yearly cycle of counting lasts 49 days and every nightfall has its own opportunity for reflection. Each of the 7 weeks has its own focus and each of the 7 days within each week has its own focus within that focus. During Sefirat Ha'Omer, we are invited on a mystical journey, a journey that spirals us deeper and deeper into discovering what exists within our psyches and souls…

text reads:

Today's focus is hod within chesed, and tonight begins the focus of yesod within chesed. 

Ever since I was little I loved to wake before the sunrise and witness the details of the morning.

Hod brings up ideas of splendor and celebration in those sorts of simple moments.

Yesod can be translated as foundation, and is also linked to ideas of sexual energy and unification.

Yesod is a connection on a deeper level than what we can physically see.

The movement between these two ideas within the week of chesed makes me take notice of the quiet foundation that holds the infinite splendor in every moment, combining the colors of the morning as the sun rises to paint the new day with them.

And noticing the divinity of creation in each subtle moment of connection with anyone, I remember that even a glance with a stranger can be a moment of love that transcends both of us.

[theleakypen]

the unintentional winky face in this megillah is ending me

"the jews had rule over them that hated them. haha jk... unless...? ;)"

#lol #omg #being jewish on main #megillah #purim

[theleakypen]

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a slapping,

As of some one gently flapping, flapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis some fairy,” I muttered, “slapping at my chamber door—

            Only this and nothing more.”

#this is REMARKABLE #poetry #edgar allan poe #nevermore #fairy walrus debate #i am in awe

[theleakypen]

Role swap au where Zuko was the Avatar who got frozen for a hundred years, so when he’s rescued from the ice instead of a goofy twelve year old Katara catches this mysterious teenager with long hair and a cool scar and a fucking DRAGON

Katara: BOY???? HOT BOY?????? HOT TEENAGE BOY?????????

Zuko: *speaks*

Katara: nevermind I hate him

#i love this #avatar the last airbender #fan comic

[theleakypen]

I Want my Wei Ying Back, with apologies to Jon Klassen.

#lol #amazing #the untamed #fanart #pastiche #i love my hat #i love my wei ying #wangixan #mo dao zu shi

[theleakypen]

hey who has a screenshot of that toby stephens tweet about his earring. you know the one,, it contains the words "an old hole, still open, from my youth." i need it for science purposes

#exCUSE ME?!? #toby stephens #SIR #black sails

[theleakypen]

Yeah I saw the lovecraftian horrors and didn’t succumb to madness. What- no I’m not a cultist, James. For Christ’s sake. What you’re forgetting my friend is that HP Lovecraft wasn’t a flexible man. His brain simply wasn’t stretchy enough to take it all in. I however, have short term memory issues. Flexibility is the name of the game when you can’t remember if you ate lunch or not. What’s the size of the universe? Big. You knew that already, James. Come on now. You don’t need to witness the terrifying ocean at the base of the entirety of reality itself to know that. Pass the brandy.

#this makes me so happy #call of cthulhu #lovecraft but make it wodehouse

[theleakypen]

some say the goat will end in fire some say in ice from what I've read on the Wikipedia page of past Goat-destroying efforts, I'm pretty sure none of us were reckoning on absolute swarms of hungry birds but birds are also great and will suffice

#i'm so happy about this #poetry #goat #gavle goat

[theleakypen]

reminder to:

straighten your back

go pee goddAMN IT STOP HOLDING IT

go take your meds if you need to

drink some water

go get a snack if you havent eaten in a while

maybe wander around the house/stretch a little if you’ve been sat at the computer a while (artists especially: sTRETCH THOSE WRISTS)

reply to that text/message from earlier you’d forgotten about

maybe send a nice lil message to someone having a bad day?

#self care #reminders

[theleakypen]

I got a job at a Ukrainian museum.

On the first day someone asks me if I have any Ukrainian heritage. I say I had ancestors from Odesa, but they were Jewish, so they weren’t considered Ukrainian, and they wouldn’t have considered themselves Ukrainian. My job is every day I go through boxes of Ukrainian textiles and I write a physical description, take measurements, take photographs, and upload everything into the database. I look up “Jewish” in the database and there is no result. 

Some objects have no context at all, some come with handwritten notes or related documents. I look at thick hand-spun, hand-woven linen heavy with embroidery. Embroidery they say can take a year or more. I think of someone dressed for a wedding in their best clothes they made with their own hands. Some shirts were donated with photographs of the original owners dressed in them, for a dance at the Ukrainian Labour Temple, in 1935. I handle the pieces carefully, looking at how they fit the men in the photos, and how they look almost a hundred years later packed in acid-free tissue. One of the men died a few years later, in the war. He was younger than I am now. The military archive has more photographs of him with his mother, his father, his fiancé. I take care in writing the catalogue entry, breathing in the history, getting tearful. 

I imagine people dressed in their best shirts at Easter, going around town in their best shirts burning the houses of Jews, in their best shirts, killing Jews. A shirt with dense embroidery all over the sleeves and chest has a note that says it is from Husiatyn. I look it up and find that it was largely a Jewish town, and Ukrainians lived in the outskirts. There is a fortress synagogue from the Renaissance period, now abandoned. 

When my partner Aaron visits I take him to an event at the museum where a man shows his collection of over fifty musical instruments from Ukraine, and he plays each one. Children are seated on the floor at the front. We’re standing in a corner, the room full of Ukrainians, very aware that we look like Jews, but not sure if anyone recognizes what that looks like anymore. Aaron gets emotional over a song played on the bandura. 

A note with a dress says it came from the Buchach region. I find a story of Jewish life in Buchach in the early twentieth century, preparing to flee as the Nazis take over. I cry over this.

I’m cataloguing a set of commemorative ribbons that were placed on the grave of a Ukrainian Nationalist leader, Yevhen Konovalets, after he was assassinated. The ribbons were collected and stored by another Nationalist, Andriy Melnyk, who took over leadership after Konovalets’ death. The ribbons are painted or embroidered with messages honouring the dead politician. I start to recognize the word for “leader”, the Cyrillic letters which make up the name of the colonel, the letters “OYH” which stand for Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN in English). The OUN played a big part in the Lviv pogroms in 1941, I learn. The Wikipedia article has a black and white image of a woman in her underwear, running in terror from a man and a young boy carrying a stick of wood. The woman’s face is dark, her nose may be bleeding. Her underwear is torn, her breast exposed. I’m measuring, photographing, recording the stains and loose threads in the banners that honour men who would have done this to me. 

Every day I can’t stop looking at my phone, looking up the news from Gaza, tapping through Instagram stories that show what the news won’t. Half my family won’t talk to the other half, after I share an article by a scholar of Holocaust and genocide studies, who says Israel is committing a genocide. My dad makes a comment that compares Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto. This gets him in trouble. My aunt says I must have learned this antisemitism at university, but there is no excuse for my dad. 

This morning I see images from Israeli attacks in the West Bank, where they are not at war. There are naked bodies on the dusty ground. I’m not sure if they are alive. This is what I think of when I see the image from the Lviv pogrom. If what it means for Jews to be safe from oppression is to become the oppressor, I don’t want safety. I don’t want to speak about Jews as if we are one People, because I have so little in common with those in green uniforms and tanks. I am called a self-hating Jew but I think I am a self-reflecting Jew.

I don’t know how to articulate how it feels to be handling objects which remind me of Jewish traumas I inherited only from history classes and books. Textiles hold evidence of the bodies that made them and used them. I measure the waist of a skirt and notice that it is the same as my waist size. I think of clothing and textiles that were looted from Jewish homes during pogroms. I think of clothing and textiles that were looted from Palestinian homes during the ongoing Nakba. Clothes hold the shape of the body that once dressed in them. Sometimes there are tears, mends, stains. I am rummaging through personal belongings in my nitrile gloves. 

I am hands-on learning about the violence caused by Ukrainian Nationalism while more than nine thousand Palestinians have been killed by the State of Israel in three weeks, not to mention all those who have been killed in the last seventy-five years of occupation, in the name of the Jewish Nation, the Jewish People — me? If we (and I am hesitant to say “we”) learned anything from the centuries of being killed, it was how to kill. This should not have been the lesson learned. Zionism wants us to feel constantly like the victims, like we need to defend ourself, like violence is necessary, inevitable. I need community that believes in freedom for all, not just our own People. I need the half of my family who believes in this necessary “self-defence” to remember our history, and not just the one that ends happily ever after with the creation of the State of Israel. Genocide should not be this controversial. We should not be okay with this. 

Tomorrow I will go to work and keep cataloguing banners that honour the leader of an organization which led pogroms. I will keep checking the news, crying into my phone, coordinating with organizers about our next actions, grappling with how we can be a tiny part in ending this genocide that the world won’t acknowledge, out of guilt over the ones it ignored long ago. 

#oh very me #memory work #genocide #jewish history #ukrainian history #very well said #and beautifuly written #as a fellow ukrainian jew #whoof

[theleakypen]

From THiS by @iamwestiec ,

LOOK this wasn’t supposed to be so suggestive lmfao I’ll see myself out

yes im a filthy chengxian shipper this takes place post canon btw

“Jiang Cheng raised a hand and skimmed it up Wei Wuxian’s arm. Purple fabric.”

#ahhh lovely! #fanart #fanart of a fanfic #chengxian #jiang cheng #jiang wanyin #wei ying #wei wuxian #mo dao zu shi #the untamed

[theleakypen]

I hear my mom shrieking downstairs, shouting up to me about “THE CATS! THE CATS!”

I run downstairs, thinking someone has died or something and see THIS:

I FEEL LIKE I NEED TO PUNCH SOMETHING TO GET OVER THE ADORABLENESS

#cats #awwww #good job everyone #art #gifs #cute animals #barbershop quartet

[theleakypen]

i'm honestly impressed with lumity for holding up this well!

AO3 Top Relationships Bracket- Round 4

This poll is a celebration of fandom history; we're aware that there are certain issues with many of the listed pairings and sources, but they are a part of that history. Please do not take this as an endorsement, and refrain from harassment.

#f/f ships are all doing remarkably well tbh #i'm impressed #tumblr polls

[theleakypen]

Reblog if you wouldn't mind some curious anons

Anonymous questions 🌞🤫

#yeah always #ask me

[theleakypen]

— f.h.

#oh gosh oh wow #gifs #death #the untamed

[theleakypen]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV) Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Granny Wēn & Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn & Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín & Wēn Remnants, Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín & Original Characters, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxi��n & Original Character(s), Bàoshān Sǎnrén & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Luó "Mián Mián" Qīngyáng & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Mò Xuányǔ & Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn Characters: Wēn Níng | Wēn Qiónglín, Granny Wēn (Módào Zǔshī), Wen Yuan, Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn, Wēn Remnants (Módào Zǔshī), Luó "Mián Mián" Qīngyáng, Mò Xuányǔ, Bàoshān Sǎnrén, Original Characters Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - New York City, technically also a college au but that barely matters, Sukkot | Tabernacles, mid-autumn festival, Extended Families, Synagogue-Assigned Party Guests, Chinese Jewish Characters, Best Friends, Background Relationships Summary:

“I think the member coordinator saw our Chinese names and was like, ‘Better send all the Chinese Jews to these guys,’” Ning said.

“All the better!” Wuxian said, grinning. “Double holiday for everyone!”

The Wens host Sukkot/Mid-Autumn Festival.

HEY HAPPY DOUBLE HARVEST FESTIVAL! I WROTE A FIC ABOUT THIS EXACT EVENT LAST YEAR! <3

#fanfic #puck writes #the untamed #mo dao zu shi #wen ning #wen qionglin #wei wuxian #wei ying #granny wen #baoshan sanren #luo qingyang #mianmian #mo xuanyu #sukkos #sukkot #mid autumn festival

[theleakypen]

Happy Mid-Autumn & Sukkot to my fellow Chinese-Jewish households! 🥮🌿🍋🌕

#mid autumn festival #sukkos #heck yeah! #double harvest festival #art #being jewish on main