“I Have Never Been One Of Those People—I Know You Aren’t, Either—who Feels That The Love One

Finally finished my Hidden Figures print! Another one you can find at ECCC! Which I need to remember to make a map of my location lol

what do they put in october and november that makes them the most ungodly mental breakdown psychosis inducing months imaginable. what are they storing in the orange leaves and generally grey drowsy atmosphere

New Years Resolution?

The Zen of La Llorona

by Deborah Miranda

La Llorona rises over my town– a solitary curve, sharpened by someone else’s fury. I read a small gray Zen book Everyone loses everything. Lovers, families, friends, possessions, egos– we keep nothing of this world, not even our bodies. It’s as if you’d lost your favorite teacup, you see. No amount of searching, weeping or wailing will bring it back. If you want a drink, use a different container. Write a long series of passionate poems about your cup. Hell, write a whole book. Obsession is the mother of creation. But as you compose, sip from the new mug. It will become your mug of choice. You’ll lose that one, too. And so on. In theory, anyway, we outlast dispossession: Ceramic mugs, hearts, continents. Outside, La Llorona’s knife slices the indigo heart of silence. Nonsense, she howls. There’s always something left to lose.

this is how i used to serve appetizers to customers

what is it about these photos that makes my heart burst with nostalgia and longing for a familiar place i've never been?

Norway | Johannes Höhn

severance + screenshots

So my family has a Gay Pirate Plate.

Stay with me.

We do not know how the hell the Gay Pirate Plate was first acquired. This being a point of contention is actually pretty plot-relevant; the saga of the Gay Pirate Plate began with my grandmother and her sister, who, for some ungodly reason, both BADLY wanted the Gay Pirate Plate and believed it to be rightfully theirs.

I should back up, firstly, to establish: The Gay Pirate Plate is the cheapest, tackiest, ugliest plate in existence.

It is in no way a collector’s item. It is physically impossible for it to complement anyone’s decor, because the colors in it are garish. It’s just a ceramic plate with a gay pirate painted on it, and the painting is, this cannot be emphasized enough, extremely bad.

(How do we know the pirate is gay if he’s just posing on a plate? Listen. Fully 100% to stereotype, but he is. He is gay. There’s an energy. That pirate is a flaming homosexual. That pirate has sex with men and does it frequently. That pirate is fucking gay, all right, he just is.)

Anyway. The point is that this is an extremely cheap and ugly plate with a poorly-executed painting of pirate on it who is like a nine on the Kinsey scale.

My grandmother and her sister fought a blood feud over this plate for their entire lives. It would be on the wall in my grandma’s house, and then her sister would visit, and then it would be gone. She’d visit her sister and the plate would be on the wall and her sister would pretend it had always been there. She would steal it back, hang it up, and, when her sister visited, pretend it had always been there. This continued for DECADES.

When the sister died, the Gay Pirate Plate lived triumphantly in my grandmother’s house. And then my grandmother died. And my aunt, who had lived with her and been her carer throughout her life, rightfully inherited their house.

We visit my aunt after the funeral and stay with her for a week or two.

Me, my sister, and our dad. Her brother.

The three of us look at each other. We don’t say anything. We studiously avoid making eye contact with the Gay Pirate Plate mounted proud and ugly on the wall. We notice one another studiously avoiding looking at it. We notice one another noticing. We say nothing. We come to a silent consensus. We pack up to leave. We get in the van. Our aunt comes out to say goodbye. I loudly announce I need to use the restroom before we leave. She obviously stays outside to continue talking to my dad.

I take down the Gay Pirate Plate, stuff it under my oversized sweatshirt, go outside, and get in the van. She happily waves goodbye as we drive off.

Two days later my dad gets a phone call that opens with hysterical laughter and “You FUCKING ASSHOLE did you seriously STEAL THE PLATE–”

Anyway. The gay pirate plate lives in my dad’s house currently.

But he’s trying to get me and my sister out to visit him. And plate mounts are cheap.

friends

Fathers, sons, flight—as far as fathers go, no one would rank Daedalus as World’s #1 Dad. Why didn’t he and his son Icarus make their famous flight at night? Moonlight won’t melt wax. But I think Daedalus knew exactly what he was doing. Had they flown by moonlight, we wouldn’t have learned of the consequences of ambition unmatched by ability. And Brueghel would not have painted the shepherds and farmers not seeing Icarus splash into the sea, and Auden would not have written “how everything turns away / quite leisurely from the disaster.”

The Harvest Moon rises tonight and “The Moon in Full” series continues at the Paris Review.