Linda Pastan, from Waiting for My Life: Poems; "Excursion"

[Text ID: I am a tourist / in my own life, / gazing at the exotic shapes / of flowers / as if someone else / had planted them;"]

good omens mascot here: why i relate to crowley

Okay I know I've only watched the first season and there's a lot I don't know about season two But. I have a lot of feelings about Crowley and I'm trying to figure out why and this is what I've got. I'm sure at least some of you relate to some of these. I'm using he/him for him this post.

One. He's so disillusioned with almost everything (I say almost on purpose). Heaven? He lost faith in heaven when he fell, maybe before he fell, maybe he fell because he lost faith in it. He's so frustrated with Aziraphale's belief in the goodness of heaven, but he still respects that belief and even admires Aziraphale for it, only really showing how upset he is when Aziraphale lets that blind faith guide decisions. Crowley always says things that imply being an angel is a good trait, but that facade breaks when Aziraphale is fucking up, because he doesn't want Aziraphale to get hurt or this world to end. As for hell? He certainly doesn't have faith in hell, and doesn't belong in it. Mankind? Nope, he frequently points out how flawed and cruel humans are. Himself? Crowley doesn't have faith in himself, really, either.

And I relate to that feeling of... losing faith in all the things that are supposed to be Right and Good, like society and family, parents and friends, lovers and yourself, government and laws.

Two. I said almost, and that's because Aziraphale. He has such relentless faith in the fact that they are friends, they are best friends, they are lovers. 6000 years, and he keeps reading beneath the lines, continues to stand by Azi even when Aziraphale reminds him that he is a demon, that they are on opposing sides, that Aziraphale does not like him, that they are not friends, that Aziraphale couldn't care less about him. Crowley knows Aziraphale doesn't mean it, just like we know. And we're so used to seeing romances where one character says something they don't mean and the rift goes on forever and we get frustrated because idiots, he didn't mean it. But Crowley knows Aziraphale doesn't mean it. He doesn't stop saying they are best friends. That they are more. He calls out Aziraphale on his bullshit and points out that Aziraphale does love him. And he does it without pushing, just lines dropped over millennia, a reminder to Aziraphale that Crowley feels the same, that he knows, he understands. It's such a relentless, powerful optimism from a demon who has lost faith in everything else.

And I know how that feels, to believe in a love so strongly that you can take blow after blow to that belief and have it remain unshattered. To give gentle reminders that you see through the lies, and that you are there and you know they didn't want to hurt you.

Three. Another caveat, though. How much can that belief withstand? Yes, Crowley knows that Aziraphale is his lover and best friend. But how many doubts have crept in over those thousands of years? When Aziraphale said he didn't like Crowley, and the demon replied with you do, how much of it was posturing? When Crowley has been cast out from heaven and persecuted by hell, found no friends in humankind, it must have shattered his sense of self-worth. He calls Aziraphale his only friend, his best friend. Imagine your only friend repeatedly insisting you aren't friends. Yes, you know it is because to be friends is to put both of you in danger, that Aziraphale does not mean it and has shown time and again that he loves Crowley and that's why he's lying to protect him, but still. It must hurt. It must chip away at logic and rationality, bit by bit.

And I know how that feels, too, to begin to doubt that you are loved, because that objective knowledge that yes, you are loved gets broken and eroded by so many instances of being hurt, dismissed, ignored, betrayed.

Four. No one seems to be putting Crowley first. Not heaven, certainly, heaven threw him out millennia ago. As for hell, Satan and the demons only tolerate him, willing to kill him as soon as he betrays the slightest hint of goodness. Humans are too fleeting, gone before you can blink, and they have never paid any regard to the individual over the 'greater good', certainly not to a lonely demon who can't get close to them because they die too soon. And Aziraphale chooses heaven, chooses being good over Crowley every single time. Some of the time, he is right. But imagine being Crowley. Given the choice between salvation and Aziraphale, happiness and Aziraphale, anything and Aziraphale, he would choose Aziraphale. And he has to watch, time and again, as Aziraphale chooses other things over him, finally pulling back from the kiss and choosing the heaven he doesn't even like over what Crowley offers him. Crowley, as far as he can see, is no one's first choice, no one's first priority. It may not be true. But it does feel like that.

And that feeling is so real, to know that the people you would die for would not do the same for you. The people you put first wouldn't put you first. That you are giving knowing that you cannot take. It may be real, or it may not be, but the fact is it often looks that way to me and Crowley and a lot of us, and that hurts.

These aren't all, of course, there's the relentless questioning, the needing to be good, the needing to be bad, the horrible urges and battling them, the kinder impulses and figuring out how to fit them into an awful world, the consequences for being good, whether they are worth it, just everything about Crowley. But the four above I wanted to elaborate on.

I'm fucked, I love a fictional character again. Again, I might be wrong about a lot of things, so there's that. Aren't we all.

Getting disillusioned from your past is an extremely painful experience, and it hurts even worse when we're expected to not feel hurt from that.

What do you mean parents who I struggled to impress and who I loved all my life actually didn't care about me at all. What do you mean I was alone during the formative years of my life and nobody was in my corner and I grew up severely damaged by neglect and trauma due to it. What do you mean I haven't experience genuine love for any moment of my life.

I was in there, dreaming. I was building a life from straws and sand that I was able to grasp and glue together into an illusion of a family. I kept telling myself 'okay, but if this worse thing happened, then I would be protected, then it would be taken seriously, then it would matter.' I thought that's what we were all supposed to do? Every single time I said a word I would hear 'They're your parents and they're just doing what's best for you', what do you mean it was all a lie, every single time?

I was encouraged to put together a life that felt bearable to grow up in, so I wouldn't have to live in the worst possible option. The alternative was living in the world where every single person is an active danger to me and I am supposed to feel tense and terrified for every second of my life. To find out now, that it was not real? That I made everything up, that people were actively telling me to keep making it up, and to now find out I was alone all along, and I was hurt, for a long time, and nobody did anything? I was betrayed by every single person around me, since I was a baby? Everything I held onto was imaginary, every bit of trust and hope and love I held onto so dearly, never even existed?

That feels like wrenching hope out of my shaking arms when I'm still holding onto it to live. It feels like the entire inner world crashed and I don't know who anyone is, and I can't trust myself to find out, because I was wrong every single time I tried. Every event turns into pain. Every memory hurts like a burning wound. It's not 'starting over', it's being plunged into depth and the world closing in on you, showing you a face that you couldn't let yourself see because it would have broken you. And it's breaking you now.

To finally see your situation and your past as traumatic and devastating as it was, it's almost completely unbearable. Nobody should be expected to face that on somebody else's terms, or to suddenly be okay with it. It's not only a loss of an illusion, it's a loss of one's entire past, only to be replaced with a cruel, empty and abandonment-filled version. It's to realize you've been dreaming yourself a family while being alone in a dark cell with rocks thrown at you.

So be gentle with people who still partly live in that illusion, or who are struggling to break out of it. Yes, living in it is dangerous and painful, but breaking out takes a toll few could accept or manage. Nobody should be pushed or hurried up to go thru this devastation. Nobody should be forced to deal with this pain.

2.20.23

I am not much engaged by the problems of what you might call our day but I am burdened by the particular, the mad person who writes me a letter. It is no longer necessary for them even to write me. I know when someone is thinking of me. I learn to deal with this.

Joan Didion, Play It as It Lays (review here)

Song of the Day - “Is That All There Is?”

55 Years Ago Today, Peggy Lee recorded “Is That All There Is?” At the Capitol Tower recording studio in Hollywood. This was one of Peggy’s biggest hits. It hit #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Chart and was fairly high up on the Hot 100. The song was written by the famed songwriting duo Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, and is a lament of a disillusioned soul with the hard facts of life, going through a lifetime list of events which were supposed to be special but which were in fact disappointments. The song was inspired by Thomas Mann’s book “Disillusionment”. The verses’ lyrics are spoken rather than sung, and only the refrain is sung. The song was first recorded by British singer Georgia Brown and Leslie Uggams before Peggy took a crack at it. It would later get covered by Tony Bennett, Chaka Khan, and PJ Harvey, among others… but it is Peggy Lee’s tune. Something about her voice and her vibe are the perfect match for the lyrics… On the recording, the orchestral arrangement was composed and arranged by future famed songwriter Randy Newman, who, in addition to conducting the orchestra, also played the piano on the track. It was done in a Kurt Weill swing style. It’s such a strange song… but it was a “thing” when it was released… and delivered with Peggy’s sexy voice, it just kinda worked… a little oddity….

Mary Elaine LeBey

Come new to this day.

Remove the rigid overcoat of experience,

the notion of knowing,

the beliefs that cloud your vision.

Leave behind the stories of your life.

Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation.

Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the swamp

of your useless fears.

Arrive curious, without the armor of certainty,

the plans and planned results of the life you’ve imagined.

Live the life that chooses you,

new every breath, every blink of your astonished eyes.

~ Prescription for the Disillusioned by Rebecca del Rio

I actually liked people a LOT, before I understood them.

Mosab Abu Toha, from Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza; “Displaced”

[Text ID: “I am neither in nor out. / I am in between. / I am not part of anything. / I am a shadow of something. / At best, / I am a thing that / does not really / exist. / I am weightless, / a speck of time / in Gaza. / But I will remain / where I am.”]

Yeah, this is part of the experience of derealisation or depersonalisation. You imagine things to be different to how they really are because you don’t feel like you’re really there or that the world is really there.

This is something Buffy will return to to cope next season. Her severe depression starts here.

Some people experience trauma so intensely and viscerally that their response is to either put themselves mentally back into the time and place where that trauma happened or remove themselves from it completely. But it tends to be the latter when what’s causing the trauma is the reality. Like in this episode. The reality is that her mom has died and while being wracked by that experience - the pain and the shock and surrealism of it - her brain is trying everything to protect itself from the experience because it can’t deal with it right now. Or really ever.

It figures that in a season where the mental state can be altered so thoroughly through memories that never actually happened to the point that Buffy can be made to believe that she has a younger sister, Buffy would try to make herself believe that her mom didn’t die. This is what makes Season 5 so fucking good. It shows you how people deal with real and raw trauma.

'Cause for the first time since I was a child, I could see a man who wasn't angry

I saw a ship girl stan who also stans Danielle, because of their stupid little alliance lol, post some clap back to someone who wrote a meta saying that Dani was Azor Ahai and AA is actually the anti-christ. I have seen a bunch of these metas, and they are well thought out and actually use the text and religious imagery that is within the text to support the argument. Anyway, ship girl fan was basically like 'ummm excuse me sweetie but the Catholic church/Christianity doesn't exist in the books....so Check mate!' I just....lol this the level of analysis #that part of the fandom is working with and wonders why they got literally nothing right way back in 2019 lmao. If you can't pick up on the most obvious parallels to Christian symbolism and allusions to biblical stories/foreshadowing that is as heavy handed as GRRM can get, maybe this is not the series for you lmao.

I am floored.

Anon, we can't pick on them for this. You're not supposed to kick down.