Nourish my soul, nourish the rage, nourish the heartbeat inside of its cage: Bringer of Heat, Lady of Flame, Mother, I've hidden within me a shame. Choked down my anger, cut down my claws, Ignoring a longing that burns my lungs raw, Help me see red, help me see rage Help me break open and out of this cage. Carnelian carnivore, Lady of Light, Instruct me in carnage. Teach me to fight. Let me make true all the thoughts in my mind, in ways that are safe, and help others be kind. Help me make action of heat in my chest, Lady of Power, Dua Sekhmet!
poppy and ian's relationship is so insane that it has rearranged my dna
Haven’t finished severance yet, but one of the themes of the show that I’m really appreciating is the idea that humans will find and create the meaning they need from the media around them, even if it is incredibly limited.
For those who haven’t seen the show, the central premise involves people for whom their entire lives, their memories and consciousness, is limited to just being at work in an extremely isolated office with no access to the outside world at all.
The only book available that they’ve ever known is the employee handbook, the only art they’ve ever seen is the art that hangs on the walls of the office. And of course, these pieces of media are incredibly heavy handed workplace propaganda. As viewers with outside context, we can understand its disturbing messaging. But the characters, having known only this book, have made a sort of religion out of it. It becomes a sort of scripture that they quote when trying to make decisions or are trying to explain complex ideas (even ideas that are against the workplace itself!)
And then another book shows up. It’s a ridiculous memoir full of very eye-roll inducing truisms by a very entitled and self absorbed author. But to those in this workplace, it is the only competing source of information they’ve ever had. It is something from the outside world that has shown up, unapproved by the company. They read it in secret, it is heretical and challenging. Basic truisms without much meaning take on enormous rebellious meaning to the people there. Basic ideas about valuing yourself and your friends, about working together for common goals, about deserving to breathe fresh air, become highly radical passages that they begin quoting to each other in secret.
It makes me think about how we all have different access and different life histories that influence what media and messages we’re taking in. And sometimes you’ll meet people, people who seem to have good values, who express a real fondness for what feels like objectively bad media. Or you can think back to some of the super problematic media you absorbed as a child before you knew anything about the world. And you have to sit there and think through, despite the reality of what this text is, taken with all of the context you know, you have to think about what lessons that individual took from it, what passages they projected their own values and human need for meaning onto.
There’s a poem called “Confessions of an Uneducated Queer” by Lauren Zuniga that involves similar themes– piecing together meaning and knowledge about ones self and one’s community from whatever scraps you can find, from random comments friends make, from tumblr, from books your friends leave at your apartment when they go to college. There’s a line, “This is for the first time I heard the term heteronormative and felt like I was handed a corkscrew after years of opening the bottle with my teeth.”
So many people have a strong sense of important ideas relevant to their lives, and go long periods without words to communicate them. I’m thinking about the profound, almost spiritual, relief of finding language to speak about these ideas, to communicate ones own experiences to people around you, even if you find that language in less than perfect places.
Henry Jekyll, M.D., D.C.L., L.L.D., F.R.S., etc.,
Abraham Van Helsing, M. D., D. Ph., D. Lit., etc., etc.,
Patrick Hennessey, M. D., M. R. C. S. L. K. Q. C. P. I., etc., etc.,
Slowly amassing a collection.
Only Murders in the Building ━ 3x02 "The Beat Goes On"
“your poems are too powerful. they’re like snakes. they slither into me, and they coil around my heart, and they squeeze me until I can’t breathe. they are glittering and venomous, and they bite. I got scared, emily. of you, of the way that you grip me, of the way that you poison me.”
sometimes i think about sue saying this to emily and then i have to take a minute to breathe again.
“If I was gay,” I told the ceiling, “I wouldn’t need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn’t have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn’t say I’m ‘just a slut’ or 'faking it’ or 'undecided’ or 'confused’ I’m not confused. I don’t categorize people by who I’m allowed to like and who I’m allowed to love. Love doesn’t fit into boxes like that. It’s blurry, slippery, quantum. It’s only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.” I glanced at Josh. “That’s me. I’m not gay, not bi. I’m something quantum. I can’t define it.” “You’re just human.”
Elliot Wake, Black Iris (via thebooksaidthat)