Thought Of The Morning: Isn't It Odd When Conservatives Have This Incredibly Strict View On What A Woman

I saw a city die

However dramatic we make death out to be, really, a human death is quite easy. Your heart stops. Once. One kind of death for everyone.

Have you ever seen a city die? It's not one death. It's uncountable. A tree so big you can't watch its fall. Like you can't watch the sun travel. There it is. You get distracted. Something flashes on your wall. You look out. It is gone.

A city's deaths are very varied. Some are gardens dying. Some gardens don't die, but really they do. Really, they're dead.

Some are wild trees dying. The ones we watered by mistake, or by a thread of benevolence. Strung through palms and generations, maybe. A collective nurturing, and every solitary splash thought it was alone. They die, until they become the kind of sticks who's snaps are anonymous. There is nothing here.

Some are people leaving. There are a lot of those. But if you watch people leave, you notice they were the ones who came in the first place. Not the ones who already were.

The ones who already were always are. They are the city. Killing an elephant takes rounds of lead to the heart. Still it takes hours untill it falls, days until it stops breathing. It's not easy, killing a dragon. Those that are must be killed differently. They do not leave. But you can make their home hostile to them. Twist and contort it until those that are have no place to be. They find a new spot, of course. A new city. Who's life blood they aren't.

A city dies a hundred deaths. Like watching someone assemble a puzzle, it's not dramatic enough to watch the process. Like sand falling. Suddenly the glass is empty.

The problem is the body. It's our symbol, vessel and object of death. Without it we don't recognise decay.

Death of a city is the rarest thing you'll see. The bigger, the less you see it. The most imposing, the less you'll watch. The more lights, the less you notice the void.

Because it's a lie. And when you notice. Finally notice,

all you see are the whisps; floating. No sound. Unwatched. No meaning in silence. Nothing. Pathetic in the way they outline whatever isn't there anymore.

Btw, non UK users here, would be genuinely super helpful if you could boost posts relating to the far right violence happening and also counter protests. A lot of UK users don’t really follow each other, and also it just helps to increase the chance of people who could go to counter protests seeing posts about what’s happening when. I know posts about our politics; and non USAmerican politics really; don’t get a lot of traction on here, but like despite the UScentrism of the English speaking user base it’s really helpful and beneficial to share these things. The situation is likely downright horrifying to those being targeted right now and it really should be a priority for us to go out and counter this to the best of our abilities

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

There is hope. I promise. Young people just won their case against the state of Montana. Ecuadoreans braved escalating political violence to vote against oil drilling in the Amazon. Brazilian deforestation is down by enormous amounts since Lula took office. They’ve invented hydropanels that synthesise pure water from the air. People are farming in solar parks. A ship just launched for its maiden voyage using rigid sails designed to mimic wind turbine blades. EV sales are taking off, and, more crucially, cities are re-assessing their very relationship with the car. By the 2024 Olympics the river Seine will be safe for people to swim in again. More and more people are replacing their gas boilers with heat pumps. Solarpunks are growing crops in their back garden and distributing them to their neighbours. Great tracts of land are being given back to nature. Young people are channelling their energies into meaningful careers. Pilots are leaving the aviation industry. Yes, the world is dark and terrible and full of awful dangers that keep you up at night, but we are a huge movement that grows every day in numbers and power. Your small actions matter. Our collective triumphs are increasing. Things are going to get harder, extreme weather will be more common, but with ingenuity, resilience and crucially, COMMUNITY, we can build an equitable world on this strange, tired old planet. See you in the future.

You listen and you know you could live a better life than you do, be softer, kinder. And maybe this year you will be able to do it.

Mary Oliver

Ohara Koson (1877-1945) "Night-Heron with Raised Leg Perched on a Willow Branch,"

What are apples and toffee

and irdescent bubbles

and waves of grass and wind dances on fields

and neon lights and mischievous strangers

and cookies from acquaintances

and unbroken water surfaces and fireworks

and daisies

to her.

Motivational things to send in the group chat

“I shall never forget the occasion when I was visiting a school as a writer and the whole place suddenly fell into an uproar because the school tomboy - a most splendid Britomart of a girl - had beaten up the school bully. Everything stopped in the staffroom while the teachers debated what to do. They wanted to give the tomboy a prize, but decided reluctantly that they had better punish her and the bully too. They knew that if, as a child, you do pluck up courage to hit the bully, it is an act of true heroism - as great as that of Beowulf in his old age. I remember passing the tomboy, sitting in her special place of punishment opposite the bully. She was blazing with her deed, as if she had actually been touched by a god. And I thought that this confirmed all my theories: a child in her position is open to any heroic myth I care to use; she is inward with folktales; she would feel the force of any magical or divine intervention.”

— Diana Wynne Jones (via joeyvermeil)

This poem by Alice Miller healed something in me