Brennan: Make A Religion Check For Me

Handmaid’s Tale / The Testaments

Handmaid’s Tale

like the giver but about sex

trying to “protect” women but just 100% turns them into objects

removes the beauty and partnership from marriage leaving it cold and dead

poignant look at trauma and how past weaves into the present and the present is numb

“it didn’t happen that way either. I’m not sure how it happened. Not exactly.”

creates so much shame

juxtaposition of night with commander vs night with Nick. Nick even gets a name

The Testaments

“One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others.”

"an interrogation of faith and institutional religion, how it affects how we view ourselves and others and the world around us, even in ways that we might not realize, and how hard it is to deconstruct beliefs that we have incorporated into who we are, both harmful ones, and harmless ones, and what that can feel like for someone."

-  HelloFutureMe Book Review

Yes. Have YOU considered that sometimes working on hard things is both necessary and worthwhile?

simple poem 003

My head feels heavy and my body’s full of lead slowly poisoning itself and going mad I feel like I could sink my fingers into my skull, and rip out a piece, like a chunk of cake pull myself apart the pieces don’t quite fit as they are like a jigsaw forced into place where it doesn’t belong

Same Energy

Sources: Fantasy High S1E16 & The Unsleeping City S1E17

thoughts from another day 001

I love getting wrapped up in and enthralled with a story, but it also feels unproductive. Leaves me feeling like lack of motion or progress in actual life. Needs to be in balance with the rest of my priorities. I have a strong immediacy and recency bias, compounded with primarily extrinsic motivation makes me feel unmoored and ephemeral and also stagnant.

thoughts from another day 002

It’s all ephemeral and transitory and I feel unmoored and adrift with an overwhelming desire to be anchored and secure.

I feel like I’m swirling in this world of ideas and experiences, and I want to reach out and grasp them and capture the abstract with language. The expand and contract - get all of the thoughts and ideas into one place, and then break it down, organize it, understand it; and condense it back down to something cohesive.

But there are two many things there are too many things and ideas and people and complex interactions and relationships and how do you even begin to know where to start, how to start?

I feel like I’m being crushed

The Ten Thousand Doors of January

A gorgeous, aching love letter to stories, storytellers, and the doors they lead us through. Absolutely enchanting.

When I saw this book at the library, I picked it up off the shelf because I remembered someone telling me it was their favorite book they had ever read. But this quote above (that was on the back of the book) was what convinced me to check it out and take it home.

This book was absolutely gorgeous; one of the loveliest books I’ve ever read. The prose is flowing and poetic, wrapping you in the warmth of the beauty of written language. The plot is a story within a story that twist in and around and through itself in interesting and exciting ways. The main character is a girl who’s grown up with conditional privilege, and must now discover and learn what it means to be strong. It is a story full of love - not only romantic, but also of friendship and family.

10/10 absolutely recommend.

simple poem 004

I spend my hours doing neither what I should be doing nor what I’d like to. my eyes unfocus on the the task at hand my hand catches my heavy head as it pounds and sinks down under the waves bubbles slip from my lips as the depths suffocate me with darkness I am split by a screaming and thrashing for something to change and a hopeless, relieved resignation that this is how it always has been and this is how it always shall be

simple poem 001

I no longer fit within these walls for I have grown and stretched under a different sun and the confines of old spaces feel just so

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again but it is absolutely an example of civilizational inadequacy that only deaf people know ASL

“oh we shouldn’t teach children this language, it will only come in handy if they [checks notes] ever have to talk in a situation where it’s noisy or they need to be quiet”