it’s just me in my empty bathtub, glass of wine and orange on hand, trying to write about things i can never say out loud

Dick and Jason are Robins at the same time

(titans ‘verse. au after 1.06)

(tagging @superohclair and @cautiousamber!)

-

1.

dick has to admit that it’s not the worst arrangement: jason continues to be robin in gotham, and dick travels across the country with his little family while running from a homicidal cult, wearing the costume every now and then when he has no choice but to fight. this way batman is covered, dick still has access to some advanced gear and weaponry now that he needs it, and internet sleuths are kept on their toes when robin shows up in different ends of the country on the same day.

so what if reading news coverage of batman and robin in gotham feels like being punched in the chest, or hearing jason’s stories about learning new things from bruce everyday makes dick want to scream into a pillow? he is fine with this.

he. is. fine--

(kory knows he’s fraying at the edges. she watches, and she says nothing.)

2.

the fight to help rachel and defeat trigon is long and hard, and involves painstakingly unravelling kory’s memories. they manage to find her spaceship, and it becomes their base for a good long while. they stay there long enough that dick loses some of the tension that’s had him on edge for... well. the better part of the last five years, to be honest.

dick begins training rachel and gar in earnest. kory is able to coax some memories of tamaranean cuisine and culture out, and dick is reminded more and more of the team that he lost everyday. despite his best efforts he’s invested now. he cooks and dances with kory (good thing he’s so flexible because the tamaranean version of a waltz is like a particularly sadistic game of twister), teaches rachel algebra and does yoga with gar. he even manages to forget about bruce for a bit.

jason shows up quite often when he figures out where they’re based, and after some initial tension, he becomes an unofficial member of their team (though at this stage dick is still reluctant to use that word). dick and jason patrol in the nearby city some nights, then go for ice cream later. dick’s even starting to see the strategic (and frankly comedic) potential of two robins on the same patrol. 

time and familiarity softens how dick perceives jason: less reckless asshole and more bright young kid full of curiosity and a need to prove himself. he continues to tend towards gratuitous violence, but dick learns his triggers and helps jason recognise them as well. he soaks up the info on alien cultures and battles on kory’s ship faster than dick himself could hope to, and there is a terrible sort of tenderness to how he talks to the people he saves while on patrol. terrible, dick thinks, because he doesn’t know if he comes across like that now at all: soft and empathetic instead of aloof and shaking, too caught up in his own neuroses.

here’s the thing, the crux of it, the faultline that’s always threatening to break dick apart: he’s so afraid that he’s taken robin, his legacy, the ideals and persona that he modelled as a tribute to his parents, and made it into something so dark and broken that only batman could pass it on. jason showing up as his replacement one day only seemed to affirm that fear. but now, swinging through the skies with this kid who’s taken robin as an opportunity to learn and grow and be better, dick’s reminded of the best of his early days in the costume. 

for the first time in what feels like forever, dick feels good about putting on the robin costume again.

3.

(are you asking if dick tried to call home? of course he did. he chickens out and cuts the call to bruce after only a few rings, and feels a sad sort of vindication in noticing how bruce never attempts to call him back.

alfred picks up his call on the second ring, and dick feels like the smallest person in the world when he hears the genuine warmth, joy and relief in alfred’s voice as he greets him. there’s no excuse for dick refusing to talk to the man that practically raised him after his parents died and he knows it. 

they talk for an hours while skirting around anything to do with bruce, which is an impressive feat all in itself. they finally talk about jason, and there’s a wistful sort of fondness in alfred’s voice as he says, “you’ve been a good influence on master jason.”

dick laughs. “he’s been a good influence on me.” it’s the first time he’s said it loud, but it feels true.

“you mustn’t underestimate the ways in which you change people, master dick,” alfred says. “you have been a light in our lives for so long.”

dick’s jaw clenches. all his memories of batman smudge together in never-ending shadow; when he thinks of bruce, he can only remember that remote expression on his face, that expression dick can project all his disgust and loathing and disappointment onto. maybe people should start considering how they influence me, dick wants to say. sometimes i can’t recognise who i’m seeing in the mirror every day and other times i hate him so much i want to--

“i miss you, alf,” he says instead, softly.

“my dear boy,” alfred starts, but he sounds choked. it’s ok. dick understands.)

4.

things get worse, quickly. their enemies find and destroy their spaceship base, and they’re not nearly ready to take on trigon yet. they’re on the run again, alternating between motel rooms and empty warehouses. 

the cult finally catches up to them; they are kidnapped and tortured for days in an abandoned asylum. they eventually escape, the building and the organisation in flames behind them, but the scars from the experience are deep: rachel is anxious and tearful almost all the time, gar’s usual cheer is replaced by a quiet, simmering self-loathing, kory refuses to talk about her experience but flinches at every touch, and dick... he feels like he’s been flayed, his mind and body laid raw and bleeding until nothing recognisable, nothing human is left. he can’t think, he can barely feel. half the time it feels like he’s observing what’s happening to him like it’s happening to somebody else entirely.

they’re a mess. he can’t do this, not when he feels like--like this. he resists calling anybody for help, but one night he breaks down and calls donna. he doesn’t remember what he says on the call, but wakes up the next morning, eyes raw, tear tracks on his face, and a text from donna that says: i’ll be there in a day. stay put, bw,

“wow you’re a mess,” jason says from a corner of the room. any other time, dick would be on his feet, demanding to know how jason found them. now though, he’s feeling out of his body again, and so he says, “i kind of am, aren’t i?” and watches the words float, parting the air above him.

jason sighs.

being with donna helps get his head on straight, even though at first her appearance threatened to bring back even more traumatic memories. she’s a soothing, sobering presence not just for him, but for the others as well. they continue to motel-hop as they prepare for their big final battle against trigon.

jason continues to find them, somehow. (dick wouldn’t put installing a tracker on one of them beyond him, but he’s much too tired to feel angry about that.) he chats with dick and sometimes they bond by watching a movie together or swinging from buildings in the chill, crisp night air, jason’s cackling laugh echoing in dick’s ears. 

jason always leaves as quickly as he appears, but dick is grateful for his presence.

5.

they defeat trigon, and there’s a party. even hank and dawn show up. jason is conspicuous in his absence.

after several unanswered texts and calls, dick bites the bullet and calls alfred. “hey alf,” he says when the man picks up, “is jason there?”

there’s a long pause at the other end of the line. then: “did master bruce not tell you?” his voice sounds uncharacteristically hoarse.

dick’s stomach starts to sink. he steps away from the others and into a quiet room. “tell me what?”

“master jason...” alfred sighs. “he--he was killed by the joker two months ago. the funeral was last week.”

dick stumbles back to sit on the bed. the phone threatens to fall from his numb fingers even while his heart thunders against his ribs. “that’s impossible,” he manages. “i saw him five days ago. we saw--” there’s a hysterical laugh building in his chest, howling like a thunderstorm, “fuck we saw moulin rogue together. he told me how much he fucking loves musicals, i--”

alfred’s voice is suddenly distant and tinny. dick looks down to see his phone on the floor. he’s suddenly very, very aware of the dryness of his palms, the hot flush at the tips of his ears, the tears that are starting to slide down his cheeks, the way his lungs are burning with shock and grief and rage--

“hey, dickie,” jason says, smiling at him. “glad you finally caught up.”

-

( send me an au and i’ll give you 5+ headcanons! )

SHINee in the Good Place

What We Owe To Each Other:

This is for you, Jonghyun🌙✨

**TRIGGER WARNING**

note: I am not trying to tell any other shawols how to grieve. Trust me, I’ve gotten enough advice, both well-meaning and not, to know that it’s not helpful. I hope that all of you are able to grieve however you want, and that those you care about are there for you today. I wanted to write this because this very recently made blog has become my safe space to share my feelings about SHINee without the unsolicited input of a thousand twitteratti. Truth be told, I haven’t talked about this in three years. I don’t think I’ve ever really confronted my own grief. And I wanted to do that here. Yes, ITS LONG AND WORDY. I’m well aware that these posts aren’t exactly conducive to the short-attention-span era. My blog is nothing if not on-brand. But this one’s not really for everyone. This one’s for me.

Prologue: “It’s okay not to feel lucky sometimes.” - Jane Villanueva, Jane the Virgin

Nothing makes me more incensed than when people try to comfort me by saying, “think about how lucky you are.” Objectively, yes, in many ways and compared to many people, I am lucky. Certainly, I am lucky to exist, here, now, because how else would I have met the people that I am about to spend thousands of words writing about? But grief isn’t objective. It’s not supposed to make sense. Maybe the fact that it doesn’t make sense doesn’t make it any less real. Maybe that’s okay.

Chapter 1:

“Since nothing seems to make sense, when you find something or someone that does, it’s euphoria” - Janet, The Good Place

I know why I fell in love with SHINee. At least, I know how I found them. But what I’m not so sure about is why I stayed in love with them for over a decade. It’s a love that I can’t explain all that well. It’s not comparable to how I love my family or my friends or how I loved my significant others when we were in a relationship. It’s not all that similar to how I love my favorite sports teams, because those are entities more than individual people. Certainly, I admire SHINee. That’s a big part of it. I think they have accomplished a great many things. I have learned a lot from them. I enjoy their music and performances. But I can’t pretend that I love them because they are objectively the greatest; love, like grief, isn’t objective. All I can say is that loving them always made sense. Life rarely makes sense, and loving them did. So it was, as Janet says, euphoric.

I think the reason was that they always made sense TOGETHER. As a unit. As five. I always felt like they were born to perform together. Maybe that’s cheesy, but to me, it’s obvious. I don’t think that SHINee themselves would ever say that; they are a team strictly against self-mythologizing. Very practical and humble people, those five, and I love them for it. But even with their humility, their pride in their team sometimes leaks out around the edges. On the “SHINee’s Back” special, when Minho talked about remembering how SM announced their team one day: a sheet of paper titled “2007 Trainees to Prepare for Debut” with their names, 이진기 김종현 김기범 최민호 이태민, listed underneath. And on Minho’s episode of 청담-Key친, when Minho and Key talked about the fact that they remembered Lee Sooman’s voice telling them, “I’ve decided on your team name. Your name is SHINee,” like it was yesterday, that they couldn’t forget it if they tried. There’s a reverence in their voices when they talk about those moments. Like somehow, someway, it was meant to be.

I got to see the five of them on stage together once. SHINee World V. In Seoul. And I’ve never felt more strongly that musically, performance-wise, it all made so much sense. It was the one where Jinki hurt his ankle but insisted on coming back out to finish performing with the rest of them. It was heartbreaking in the moment, but it also made sense. It checked out with the fact that they are the ultimate professionals, who care so much and work so hard for the impeccable quality of their live performances. And it checked out because we all intuitively knew: SHINee is five. Like somehow, someway, it was meant to be. That was my dream. Maybe it’s unfair to project that on them, but it was. That the five of them, and my knowing the five of them and everyone else that I loved, it was all meant to be.

Chapter II:

“Time is cruel and indiscriminate and entirely uninterested in supporting our dreams.” - Joe Posnanski, on the career of Ken Griffey Jr.

Human beings live with the knowledge that we will die. As Eleanor says in The Good Place, that truth means that we’re all a little sad, all the time. But somehow, we’re also foolish enough to simultaneously believe that we always have more time. Especially, that we have more time with those that we love. But we don’t. It always runs out, a little too soon, when we’re not ready. We’re never ready. And it never makes sense.

I had moved to America by then. So it was the afternoon of the 17th when I found out. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Or so they say. I can speak to a couple of those: To this day, nothing makes me angrier than when YouTube recommends me videos from his funeral. Like I have a right to see it, or that those people had a right to film it. We don’t. None of us do. And sometimes I rewatch enough old variety shows and interviews and concert recordings that for a couple hours, even now, I think that he’s still here. I can still trick myself like that, even three years later. Oh, the magic of the internet: fueling anger and denial since its inception.

At my darkest, I allow myself to be depressed. Because it is all too cruel, too cold, too much. The fact that such a beautiful artist was taken from us too early. The fact that such a beautiful person was taken from us too early. The fact that this world was cruel enough that he decided to leave on his own.

I miss him. Of course I do. What I wouldn’t give to see him, here, happy, just one more time. Days like today, I pop in my SHINee World V DVD for the millionth time and cry, again. But I don’t like to grieve for myself. I don’t really feel like I deserve to. If I did, would I be grieving for him, or grieving for the idea of him? What he meant to me, or what it meant to have him mean something to me? I didn’t really know him. It’s okay for me to be sad. It’s okay for me to miss him. But is it okay for me to grieve? I ask myself this every day, because I think about him every day.

Undoubtedly, I am angry at the circumstances that led to his death, especially that my country, our country, still largely ignores mental health (dismissing it as fake or a sign of weakness) while promoting a workaholic, tough-it-out culture and thus suffers from one of the highest rates of suicide in the world. I love my country. That same workaholic culture has led us to excel at a great many things. But the mental health epidemic that has followed is one of our most glaring and tragic flaws, and one that we are still largely failing to address. I will never stop fighting for that to change. And I will never, never get over the fact that their last performances before he died, especially the final stops on their suddenly-ironically-named FIVE tour in Japan, were performed as four. How could life be so cruel? And preventably so. For that, I will never stop being angry.

But I do grieve, profoundly and truly, for those who loved him. Not as I do, for it would be terribly unfair to reduce him to that: an idea more than a person, an endless inspiration more than a living being with hopes and dreams and flaws and failings. No, I grieve for those who loved him in a close and real and visceral way. People who were close enough to not only watch him and listen to him to be happy, as I do, but were saddened by him and frustrated by him and annoyed by him too. That’s all a part of real love, as much as any of the happy bits. I grieve for them because, obviously, I have no idea what it is like to die. But I do know what it is like to lose somebody too soon to a death that is too cruel. Too sudden. Too nonsensical. Under those same preventable circumstances, in that same country.

There’s a story that many shawols know. A PD at some music show (I forget which one) posted it on their Instagram after Jonghyun’s death. Taemin was wrapping up his Day and Night promotions at the end of 2017, and the PD wrote that he would never forget the earnest look in Taemin’s eyes as he asked him to look after Jonghyun, since he was supposed to come back in early 2018. The earnest look in his eyes. Every time, that phrase: it feels like a punch in the gut. He asked so earnestly. How could it not have come true? I remember asking someone to look after my friend, to check up on her, a couple of days before she died. Earnestly. How could it not have come true?

“Irresolvable guilt,” they call it. Guilt that makes it impossible to let go. Guilt that never goes away. Guilt that is only amplified when everyone you see says that they’re sorry for you, when you can’t even forgive yourself. You’re still sorry for the words you didn’t say and the words you did, because there are never enough words afterwards to sum up how happy they made you or how much you loved them or how sorry you are for that one time you yelled at them about something that wasn’t their fault. There are never enough words, and they can’t hear you anyway, so you just cycle through the same ones again and again: 고맙다 미안하다 보고싶다 사랑한다 thank you I’m sorry I love you I miss you. There’s the guilt that you weren’t enough for them to tell you everything or that you were busy that night. Because what if you hadn’t been? Could you have saved them? And you feel guilty, more than anything, for the time you didn’t spend together. If only you had known that it was finite. The truth is, you did. But the problem is, humans always think that they have more time.

Chapter III:

- “Time means nothing. Jeremy Bearimy, baby. We’ll get through this, and then you and I can chill out in the dot of the “i” forever.” -“Right. We’ll be okay. We found each other before, hundreds of times. We can do it again.” - Eleanor and Chidi, The Good Place

2017 was shitty. I lost someone so present in my everyday life that every single thing I do, even now, reminds me of them. And so did SHINee. But I went through my loss and my grief privately. They weren’t given that opportunity. All the cameras, all the attention. It horrified me from the start. The way that a bunch of people who’d never cared about SHINee or Jonghyun when he was alive started to roll around in grief porn like pigs in mud. In the aftermath of a loss in my own life, to see it played out in the lives of more people that I cared about, and on a much bigger scale, was unbelievably triggering. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t watch people ask them about their loss for the sole purpose of indulging their own curiosity. Like they’re supposed to have the words to explain why all of this happened? It disgusted me.

In a life where nothing ever made sense, especially after the death of my friend, SHINee always had. And then suddenly, it all turned upside down.

I couldn’t watch for two years after that. Not just all of the interviews. I never thought that I would ever not want to watch them perform, but I didn’t. I was scared to see the empty space where he used to be, to see four instead of five. It didn’t make sense. But more than anything, I couldn’t watch them grieve. It reminded me too much of myself.

So I, a shawol since 2009, missed their tenth anniversary. I missed TSOL and their enlistments. I missed Jinki’s Voice, Kibum’s Face, and Taemin’s Want promotions. It was only less a year ago, when all of the kpop world, other than my fellow shawols, had largely moved on, that I could come back to them. It had been two years since they lost their friend, and a couple more since I had lost my own. We’d been through a lot. It seemed like a good time to come back together.

In the meantime, I had watched The Good Place. I’ve been to a lot of therapy, but nothing came close to being as healing as watching that show. That moment, at the end of season three, when Eleanor has to let Chidi forget her and their love for each other, and she says that they’ve found each other hundreds of times, so they can do it again? I don’t believe in afterlife, but god, I’ve never wanted to believe more strongly. That there exists a place, a good place, where time means nothing and we can find the people that we love the most over and over and over again, no matter what. A place where everything makes sense. Where SHINee can be five, forever. Where I can be with the people I’ve lost, forever. I want that to be true.

Jonghyun, if it’s true, let me know? Friend, if it’s true, let me know? Is there such a good place? A place of warm winters and coming springs? Are you there?

When I came back to SHINee in 2020, it wasn’t the same. How could it be? It couldn’t be, and it shouldn’t be. But still, he was there. There is no doubt in my mind that he was there, with them, through everything that they did. I watched the interviews and the variety shows, but more than anything, the performances. Sometimes it looked like four and it hurt to see. But if I squinted, sometimes it looked like five, like it always was. It sounded like five, like it always was. Maybe it was meant to be. Maybe time means nothing. Maybe all of this, all of it, wasn’t a pipe dream. Maybe it makes sense. Maybe they can find each other over and over and over again.

Maybe my friend and I can too.

Chapter IV:

“I proposed a rule, that Chidis shouldn’t be allowed to leave, because it would make Eleanors sad. And I could do this forever... and I’d still never find the justification for getting you to stay, because it’s a selfish rule. I owe it to you to let you go.” - Eleanor, The Good Place

I remember how shocked I was to hear Kibum say in one of their tenth anniversary interviews (my rough translation), “If we had it really hard, I could make up a grand story about how we scratched and clawed to get to our tenth anniversary. But we didn’t. We just kept going, and now we’re here.” I remember thinking, “Well if YOU didn’t have it hard, who did?”

Partly, it was their humility. You know, acknowledging big company bias and all that jazz. But mostly, I think, they wanted everyone to know that this was not a story of struggle and redemption. Jonghyun was more than a storytelling device. He was more than a challenge for them to get over. They didn’t think of him as a supporting character in their own stories: he was the main one in his own. As always, SHINee taught me something that I had been too scared to learn. Wise souls, those five, and I love them for it.

Following the death of my friend, I wallowed into my own sadness and depression for years. I let my other relationships fall apart under that burden. But eventually, especially now as I watch back all of the things that SHINee has said through the last three years, I realized that a lot of that grief was selfish. That I wasn’t grieving for my friend, but that I was feeling sorry for myself. That I had to go through this. That I had to shoulder this loss. What did I do to deserve this pain? At some point, my grief stopped being about her, and it became about me. It was never supposed to be about me. She was more than what she meant to me. She was the main character in her own story.

It’s no comfort to hear it from others, but I know: I am lucky that this was how it was meant to be. As Winnie the Pooh says, how lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard?

I could wallow forever. She did, in the end, mean that much to me. I’m absolutely sure that they could wallow around forever too. Jonghyun meant that much to them, too. But I think we both came to the same realization, albeit under different timelines, that we owed them something. No matter how much it hurt, we owed it to them to let them go. Letting go isn’t the same thing as giving up on them or forgetting them. After all, they say that best friends are hard to find, harder to leave, and impossible to forget. Because we loved them that much. Even when we want forget, we can’t. Even when Chidi left Eleanor, their love never stopped existing. Like he said, when the wave returns to the ocean, it looks like it was never there. But the wave was just a different way for the water to be, for a little while. The water is still there. The water, our love for those we cherish the most, is always there. It was always meant to be.

So I thank The Good Place for comforting me and healing me when I was at my lowest. And I thank SHINee for inspiring me and allowing me to grow with them for over ten years, all through the tireless pandemonium that is life. You mean so much to me, more than I think I have succeeded in expressing here. And to Jonghyun, and my friend, what more is there to say? 고맙다. 미안하다. 보고싶다. 사랑한다. Thank you for everything. I’m sorry for everything. I miss you everyday. I love you, forever.

*standing on the road we walked together again, those five hands folded together, the tears, the memories... it’s all so clear, I don’t want to forget, I can never forget (Taemin’s lyrics from Our Page)

FRIENDS is such a perfect example for why I have no patience for saying its unrealistic or unreasonable to expect too much of shows in taking progressive stances. Or providing positive representation. Or that we should be grateful for whatever they DO give us in terms of so-called progressive depictions of PoC, LGBTQ+ persons or disabled individuals.

Because it was over twenty years ago at this point, and nothing has changed. Shows still do the exact same stunts and expect applause and a cookie for their token attempts at progressive actions, while turning around and doing 100x as much to perpetuate the status quo.

As an example, take Ross’ ex-wife, Susan. She was gay, and had a girlfriend who raised her son as equal parents and with Ross co-parenting as well. Great, right? They were consistent presences throughout most of the ten seasons of the show, and even got married in one of the earlier seasons. Their wedding was the focal point of an entire episode, with rave reviews and buzz around that episode and how much it did for gay rights and to promote positivity towards LGBTQ+ people and issues. 

Again, great right? That’s a good thing, yeah? What’s the problem?

Well, nothing there. The problem is that IN ADDITION to this wedding episode and the recurring presence of Carol and Susan throughout the show.....the main characters made homophobic and transphobic jokes like EVERY DAMN EPISODE. Oh sure, I don’t think the writers thought of it that way, their own internal biases meant they wrote these jokes without a second thought and probably THOUGHT they were liberal, progressive, social conscious people and so were these characters they were writing....

But none of that changes the fact that these constant, incessant jokes at the expense of gay people and trans people and occasionally bisexuality and so on....they were still homophobic and transphobic and biphobic regardless! Carol and Susan’s partnership was treated as a punchline ten times as often as it was held up as something good and natural. Any time it came up in casual conversation and not because those characters were involved in a scene directly, it was never oh how great a couple they are or what good parents they are or anything even about THEM, it was almost always ‘lol isn’t it hilarious that Ross married a lesbian?’

And that’s not even TOUCHING the shit that was everything involving Chandler’s parents.

Like yeah, great, FRIENDS had one good, wholesome episode about a gay marriage. But I guarantee the way it dismissively and offensively references LGBTQ+ people and issues in every other way on the show, in every single season.....that made WAY more of an impact on audiences, and did far more to perpetuate and normalize such jokes and the views behind such jokes than their one token attempt to say ‘look how much we care about gay rights’ did in reverse.

But at any point in the twenty years since then, you try criticizing the show for being so blatantly and consistently homophobic and transphobic, and GUARANTEED you inevitably have people jumping all over that and pointing to Carol and Susan and their recurring appearances and their wedding episode while saying see?? SEE? How can Friends have been homophobic when look how much they did to show they care about gay people, look at this episode, everybody’s saying nice things about a gay wedding, where’s the homophobia huh? CHECKMATE.

And if you actually try arguing with that and pointing out that doesn’t negate all the other times they were offensive and used homophobic language and jokes and stereotypes.....what do you hear? ‘They did what they could, they had the studio to worry about and it was a different time back then.’ ‘These things take time, you can’t expect them to do everything perfectly, it has to start somewhere like with that wedding episode, that was a big step.’ ‘You’re never going to get perfect representation, you have to be realistic. They TRIED and that’s more than a lot of people do, doesn’t that matter?’ ’One step at a time. This was a good start.’

Any of this sound familiar? Sound like the same lines trotted out any time someone criticizes a current TV show or cartoon or movie or comic book or novel because of blatant racism or homophobia or transphobia, with defenders jumping to lift up one single episode or character or storyline and saying ‘look, see how much they care, nobody’s perfect and at least they tried and it was probably the studio/editors/publisher that wouldn’t let them do more?’

“You can’t demand more than what the studio/show/film/comic/novel was willing to give you here” is the takeaway now, same as it was twenty years ago, same as it was twenty years before that.

WHY THE FUCK NOT? Is what I wanna know.

Considering people seem more than happy to demand marginalized audiences settle for the one bone or scrap they’re thrown to pacify them while following that up with a hundred times that amount of content enabling the racist, ableist, homophobic and transphobic status quo. 

It was bullshit then, and its bullshit now. A half-hearted or hell, even an earnest attempt at doing ONE thing to challenge racism or homophobia, is not a free pass to then perpetuate those things in a dozen other ways. And its certainly not a shield against people saying THAT’S NOT ENOUGH. DO BETTER. DO MORE.

It’s about priorities, at the end of the day.

Any content creator that’s able to include some token effort at being progressive absolutely is capable of more than JUST that. It is always, ALWAYS just a matter of picking your battles, when it comes to studios, audiences, publishers, etc. That’s what it comes down to. You have to pick your battles, decide what you’re going to fight to include or how its portrayed, where you’re willing to compromise and where you’re not.

And over and over, all these arguments, all these content creators and their nominal efforts and excuses for not doing more, all it boils down to - is just like any creator, they picked their battles. What was worth fighting for in their eyes and where they were okay with cutting their losses. The answer to ‘why not more’ and ‘why not better’ is ALWAYS - because they didn’t care as much about fighting for that content as the other stuff they wanted to include, that mattered more to them.

Thing is, there are a million different elements at play in any given content. There are a million different identities or combination of identities that could be prioritized in any given content. It is literally impossible to prioritize all of them or even most of them or even 99% of them. While at the same time, its equally true that all of them DESERVE to be prioritized somewhere.

And like....because of that, its not a problem that somebody’s personal priorities are different from yours or what you’d like theirs to be. If someone’s not trying to be offensive or exclude any given identities or experiences? If the reason they only fought to include a token display of something and nothing more than that is because they personally have other things they prioritize more, that are more important to see included in their final product, for them, the creator, personally? That’s not evil. That’s not unreasonable. People are ALLOWED to have their own priorities. They’re allowed to have things they care more about fighting for than other things.

But the same has to be true in reverse.

Fans get to be equally concerned with THEIR personal priorities. Criticism isn’t censorship, a hundred, a thousand people on the internet saying ‘i hate this because it doesn’t do enough of x’ is not ‘you are a bad person because you like this because it includes y and you personally care about y a lot.’

Stop responding to people saying “I’m not satisfied by the inclusion of this one character, story, episode. I want more. People like me deserve more” with “Stop expecting more than what you’re given and settle for being happy with whatever you’re offered.”

It should NOT be that hard to instead respond with “I enjoy this thing because what it does and doesn’t prioritize lines up well with my own personal priorities, but it makes sense that you’re not content with it because your priorities are different and that’s fair and valid. You deserve content that lines up with your priorities, same as this thing currently does with mine. Its not an attack on me to hear you say that.”

It's So Meta Even This Acronym

"What, you expect us to say something in summary? You haven't even written the damn story yet," Dan said, scowling. 

"Come on, play along," Phil urged, "There's no reason to get on their bad side." 

"I'm not helping them peddle this stupid thing." 

"I think you just did."

Chapter one

 Word Count: 2.3k 

 Warnings: strong language

 Read on ao3 

Excerpt: Dan poured himself cereal and headed to the lounge, where he flopped onto the couch. He couldn't watch anything new—Phil wasn't up, and probably wouldn't be for a few hours. He settled for an old episode of Steven Universe and started on his cereal. 

 A couple of episodes had played when he realized he was staring at the screen without seeing anything. His bowl was empty, sitting on the coffee table. Again, he shook his head, trying to clear his mind. What had gotten into him? He felt strange the past few days, but it just kept getting worse. Every moment was worse than the last: fuzziness, confusion, disorientation. Maybe he was getting sick. 

Dan sat in his sofa crease, scrolling through tumblr. He had a word document in another window, so he could claim he was writing a script for a video. He scowled as he came across another “rip Dani Snot On Fire” joke. He was really beginning to regret the rebranding. It had seemed so necessary, but it turned out to be so much work. Changing all his social media, changing the links in all his video descriptions, contacting everyone he'd ever done a collab with to ask them to change his information. Maybe he should keep the placentas in the trash but give up on Daniel Howell. It would be months before anyone really knew him as that name…if they ever did. That stupid teenage screen name might stick with him for life, no matter how hard he tried.

He sighed loudly, hoping for sympathy from the man on the other side of the couch. But Phil was absorbed in something on his own laptop and didn't seem to hear. He was still in Star Wars pajamas and Dan had to recheck the time. It was three in the afternoon. They'd been slipping into the habit of slobbing around, sometimes not even changing into real clothes.

Dan realized he'd thought the word “pajamas” instead of “pyjamas”. He shook his head slightly; he'd been spending too much time on the American-dominated internet. He found himself using ‘miles’ and ‘dollars’, too. There was no escaping the Americanisms. Maybe he'd do a video about that. He was certain someone had made a compilation video of every time he used an Imperial measurement or American word. He opened his document of video ideas and jotted it down. He frowned. It was thin, but maybe he could at least shitpost about it.

He stood up and walked to the kitchen, grabbing two glasses of Ribena. He frowned as he walked back to the living room. Wasn't he supposed to be decoupling himself from Ribena? He couldn't—

Wait. He'd said living room. Had he ever said that before in his life? It was the lounge.

He sat the two glasses down on the coffee table. It caught Phil's attention and he mumbled a thanks before grabbing it and drinking. He was actually writing a script for a video. Dan took another drink then stared blankly at his screen.

The day stretched on. Dan started looking for games for their next video. Phil tapped away at his script. There was evening, and there was morning. Tuesday.

Wednesday saw Dan wake up unusually early. He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes and groaned. Why was he up at—he checked his phone—seven in the morning? There was no reason for this stupid consciousness.

He gave up with a sigh and threw off his greyscale bedcovers. There was no use sitting in bed trying to sleep when he clearly wasn't tired. He shivered as he sat shirtless. It was unseasonably cool for…fall? He frowned. It had taken him several seconds to remember what season it was. What was going on with him lately?

He got dressed—okay, so it was only a t-shirt and sweatpants. But it was better than pajamas. He ran his fingers through his hair and brushed his teeth. Staring into the mirror, he frowned at himself. It had been a weird couple weeks and his face was showing it. Purplish bags sat under his eyes and he looked paler than he should. He splashed water on his face and some color returned to his cheeks. But his complexion was definitely less olive and more pink than usual—he looked like Phil.

Shaking his head, he flipped the light off and shuffled to the kitchen. He poured himself cereal and headed to the lounge, where he flipped on the television. He couldn't watch anything new—Phil wasn't up, and probably wouldn't be for a few hours. He settled for an old episode of Steven Universe and started on his cereal.

A couple of episodes had played when he realized he was staring at the screen without seeing anything. His bowl was empty, sitting on the coffee table. Again, he shook his head, trying to clear his mind. What had gotten into him? He felt strange the past few days, but it just kept getting worse. Every moment was worse than the last: fuzziness, confusion, disorientation. Maybe he was getting sick.

He opened his laptop and pulled up his email, intending to respond to business emails. He had gotten through exactly two when he decided he was fed up with them. There were a few too many pointed “Daniel Howell”s to be entirely professional. Why wouldn't people leave him alone about it?

He logged into his Internet Support Group email for shits and giggles. There were hundreds of thousands of unread messages. But these ones weren't overwhelming. He was under no obligation to answer any of them.

He tried to pick earnest ones to read. The funny ones were best read and reacted to on camera. But he probably wasn't doing another ISG for months anyway, and he liked he use relatively fresh ones when he did, so what did it matter? Whatever. He clicked on another with the subject “Should I go to grad school?”

It explained that this student had just finished her degree and was planning on going to a four-year graduate school. But she was feeling burned out. But there were literally no jobs available in her field with only a bachelor's degree. After a lengthy explanation, she said she had been listening to everyone's advice. Her sister told her to stay in school, but a close friend told her to take a break. And somebody once told me—

Dan broke out laughing. He couldn't stop himself—they'd caught him completely off guard. He wiped the corners of his eyes and starred the email to show Phil.

As if on cue, soft thuds echoed down the hall. Phil was tired, he'd seen that Dan was awake, and so he didn't care that he was all but stomping. He fixed himself a cup of coffee and a bowl of cereal and made his way blearily into the lounge.

“Couldn't sleep,” he mumbled by way of explanation. He looked it. His glasses were askew, his hair rumpled, and his mouth set stiffly, as though he'd been grinding his teeth.

“Sorry,” Dan said, moving the television remote to beside Phil's bowl. “Anything you want to watch?”

“This’s fine,” he nodded at the screen and pressed a button to resume the episode that Dan had paused.              

Dan considered showing him the ISG email he'd read, but figured that he'd wait until Phil woke up a little. He wasn't known for his early-morning sense of humor. No, even on the tour, his raven-haired friend—

Dan actually snorted out loud.

“Hmm?” Phil said, not bothering with a full question. Dan shrugged off the feeling of déjà vu.

“Have you ever noticed the fandom leaking into your real life?” Dan asked him. Phil looked blankly at him, so he continued. “Like when you see something on tumblr or read something in fanfiction enough times that you start to incorporate it into the way you think?”

“I don't think so,” Phil said, frowning a little in thought. His voice was still gravelly with sleep. “What happened?”

“I just referred to you as my ‘raven-haired friend’ in my internal monologue,” Dan said, halfway between amused and embarrassed.

“What the heck,” Phil said, laughing. “Stop reading so much fanfic.”

“I know, I know,” Dan said, “Besides, that would require us being friends.” Phil stuck his tongue out at Dan, who just laughed.

“You know, maybe I get it,” Phil said after a moment of thought, “I've seen you portrayed so many times that sometimes I catch myself thinking you're a nice person.”

“What a crock of shit, you never think that.”

“I did once.”

“Psh, when?”

“Do you think I would have wanted to meet you if I knew you were such a dick?” 

Dan reached over and kicked Phil. Not hard enough to hurt, though. Maybe.

The more years that passed, the more they were comfortable teasing each other. They'd grown more secure in their partnership and they'd both become more confident; Dan from 2009 would have been devastated to hear his idol call him a dick.

Then again, Dan thought, 2009 Dan wouldn't have thought his idol would prank him with habanero gummy bears. Or put a banana peel down the back of his shirt on camera. He still hadn't gotten revenge on Phil for that. He'd have to come up with something fittingly awful, but still believable…

Dan spent a few seconds staring at Phil's profile as the latter scrolled away on his laptop. Phil looked tired too. His jaw was still tight. It looked like he'd had several bad nights in a row. Maybe the new house had a gas leak too, Dan thought bitterly. At least it would explain why he felt so strange.

“We should do something,” Dan said suddenly.

“Like what? Why?” Phil asked, surprised, as he looked up from his laptop.

“I don’t know,” Dan admitted, “Something. We’ve been cooped up for too long. It’s weird.”

“We just came back from Vidcon,” Phil reminded him, “Traveling halfway around the world and back isn’t exactly cooped up. And since when do you have a problem staying inside all day?”

“Since the tour,” Dan said, “It’s just one giant letdown since then. Relaxing was good for a while. Now it just feels like nothing.”

“Okay, then, what do you suggest we do?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, let me know when you have an idea.”

“Come on, I know you’re just humoring me. Don’t you want to do something? I feel like I’m imploding.”

Phil sighed and closed his laptop. “Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what you’re on about. You’ve been happy to stay put for months now. Did something change?”

“I don’t know,” Dan admitted, rubbing his forehead, “I feel strange. Like something is different or there’s something in the air. I was kind of hoping you’d know what I mean.”

“Tell you what,” Phil said, “I have the next game picked out. We’ll shoot a gaming video then do something. Get out of the house. Whatever you’d like.”

“Can’t we do it now?"

“No. Work comes first.”

Dan groaned. “Yes, Dad.”

“Stop calling me that!”

“I’ll stop when you stop acting like a dad,” Dan said. He pulled himself off the sofa and started to walk to his room.

“I wouldn’t have to act like a dad if you acted like an adult,” Phil said to his back. Dan looked back and stuck his tongue out at Phil. “You’re proving me right!” Phil said, laughing. He, too, had to drag himself up and to his bedroom.

The gaming video went badly. Humorously badly, hopefully. They’d played GeoGuessr and probably offended a wide variety of viewers. They were both well-traveled; who’d have thought they would do so utterly horribly? Dan had bragged about doing geography at A level and then failed spectacularly. But it was a Dan vs Phil and Phil wouldn’t let his win go to waste, so they’d just have to hope that no one was legitimately offended.

Phil turned the camera off and plugged it in to let the footage upload to the computer.

“So, you wanted to go somewhere?” He asked Dan.

“What about the park?” Dan suggested.

“You hate the park,” Phil pointed out, frowning.

“I changed my mind. Just for a bit, okay? Then we’ll order in tonight.”

“Pizza. And you’re paying.”

“Fine,” Dan said, “But we’re leaving right now. So you can’t weasel out of this.” He walked out of the room to put his shoes on.

“What is with you?” Phil asked to his back, shaking his head.

He followed Dan and shoved his shoes on. The younger man waited at the door, bouncing slightly, impatient. When Phil was ready, they stepped out and began the walk. The wind bit at Dan’s face, but he’d left his jacket at home intentionally.

Maybe if he got cold enough, he’d remember how much he hated being outside. He’d want to go back in and hibernate with his laptop. He’d stop being so restless. Or maybe the fresh air would revive him. He wasn’t sure which he wanted more. Anything to stop this bizarre ambiance that apparently only he could feel.

Relinquish Mistakes And Appear Ahead With Reason.

From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishmistakemis take1/ məˈsteɪk/ ● ● ● S2 W2 noun 1 countableMISTAKE one thing that has been done in the upside-down, or an opinion or even statement that is incorrect → errormistake in Our experts might possess slipped up in our estimations.. If greater than one person is actually making the very same mistake in a healthcare facility or even various other medical organization, and also this error is actually drawn to their interest by characters from complaint, the medical body system may quickly act and also offer any type of training that is actually required to prevent the same errors from taking place once more. An independent oversight is where only one group to a deal is actually confused as to the terms or subject-matter consisted of in a deal. In their eagerness to develop a company many people often tend to create the mistake of embracing the wrong registration manager as an example. Take place. Envision if you certainly never created that mistake, if that unpleasant thing had actually certainly never occurred, if you weren't thinking confused by this point nearing in your past times. If you don't take a look at your statements properly after that you will certainly not view errors on your account that may be costing you a ton of cash. MISTAKE 7: Having actually obsoleted information- Generating a great website is actually not completion from job, when this relates to internet search engine marketing. Acquiring factors that colleagues have is one more usual error made through folks which are actually aiming to enrich their appeal, especially their reliability at work. . Slang), slip up (casual), misjudge, goof (informal), go down a clanger (laid-back), put your feet in this (laid-back), be large of or be off the mark I believed I had actually miscalculated, so I redesigned it. While your error may possess affected various people, this's still up to you to elbow most of the after effects. I assured him that it was certainly not usual; that the directory manager had perhaps made a mistake as a result of the high amount of plagiarism that was actually being driven at him. Shot under the functioning name The Storage, no one anticipated the film until an unforeseen trailer decreased in January. Perform not let that you have brought in a few errors to stop you coming from trying to repair the relationship. We just have one opportunity to show our little ones the perseverance and technique necessary to permit them to pick up from the errors that our team have actually all brought in. When you loved this article and you want to receive more information with regards to yellow pages residential search uk (lsensazionedfreschezzaora.info) assure visit the internet site. When people check out physical body language, in this post you will certainly check out an amount from typical oversights made. A very common oversight made is using the wrong pads or even shoes for a vehicle. Oversights can easily harm, but if our experts don't 1eaai coming from the blunder our experts've created, the discomfort our team have actually suffered from it has actually been actually for nothing. The only people which don't create mistakes are actually those which sit around alone contemplating their navels. Look for the points to be actually grateful for the moment you've opted for an oversight to magically improve in to benefits. . V. United States, 66 C.C.P.A. 113, 118, C.A.D. 1231, 603 F. 2d 850, 853 (1979) (A blunder from fact is actually any type of mistake other than an error of rule." Id. at 855) Hynix, 414 F. Supp. Any armed forces leader that is actually truthful with themself, or even with those he is actually speaking with, will certainly confess that he has created blunders in the use from armed forces energy. You as an individual being actually can't steer clear of bring in blunders provided that you deal and also operate with people. After a bunch of catastrophic-seeming oversights, I've related to realize that few errors are permanent. Own that if you have sinned. (In fact, if you have slipped up, possess that too.) Take the favorite. The Birdman superstar was actually declaring the nominees for Finest Assisting Starlet in a Motion Picture when he came to Octavia Spencer's label as well as said she became part of the film 'Hidden Fences'. Regardless of what blunders you create, as well as you will continue to produce them, don't quit. Do not allow your own self experience or even be actually defeated. Counting on the Center East, he punished the 2003 invasion of Iraq as possibly awful decision ever before made in the history from the nation, and also claimed secure zones must have been actually created within Syria and also spent for due to the USA' Bay allies. You lose concentration when you stay in the past, when you hold onto the luggage of all the failings you have actually made in your life. The second oversight a lot of companies help make is to forget as well as somehow overlook the education and learning from the important value of marketing. Okay, fine, that was unnecessary, however seriously, the more oversights you make, the more you find out. The very best forerunners out there are the ones which created the absolute most oversights but picked up from them. You are able to maintain moving, not enabling the mistakes to shackle you to your past times, nor allowing anxiety to keep you off trying. MISTAKE 6: Poor exterior web link strategy- This is an additional blunder which frequently occurs in the course of site growth. Nanny McPhee is a superb movie with a splendid notification for all kids to realize and also know. It is actually not regarding our errors in life that describes who we are actually, it's about the character that is actually constructed because of all of them, the knowledge that we get coming from them and also the expertise that when our team perform create blunders our company will receive beyond them and still live a terrific life. Although everybody makes a mistake occasionally, please do not undervalue the value from proper syntax. You created the blunder simply given that you found yourself in a setting in which your opinion regarding a profession was actually being challenged as well as you were encountering the uncomfortable posture from having to acknowledge that you mistook. Massage oversights consist of inaccuracies in stress, or not signing in with the client concerning his/her convenience. If you don't examine your statements effectively at that point you will certainly not observe errors on your account that could be costing you a ton of cash. MISTAKE 7: Having dated records- Generating a great internet site is actually not the end of job, when that pertains to internet search engine optimisation. Purchasing things that coworkers have is actually another common oversight made by folks who are aiming to boost their appeal, specifically their professionalism at the workplace. Definitely take the idea that your kids are actually performing their finest, and also they'll know much faster about their blunders if they are in an environment that takes oversights. Viewpoint what occurred as an experience that is going to strengthen your actions as well as routines, thus you will not create the very same mistake once again. Acknowledging blunders suggests strength: Wanting to discover, go out on the edge, and also fall short, especially facing others, is a sign of a person which counts on herself and also her ability to prosper. Like I pointed out above, my most significant error after passing was tingling and also purchasing a vehicle too early. Thus allow me offer you a run-through of the 10 very most typical mistakes I find men creating when they initially approach a female - as well as this really isn't simply trainees - this puts on frequent people I monitor when I head out. If your blunder has induced somebody to lose count on you, come close to the person as well as provide an earnest apology. The Hynix courtroom describes the distinction between an error of law ... where the truths are recognized but the legal effects are not, or are actually felt to become various than they really are ...," Century Importers, Inc When opening their very own company is actually to in some way overlook to place aside a details finances for advertising and marketing, the first error companies bring in. As a matter of fact, life's finest trainings are actually commonly found out at awful opportunities and off the worst blunders. This insurance coverage is made to guard specialists and his employees against action resulting from injury, carelessness or even building harm. My Significant Excess fat Classical Wedding event is actually simply one of the greatest films ever before created concerning shut family members and their practices. Additionally, the defendant's reliance on any one of these sources have to possess been reasonable, much like mistake from simple fact. Upcoming time you think that you've slipped up, just smile as well as enjoy that you simply made a large deposit in to you experience account. This is much less complicated in a knowing culture than in a performance-focused lifestyle, where blunders are actually usually checked out a lot more severely. Many people bring in the mistake of certainly not safeguarding the pre-approved lendings prior to seeking houses.

2017-11(NOV)-21st---Tuesday.

2017-11(NOV)-21st---Tuesday.

I was NOT going to post today. But I've been awake and up since before dawn, and need to post this in case my shitty internet connection completely stuffs up again, as it has been doing. Andor the electrical power supply to this hellhole stuffs up again. It's almost so regular every year that its like a terrible calendar event.

The 1st of two rubbish trucks came along to this hellhole area early this morning. It emptied the rubbish bins in the streets.

I didn't wake up because I was comatose. I had no dreams. I only had a few hours terrible sleep.

Sam & Max were depserate to go outside so I had to get up. I had to get up in any case because otherwise our rubbish bins would be stolen by thieves as I've written about so many times.

The streets recycle bins were being emptied by a council truck as Sam & Max and myself were out the back and they were doing their desperate ablutions (both kinds) that I would have to clean up straight away. Thick clouds of flies everywhere.

Down at Fatguts aboriginal criminal household, toddlers ran out on the concrete driveway and watched the big rubbish truck going down the street and emptying bins. It's treated by the abos as a weekly kids entertainment event. Somebody there yelled/shrieked at them to keep away from the road but nobody walked out and stopped them. That is normal for that pit.

A small abo girl came out of there and struggled to take inside one of the emptied bins. (she was smaller than the bin). The other bin was still was full. She then struggled and pulled that one away too despite it not having yet been emptied. The abo's have no concept whatsoever that a garbage truck goes around next to the kerbs and empties bins of ALL neighbours, and NOT just especially for the abos. And the truck goes around in circuits and the truck when full goes away and empties it all and then comes back to continue what it was doing. This is all beyond the abo's understanding completely, as well as the the idiots and shitheads and criminals.

The newest neighbours of the unfenced household have been doing work planting plants in the front yard. But they have no idea that those plants can yet be dug up and stolen by the abo's, as has happened so many times in the past.

As they were doing that planting, barefoot abo toddlers, one wearing training pants shorts and the other just wearing a diaper and nothing else were walking along ON the road. An 'adult' abo woman was walking behind them. And they were all ON the road. They went through the intersection ON the road, and walked to the Koongamia shops ON the road.

Later in the morning as I was cleaning up and transporting dog messes into a dirt pit, there was VERY loud shouting coming from Fatguts abo criminal houseold. It got louder and louder. Criminal brats were bawling. More shouting. - No screaming though which was unusual because that's what normally goes on. The shouting and brats bawling got louder. Dunno what happened after that.

Innocent cars of course have been driving on the streets and going to the Koongamia shops. The local Koongamia school I expect is still doing schooling. At least for those who go to school. Unlike the criminals ones that live in the streets of this hellhole.

Been in a lot of pain.

Going back and laying down after I have my 'breakfast' at midday noon of just cereal. I need to give dear Sam and dear Max some of that too so they can have some milk. (I hope the milk is stil okay)

Max has earlier become angry and agressive and was building up to be vicious. The screaming/shrieking abos certainly are a cause of that which can be heard all about the streets.

More shit will go on with them today as always.

The inside of this hovel had become very hot and I had to bring in air from outside to try to 'cool' it down. Because there is NO wind at all, no cool air gets into this hovel. Water out of the COLD water taps just feels over-warm as if about to be hot. It is not COLD water. I can only give poor Sam & Max water out of the fridge that has been chilled for them to drink otherwise they would just have warm water all day.

My earlier breakfast was only part of a small cold tin of cheap tomato soup, eaten with pieces of plain bread. (Essentially bread & water.) Sam & Max got more than I did to kep them healthy. I don't matter and Fliss doesn't care or else she would have contacted me long ago. So much for her earnest absolute promise to keep in touch.

So far the streets have been 'quiet'. It's like a POLICE event has occured at the abo criminal households. I don't know if one has or not because Western Australian POLICE keep things VERY VERY quiet and unknown about.

But that quietness never lasts.

I want and need to go back to sleep, but I know that will ruin my sleep cycles (as pathetic as they are), and so I am forced to stay awake until later perhaps.

Bills are rolling in. The gas bill finally arrived yesterday a week or so after the meter was read outside which caused dear Sam and Max great distress at the intruder as the gas meter man read the thing and banged the sheet metal cabinet open and shut here and at other innocent peoples households.

Outside there is going to be a Swan Shire bulk collection (of residents stuff) from the street verges in about the first week of December. - And THAT is when the criminal aboriginals will go beserk AGAIN and go around dragging it all about like deranged animals, smashing everything and throwing it all on to the roads. - It's all happened before for the past 2 years every year (at it's worst) and it will happen again. I've written all about that before.

I expect it will be the newest innocent residents first real taste of the aboriginal criminals, even moreso than what they've had already. Then, let them then experience the soul destroying futility of trying to complain to authorities to get anything addressed about it. And they'll find that they themselves will get wronged and blamed for any and everything.

That is the nature of this hellhole of despair and death and suffering.

----------------------------------

Speaking of that above, the NEWS story of the aboriginal person murdered in Perth that I gave links to in my previous posts had a photo of the accused murderer. And he looks VERY much like one of the criminals that roams about this area. AND has been all about for years doing rampant crime.

But it maybe wasn't be the one I saw romaing about on the steets yesterday at this hellhole area because apparently the one in the NEWS said he was in court yesterday. Or maybe he was picked up and taken to court and then returned 'home'?) - But wouldn't they keep an accused murderer behind bars?

I've previously found a knife thrown into my yard by criminals (aboriginals?) and I contacted Police but they did noing at all about it, nor came and got the knife. I had no transport then. I told them that. - It all added to utter despair at this hellhole.

photo of the aboriginal murderer:---- http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-20/an-11-year-old-boy-charged-with-patrick-slaters-murder/9171070

WA NEWS:----------- Esplanade murder: Teen accused of killing Patrick Slater seen with bloodstained weapon, court told

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-11-20/teen-accused-of-esplanade-killing-seen-holding-bloody-weapon/9170990

----------------------------------

I love you dear Fliss and want to be be with you. Suffering so VERY much without you. So is dear Sam & Max. That is why poor Max is by himself again going back to being vicous AGAIN in his grief and suffering because this time of year reminds him so much of the horrors of you leaving and abandoning us all to die. - People like to try to convince themseleves that dogs don't have memories and feelings and emotions, but they DO. You know that. And they too have terrible memories of being abandoned when their Mummy left them to die. - I love you dear Fliss and want to be be with you so much to stay with you.

Well, at least it hasn’t been confirmed yet, only heavily implied (honestly Mutsurie has been implied since the Auction arc)…sad thing is that back when Mutsuki was likable I used to kind of ship it. But now…

Ishida, bring Saiko back.

Urie deserves to love someone who truly cares for him and could actually give him a happy, stable life/relationship (because Saiko is totally filling the ‘Sasaki’ role for the Q squad now that Ken’s gone).

Not this murderous angsty yandere who’s very much obsessed with somebody else.

Also, I’m getting a bit tired of Kaneki making everybody’s relationships difficult. First it was Kanae loves Tsukiyama but Tsukiyama loves Kaneki but Kaneki loves Touka, and then Kanae DIED, and now Ishida’s going to replace that with Urie loves Mutsuki but Mutsuki loves Kaneki but Kaneki loves Touka? No.

The only thing worse than that would be Saiko loves Urie but Urie loves Mutsuki but Mutsuki loves Kaneki and so on and so forth… I seriously hope Ishida won’t do that. Not only would it be terrible for my feels, it would also be kind of ridiculous.

Though that freaking centipede was hands down the worst part of this chapter tbh

I’m really, really happy Yoriko’s alive, but this isn’t 100% fluff either because there are three questions I have now:

Since Yoriko appears to have both of her hands, whose hand did Mutsuki show Touka? (I just remembered that Torso cut off Mutsuki’s hands and put a wedding/engagement ring on one of them…ew. This is getting creepy)

Who was it that called Yoriko while she was out shopping?

Do the other two questions have anything to do with how somber Yoriko looks at the wedding, or is that just because of nerves (she does smile later on when throwing her bouquet, but…)?

(And yeah, Urie has known Mutsuki is biologically female since the auction arc: I got confused about this too because of weird translations, but apparently he smelled their blood and realized it was from menstruation and not an injury. For them, Mutuski being AFAB is an ‘I know you know I know’ kind of situation)

(Aww that’s so sweet! Tysm <3 Wish I had a Shuu irl…I got diagnosed with SA earlier this week so things are difficult over here ;-;

Once we got close, though, Shuu’s dramatic behavior might start to trigger my sarcastic/teasing side…like,

“Ah, so you’re using watercolors? How lovely! What are you painting? Is it me? Well, of course it’s me, your one true-”

“Actually, it’s Yomo. I’m kinda into the strong, silent types.”

“…What are you implying, love…?”)

Luna/Urie (Lurie? Uruna?) HCs:

-Urie’s attitude around you is a bit like this:

Urie around other people: (Total scum. I can feel myself getting stupider whenever I talk to you) Of course, sir. You are truly setting a great example.

Urie around you: (I was going to work more but then I remembered I haven’t spent much time with you this week…ugh, this is like those cheesy games Yonebayashi likes to play) Be quiet, I’m trying to exercise. I suggest you do the same (oh ***** wrong answer)- just to clarify, it’s not because of your looks, it’s because you have to get stronger.

-He’s super organized and has a great memory so you can just text him when you’ve lost/can’t remember something (‘Urie, where’s my notebook?’ 'second drawer in ur desk’).

-Though he’s more comfortable with texting, he occasionally leaves short sticky notes for you when he’s busy. Usually it’s serious but maybe not quite flattering stuff like 'there are bags under your eyes. The average human of your age requires at least 7.5 hours of sleep per night' but there’s also the rare, awkwardly sweet note- 'I’ll try to be back soon’,'stay safe’,'Your hair looks nice’ (when you cut it when he was at work and he came home when you were already asleep)

-Cookie’s actually nervous about making this relationship work and the sticky notes were inspired by advice from the internet.

-when it comes to school and studying, he’s extremely impressed with how many things you’re managing to do at once.Though he usually doesn’t express this openly he definitely lets you know when he’s proud of you.

-He helps you with Japanese when you need it.

-in social situations like parties, you usually stick together and don’t talk much to anybody else unless you’re with the other Q squad members (I think I remember you mentioning you’re an introvert?). Though it might not look like it, there’s a lot of banter in these situations and you almost always have fun together.

-Urie secretly likes your 'weird, slightly pervy’ jokes

-He probably has a secret sketchbook with dozens of pictures of you in it. His face when you somehow find it is priceless.

-At some point you turn him into Hamiltrash. When you try to tease him by asking him to rap Guns and Ships, he disappoints you by rapping the whole song perfectly. He also relates to 'The Room Where it Happens’ on a personal level.

-He doesn’t understand your manga/anime obsession. Especially when it comes to Love Live- one day you get him to watch the anime with you and he remains poker-faced the whole time (honestly he looks more interested in playing with your hair than watching the show). In the end, you agree to disagree.

Until a week later, when you discover Urie’s been secretly listening to 'Storm in Lover’.

(I’ll stop rambling now…I admit that a lot of these were slightly crack-y, though I did try my best to throw in some fluff and serious HCs as well ^^;; I hope you like it! :D)

Again, thank you so much for being so nice and supportive <333 (I say that a lot, don’t I XD) I actually tried out the watercolors yesterday, and though I messed up my picture by adding too much water (I’ve never actually learned to use watercolors and I started painting with them this month), the paper is actually pretty good! I was right when I guessed it wasn’t really watercolor paper, but it wrinkles much less than my other sketchbooks :D

but wait, 'Huge airhead with the memory of a goldfish’? Are you sure you aren’t talking about me? I don’t really have a bad memory, but I only seem to remember the things I WANT to remember LOL for example, I remember almost everything about my various fandoms, but sometimes I find that I have no idea where I put my glasses when I took them off barely a minute ago (plot twist: they were on the shelf in front of me the whole time and I couldn’t see them because of my terrible eyesight. Yes, this has happened before. Several times, in fact).

Burr would later be unable to look Lee in the eye lol. Seriously though, I ship this a lot. Burr is way too shippable ;-; Remember when I said I ship him with Eliza? The fic 'True and Earnest’ on ao3 is what really made me ship them but still (I totally recommend that fic you get the chance to read it because it’s just perfect. So sweet and beautiful <3 plus, there’s some implied Angelica/Alex at the end so everybody gets to be happy! :D)

btw, just found some fanart of Burr titled 'Aaron Burr has strong opinions’

Burr in the picture: 'Personally, I love things…

…AND stuff.’

And they call Jefferson a francophile. At least we know he knows where France is.

Last note of this ridiculously disorganized message:

I just wanted to ask, are you into the MCU fandom? Because I’m very deep into it…I haven’t watched the Iron Man trilogy or the Guardians of the Galaxy movies yet (though I have the latter on my computer and am planning to watch it soon) but I’ve watched almost all of the Captain America movies and all of the Thor and Avengers movies.

Honestly I have 0 problems shipping Cookie with anyone as long as they’re mentally stable. Hell, I’ll even ship him with Shuu as long as it means Urie would be happy. The amount of suffering in TG is starting to be too much. There is a fine line between ‘a little angst to keep the plot moving’ and ‘bucketful of angst because everyone shall suffer for no particular reason’. 

I read the new chapter myself (I always seem to do after you update me on the happenings hahah) and I am screaming. It’s like Ishida put a huge ‘No happiness allowed’ sign on his desk and looks at it every time he’s thinking of how to advance the plot. Sigh.

Honestly, it’s so heavily implied, I consider it canon. ‘I wasn’t going to come, but then I heard you’d be here’? Come on, Urie would never say that unless he really liked someone. 

Oh, what if Sasaki/Kaneki is Urie’s true love! I mean Saiko=Sasaki and he wanted to see Mutsuki since they might know about Kaneki’s whereabouts… Don’t mind me, I’m just trying to think of something, anything that doesn’t involve Mutsuki/Urie because that has become my ultimate NOTP.  But Saiko/Urie is very attractive…

Everyone loves Kaneki. Ishida lied to us, this is actually some sort of twisted harem/reverse harem manga that’s only full of suffering for the lols. When the end of the manga comes, it’ll turn out this is a stage play/movie/dream and that everyone is Kaneki’s classmates who have a crush on him, but he loves Touka, whilst she doesn’t give two shits about him. Yeah, that’d be a nice end.  Waaait a minute. That implies Urie will die ;-; Nooooooo, come one, the cookie deserves happiness, his life is a big enough shitstain already. 

The love relationships form a centipede. It’s like this a→b→c→d→e→f→g→h→i→j→k→l→m→n→o→Kaneki. 

I was studying biology this morning, and passed the Chilopoda unit. GUESS WHICH BUG WAS THERE. I WAS THIS CLOSE TO SCREAMING OUT LOUD BECAUSE FUCK CENTIPEDES.

Oh, those are good questions! Here are my thoughts:

a) Maybe it was Mutsuki’s hand? But the hand looked…. fresh, in lack of better expression. Who knows, maybe Mutsuki just chopped off a random person’s hand to use as bait. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise me. 

b) I checked the panel, and Yoriko didn’t look alarmed or confused when she turned around, so maybe it was a random person she knew? Or someone from the CCG she met before? (what would they be doing in a wedding dress  shop, tho?)

c) I’ll choose to believe it was simply wedding nerves, because if it wasn’t the nervous, it was something else more sinister and there’s already enough suffering.

Oh, right! Now that you mention it, I remember! Thanks for reminding me ^^

That can’t be easy for you… If you ever want to talk, I’m here ^^ And I’m very sure Shuu would be persistent in getting to know you, yet he’d be careful not to trigger anything. Once he’d realise you have that teasing side, I’m sure he’d be a lot happier, because ‘HOLY SHIT EVANS OPENED UP TO ME HELL YEAAAAAAAAAAH’. He’d get a bit pouty if you’d tease him, tho. Of course, that’d make it even funnier. 

MY HEART! A critical hit. You really know how to pull those off.

Here’s an accurate representation of me while reading them:

Urie perfectly rapping Guns and Ships is now my favourite thing, especially considering he’d do it with a perfectly straight face. Like ‘oh this? this is nothing’ while everyone stares at him like -_-

I’m pretty sure that Storm in Lover came from my ‘the names can be weird af’, but you chose the one which is sung by the girl that I’m sure would be his absolute favourite.  whoops, my idol trash side is showing again.

Thank you so much for this ;-; It’ll serve as motivation for me to survive next week which is the last one this school year with exams (and they’re the hardest ones, whooo). THEN I’M DONE AND CAN WATCH TONS OF ANIME AND REDA MANGA AND WRITE AND SLEEP AND RELAX IN GENERAL BECAUSE NO MORE SCHOOL FUCKING FINALLY.

We all make mistakes when trying something for the first time, so it’s completely normal that you added too much water ^^ Now you know how much you should(n’t) add the next time you draw :p  Ah, that’s great to hear! Now you have somewhere to draw where it won’t be as bad as if you painted on normal paper.

We used to paint a lot with watercolours and temperas in elementary school, and my drawing always ended up being disfigured blobs of colour. So I’m sure yours are perfect ^^

The useless things I usually end up remembering are usually animal facts (and, for some ??? reason, heights and blood types of characters. don’t question it). Here are my proudest goldfish moments: Search for glasses for 15-20 minutes only to realise they were on top of my head all the time. Thinking I lost my ID only for it to be buried deep inside my bad. Finding a fork in my bed (I’m not joking, I somehow managed to leave a fork there for some twisted reason). And my favourite: Being late and looking for my shoe for around 5 mins to realise I already put it on. Yeah, I’m not very smart. 

Yes, Burr is very shippable. Musical Burr, at least. I ship him with Angelica, Eliza, Ham (to some degree) and Lee. Man, that’s a lot of Burr ships. 

Ask him a question: it glances off, he obfuscates, he dances

Honestly, no so much ^^;; I mean, I’ve watched the Iron Man (and went through the obligatory Robert Downey Jr. fangirl phase, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Guardians of the Galaxy, Captain America (1st part) and Ant Man, but that’s it ^^;; However, I was planning on having a marathon during the summer, because I like superhero movies (that probably explains my obsession with BnHA which is a superhero manga.)

This just in from Cohesion Arts

New Post has been published on http://cohesionarts.com/2017/01/02/whered-paul-go/

Where'd Paul Go??

I can’t really know if anybody besides me has been asking that question, but if you’re one of the regulars around here (the numbers may not be legion, but I know they are sincere…) you may have been wondering why the frequency of posts to this site dropped off dramatically in the second half of last year (2016).

At least, I hope somebody noticed, and even if nobody did notice, I’m going to attempt to explain the absence.

So, where did Paul go?

He sorta went into hiding for awhile. His innate tendency to be reclusive and withdrawn when things “go all pear-shaped” got the better of him for several months.

Or, rather, maybe, he just had the wind kicked out of him, and he’s been trying to catch his breath.

Or maybe he’s been thrown into the middle of a lake and is treading water, trying to figure which shore to swim to.

Yeah, that’s it. Treading water.

Chalk it all up to disruption on a personally cosmic scale.

– – – – – – –

I remember exactly when the fabric of my universe started to tear: April 29, 2016.

Ann and I were in Portland, Oregon. She got back in the car and said,

“They want me to start August 1st.”

At that moment, the Big Bang Theory went into full reverse and my Universe started to implode….

We were in Portland to visit “the kids” – that would be Ann’s two sons, James and Robert (they are by no means “kids” – I can never remember their exact ages but it’s somewhere in the vicinity of 40 years old), her daughter-in-law – Robert’s wife, Melissa – and, more notably, Robert and Melissa’s baby daughter, Ann’s first – and quite possibly her only – grandchild, Juniper Rae.

Juniper Rae

We’d gone to Portland ostensibly for Juniper’s first birthday. She was born in May of 2015, and we’d both flown up to Portland for that; Ann had gotten there within hours of the baby’s arrival, I followed a week later. Photos here.

Now we were back for the first birthday, and Major Changes were afoot. They’d started in earnest the previously fall, but really the fuse started burning toward an inexorable explosion as soon as Melissa’s pregnancy was announced back in the summer of 2014.

The fuse started burning with that announcement, but the first cherry bomb didn’t go off until a year later, when Ann let me know that sooner or later she was moving to Oregon. And that I could come… if I wanted. It was all about being a grandparent. Which concept I might not have been sufficiently enthusiastic about, owing in part perhaps to the fact that I’d never met the prerequisite of being an actual parent myself.

“I’m going to find a job and I might just pack up and move,” she said, back in November of 2015. “If you’d like to come with me that’s great. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”

Juniper was about 6 months old when Ann threw down that gauntlet.

Now here we were in Portland roughly another six months later, and the prophecy was coming true.

Prior to flying out to Portland for Juni’s birthday, Ann had started making… arrangements. Ann is a nurse, and for the past nearly two decades she has worked for a multinational corporation, a health care company that has offices and clinics all over the country. Prior to our trip to Portland, she started scanning the company’s bulletin boards to see what sort of opportunities she could find in the Portland area.

Sure enough, there was a new clinic opening in a Portland suburb, and Ann arranged an interview.

We flew to Portland on Thursday, April 28. The next morning I dropped her off for her interview and went off to a Starbucks nearby. She sent me a text when the interview was over, I went back to pick her up, she got back in the car and said “they want me to start on August 1.”

Cue the Big Bang Theory, only set it in reverse….

*

I have lived in Nashville (OK, I’m technically in Pegram, in the next county over, but who’s counting?) since February, 1994. It’ll be 23 years I’ve lived here come next Valentines Day.

That’s more than twice as long as I’ve lived anywhere in my whole life. When I was a kid I lived in Rumson, New Jersey, from age 0 until I was almost 12, when my mother and (new) step father moved us to a suburb in New Jersey that was closer to his office in New York. I also lived in Hawaii from 1980 until 1994, though the last two years of that residency was spent mostly in Los Angeles, going back and forth to Maui.

(Insert obscure Pop Culture reference here:

They even brought a neon sign!

In Hawaii, I lived near a line in an Eagles song:

You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina Just like the missionaries did so many years ago They even brought a neon sign ‘Jesus is Coming’, Brought the white man’s burden down, brought the white man’s reign

Yeah, that’s what I did in 1980. And I drove by that neon sign almost every day.)

So by any calculus, I’ve lived here in Middle Tennessee longer than I’ve lived anywhere. When people ask me “where you from” I will make a big deal about being from ‘Springsteen Country – Monmouth County, New Jersey.” But then I will tell them, “but I’ve lived in Nashville longer than I’ve lived anywhere, so I’m from here now….”

At the time Ann was living in Austin.  We’d met at a music festival in Texas the previous spring, and we maintained a “long distance relationship” until January of 1998, when she pulled up stakes and moved to Tennessee – to be with me.

Her nursing career had begun only a couple of years before. She was divorced (twice, but we don’t have to go into the second one) from the father of her two sons, who were in their early 20s and living with her and doing to school in Austin. When she decided to move to Nashville, she set ‘the boys’ out on their own and put her house up for rent. Then she put everything she owned in a U-Haul and with a friend made the trek from Texas to Tennessee.

The apartment I was living in at the time was tiny, and mostly filled with the CDs for songs.com – the online music service I’d started two years earlier. So Ann got her own apartment in the same complex where I lived in Bellevue, and for the next 18 months or so, we “lived together in separate apartments…”

In the spring of 1999 we bought a house together. When I’d first come to Nashville in 1994 real estate was still quite affordable, but by the time we started looking around in 1999 prices within Nashville / Davidson County were already inflating out of reach (never mind how much farther they’ve gotten out of reach since).  So we found a charming little ‘ersatz Cape Cod’ on an acre of land on a quiet cul-de-sac in Pegram, one exit off I-40 west of the last exit in Davidson County.

We put both or our names on the deed, and moved in together in May of 1999.

I sold that Internet music business later that year. At the very peak of the Internet Bubble Gaylord Entertainment came knocking and offered us stupid money for a tiny business. My partners (Tom Kimmel and Michael Camp) and I pondered the proposition for about 15 seconds and said “OK.” We closed the deal in December ’99, and the first call I made after banking the proceeds was to the bank that held our mortgage, which I paid off.

Perhaps due to some family history (my father died when I was 7), I’ve never been one for making or pursuing goals in life. But the one dream/fantasy/goal I’d ever had as to live in a paid-for house. I notched that one at the end of 1999. By the time that happened, Ann and I had already been living there for about six months.

Ann and I got married in September, 2000. We went on a two-week honeymoon to England and Germany. We got rained on at Ludlow Castle in the Cotswolds, and went through crazy King Ludwig II’s Fantasyland Castle in Bavaria. Then we returned to hour shared house in Pegram and settled in “for the duration.”

Once again proving that “everything is permanent… for as long as it lasts.”

*

Here is where, in the first draft of this reminiscence, I started to go into some detail about how Ann and I had moved in to the house together and the considerable (and costly!) improvements we made over the years. How the deal with Gaylord Entertainment went south within a year, and how I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I grow up ever since.

How I went into a form of hiding in the days and weeks after Ann departed.

But that’s all a lot more detail than I need to go into for the purposes of this testimonial. Maybe another time…

Instead, we return to Portland in April and May. Ann and I stayed there about a week. Juni had her first birthday party, attended by children and their parents from Rob and Melissa’s community of friends. I took pictures.

And the wheels started turning toward Ann’s departure. I say “Ann’s departure” because from the moment she got back in the car, it was obvious that she was moving to Portland… and I was not. At least, not yet….

We came back to Nashville, and almost immediately, Ann started pulling things together and packing things up. Over the ensuing several weeks, things that we had shared for years started disappearing. Things like the steak knives we’d used since 1999. She stopped feeding the birds in the backyard. It was always little things, but it was little things that added up to a big thing.

If you’ve read this far, I think you get the gist.

Ann packed up her Subaru SUV and drove off with her friend Evelyn (Thelma and Louise!!) and left for Portland on July 20.

http://cohesionarts.com/art/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IMG_0805-1.m4v

  Amid all the other cosmic/global upheavals of the past 12 months, I have been going through my own fundamental disruption and realignment.

I have been to Portland three times in the 5-1/2 months since Ann moved there. She has yet to visit Nashville.

And I have been, for the most part, creatively inert. I haven’t written much, I haven’t taken any pictures, I haven’t played much guitar. I’ve posted only a few things to this blog, and there hasn’t been a “Weekly Digest” since the week before the election.   What little output I have made has been pretty much  confined to Facebook – which lends it self to short, quick, snarky diatribes that don’t require a whole lot of actual thought.

Maybe I’ve been quiet because it’s hard to keep creative energy flowing when all the energy you have is just going into riding the waves of an emotional roller coaster, when it takes all your strength to just hold yourself together when it feels like the world around you is falling apart. Like I told my therapist recently, “I’m exhausted.”

For as long as it has been – too long, really – since my business blew up in 2000, I have fully expected that I would find something to do that would spring from my own creative energy. First I wrote a book and got it published. Thinking I’d found my new calling as a “biographer of obscure 20th century scientists” I went on to write another. That turned into six years going down a rabbit hole in which there was no fucking rabbit.

After that, I turned my attention to photography, and even my therapist thought I was “on to something” when I first started creating the “Portals of Stone” from my trip to the UK in the spring of 2013. I started exhibiting at a gallery in the Arcade. I tried to own my identity as “an artist.” But mostly what I got was a first-hand education in how truly difficult that is.

Long and short of it, really nothing I’ve undertaken over the past 15 years has come to fruition anything like that company I started back in 1995. I’ve spent all that time as “an entrepreneur between startups” or “an author between books.” Or a photographer wandering among medieval ruins, looking for continuity in time and space…

But once I was living alone, I finally found a partial answer to the question I’ve been asking myself at 4:00AM every morning for the past 15 years, “what will I do when I grow up?”

I finally broke down and got a real “job.”

For the past four months, I have been working for Apple, at their store in the Green Hills Mall in Nashville, where I am a “product specialist.” It’s a glorified title for a retail salesperson, but I rather like the work and I seem well-suited for it.

I really have prided myself, over the course of my life generally, but of the past decade-and-half specifically, for never having worked for any giant corporations. The two previous exceptions where a brief stint as a securities peddler for the Maui branch of a Wall Street brokerage, and then my 10 months as an ‘executive’ for Gaylord Entertainment.

Neither of those situations was a particularly good fit. The Wall Street thing dissolved when I decided instead to go to Los Angeles and study music. At Gaylord, I was “the New York Jewish bull in Gaylord’s Southern Christian China shop.”

But as giant corporations go, Apple is a good one – at least from the perspective of a rank-and-file employee at one of their retail stores. The environment is stimulating and supportive; the hours are flexible and predicated as much on my own schedule  as theirs.  Since I get to spend the hours there talking about products that I use personally, that I know almost inside and out, it’s just the most natural fit I was ever going to find. And given what else was going on in my life when I applied for the job, I am grateful that they looked at my resume (…”What, you haven’t really had a job for 15 years?…) and said “OK.”

So for the past few months, I have been spending most of my waking hours seeking an unexpected refuge in the form of a conventional “day job” that I actually look forward to going to every day. As challenging as some of the customer interactions can be sometimes (“…Whaddya mean you don’t know your password…???”), it’s always a bit of a let down when it’s time to leave. And I really like the person I turn into when I go out on the floor.

So a lot of my time and energy over the past 4 months has gone into adapting to a very different reality from everything that went before.

– – – – –

Earlier today I opened WordPress for the first time in weeks (months?) and posted two items. And I’ve been writing this gem all day. It’s literally the first time I have spent a whole day in my own creative space in several months.

So maybe there is something to this “dawning of a new year” business, even if it does mean that Donald-Fucking-Trump is going to be President for the next four years (or until we nuclear-annihilate ourselves, which ever comes first).

It feels like the fog is lifting. That maybe there’s some light at the end of this tunnel, though I suspect there could be more tunnel before I actually get to the light.

This will do for now.

But that’s where Paul went.

This just in from Cohesion Arts

New Post has been published on http://cohesionarts.com/2017/01/02/whered-paul-go/

Where'd Paul Go??

I can’t really know if anybody besides me has been asking that question, but if you’re one of the regulars around here (the numbers may not be legion, but the affection is sincere…) you may have been wondering why the frequency of posts to this site dropped off dramatically in the second half of last year (2016).

At least, I hope somebody noticed, and even if nobody did notice, I’m going to attempt to explain the absence.

So, where did Paul go?

He sorta went into hiding for awhile. His innate tendency to be reclusive and withdrawn when things “go all pear-shaped” got the better of him for several months.

Or, rather, maybe, he just had the wind kicked out of him, and he’s been trying to catch his breath.

Or maybe he’s been thrown into the middle of a lake and is treading water, trying to figure which shore to swim to.

Yeah, that’s it. Treading water.

Chalk it all up to disruption on a personally cosmic scale.

– – – – – – –

I remember exactly when the fabric of my universe started to tear: April 29, 2016.

Ann and I were in Portland, Oregon. She got back in the car and said,

“They want me to start August 1st.”

At that moment, the Big Bang Theory went into full reverse and my Universe started to implode….

We were in Portland to visit “the kids” – that would be Ann’s two sons, James and Robert (they are by no means “kids” – I can never remember their exact ages but it’s somewhere in the vicinity of 40 years old), her daughter-in-law – Robert’s wife, Melissa – and, more notably, Robert and Melissa’s baby daughter, Ann’s first – and quite possibly her only – grandchild, Juniper Rae.

Juniper Rae

We’d gone to Portland ostensibly for Juniper’s first birthday. She was born in May of 2015, and we’d both flown up to Portland for that; Ann had gotten there within hours of the baby’s arrival, I followed a week later.

Now we were back for the first birthday, and Major Changes were afoot. They’d started in earnest the previously fall, but really the fuse started burning toward an inexorable explosion as soon as Melissa’s pregnancy was announced back in the summer of 2014.

The fuse started burning with that announcement, but the first cherry bomb didn’t go off until a year later, when Ann let me know that sooner or later she was moving to Oregon. And that I could come… if I wanted. It was all about being a grandparent. Which concept I might have been insufficiently enthusiastic about, owing in part to never having met the prerequisite of being an actual parent myself.

“I’m going to find a job and I might just pack up and move,” she said, back in November of 2015. “If you’d like to come with me that’s great. If you don’t, that’s fine, too.”

Juniper was about 6 months old when Ann threw down that gauntlet.

Now here we were in Portland six months later, and the prophecy was coming true.

Prior to flying out to Portland for Juni’s birthday, Ann had started making… arrangements. Ann is a nurse, and for the past nearly two decades she has worked for a multinational health care company that has offices and clinics all over the country. Prior to our trip to Portland, she started scanning the company’s bulletin boards to see what sort of opportunities she could find in the Portland area.

Sure enough, there was a new clinic opening in a Portland suburb, and Ann arranged an interview.

We flew to Portland on Thursday, April 28. The next morning I dropped her off for her interview and went off to a Starbucks nearby. She sent me a text when the interview was over, I went back to pick her up, she got back in the car and said “they want me to start on August 1.”

Cue the Big Bang Theory, only set it in reverse….

*

I have lived in Nashville (OK, I’m technically in Pegram, in the next county over, but who’s counting?) since February, 1994. It’ll be 23 years I’ve lived here come next Valentines Day.

That’s more than twice as long as I’ve lived anywhere in my whole life. When I was a kid I lived in Rumson, New Jersey, from age 0 until I was almost 12, when my mother and (new) step father moved us to a suburb in New Jersey that was closer to his office in New York. I also lived in Hawaii from 1980 until 1994, though the last two years of that residency was spent mostly in Los Angeles, going back and forth to Maui.

(Insert obscure Pop Culture reference here:

They even brought a neon sign!

In Hawaii, I lived near a line in an Eagles song:

You can leave it all behind and sail to Lahaina Just like the missionaries did so many years ago They even brought a neon sign ‘Jesus is Coming’, Brought the white man’s burden down, brought the white man’s reign…

Yeah, that’s what I did in 1980. And I drove by that neon sign almost every day.)

So by any calculus, I’ve lived here in Middle Tennessee longer than I’ve lived anywhere. When people ask me “where are you from” I will make a big deal about being from ‘Springsteen Country – Monmouth County, New Jersey.” But then I will tell them, “but I’ve lived in Nashville longer than I’ve lived anywhere, so I’m from here now….”

At the time Ann was living in Austin.  We’d met at a music festival in Texas the previous spring, and we maintained a “long distance relationship” until January of 1998, when she pulled up stakes and moved to Tennessee – to be with me.

Her nursing career had begun only a couple of years before. She was divorced (twice, but we don’t have to go into the second one) from the father of her two sons, who were in their early 20s and living with her and going to school in Austin. When she decided to move to Nashville, she set ‘the boys’ out on their own and put her house up for rent. Then she put everything she owned in a U-Haul and with a friend made the trek from Texas to Tennessee.

The apartment I was living in at the time was tiny, and mostly filled with the CDs for songs.com – the online music service I’d started two years earlier. So Ann got her own apartment in the same complex where I lived in Bellevue, and for the next 18 months or so, we “lived together in separate apartments…”

In the spring of 1999 we bought a house together. When I’d first come to Nashville in 1994, real estate was still quite affordable, but by the time we started looking around in 1999 prices within Nashville / Davidson County were already inflating out of reach (never mind how much farther they’ve gotten out of reach since).  So we found a charming little ‘ersatz Cape Cod’ on an acre of land on a quiet cul-de-sac in Pegram, one exit off I-40, west of the last exit in Davidson County.

We put both or our names on the deed, and moved in together in May of 1999.

I sold that Internet music business later that year. At the very peak of the Internet Bubble Gaylord Entertainment came knocking and offered us stupid money for a tiny business. My partners (Tom Kimmel and Michael Camp) and I pondered the proposition for about 15 seconds and said “OK.” We closed the deal in December ’99, and the first call I made after banking the proceeds was to the bank that held our mortgage, which I paid off.

Perhaps due to some family history (my father died when I was 7), I’ve never been one for making or pursuing goals in life. But the one dream/fantasy/goal I’d ever had as to live in a paid-for house. I notched that one at the end of 1999. By the time that happened, Ann and I had already been living there for about six months.

I went to work as a mid-level executive for Gaylord, still running my old company but now leashed to the prerogatives of young and stupid Corporate Overlords.  I watched as the whole thing ground slowly into digital dust.

Ann and I  got married in September, 2000 and went on a two-week honeymoon to England and Germany. We got rained on at Ludlow Castle in the Cotswolds, and went through crazy King Ludwig II’s Fantasyland Castle in Bavaria. Then we returned to our shared house in Pegram and settled in “for the duration.”

Once again proving that “everything is permanent… for as long as it lasts.”

*

Here is where, in the first draft of this reminiscence, I started to go into some detail about how Ann and I had moved in to the house together and the considerable (and costly!) improvements we made over the years. How the deal with Gaylord Entertainment went off the rails the day after we returned from our honeymoon, and how I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do when I grow up ever since.

But that’s all a lot more detail than I need to go into now. Maybe another time…

Instead, we return to Portland in April and May. Ann and I stayed there about a week. Juni had her first birthday party, attended by children and their parents from Rob and Melissa’s community of friends. I took pictures.

And the wheels started turning toward Ann’s departure. I say “Ann’s departure” because from the moment she got back in the car, it was obvious that she was moving to Portland… and I was not. At least, not yet….

We came back to Nashville, and almost immediately, Ann started pulling things together and packing things up. Over the ensuing several weeks, things that we had shared for years started disappearing. Things like the steak knives we’d used since 1999. She stopped feeding the birds in the backyard. It was always little things, but it was little things that added up to a Big Thing.

If you’ve read this far, I think you get the gist.

Ann packed up her Subaru SUV and drove off with her friend Evelyn (Thelma and Louise!!) and left for Portland on July 20.

http://cohesionarts.com/art/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/IMG_0805-1.m4v

  And so, amid all the other cosmic/global upheavals of the past 12 months, I have been going through my own fundamental disruption and realignment.

I have been to Portland three times in the 5-1/2 months since Ann moved there. She has yet to visit Nashville.

And I have been, for the most part, creatively inert. I haven’t written much, I haven’t taken any pictures, I haven’t played much guitar. I’ve posted only a few things to this blog, and there hasn’t been a “Weekly Digest” since the week before the election.   What little output I have made has been pretty much  confined to Facebook – which lends it self to short, quick, snarky diatribes that don’t require a whole lot of actual thought.

Maybe I’ve been quiet because it’s hard to keep creative energy flowing when all the energy you have is just going into riding the waves of an emotional roller coaster, when it takes all your strength to just hold yourself together when it feels like the world around you is falling apart. Like I told my therapist recently, “I’m exhausted.”

For as long as it has been – too long, really – since my business blew up in 2000, I have fully expected that I would find something to do that would spring from my own creative energy. First I wrote a book and got it published. Thinking I’d found my new calling as a “biographer of obscure 20th century scientists” I went on to write another. That turned into six years going down a rabbit hole in which there was no fucking rabbit.

After that, I turned my attention to photography, and even my therapist thought I was “on to something” when I first started creating the “Portals of Stone” from my trip to the UK in the spring of 2013. I started exhibiting at a gallery in the Arcade. I tried to own my identity as “an artist.” But mostly what I got was a first-hand education in how truly difficult that is.

Long and short of it, nothing I’ve undertaken over the past 15 years has come to fruition anything like that company I started back in 1995. I’ve spent all that time as “an entrepreneur between startups” or “an author between books.” Or a photographer wandering among medieval ruins, looking for continuity in time and space…

But once I was living alone, I finally found a partial answer to the question I’ve been asking myself at 4:00AM every morning for the past 15 years, “what will I do when I grow up?”

I finally broke down and got a “real job.”

For the past four months, I have been working for Apple, at their store in the Green Hills Mall in Nashville, where I am a “product specialist.” It’s a glorified title for a retail salesperson, but I rather like the work and I seem well-suited for it.

I really have prided myself, over the course of my life generally, but of the past decade-and-half specifically, for never having worked for any giant corporations. The two previous exceptions where a brief stint as a securities peddler for the Maui branch of a Wall Street brokerage, and then my 10 months as an ‘executive’ for Gaylord Entertainment.

Neither of those situations was a particularly good fit. The Wall-Street-in-Hawaii thing dissolved when I decided instead to go to Los Angeles and study music. At Gaylord, I was “the New York Jewish bull in Gaylord’s Southern Christian China shop.”

But as giant corporations go, Apple is a good one – at least from the perspective of a rank-and-file employee at one of their retail stores. The environment is stimulating and supportive; the hours are flexible and predicated as much on my own schedule  as theirs.  Since I get to spend the hours there talking about products that I use personally, that I know almost inside and out, it’s just the most natural fit I was ever going to find. And given what else was going on in my life when I applied for the job, I am grateful that they looked at my resume (…”What, you haven’t really had a job for 15 years?…) and said “OK.”

So for the past few months, I have been spending most of my waking hours finding an unexpected refuge in the form of a conventional “day job” that I actually look forward to going to every day. As challenging as some of the customer interactions can be sometimes (“…Whaddya mean you don’t know your password…???”), it’s always a bit of a let down when it’s time to leave. And I really like the person I turn into when I go out on the floor.

So a lot of my time and energy over the past 4 months has gone into adapting to a very different reality from everything that went before.

*

Yesterday, I opened WordPress for the first time in weeks (months?) and posted two items. I spent the rest of the day writing this gem. It’s literally the first time I have spent a whole day in my own creative space in several months.

So maybe there is something to this “dawning of a new year” business, even if it does mean that Donald-Fucking-Trump is going to be President for the next four years (or until we nuclear-annihilate ourselves, which ever comes first).

It feels like the fog is lifting.  Like I’m finally starting to come out of a self-induced creative coma.

Maybe there’s some light at the end of this tunnel – though I suspect there could be more tunnel before I actually get to the light.

This will do for now.

Anyway, that’s where Paul went.