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zakthefiend · 5 years

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AlexHanzo tribute

((You’d think with all this Thraina art coming from @pebster would be the next thing I write. Which you’d be right, but I wanted to pay homage to her first ship that I utterly fell for. Besides, there needs to be some more love for these two and I will happily help this ship the best I can! So, I hope you enjoy!))

The planet known as Earth was quite strange to the lifebinder. Food that seems like it’s only there to fatten you, buildings that reached so high it scrapped the skies, artificial humans walking around, and the very diverse cultures that seem to almost mirror Azeroth’s. It was understandably a bit much for the dragoness. Luckily for her, Hanzo is there to help her.

The dragon laid soundly in a soft bed, holding her dear Hanzo in her arms. She had cuddled up close to him last night when the cold winter air had came swiftly. Alexstrasza did not like the cold, and somehow, it was colder HERE than back in Northrend! Hanzo was the first to awake, seeing the poor dragoness shivering! He couldn’t help but quietly chuckle at her.

He stealthfully got out of bed, making way to the other side of the room to bring a portable heater over to her. He switched the lamp on, and it begun to make the room they were in much warmer. The shivering Allie quickly stopped, as she breathed a comfortable sigh. It took everything for Hanzo not to respond to such a cute thing!

Seeing as it was still early for her, he laid back into bed with his wife. He held her close, and the still sleeping dragon dug her head into Hanzo’s chest. Her arms quickly wrapped themselves around him, as she sleepily smiled. “My archer...~” She mumbled, before sleeping once more. Hanzo also fell asleep in her embrace, seeing as it was hard to stay awake in such a position.

The two finally woke up, Alexstrasza was first this time. She rolled on top of Hanzo and placed her lips gently against his. “Good morning husband~” She started, her voice so soft and quiet it would be barely audible to anyone else! She giggled when Hanzo purposely tickled her face with his beard. “Stooop! That tickles my love!’ She protested, but he simply continued until he was on top of her now. “Good morning, my silly wife. Hope your dreams were a pleasant one.” He stroked down her face, his eyes staring into hers lovingly.

“How could I? When you are here with me?” Her smile was very bright to the archer, as he kissed her back tenderly. Hanzo broke the kiss after a solid minute, and got to the edge of the bed. Alexstrasza hugged him behind, “Five more minutes... please...?” She asked, yawning very cutely. Hanzo held her hands, “I already gave you an hour silly dragon.” The life binder gave a pouty face, but let him up from his bed.

He would get out of his nightwear and change into his day to day clothes for the Winter. Alexstrasza would not mind the view of the many spots of him that she “claimed”. She followed along as well, using a standard magic to make herself more human looking. Hiding her horns, having rounder pupils, no scales whatsoever, while still keeping her body build. She then grabbed a long pair of jeans, a scarlet shirt, a heavy jacket, earmuffs, a scarf, mittens, tube socks, and snow boots.

Hanzo smiled at her look, “You look ready for the day.” He reached out his hand to her, “Shall we?”

“Lets.”

Hanzo began to show Alexstrasza around Japan. With the advanced bullet train system, getting around very simple. Though, a lot of brave men on those trains reached for a grab on both Hanzo and Alex, to which both responded in kind. Alex scaring them half to death, and Hanzo breaking their nose. Needless to say, there were fewer people being brave that following day.

Hanzo showed Allie the ancient wonders of Japan. Koi fish ponds, shrines, ancient battlefields, monasteries, the works! He even took her to the temple of Kiyomizu-dera. He explained to her that many people would jump off it’s side to have a wish granted... 43 feet in the air (13.1064 meters). He also stopped Alex from jumping off the side to make a wish! Nearly gave the poor man a heart attack!

They then spent three hours walking through the ten thousand red gates, and Hanzo was slightly winded going up THAT many steps! Hanzo then took dragon mom to the studio ghibli museum. She even hugged a life-size Totoro mascot!(This is a lowkey attempt to ask Pebs to make a sketch of Alex holding Totoro. Please Pebs!). They would finish the day with Hanzo spending the last bit of money on a food cart for Ramen. The cold seemed to make the flavor pop out more, something Hanzo could never explain to her.

Long story short, Alexstrasza, the dragon queen of the dragonflight, was indeed intimidated by what this world had to offer her, but with Hanzo there to help her get her bearings, she found this one definitely an absolute joy to be in! Her only regret is not knowing any places in Azeroth to show her archer that he hasn’t already seen. The Shimada doesn’t really care though, because having her by his side was a gift enough to him.

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freakflagbyiana · 5 years

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Why “David Bowie is god”

As my site turns one year old today, which is also David Bowie’s birthday, I thought I’d try to begin to explain the importance David Bowie has in my personal life and the effect he had, continues to have, on my career.

Childhood influence

My parents had fairly different musical tastes but the one major thing that overlapped was they were both David Bowie fans. My mom was also a Jim Henson fan so I grew up watching Labyrinth with her. I remember it was out of print for a long time and I was the only kid in the neighborhood with a copy that had been taped off of HBO. As a kid I remember being in love with Jareth’s hair itself, asking Mom if I could make my hair do that one day. She replied “Sweetie, that’s a wig, not his real hair” and it was the dream-shattering equivalent of learning that there was no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, and Tooth Fairy all rolled up into one. As a goth teenager I really got into his freaky Ziggy era, finding the idea of being an alien heavily relatable. And when I discovered BowieNet when I was 17, to my surprise my parents agreed to pay my annual subscription... It was $70. I think most parents would be like “Your message board fanclub costs how much? HAH! No.” I won’t go into grave detail of my BowieNet life here, because I could write an entire book, but I’ll summarize it. It began in 1996, and behind the pay wall was lots of exclusive bonus content, access to concert presales and bnet-only events, exclusive chatroom Q&As, and a very active message board. This was before Twitter, before Instagram, before Myspace, definitely before Facebook. David Bowie basically created social media as the everyday form we recognize today. He didn’t post all the time but I would still consider him very active on the message board, for a busy top tier celebrity. His username was “sailor” although there were always whispers about his other secret accounts that he used for trolling. So he basically invented trolling, too. The community itself was close, there were always local meetups and many members would travel internationally to see their closest bnet friends, eventually including myself. I joined this community when I was still in high school and 17 years later I am still close to the friends I made back then. These people are my family, and they vary from all nations, all walks of life, all classes, all ages... The first time I met any of them was at my first ever Bowie concert and that itself was a bnet members-only show to launch the Reality tour, which was eventually known as his last tour. This pivotal moment in my life occurred on August 19th 2003 at the The Chance Theater in Poughkeepsie NY. It was a small general admission venue, arguably a dive compared to the arenas he would play on the rest of the Reality tour. I was 18 years old and was in the process of moving to Chicago for art school. It was surreal to be seeing my first Bowie concert in a GA venue, and yet I knew 80% of the audience. David Bowie himself knew 100% of the audience, and you can hear him speaking to specific people in the bootlegs. I knew more people in the audience than I knew in my high school of 60 kids. A bunch of us were waiting at the venue early enough to catch him coming out to say hello while they were doing soundcheck. I didn’t get anything signed because all the members he knew by name were up in the very front of the group, as it should be. But I could still observe him from afar. He was dressed simply in a crisp white tshirt and white jeans, so the bright summer sunshine gave him a literally radiant, angelic glow. I’ll never forget his slinky catlike walk, and I’ve since never witnessed a creature with more grace.

Lessons I learned from Him

Freakflag began when my last salon closed, suddenly, due to #Austinproblems. As a fantasy color specialist, what I do is so specialized that not many places are going to do it well. The most stable environment for it, on short notice, is a mini salon. As a hairstylist, this makes sense. As an artist, this was (still is) terrifying. I have literally painted myself into a corner where I am my own microcosm, a terrarium of rare creatures emerging covered in sunset locks and lavender hairdust... None of this would have been possible without David Bowie. I very sincerely celebrate him as a god of my profession. For I am a witch and my profession is transformation magic. In many ways it is the magic of one’s true form, their true Identity. For example, I have many transgender clients who visit me in the early stages of their personal transformation. Sometimes they know what they want but a lot of times they don’t. I accept this task with great reverence for the importance of what I’m being asked to do. If they are not completely comfortable with the hair I’ve given them, it’s more than “a bad haircut will grow out if you don’t like it” - it can shape their confidence and that shapes the way people treat them. David Bowie is the Patron Saint of No Labels & Don’t Tell Me What To Do. The Patron Saint of the Gender Fluid & the Non-Binary. His iconic Ziggy Stardust mullet is the perfect example as to why I don’t attribute gender to my haircuts. Tell me, is a Ziggy mullet a men’s haircut or a women’s haircut? The answer is Yes. He taught me you can walk around with no eyebrows, a pale skeletal alien, and still feel your oats. It doesn’t matter if people “get it” because you “get it.” And you are the only person that really needs to “get it.” This is the lesson of aesthetic integrity. He taught me the importance of artistic integrity. At times he was a starving artist that created beautiful, profound things that no one quite understood or appreciated. But eventually he had a period of being a sellout that pandered to the crowd; it made him so sick of China Girl that he didn’t play it live for years after. I think it’s the period after this, from the 90s onward, where he found his true creative power. He knew he could achieve either end of the spectrum and balanced on that line thereafter. Blackstar being his best achievement in this regard. He taught me you can find your truest love later in life. Many goths say they aspire to a love like Morticia & Gomez, but I aspire to a love like Iman & David. Theirs is a real life love story that endured, and it didn’t happen overnight, she made him work for it! This is the big one... He saved me from flirting with suicide. I could write a lot about this too but I won’t right now. Here are the broadest strokes: As a sensitive, emotionally neglected, eccentric teenager I listened to a lot of angry music; Punk, Goth, Industrial, etc. The summer of age 16 was a tough one, I had been kicked out of one parent’s house and the other one completely left me to my own devices... So when I began flirting with self harm, the only person that noticed and snapped me out of it was a close school friend whom I will always consider a brother. This was about the time I discovered Bowie’s glamorous Ziggy era and it was the first thing that showed me “Truth, Goodness & Beauty” in my darkest hour. He showed me that being a great artist took time to cultivate your skills and not only would suicide mean I was achieving nothing, but self harm was a weakness that would eventually fester and I had to nip it in the bud. Bowie’s brother suffered from schizophrenia and eventually committed suicide so many of his works touch on the theme of your own worst enemy coming from within. A lot of goth music discusses it too, warning against rather than encouraging, but no one can make something relatable quite like Bowie. (For the record, a lot of that angry music is still my favorite! It has its place in the world) A lot of rock stars drank and drugged their way into an early grave but David Bowie was the one that survived and still managed to stay artistically and culturally relevant in the end. This is the main reason I celebrate him as a role model and a god amongst men. If he survived the 70s, made a clear decision to sober up, and could maintain sobriety throughout the 80s, he could achieve anything.

“Just a mortal with the potential of a superman” David Bowie, Quicksand

How I celebrate Him

For the last four years, I’ve been a DJ at Elysium’s New Year’s Eve party, a Labyrinth-themed Goblin King’s ball. And for the last three, I’ve co-hosted as Jareth himself... which means I’ve achieved my childhood dream of wanting to be Jareth with that fabulous hair and bedazzled tailcoat! This prepares me perfectly for celebrating his life a week later. There are a few “Bowie Weekend” events here in town. Drinks Lounge always has a Bowie Birthday Bash and Elysium usually has an 80’s night tribute or some other event in his honor. Then on the day itself I will take the time to clean my Bowie Shrine and think about all the times he helped me get out of a bad place in my life. Here you can see Instagram highlights of my Bowie Shrine. A few months ago, I got to work on a truly special project that is still super secret. But I can say that it involved recreating a famous David Bowie image and it was a great honor to be asked to do the makeup and hairstyling for this. It took all day, longer than expected, and we got about 300 shots... This weekend we got together again to edit them and in the end only 3 shots were picked. I can only imagine the process for the original shoot! I thought I was just invited along to edit because I was a Bowie nerd that wanted to be there and was ridiculously stoked on this project. But I was grateful to witness us work together as group on this tribute in its entirety, the three of us are perfectionists and we all had high standards but we also had methods of editing our standards for the sake of being practical. Unlike the shoot itself, this time a lot of discussion was had on the different elements that composed the original image and all three of us paid great attention to those details in the recreation. None of us expect to profit from it, this was hours of work that we each volunteered out of love of the art form, and reverence for David Bowie himself. The role I played in this image is a minor one compared to the other two people involved, but I am so terribly proud of us. I think He would be, too. Since I can’t post that image, I will instead leave you with my Aladdin Sane selfie tribute from this weekend:

★

#freakflagbyiana #davidbowie #hair #beauty #happy birthday David Bowie #Bowie Birthday #religious beliefs #Bowie #autobiographical #transgender #nonbinary #genderfluid #tansformation #witchcraft

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theoneinfamous · 6 years

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Hope For the Fallen Chpt. 2 An Unwanted Heir pt. 1

At about 6 a.m. Zera stepped outside. He had woken up early just for the first day of school, and as he walked out, the morning dew still shined wet on the grass. He wore one of his usual outfits; a long sleeve black shirt, an orange vest which he kept open, and blue denim shorts. On his forehead he sported a black headband, holding back his usually unkempt silver-white hair. His large, dark purple headphones rest around his neck, unused as always.

Despite the weird looks he sometimes got from the way he dressed, Zera never did think much of his looks. He just wore whatever he thought was comfortable or looked cool. He was average height, only 5’8”, and he only weighed about 180 lbs. What really stood about him though, was his beautifully dark skin and his shiny, silver-white hair. Both were proof of his connection to the Kurenai clan, his former family. No longer could he claim pride in his blood or status. All he had left of it was his home, the Kurenai family’s oldest shrine, once used to pay tribute to the gods. None of the family shrines were in use anymore, and Zera felt immense pleasure in maintaining the one he lived in. And now he was leaving.

Zera sighed , grabbing his backpack and gym bag. Fox Den was a boarding school, and so his other belongings were already on campus in his dorm. A car pulled up and he got in, setting off for school. As he watched his house, his home of many years get smaller in the distance, he thought to himself.

‘Maybe this will be good. Classes start in two weeks. A new school, a new beginning right?’

He had no idea how wrong he was.

Zera walked aimlessly around the school. He’d put down all his belongings and found nothing better to do than learn his way around. He wasn’t making much progress.

“My god, this huge fucking school is impossible! Why is there so much space?” Zera lamented out loud, effectively lost. He stopped and gathered himself, recalling what he does know.

“Okay, so this is the main building. Most mandatory classes are held here, those being math, lower-level science, language and language arts, and history classes. It’s the biggest building and many of the rooms and spaces of it go unused. The cafeteria takes up the bottom floor.”

He walked over to a nearby window and looked out. A huge field was barely visible to the far right, and directly in front of Zera was a semicircle of three buildings surrounding a courtyard. He identified them in his mind.

‘Those are the dorms. Together they make up the largest room area, but individually they’re not much. The one in the middle is where I just came from, the gender-neutral dorms for those who have no preference for who they’re bunked up with.’

Zera stepped away from the window, finally gathering his surroundings.

‘That means...I’m on the third floor far East side of the main building, an area left mostly unused for reasons the staff do not elaborate. Perhaps they just have too much space.’

Just as Zera was about to find the stairs and leave, he heard voices coming from down the hall. They appeared to be in a heated argument. ‘I probably should steer clear of that, lest I get involved,’ he thought as he walked unhesitating towards them.

Zera peeked around the corner and saw two people standing in an otherwise empty room. He immediately recognized one as his younger sister, Corona. Her short stature and long hair was unmistakable. It was mostly in two buns on her head, but two braids hung down her back, silver like Zera’s but for three streaks of red. The other person Zera didn’t recognize, or rather couldn’t, as he was covered by the shadows of the room.

‘What is she doing here at this time? And who is that she’s arguing with?’ Zera, becoming suspicious upon seeing his sister, gave up on all caution; he walked directly into the room.

Corona froze speechless for just a moment when she saw him. The room fell into total and the world stilled around them as they stare at each other. Then, obviously angry and flustered, Corona stuttered a response.

“Z-Zera! What are you doing here?!”

Zera remained expressionless. “I could ask the same of you ‘Flame Queen.’ Who is this?”

Before Corona could respond, the stranger scoffed and stepped forward smirking.

“Come now, Zera. Don’t tell me you don’t recognize your own little brother.” He glared down at Zera so he could see clearly; the man’s eyes flashed the same as Corona’s and his own.

Zera surprise this time was visible. “Ikari...you…”

Zera looked Ikari over. He had gotten much taller since he last saw him years ago. His pitch black hair had grown out and hung, unkempt, to his shoulders. He seemed to be the same height as Zera, despite being younger, and had much of the same build. He wore a black leather jacket over a black shirt and jeans.

Ikari bowed, still smirking. “Elder brother...it’s been a while. If I remember correctly last I saw you, you were abandoning us.” He frowned returning Zera’s glare. “You trash.”

Zera closed his eyes, his face contorted into a pained expression as he tried to control his anger.

‘The way he and I are now, Ikari could easily kill me. Calm down. Do not engage.’

Ikari’s glare hardened. “What’s wrong failed one? Are you scared. I don’t blame you.”

Zera sighed, smiling his fake smile as he opened his eyes. He walked past Ikari to the door on the opposite side of the room, opening it to the opposing hallway. Ikari’s anger immediately peaked.

Ikari clenched his fist, veins visible on his angered face. “How dare you, a failure, ignore me? I...will not allow it.” He slowly raised his arm towards and opened his hand. “Get back here.”

#hope for the fallen #Second Chapter #hope you like it #please like and reblog #spread this #sorry for the delay #love you all

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bountyofbeads · 4 years

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In Iraq, Where Beauty Was Long Suppressed, Art Flowers Amid Protests https://nyti.ms/2RR5PSs

This is a wonderful story that shows the healing power of art 🎨 and the human spirit's need to express itself. Please take time to read and view the photojournalism.

In Iraq, Where Beauty Was Long Suppressed, Art Flowers Amid Protests

Painters, sculptors and musicians are rallying to Baghdad’s protests, and the capital is overflowing with political art.

By Alissa J. Rubin | Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated 10:09 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 3, 2020 |

BAGHDAD — Hollow-cheeked and shivering slightly in jeans he had outgrown, Abdullah stood in an unfinished parking garage, transfixed in front of a mural whose meaning he was eager to decode for a visitor.

“See, the man in the middle, he is asking the security forces, ‘Please don’t shoot us, we have nothing, nothing.’” Abdullah said the final word twice for emphasis as he earnestly studied the black-and-white image on the wall.

Drawn in charcoal in a socialist realist style, the mural, more than 12 feet long, showed a group of men walking forward and carrying their fallen friends in their arms. The men depicted were unmistakably Everyman laborers, with rough clothes and strained faces.

Abdullah, 18 — a former cleaner in a hospital who asked that his surname not be used because he feared retribution for his involvement in anti-government protests — is now an unofficial art guide to one of the most unlikely galleries imaginable: a 15-story shell of a structure, known locally by all as the Turkish Restaurant building, that looks over the Tigris River. It is the self-declared stronghold of Iraqis who oppose the country’s current leadership.

Covered on all sides by banners with messages to the government, to the security forces and to the world, the building looks like a ship about to set sail, with the slogans written on white cloth ballooning in the wind.

The first five floors have become one of the half-dozen major art venues that have sprung up in Baghdad around the protests as painters — trained and untrained — have turned walls, stairwells and littered parks into a vast canvas.

Where did all this art come from? How is it that a city where beauty and color have been largely suppressed for decades by poverty, and by the oppression or indifference of successive governments, suddenly came to be so alive?

“You know, we have many thoughts about Iraq, but no one from the government ever asked us,” said Riad Rahim, 45, an art teacher.

The city’s creative hub is Tahrir Square. Art covers the underpasses that run below it, the green space behind it, and the streets leading into it.

The paintings, sculptures, photographs and shrines to killed protesters are political art of a kind rarely seen in Iraq, where art has been made for at least 10,000 years. It is as if an entire society is awakening to the sound of its own voice, and to the shape, size and sway of its creative force.

“In the beginning this was an uprising, but now it is a revolution,” said Bassim al-Shadhir, an Iraqi-German who goes back and forth between the two countries and has participated in the protests. “There is art, there is theater, people are giving lectures and distributing books — giving them away for free.”

Mr. al-Shadhir, an abstract artist with a degree in biology, painted his contribution to the scene on a wall on Sadoun Street, one of the capital’s broadest thoroughfares. It shows a man shot by the security forces, the blood pouring out of his heart in a vast pool, too large to be hidden or washed away by the masked military man standing behind him.

Nearby a mural begs the United Nations to rescue Iraqis. Another shows a map of Iraq inside a heart and says, “Oh my country, don’t feel pain.” There are two or three murals depicting lions, a symbol of Iraq dating from the Assyrian period and one that protesters have adopted.

There has been little if any new anti-American messages in the paintings in recent days, even though there is more anti-American feeling in Baghdad since the United States last month assassinated Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds force who was visiting Iraq.

One reason may be that there are already several murals that have anti-American and anti-Israeli messages. Another is that by now, there are so many walls covered with art, that it is hard to find empty space to add anything new.

The artistic subjects and styles on view show how much a younger generation of Iraqis has been influenced by the internet, discovering there images that resonate with them and then drawing them with Iraqi touches.

Rosie the Riveter has an Iraqi flag on her cheek; Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night” has the Turkish Restaurant building in place of a cypress tree. Some paintings feature comic book characters, but wrapped in the Iraqi flag, the uniform of the protesters.

There are echoes of 1960s Pop Art in a painting of the Turkish Restaurant building with a red tuk tuk flying out of the roof. The tuk tuk is the protesters’ mascot, a diesel-fueled, three-wheeled vehicle that requires no license to drive and has become the unofficial front line ambulance, bearing the wounded to the first aid tents.

More than 500 protesters have been killed and thousands more have been injured.

Trees are another common subject, with painters in different locations in the Turkish Restaurant building drawing images of falling leaves.

“This tree is Iraq and I am going to write on each leaf the name of one of those martyred by the security forces,” said Diana al-Qaisi, 32, who trained as an information systems engineer but now works in public relations.

“Its leaves are dropping because it is autumn and those who are trying to kill the tree are trying to kill the revolution,” she said. “Even if they try, some leaves stay in the tree waiting to be born.”

Zainab Abdul Karim, 22, and her sister Zahra, 15, had a darker vision. Their tree is a black silhouette standing in a cemetery, each grave representing one of the protesters killed by the security forces.

More individualized portraits of those killed are also a common subject.

The small park behind Tahrir Square has been divided by tents, one of which has become a steadily expanding portrait gallery with photographs of those who have been killed by the security forces. People walk along the memorial quietly, looking at each of the faces, occasionally tears welling up when they see one they recognize.

The country is witnessing an expressive flowering in more than the visual arts.

More than a dozen songs have been written for the protests and circulate nonstop on social media. Luminaries of the Iraqi arts — actors and actresses, as well as musicians, painters and sculptors — came together to record a tribute to the fallen protesters.

Recently, Mr. Rahim, the art teacher, was working with his friend, Hussein Shenshul, 41, who runs a clothing store, on a low-budget, high-concept sculpture project. They were painstakingly carving archaeologically accurate maquettes of six famous Iraqi sites, three ancient and three modern.

They had finished three — the Al Hadba minaret in Mosul, which was destroyed in the fight with the Islamic State; the ziggurat of Samarra; and the Turkish Restaurant building. They were working now on the Ishtar Gate, which once stood in ancient Babylon.

Their tools were foam, toothpicks, box cutters and spray paint for the background color, paintbrushes for the calligraphy.

“We want to express what the Iraqi civilization means,” Mr. Rahim said. “We want to send a message to the world that this is our culture, we are educated, we are painters and poets, musicians and sculptors, this is what it means to be Iraqi.”

“Everyone thinks Iraq is all wars and fighting,” he added.

Outside the still unfinished Turkish Restaurant building — so named because some 25 years ago it housed a Turkish restaurant on the ground floor — Hussein Abdul Mufsin, 25, was finishing a mural on Sadoun Street. He had already painted four others — a far cry from his usual work as a house painter.

Two murals depicted silhouettes of protesters trying to scale the barriers that divide them from the security forces. But today his primary painting goal was not art, but life. He was painting the lines that delineate the street’s edges to keep cars from veering onto the curb.

“I brought my reflecting paint today from home because at night the government turns off all the electricity and the tuk tuks carrying the injured cannot see the edge of the road and could crash,” he said.

Why was he doing this? Shouldn’t it be the city’s responsibility?

“You could call it self-financing,” he said, looking down shyly. “Or maybe this is patriotism.”

______

Falih Hassan contributed reporting.

*********

Home at Last From China: A Foreign Exchange Student’s Travel Ordeal

A tense nighttime drive along deserted roads to an empty airport, then a scramble to join the rush of passengers leaving China amid the coronavirus scare.

By Miriam Jordan | Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated 11:32 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 3, 2020 |

LOS ANGELES — When Jaden Taylor, 17, pulled a mask off his face at Los Angeles International Airport on Sunday morning and smiled at the customs officer, who gave him a thumbs up, it was much more than the end of a 12-hour flight from Shanghai.

He was taking the final step in a weekslong scramble to get out of China, where he had been an exchange student caught in an outbreak of coronavirus, which was rapidly spreading and causing fatalities.

“Oddly enough, the officer didn’t ask me a single question,” said Jaden, after exiting the airport. “I feel lucky, I thought I was definitely going to be quarantined but it was so fast.”

His struggle, involving canceled flights, frantic negotiations across two continents and a series of checkpoints where the authorities checked his temperature, was playing out for countless travelers trying to leave China as the world tries to seal itself off from the fast-moving virus.

Jaden, a former high school student from Portland, Ore., may have been among the last Americans to get out of China and clear security with ease. By Monday morning, American air travelers who had been to China in the last 14 days were being routed through one of 11 airports to undergo enhanced health screenings, with the possibility that they could be quarantined.

Each year, thousands of Americans and other foreigners travel to China on student exchange programs. Since last month, these students have been among those caught up in the widening health crisis. Because of the nature of their studies, often embedded with families across China, some of them are hundreds of miles from a consulate or embassy. Many students have had to find their own way from far-flung cities to major airports for the return home.

American Field Service sent more than 300 students from all over the world to China, including about two dozen Americans, during the current school year. Jaden was the only American student placed in Anhui province, which borders Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak.

The nonprofit organization canceled all programs in China on Jan. 31.

‘IT SEEMED LIKE A FUN ADVENTURE’

Bored with high school in Portland, Jaden had hatched a plan to learn Mandarin and graduate early so that he could spend a year in China before college.

“It seemed like a fun adventure to a place that was completely foreign to me,” he said. “I would not know what to expect.”

He made the move in August, becoming the third generation in his family to go abroad as an exchange student.

In the city of Wuhu, he settled in with a host family and started school, planning to remain until June. He made Chinese friends and tried new foods, like turtle and cow stomach. As trade tensions between the United States and China escalated, he took it in stride when taxi drivers turned him away because he was an American.

It was early January when he first heard that the coronavirus had struck. Emails streamed in from his Chinese teachers informing him about an illness spreading in Wuhan, the capital of the adjoining province.

Around Jan. 15, the local coordinator for American Field Service and Jaden’s host family ordered him to remain inside at all times. “I was reminded almost everyday not to go outside,” he recalled.

By Jan. 20, the virus had crossed international borders. China had reported hundreds of infections, and the death toll jumped from three to 17 in a matter of days.

Two days later, Jaden’s grandmother, Christine Berardo, sent him a WhatsApp message saying that she had been reading about the virus and felt sorry that it might affect his travel plans for the Lunar New Year.

“The virus has been found in my city so everyone is wearing face masks,” he told her.

‘HAVE SOME GRIT,’ HIS MOTHER SAID

On Jan. 23, Wuhan, home to about 11 million people, was placed under quarantine and Chinese authorities closed off the city. “I was seeing images of borders shutting down and people not being able to leave Wuhan,” Jaden recalled. He began to worry.

So did his mother, Karin Berardo, 51, an investment manager in Washington, D.C. But she did not want to let on.

In a WhatsApp exchange, Ms. Berardo told her adventurous child, “to suck it up. Have some grit,” she recalled. “He had always been eager to conquer the world.”

Wuhu, about 300 miles northeast of Wuhan, was not officially quarantined but it might as well have been. Instead of celebrating the Lunar New Year with fireworks and festivities, people locked themselves indoors.

Except for those trying to stock up on food and masks, the streets were deserted; store shelves were almost bare. People glared at anyone who coughed, Jaden said. The images of a city in fear began to haunt him at night, and he had trouble sleeping. “I became very paranoid and anxious,” he said.

Friends from Portland, Berkeley, Baltimore and Abu Dhabi, places where Jaden had lived, were reaching out on Snapchat and WhatsApp to express concern about the risk of staying in China.

With ample time on his hands, Jaden scanned news reports on Reddit and waited for emails from the State Department. Chinese friends shared information they were gleaning from Chinese media. The news was getting worse with each passing day, it seemed.

Back in Washington, his mother contacted American Field Service to get their assessment of the situation.

“They said they were in close contact with A.F.S. Beijing and were advising the students to just stay inside,” Ms. Berardo recalled.

On Jan. 26, after learning that 56 million people were under quarantine in China, Ms. Berardo contacted a program representative in New York to request that her son be returned to the United States as soon as possible.

TRYING TO FIND A WAY OUT

The next day, program representatives had a tentative plan to get Jaden out. It involved flying out of Shanghai, about 215 miles away. But there was no one on the ground to escort him there, Ms. Berardo was told. “They said they could put him on a train, but he would have to figure out how to get to the airport in Shanghai,” she said.

Ms. Berardo feared that her son might end up stranded in the one of the world’s largest cities, where many cases of the virus had been reported.

Still, in a conversation, mother and son agreed to give it a try. Ultimately, program officials found someone to drive Jaden to Nanjing, about 60 miles from Wuhu, where he would catch a flight to Shanghai.

Jaden was booked on an American Airlines flight that was to leave on Sunday. But on Friday afternoon, the carrier announced that it had canceled the flight, as a spate of airlines began suspending their operations in China. He was rebooked on China Eastern Airlines leaving the same day.

“We calmed down for a minute,” Ms. Berardo recalled.

Jaden sneaked out of the apartment to say goodbye to Chinese friends and to take his last pictures of an empty Wuhu. His bags had been packed for two days.

He was scheduled for a 3 a.m. pickup but his host brother knocked on his door shortly after 11 p.m. A car was there to take him.

The only car on the road

His escort was concerned about potential delays if they encountered road closures along the way. Indeed, some portions were blocked, and the driver had to divert to side roads.

“I’m stressed and worried,” Jaden jotted down in a diary that he had decided to start to record his last hours in China. It was about 11:30 p.m. Saturday night.

“It’s pretty much pitch black everywhere and we’re the only car on the road,” he wrote. “I took my mask off for five seconds and the driver turned his head yelling.”

At multiple checkpoints, police officers pulled over the car and checked whether they were wearing their masks. Jaden’s temperature was taken with an infrared temperature gun every time.

Shortly after 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, as they approached the Nanjing airport, the police stopped the car. People in hazmat suits instructed Jaden to get out. They checked his temperature once, twice, three times. Every time, they said, his temperature was too high.

Jaden was not sure what was happening. He felt fine.

“I didn’t know what I would do if they didn’t let me go to the airport,” he said.

Finally, one of the health workers retrieved a different thermometer from their supply kits. This time, they said, Jaden’s temperature was acceptable.

Arriving at a deserted airport

Four hours after they had left, they completed the 60-mile journey and arrived at a deserted airport. It was just after 2 a.m.

When he checked in for his flight to Shanghai, three hours later, the agent told him that she could not check his bags all the way to Los Angeles because his flight might be canceled. Did he still want to go to Shanghai, the agent wanted to know.

Jaden figured there was no looking back at this point.

Once on the plane to Los Angeles, he tried to sleep, but it was hard: He kept thinking about the five months his program had been cut short, the lost opportunities.

At Los Angeles International Airport, he joined the swarms of people converging in the passport-control area after landing from all corners of the globe.

He entered the line for American citizens, pulled off his mask and waited his turn. In his pocket, he carried a booklet of the United States Constitution, in case he got pulled out of line by the authorities and had to reference his rights.

But when he got to the counter, the officer scanned his passport and returned it to him without asking a single question.

“At all the other kiosks,” he said, “anyone with a mask or who had traveled to China was being asked where they went and why. But not me.”

On the other side of security, his mother swooped all 6 feet 3 inches of her son into her arms. “Hi, Mom,” he said. “I’m tired.”

He strapped on his mask again briefly as they left the airport — before realizing that he was no longer in the middle of a virus emergency. He removed it, and they headed to a Chipotle, where he dug into two bean-and-cheese burritos. “This is heaven,” he said.

*********

Turkey Launches Deadly Airstrikes Against Syrian Forces

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that as many as 35 Syrian government troops had been killed, and he warned Russia against trying to prevent his country’s actions.

By Carlotta Gall | Published Feb. 3, 2020 Updated 10:08 a.m. ET | New York Times | Posted February 3, 2020 |

ISTANBUL — Turkey deployed F-16 fighter jets against government forces in northwestern Syria on Monday, a sharp escalation of the conflict there after six Turkish soldiers were killed by artillery strikes.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey said that as many as 35 Syrian troops had been “neutralized.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, said the number of military personnel killed was at least 13, while state news media in Syria made no mention of any deaths. There were also reports on social media of at least eight civilian deaths when a minibus was struck.

Mr. Erdogan warned Russia, which backs the Syrian government and which controls the airspace in western Syria, not to prevent Turkey from retaliating.

“It should be out of discussion to block us,” Mr. Erdogan said, before leaving for a trip to Ukraine. Describing the dead Turkish soldiers as martyrs, he added that, “It is not possible for us to keep silent” as long as his country’s troops were being targeted.

Mr. Erdogan has frequently met with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to discuss Syria, and in particular, the thorny problem of Idlib Province, which Moscow wants to bring under Syrian government control to declare victory in the war.

In a sign of the fragility of the relationship and of the high stakes, Mr. Erdogan adopted a sober demeanor as he announced the Turkish casualties, despite a dispute with Russia over whether the Turkish military’s moves had been coordinated with their Russian counterparts. Turkish reporters noted that Mr. Erdogan’s understated tone and remarks were free of the vitriolic rhetoric he often uses for opponents.

Syrian government forces have recently intensified their offensive in Idlib, in western Syria, the last rebel-held province. Turkey deployed several hundred troops to observation posts there in 2018, as part of an agreement with Russia to create a de-escalation zone in the area.

But Russian and Syrian forces have been conducting an offensive on the major highway through the province, prompting hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee north toward the border with Turkey.

Turkey has already taken in nearly four million people trying to escape the war, which started nearly nine years ago, and is concerned that the Syrian push into the area will create a fresh surge of refugees. It has closed its border with Syria to prevent more refugees from entering.

Nearly 700,000 people have been displaced since the Russian-led offensive began in Idlib last year — 140,000 in January alone. Many are camping in the open in increasingly desperate conditions.

The deployment of air power came after the Turkish Defense Ministry said that a supply convoy bringing reinforcements into the observation posts on Monday had come under fire, leaving six Turkish soldiers dead and several others wounded.

The movement of the convoy had been coordinated beforehand, the statement said, and Turkish forces retaliated immediately. “Those who test Turkey’s determination with such heinous attacks will understand they have made a huge mistake,’’ Mr. Erdogan said.

Moscow, however, disputed Turkey’s account about coordinating with other forces in the province, saying that the Russian Defense Ministry had not been told about the troop movements.

Syrian forces were trying to hit militants linked with Al Qaeda, the Russian Defense Ministry said, according to The Associated Press, and the Turkish forces were struck because they were in the area. (To justify their attacks, including ones that have killed many civilians, Russia and the Syrian government have consistently argued they must go on the offensive to eradicate terrorists.)

Turkey has always supported the opposition forces fighting against the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad, including some radical Islamists, and has sought to delay the Russian-Syrian advance to take Idlib.

Mr. Erdogan has highlighted his good relationship with Mr. Putin and attempted to strengthen ties by purchasing the Russian S-400 missile defense system against the wishes of the United States and other NATO allies. But those links do not appear to have won him any lasting concessions from Moscow over Idlib.

The Turkish Defense Ministry said that it was maintaining suppressive fire on Syrian targets for self-defense to evacuate the dead and wounded. “The perpetrators of this hateful attack will be brought to account and our right to self-defense will be exercised in the most robust way,” the ministry said.

The suffering continued for the civilians caught in the fighting. At least eight people, most of them women and children, were said to have been killed on Monday when their minibus came under fire on a rural road. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that nine people had died in that attack, including four children.

Ahmad Aslan, who fled with his family from the town of Maaret al-Numan, said in a video message that he would have preferred death to abandoning his home. “We prayed many times to die from rockets or from barrel bombs there but it didn’t happen,” he said.

“After the regime advanced, we were forced to leave,” he added. “We have been living under the rain and cold, we lack shelter and food.”

Video distributed on social media showed people setting fire to their homes before fleeing the town of Saraqeb, ahead of the advancing Syrian forces. “We don’t want to leave anything behind for the thugs,” a voice in the background says.

Abdul Kareem Thalji, from Iss, a few miles from Saraqeb, said, “The regime is advancing and I’m racing with time to find a car and house to stay in.” He added that he was being displaced for the seventh time. “If you ask me about hope, I will tell you my entire ambition for life has collapsed, people here have lost hope.”

_______

Hwaida Saad and Vivian Yee contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon.

*********

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biofunmy · 5 years

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Martinis at the Bar. Sinatra on Repeat. The TWA Hotel Sells a Jet-Age Fantasy.

Within the first couple of weeks there were half a dozen marriage proposals. Guys dropping to their knees in the Sunken Lounge and on the cantilevered catwalk — popping the question on the Solari split-flap departure board or in “Connie,” the 1958 TWA Lockheed Constellation Starliner parked outside on the roof of a new underground conference center, the plane’s fuselage converted into a 60’s-era cocktail lounge.

The TWA Hotel now occupies Eero Saarinen’s stupendously restored 1962 TWA Flight Center at John F. Kennedy International Airport, midcentury modernism’s great tribute to sex, adventure and the golden age of air travel. It is attracting the predictable mix of nostalgic baby boomers, design-conscious hipsters and stylish Europeans.

[This story is part of our package about Queens, New York City’s most diverse borough. It also includes 36 Hours in Rockaway Beach, and a whirlwind tour of the Queens food scene.]

My wife and I caught the A train to Kennedy and stayed the other night, during what TWA’s owner is calling the hotel’s soft opening — his explanation for what has clearly been a rough start. Power outages, failed air-conditioning in the rooms, broken window blinds, televisions that don’t work, a food court shut down by the Health Department: the place is a work in progress.

There are 512 new rooms in two plain seven-story towers designed by a Brooklyn architecture firm, Lubrano Ciavarra, linked to the Flight Center via Saarinen’s red-carpeted tubular jetways, their exteriors clad in curtain walls of reflective black glass to mirror Saarinen’s building. An infinity pool, with a bird’s-eye view of planes taking off and landing, occupies the rooftop of one tower.

Saarinen’s building is the hotel atrium, with bars, shops and the latest Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant. Richard Southwick, from Beyer Blinder Belle, the New York architects, oversaw its restoration. He deserves a key to the city. I watched people walk around as if in a trance, snapping selfies, pointing and gazing at the thin, vaulted, soaring, twin-tortoise-shell concrete roof, breathing deeply, to inhale the building’s aura, lingering because, well, just being in that space seems to inspire happiness.

When was the last time you lingered for pleasure at Kennedy Airport? When was the last time you felt happy to be there? An architectural advertisement for the thrill of air travel at the sunny dawn of the jet age, Saarinen’s reincarnated terminal is an unavoidable reminder of just how sad and degrading the experience of flying has become, if you’re not rich.

Some history: In 1955, the architect Wallace Harrison came up with a master plan for what was then called Idlewild Airport. It prescribed stand-alone terminals built and run by competing airlines encircling a traffic loop. The plan was a kind of recipe for architectural scene-stealing. During its early years, Kennedy boasted the world’s longest continuous cocktail lounge (in the since-demolished American Airlines terminal designed by Kahn and Jacobs), and Tippett-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton’s (now also sadly demolished) 1960 Worldport for Pan Am, the architectural analog to Marilyn Monroe’s billowing skirt in “The Seven Year Itch.”

The 1950s and 60s were the days before airline deregulation, when the government still set ticket prices. So airlines competed not over who could offer the cheapest, no-frills fares but over who could offer the best-dressed flight attendants, the most scrumptious Chateaubriand on the plane and the best terminal experience. Back then, Howard Hughes’s TWA was the nation’s glamour carrier, the Veronica Lake of airlines. Hughes is said to have spent his five minutes with Saarinen demanding something truly out of this world — money being no object.

Saarinen earned his spurs conjuring up a raft of rectilinear behemoths for big companies and swooping spectacles of sculptural engineering like the St. Louis Arch, Ingalls Hockey Rink at Yale and Dulles Airport in Washington. He was a chameleon and a master of corporate branding.

For TWA, he seems to nod both toward Le Corbusier’s Ronchamp Chapel and the Las Vegas Strip. The building, an amazing feat of technological improvisation in the days before computer design, was a populist proto-emoji for flight, all free-flowing, liquid curves, improbably poised on four slender buttresses like a winged bird on skinny legs.

Its sheer formal poetry kept the aviary and female allusions from tipping into kitsch. This was high modernism at its most seductive and crowd-pleasing.

Opened a year after Saarinen died, at 51, the terminal was also obsolete from day one. Conceived while the biggest of those Constellation jets carried just 105 passengers, the Flight Center was born into a decade that introduced the 747, which could haul 660 souls in its maw. Notepad and stopwatch in hand, Saarinen had spent hours analyzing how people moved through airline terminals. He invented the jetway to funnel passengers more efficiently from check-in to plane, and an automated baggage carousel to return luggage quicker.

But he hadn’t anticipated the wide-body jet, for which the terminal became a useless Lilliputian. TWA’s baggage carousel had been conceived to handle only a few suitcases at a time. Between 1955 and 1962, the volume of passengers shuffling through Kennedy skyrocketed from 3.5 million to 11.5 million.

In 2002, that number reached 30 million, by which time TWA was defunct and Saarinen’s terminal, mothballed.

It sat empty while the banal Terminal 5, scaled to the jumbo-sized misery of contemporary air travel, was constructed around it, landlocking the Flight Center. Serving JetBlue, Terminal 5 spoiled what had been Saarinen’s carefully orchestrated tarmac-and-blue-sky views through the Flight Center’s huge, inclined windows.

Then in 2015 MCR, a New York development company led by Tyler Morse, won the right to lease the disused Flight Center and turn it into a hotel. Mr. Morse’s business owns and operates the High Line Hotel in Manhattan along with dozens of midrange chain hotels around the country. He saw TWA as a shrine for architecture buffs and a potential retreat for transients power-napping between flights. It lets guests rent rooms for the day as well as overnight.

The room designs by the interior design firm Stonehill Taylor are crisp, compact and clean — pretend time capsules from 1962 — with brushed-brass fixtures, walnut paneling and floor-to-ceiling windows of 4.5-inch glass to keep out the sound of jet engines. Maybe I missed it, but I failed to locate a USB port. Each room is stocked with pole lamps, Saarinen tulip tables and womb chairs, martini glasses, cups of bright red TWA-embossed pencils and copies of Life magazine. Guests have apparently been stealing pencils and magazines by the bushel.

The economy and logic of the site suggested a large full-service airport hotel with a 21st century conference center, a ballroom and event space to compete with the Marriotts and Hyatts at major airports in other big cities.

Mr. Morse says he envisioned another audience too. Millions of people live east of the airport, in the opposite direction from Manhattan and Brooklyn. And a virtual city of employees — baggage handlers, TSA agents, pilots, flight attendants, shopkeepers, maintenance personnel and air traffic controllers — work at the airport each day. These were also potential customers.

And, in fact, locals seem to be checking the place out. Rooms start at under $200. Ours cost $179 before taxes. When I came down from our room to the lobby for a morning coffee, I ran across an older man in a baggy tank top, Jordans and gym shorts, toting flaming red shopping bags packed with TWA swag he had bought at the new TWA store. “I can’t get enough of these!” he announced, waving a thick wad of compression socks with the TWA logo on them. He told me that he was a mover on his day off. He had taken the B15 bus to the airport and stayed overnight. Kennedy was near where he had grown up, he said. For him, the hotel was the latest attraction in his old neighborhood.

Mr. Morse plans to install a skating rink next to Connie this winter, with the expectation it will entice Queens residents. I’m reminded of the days when families went to the airport just for the joy of watching planes take off.

It’s a pity that the hotel’s opening was rushed to make the deadline for a ribbon cutting by New York’s governor, and others. The infinity pool wasn’t finished when we were there. Service was friendly but a mess.

A little teething pain is understandable, of course, but the scrupulous attention paid up front to architectural restoration doesn’t seem to have been paid to hotel operations and customer service. Had we been jet-lagged travelers desperate for sleep, not carefree New Yorkers with an evening to spare, I doubt we would have felt as copacetic when told to kill time by buying ourselves drinks and dinner because our reserved room would not be ready until two hours after it was supposed to be.

And my wife and I weren’t the only ones whose blackout curtains — obligatory if you don’t want to be on display at night from the Flight Center — didn’t work. We spent the hour it took for a repairman to arrive thumbing through ads for Bridget Bardot bras and Plymouth Valiant cars in our copy of Life magazine from 1960.

I called Mr. Morse. He acknowledged the hotel has handed out more than a few refunds. As a designated city landmark at the airport, the building has required approvals from some 22 government agencies, Mr. Morse told me, “all with different wants and needs and restrictions and comments.”

He described the trials of finding grout to match exactly the original penny tile floor that isn’t slippery and doesn’t stain and discolor when it gets wet.

“We’re back to the drawing board on sealant number nine,” he said. “We’ve been at this for weeks.”

Mr. Morse pointed out to me that 1962 was the year Sean Connery starred in “Dr. No,” the year John Glenn circled the earth, the year “The Jetsons” introduced color to prime time television. It was the year President Kennedy challenged America to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade.

A period Lincoln Continental is stationed outside the hotel’s front door. Cans of Tab stock the mini-fridge at the newsstand. The soundtrack is 24-hour Connie Francis and Frank Sinatra. There’s a display of TWA uniforms by Balmain and Valentino in the Ambassador Lounge, and greeters, wearing the outfits, roam around pretending to be characters from 1962.

Nineteen-sixty-two was also the year riots erupted on the all-white campus of the University of Mississippi when a black Air Force veteran named James Meredith tried to enroll, and U.S. aircraft started spraying Agent Orange over guerrilla-occupied areas of South Vietnam.

Saarinen’s TWA was obviously selling a mostly white middle-class fantasy, the upbeat 60s, the airline beloved by Elizabeth Taylor and the Pope, who got his own gold-painted hideaway, with its own oculus, carved into a corner of Saarinen’s Ambassador Lounge.

The hotel is a theme park for that fantasy version of 1962, though I have trouble picturing a busy corporate traveler today attending meetings at the conference center feeling charmed when a costumed employee responds with a blank stare to a request for directions to CitiField or for the hotel’s Wi-Fi passcode because there was no such thing as CitiField or Wi-Fi in 1962.

“The place will evolve,” Mr. Morse said, “like all things in the built environment. Our objective is to continue to experiment within this extraordinary piece of art.”

Here’s hoping the experiment succeeds. It’s exhilarating to find this extraordinary piece of art back in all its glory.

But its future now depends on the hotel finding its groove.

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fashiontrendin-blog · 6 years

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5 People on Why They’re Spending the Holidays Alone

http://fashion-trendin.com/5-people-on-why-theyre-spending-the-holidays-alone/

5 People on Why They’re Spending the Holidays Alone

There is a definite stigma attached to the idea of spending the winter holidays alone. It’s reinforced by movies like The Holiday wherein single women lament the prospect of a solo Christmas, general hype around gift-giving and all the other cultural clichés that seem to tell the same, repetitive story: If you’re alone this time of year, your life is lacking.

Like most stigmas, this one is due for a check-up. I asked five people spending the holidays alone in different parts of the world to share their particular reasons for doing so and what highs and lows they predict will come from the experience. No two answers were the same, and that’s what I love about lifting the hood on a preconceived notion and polishing away the rust of stereotype. The collective gleam underneath almost always tells a different story.

Kasumi Mizoguchi

Kasumi is a 25-year-old sales consultant at a software-as-a-service company in Tokyo.

What holiday(s) are you spending alone, and why?

I’m spending Christmas and New Year’s Eve alone this year. I live in Japan, and Christmas is actually marketed as a “couples” holiday here, so many of my friends spend Christmas with their significant others. It is comparable to Valentine’s Day in the U.S.: an occasion for a romantic dinner for two. You’ll see a lot of “gift guides for your significant other” and date ideas on magazines and TV programs in December. People talk about being single this time of year as something tragic!

Having spent time living in the U.S., my family still celebrates Christmas the American way — presents under the tree, a big homemade dinner and a cake — but because my parents happen to be moving back to the U.S. this month, I’ll be solo. It’s not that big of a deal; in fact, in the past, since Christmas isn’t a public holiday here, I’m used to treating it like any other day.

New Year’s, on the other hand, is a major family holiday in Japan. Everyone spends time with their parents or distant relatives, eats traditional New Year’s food called osechi, pays a visit to the shrine, etc. This year will be my first time spending New Year’s alone.

What are you planning to do?

Not much. Maybe cook myself dinner and read or watch a movie? Get a big thing of mint chocolate chip ice cream? The world is my oyster.

What about the experience do you think will be most challenging?

I doubt I’ll find it challenging. I guess it may seem a bit sad to some people, but Christmas in particular has no significance to me.

What about the experience are you looking forward to?

No stress, no fuss, no nothin’.

Molly Simeone

Molly is a 23-year-old registered nurse who works in a neonatal intensive care unit in Boston.

What holiday(s) are you spending alone, and why?

I’ll be spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone. I’m scheduled to work December 23rd-26th. I have worked during the holidays before, but at the time I lived in Connecticut where my family is and was still able to see them and celebrate after my shifts. I’ve moved since, so this year is the first time I will be truly alone. My roommate is also a nurse, but we are working different shifts — when I leave work for the night, she’ll just be clocking in.

What are you planning to do?

I’m working 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We’re having a big potluck and doing Secret Santa at work, which will be fun. My floor really goes all-out for the holidays. It definitely helps to have a “work family” when I can’t be near my actual family.

I don’t have any crazy plans after my shifts. I’ll come home, make dinner, shower and go to bed relatively early — lame, I know! My parents usually buy my sister and me new festive pajamas to wear Christmas Eve. It sounds cheesy, but I’ll probably put on an old pair just to stick with tradition.

What about the experience do you think will be most challenging?

Coming home to an empty apartment. To me, the holidays are about family, and being apart from mine will be hard. I’m sure they will try to FaceTime me into their celebrations, but it’s not the same.

What about the experience are you looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to being present for my patients and their families. While it is hard to work during the holidays, it’s even harder to be a patient in a hospital during this time of year. Since I work with newborn babies, they’ll be celebrating their very first Christmas in the hospital. We will do something special so it feels like Christmas for them, like make a craft with all of their footprints. Some of the babies are small enough that we can fit them in Christmas stockings, so we’ll do that and take a photo for their parents. We’ll also cover their isolettes (newborn infant incubators) with festive holiday quilts.

Julia Knolle

Julia is the 35-year-old co-founder and editor-in-chief of Hey Woman!, a web destination for smart and savvy women based in Berlin.

What holiday(s) are you spending alone, and why?

Christmas has never been my favorite holiday. Growing up, I had to split the day between the homes of my parents, who are separated. Eventually, I convinced them I needed this time to myself to recharge from work. After eight years of doing so, they now understand and fully accept this decision, which makes it way easier for me.

I also don’t subscribe to the tradition of forced gift-giving. There are so many other ways you can express that you care about someone. I occasionally visit my family after Christmas, but I only bring a present if I have a particularly good idea. If not, my homemade sweets will do.

What are you planning to do?

The Friday before Christmas, I plan to celebrate by finally leaving the office (which has been my second home for the last 12 months since I never got a real summer break). I’ll jump straight into my black leggings and ideally avoid wearing normal pants or jeans for the next two weeks, or makeup of any kind.

I have a pile of books begging to be read and a list of TV series I want to watch. I can’t think of anything more luxurious than being able to do yoga or go on a run almost every day of the week, whenever the mood strikes. Plus, I’ll have so much time to prepare healthy food, sleep as much as I please and get back into green tea to replace the slight coffee addiction that has slipped into my daily work routine again. I’m planning to put my phone away and on silent mode as much as possible.

What about the experience do you think will be most challenging?

Since this is my favorite time of the year, there is no challenge in sight.

What about the experience are you looking forward to?

As selfish as it sounds, I’m most excited about focusing on myself. The holidays provide a rare window of time in which I can really do that. Everyone else will be busy skiing, sunbathing or seeing their families, so no one will be offended when I go off the grid. After two weeks of unplugging, I think I will actually look forward to returning to work.

Travis Weaver

Travis is a 27-year-old stylist and designer living in Brooklyn.

What holiday(s) are you spending alone, and why?

I am staying in New York for Christmas and New Year’s Eve. Though I’ve previously spent the holidays apart from my family in Michigan (my boyfriend of seven years is from Australia, so we often go there or Europe for the holidays), this year will be the first time I’m spending them completely alone.

What are you planning to do?

I am planning on sewing my FW18 collection for my brand One DNA. In addition to designing and creating my own clothes, I also have a full-time 9-5 job, so I am taking advantage of the time off to sew. I will probably cook a vegan chili for myself to eat on Christmas Eve and Christmas.

What about the experience do you think will be most challenging?

I am someone who loves to be surrounded by people all the time. It will be challenging to not have human interactions since all my friends will be away, too. I might visit Prospect Park to get outside and see other humans, or maybe I’ll go ice-skating.

Not having a New Year’s Eve kiss will also be a challenge. My boyfriend will be in Australia with his family, so I will not get to physically kiss him, but we plan to FaceTime at midnight to say cheers. This will be our first New Year’s Eve apart since we started dating.

What about the experience are you looking forward to?

I’m looking forward to sewing. It’s my passion, but I don’t always have the time to devote to it during the busy workweek. Every time I sew, I learn something new about my machine.

I also look forward to snacking on all of my favorite foods (specifically chips and salsa, hummus with pita, and oatmeal raisin cookies) and watching TV or movies (Black Mirror is on my list, as is The Killing of a Sacred Deer).

Tiago Valente

Tiago is a 38-year-old multidisciplinary artist and creative director living in New York City.

What holiday(s) are you spending alone, and why?

I’m spending Christmas Eve and Christmas Day alone, the perfect occasion to have a lovely date with my inner Grinch. I currently have no plans on the horizon and am therefore open to whatever my Grinchy side might desire. In the past, I’ve always tried to spend the holidays somewhere by the ocean. Part of my family is Brazilian, and I grew up following the Brazilian New Year’s Eve tradition of jumping over seven waves, one straight after the other. It’s a tribute to Yemanjá, the goddess of the sea. For each jump, you are allowed to make one wish for the new year. Even though I won’t be in Brazil this year, I guess the ocean is only a train ride away on the wonderful LIRR!

As a global nomad and researcher, I’ve spent the holidays alone in the past, but I’ve tried to reverse the stigma of doing so by seeking out compelling and memorable creative adventures. I’ve traveled to the middle of the jungle, coexisted with tribal groups, learned how to talk to volcanoes and developed art interventions in some of the world’s most unexpected places. However, this year, I choose to stay in New York City, and it’s just starting to hit me that everyone else will be gone…ugh. I’m trying to reframe it in my mind as an opportunity to continue my personal tradition of taking a situation that might seem sad or lonely on the surface and transform it into an exciting new adventure. My creative juices are already boiling in the kitchen.

What are you planning to do?

I’m going to immerse myself in a new adventure of public intervention and “invade” some spots around the city with a new art project. I can’t reveal much about it yet as it would ruin the surprise, but stay alert and start paying attention to the hashtag #talktoyouralterego.

What about the experience do you think will be most challenging?

The freezing cold weather! Give me tropical mosquito bites instead of runny noses and cold hands, please.

What about the experience are you looking forward to?

One of the most valuable lessons I have learned over the course of my past adventures is that creativity is a universal language that transcends any cultural, social or emotional barrier. Creativity brings communities together and initiates conversations. That’s why I am not worried about being “alone,” because aloneness is just empty space waiting to be filled with unexpected encounters and wonderful conversations. And you know what? I am ready to savor every little second of it. Ciao, Grinch!

Illustrations by Ana Leovy.

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leslierichardsrp · 7 years

Text

Not the best story in the world. This is just a tribute.

Rated M for Mature

Have you ever been crazy for someone that was out of your league, watching from her high throne out in the Triangulum Galaxy, 2.9 mega-lightyears away? Ever watched her flounce from one cloud to the next, her blonde hair shining like the milky way in a summer wind? If so, then you and I can probably relate. My girl was out of this world. An intergalactic beauty that was too prepossessing to be from this universe. She practically floated through life, as if nothing would ever drag her down. Me? I was never made for the stars, man. A mess that seemed to trip over dirt, a massive pile of rambling words, bad jokes, and dirty laundry, it was an absolute wonder how she’d ever found the time to get to know me—much less get involved with me. You know—intimately.

Maybe I should be more specific. I was actually sitting on the toilet in my bathroom, staring down at the bulge in my pants like it was a freaking tumor bubbling up from the fiery pits of Tartarus. Yeah, sure, I’d slept with plenty of women before, but none of them were like London. None were goddesses guiding insignificant ants from their shrines, up high on Mount Olympus. She towered over the world. She did anything she could to help less fortunate souls. I mean it when I say, she was a saint. Which was probably why she was rapping her knuckles at the door to my bathroom, calling out to make sure I was still alive and well.

“Leslie? Hey, you okay in there?” she was speaking with the voice of a thousand angels singing a hallelujah chorus—only, with just one voice, because I’d be pretty creeped out if she actually spoke in multiple voices, “It’s been a few minutes. Should I put my clothes back on? Is that why you’re upset?”

No, god, no. The last thing I wanted was for her to cover that body, thin, but proportioned in a way that made me weak at the knees. It was tough to speak, especially when my own voice paled in comparison to the airy tone that sang from her lips.

“Yeah! Yeah, I’m good. Just another minute and I’m all yours, babe,” my tone cracked before the word “babe”, and I felt dumb using such a common term of endearment to refer to her; she was anything but common.

I had baby wipes somewhere in that bathroom, but I’d been so caught up in my thoughts and anxieties that I’d completely forgotten what my excuse to get away had been. See, I’d told her that I needed to “clean myself up”. Which really meant that I needed to freshen up my genitals before performing—making whoopee, hitting home run, dipping the “d”—sex. Jumping up from my spot on the toilet, my hands and eyes started the frantic search for a moist towelette, baby wipes, anything, really, that I could use to freshen up. And when I finally found a container of cleansing wipes, I unfastened my jeans, slid the fabric down to my thighs (along with my boxer shorts), and polished my knob with a wipe.

It would’ve been a lie if I didn’t admit that it was really freaking cold, and if the image of London’s nude body hadn’t been on the forefront of my brain, my erection would’ve gone limp as a balloon animal meeting the sharp end of a sewing kit.

“So, I’ll be in the bedroom whenever you’re done. It’s freezing out here, and that blanket is callin’ for me,” I could hear her speaking through the door, even though the sound was fading with every word, probably because she was heading to bed over the course of those two sentences. As for me? Well, I was trying to part my legs enough to scrub between my thighs and gonads. Because whether or not we were going to perform oral, no course of action would be acceptable if it prompted my gorgeous femme fatale’s face to be anywhere in close proximity to dirty testicles. Especially not if they were my dirty testicles. A moment later and the stretchy band of my boxers was slapped back at my hips, legs frantically kicking to knock away my jeans.

I had to stop, stare at my face in the mirror, splotchy with the splash of too many tooth-brushings that hadn’t been washed in who-the-frack knows how long. A few whispered words of encouragement (“You got this” and “Don’t screw this up”) and I was finally reaching for the brass handle of my restroom door.

Of course, the few steps to my bedroom seemed to take millennia, and I was somewhere between extraordinarily excited (my penis could confirm that one) and absolutely terrified. Realize, please, that I was not an immaculate picture of the male form, just a skinny guy in my late twenties with a pretty decent sized lower-appendage (once establishing a good blood flow, though. I was a shower, not a grower, so to speak). So this was a pretty advantageous undertaking for me.

Finally, through the door and looking at her form, sitting cross-legged underneath a mass of grey blanket, I had to stop to admire how attractive the blonde could make a woolen shroud. So much, in fact, that with every step toward her, I had to revel in her beauty, to sing praise unto her.

“You-are-so-beeeeeeautiful,” I sang, an homage to her sexiness and a throw-back to the Joe Cocker song by the same name, and though my tonality was incredibly off the mark, she smiled, her bright teeth revealing themselves with an eruption of giggles, “to meeeeeee.”

“Sometimes I forget how much of a dweeb you are,” she admitted, though I highly doubted that was true.

I’d always acted like this, and although she was my better in so many ways, it never failed to cause a smile on that sweet face, which was more empowering to my sense of hope for this budding relationship than anything else. The moment my butt hit the mattress, her face was pressing close to mine, her pink lips planting a kiss on my cheek. Or, trying to, at least, considering the moment she moved forward to peck at my face, I turned my head to catch a win for my lips instead. The effect was a soft flush over her complexion and a wide grin for me. It made me dumbfoundingly happy, practically proud, to know that something as simple as a slight twist of the neck could gain such a reaction. There was a decent chance that it was merely because of the element of surprise, but that didn’t put a cease-and-desist order out on my giddiness.

She really didn’t hesitate to touch me again, and though her touch was incredibly gentle, I could tell that it was something she really wanted. A stroke to my ego and a pull at my heart-strings, her movement to wrap the wool blanket around both of our bodies, skim the tips of her fingers down my chest, and nose against my jawline, immediately had me biting at my lower lip, every nerve ending in my body standing on edge. Everything she did gave me goosebumps, and despite the fact that my inner-eagerness was prompting me to jump on and go to town, I started small; the logical side of my brain knew to start from the bottom and work my way up. Though, in a more literal sense, I would start from the top and work my way down.

It was my hope that my warm breath against her skin could be some relief from the crisp night air of a February Maine, and without much thought, I was brushing my parted mouth against the nape of her neck, periodically leaving a gentle kiss. This was something I needed to savor—something to make memorable with different levels of wonderful. If I could mold her perception of me during intercourse, I wanted to leave her feeling cared for, loved, and then senselessly screwed. Okay, more the first two than anything else. Even if the sex wasn’t mind-blowing, I genuinely wanted her to be happy.

My nerves were acting out, and even though the wonderful smell of her perfume (was that lavender? Rose? I wasn’t much of a botanist) was calming to my senses, my body was very obviously shaking. London was concerned, and she paused my kissing, took my face in her slender hands, and offered me a dazzling smile. Not too wide, not too snide, but situated in a perfect middle-ground.

“Hey, funny man,” her brow piqued, head tilting to the side as her tongue wet the pink of her lower lip, “Relax. It’s just me, you weirdo.”

Yes, it was just London, which was far more stressful a statement than she could ever know. It was

just

the most beautiful woman in the world,

only

an angel. Exemplary of feminine wiles, she was

merely

a divine being that, for some reason, was willing to kiss my cheek, my jaw, my lips. She had me melting at the seams, feeling like her warmth would turn me into liquid form. A puddle on the mattress. That would be me.

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Character London belongs to Neva of Abandon Hope

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