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I don't like cool, I like beautiful

@emsler / emsler.tumblr.com

"I was like, 'What do you think of this stuff, Hollis?' And she's like, 'Dad, I don't like cool. I like beautiful.' All right. You can't argue with that." - Alan Sparhawk of Low on his six-year old daughter
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Tagged by @missyourflight

1. Spell your name with song titles. Everest - Public Service Broadcasting Meeting In The Aisle - Radiohead Man/bag of Sand - Frightened Rabbit Angry Ferret - Green Rock River Band 2. Why did you choose your url? Because I can never get Ems (which is my name) and because one of my very first Friends On The Internet used to call me it. (He has a wife and two babies now which is vaguely terrifying.) 3. What is your middle name? Jane. 4. If you could be any mythical creature what would you be? Greek goddess; endless grooming, white clothing, lots of sex, honey, many mirrors, daddy issues. 5. Favourite colour? u r g h - sage green / blush pink TIED. 6. Song you like right now?
Rozi Plain - Marshes 7. Top 4 fandoms I'm doing ever because I am too old and boring for fandom now, sob 1. Merlin, shut up, whatever. 2. Jamie Parker (/Sam Crane / Henry IV / History Boys) 3. As You Like It 2011 4. Low 8. Tag 9 people lol Sophie basically already tagged most people I know so EVERYONE ELSE

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Intuition: I tried to make a home out of you but doors lead to trap doors, a stairway leads to nothing. Unknown women wander the hallways at night. Where do you go when you go quiet? You remind me of my father, a magician… able to exist in two places at once. In the tradition of men in my blood, you come home at 3 a.m. and lie to me. What are you hiding? The past and the future merge to meet us here. What luck. What a f*cking curse. Denial: I tried to change, closed my mouth more, tried to be soft, prettier, less awake. Fasted for 60 days, wore white, abstained from mirrors, abstained from sex, slowly did not speak another word. In that time my hair, I grew past my ankles. I slept on a mat on the floor. I swallowed a sword. I levitated. Went to the basement, confessed my sins, and was baptized in a river. I got on my knees and said amen and said I mean. I whipped my own back and asked for dominion at your feet. I threw myself into a volcano. I drank the blood and drank the wine. I sat alone and begged and bent at the waist for God. I crossed myself and thought I saw the devil. I grew thickened skin on my feet I bathed in bleach and plugged my menses with pages from the holy book, but still inside me, coiled deep, was the need to know… are you cheating on me? Cheating? Are you cheating on me? Anger: If it’s what you truly want… I can wear her skin over mine. Her hair over mine. Her hands as gloves. Her teeth as confetti. Her scalp, a cap. Her sternum, my bedazzled cane. We can pose for a photograph all three of us. Immortalized… you and your perfect girl. I don’t know when love became elusive. What I know is, no one I know has it. My father’s arms around my mother’s neck, fruit too ripe to eat. I think of lovers as trees… growing to and from one another. Searching for the same light. Why can’t you see me? Why can’t you see me? Why can’t you see me? Everyone else can. Apathy: So, what are you gonna say at my funeral now that you’ve killed me? Here lies the body of love of my life, whose heart I broke without a gun to my head. Here lies the mother of my children, both living and dead. Rest in peace, my true love, who I took for granted. Most bomb p*ssy who, because of me, sleep evaded. Her god listening. Her heaven will be a love without betrayal. Ashes to ashes, dust to side chicks. Emptiness: She sleeps all day. Dreams of you in both worlds. Tills the blood, in and out of uterus. Wakes up smelling of zinc, grief sedated by orgasm, orgasm heightened by grief. God was in the room when the man said to the woman, “I love you so much. Wrap your legs around me. Pull me in, pull me in, pull me in.” Sometimes when he’d have her nipple in his mouth, she’d whisper, “Oh, my God.” That, too, is a form of worship. Her hips grind, pestle and mortar, cinnamon and cloves. Whenever he pulls out… loss. Dear moon, we blame you for floods… for the flush of blood… for men who are also wolves. We blame for the night, for the dark, for the ghosts. Loss: Every fear… every nightmare… anyone has ever had. Accountability: You find the black tube inside her beauty case where she keeps your father’s old prison letters. You desperately want to look like her. You look nothing like your mother. You look everything like your mother. Film star beauty. How to wear your mother’s lipstick. You go to the bathroom to apply your mother’s lipstick. Somewhere no one can find you. You must wear it like she wears disappointment on her face. Your mother is a woman and women like her can not be contained. Mother dearest, let me inherent the earth. Teach me how to make him beg. Let me make up for the years he made you wait. Did he bend your reflection? Did he make you forget your own name? Did he convince you he was a god? Did you get on your knees daily? Do his eyes close like doors? Are you a slave to the back of his head? Am I talking about your husband or your father? Reformation: He bathes me until I forget their names and faces. I ask him to look me in the eye when I come home. Why do you deny yourself heaven? Why do you consider yourself undeserving? Why are you afraid of love? You think it’s not possible for someone like you. But you are the love of my life. You are the love of my life. You are the love of my life. Forgiveness: Baptize me… now that reconciliation is possible. If we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious. 1,000 girls raise their arms. Do you remember being born? Are you thankful for the hips that cracked? The deep velvet of your mother and her mother and her mother? There is a curse that will be broken. Resurrection: Something is missing. So many young women, they tell you, “I want me a hu — see, all them make me feel better than you.” So how we supposed to lead our children to the future? What do we do? How do we lead them? Love. L-O-V-E, love. Mm-mmm-mmm. Hallelujah, thank you, Jesus. I just love the Lord, I’m sorry, brother. I love the Lord, that’s all I got. When your back gets against the wall and your wall against your back, who you call? Hey! Who you call? Who you call? You gotta call Him. You gotta call Jesus. You gotta call Him. You gotta call Him ‘cause you ain’t got another hope. You are terrifying… and strange and beautiful. Magic. Hope: The nail technician pushed my cuticles back… turns my hand over, stretches the skin on my palm and says, “I see your daughters and their daughters.” That night in a dream, the first girl emerges from a slit in my stomach. The scar heals into a smile. The man I love pulls the stitches out with his fingernails. We leave black sutures curling on the side of the bath. I wake as the second girl crawls head first up my throat, a flower, blossoming out of the hole in my face. Redemption: Take one pint of water, add a half pound of sugar, the juice of eight lemons, the zest of half a lemon. Pour the water from one jug then into the other several times. Strain through a clean napkin. Grandmother, the alchemist, you spun gold out of this hard life, conjured beauty from the things left behind. Found healing where it did not live. Discovered the antidote in your own kit. Broke the curse with your own two hands. You passed these instructions down to your daughter who then passed it down to her daughter. I had my ups and downs, but I always find the inner strength to pull myself up. I was served lemons, but I made lemonade. My grandma said “Nothing real can be threatened.” True love brought salvation back into me. With every tear came redemption and my torturers became my remedy. So we’re gonna heal. We’re gonna start again. You’ve brought the orchestra, synchronized swimmers. You’re the magician. Pull me back together again, the way you cut me in half. Make the woman in doubt disappear. Pull the sorrow from between my legs like silk. Knot after knot after knot. The audience applauds… but we can’t hear them.

by Warsan Shire for Beyonce’s Lemonade album (I’m pretty sure all these words are by Warsan Shire, if they’re not let me know)

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reblogged

Being abused can seriously affect your ability to distinguish between “not obviously pleased” and “obviously displeased” because abusers go from Neutral to Hostile for absolutely no discernible reason, and eventually you start worrying that everyone is going to be like that and you start feeling this urge to make absolutely sure that the people you actually care about aren’t mad or upset, because to you, “there’s no evidence that they’re not angry” is the same as “there’s evidence that they are angry”

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solitarelee

I have never heard this put into words before but it explains so much. Even as a kid I was constantly scared my mom was mad just when she was making a neutral expression cause she could go from 0 to 60 with no other warning. 

Omg I didn’t realise. I do this. I’m constantly checking that people are ok and not mad.

Because that’s what my dad did. 0-rage monster in a second.

Hyper vigilance over other people’s emotional state because of previous / repeated / continuous exposure to volatile people is seriously just…the most exhausting, fucked up, draining, relationship-fucking, driving-yourself-mad thing and it is so rarely explained well or talked about at all and I’m SO GLAD this post is going around.  If someone is even slightly less than being 100% positive/happy/approving of me I pick up on it right away, even if it has absolutely nothing to do with me, and I fret and stress and am on edge. Which is so unfair because other people are allowed to have feelings and they’re allowed to express those feelings and it’s almost never about me anyway.  And then trying to explain that you expect them to be volatile assholes when they’ve never shown any evidence of being that way, and trying to say that it’s not personal, is almost impossible. Because it’s always taken personally and how can they not, really? 

I wonder what the discourse looks like to people who don’t have this

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littl3red

Why vegans should use honey instead of agave nectar

Okay, so I might get a lot of hate for this, I might not. I don’t particularly care either way, as long as word gets out about this, because it’s extremely important to me.

As I’m sure most people know by now, bees are disappearing at alarming rates. Simply put, our entire species could not survive without them. This is due to a syndrome called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD).

Many vegans opt to use agave nectar instead of honey, because agave nectar is plant based. But harvesting of agave nectar is threatening the existence of two other endangered species: Mexican long-nosed bats (who live strictly off of nectars - primarily agave nectar) and the Jaguarundi (a solitary feline who basically looks like a love child between a jungle cat and a ferret.) Approximately 113,126 acres of these animals’ habitat were destroyed from 1991 to 2000, and more has been destroyed since.

On the other hand, beekeepers are essential to increasing bee populations. They monitor the bees’ health and help protect them from dangerous parasites and pesticides that are suspected to cause CCD. In addition, well-kept bees never need to use the amount of honey they produce; Honey is made by the bees to consume only when there is not enough food for them outside the hive. In the care of a good beekeeper, this will only happen during the winter months, and the keeper will leave enough honey for the bees to thrive until it’s spring again.

It’s best to buy local, organic honey if at all possible. Local beekeepers will not use dangerous factory-farming methods, and it helps maintain your local bee population! If you want to help bees in a more active way than buying local honey, you can plant a bee garden or even become a small-scale beekeeper! (I don’t have a link for this, it’s best to check out local resources. Maybe even ask the person selling honey at your farmer’s market!)

This is great info that I never knew about!!

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emsler

Plus eating locally-produced honey can help you build up a tolerance to the pollens in your area and reduce the symptoms of hayfever! Bees are magical and important.

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sharkodactyl

do you want to see a movie where you have no idea what is going on for the first forty-five minutes? jupiter ascending is the film for you! other highlights include:

  • a ten minute long spaceship fight with no context or purpose, which destroys a city. “no one will remember” channing tatum growls as they leave the city, as if youtube does not exist
  • “here’s a latke for you, bitch”
  • someone using a menstrual pad as a bandage by slapping the sticky part onto the wound, leaving the actual blood-absorbing part just kind of…waving around
  • actors chewing the scenery so hard i’m surprised beautifully over-constructed bits of space metal aren’t just falling out of their mouths
  • a man trying to shoot thousands of bees in the middle of a cornfield
  • a gun that makes dog noises. it barks. the gun barks. 
  • oedipus complexes so beautifully twisted and terrible that you will spend half the movie mouthing “oh my god” to yourself
  • related to that, the climactic line of the movie is “i’m not your damn mother,” so take that as you will
  • a breathtakingly gorgeous and complex universe used as a background for a romance between woman and a man. granted, the man is a wolf angel. but still.
  • I CREATE LIVES……………….
  • [whispers] and destroy them

no i’m sorry i have to keep going

  • “bees can sense royalty”
  • mila kunis having the powerful realization partway through that she is a furry, an epiphany that changes her life
  • “i love dogs” she whispers, eyes wide
  • SPACE BUREAUCRACY. A MONTAGE THAT IS JUST SPACE BUREAUCRACY. THEY FILL OUT SPACE FORMS. IN SPACE.
  • “bees can sense royalty”
  • channing tatum, shirtless in the void of space
  • a room FILLED WITH CANDLES
  • soylent green nectar…….is…………….peeeeoplllle
  • “bees can sense royalty”
  • sean bean’s apparent daughter, who shows up onscreen for a minute and a half, leaves to get supplies for dinner, and never comes back
  • yeah sean bean is in this too i didn’t believe it either
  • “bees can sense royalty”
  • a space wedding. it’s just like an earth wedding. BUT IN SPACE
  • mila kunis’ character’s name is jupiter
  • yes i am dead serious about this
  • she spends most of the movie falling
  • they really should have called it “jupiter descending” because that’s all she does
  •   “bees can sense royalty”

All that repetition of how bees can sense royalty, and you leave out the fact that the bees were an alarm system set up by Sean Bean, who is part bee.

Did you seriously leave out Channing Tatum’s flying rollerskates?

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sevenpoints
  • it also includes the line “he was tragically born half-albino”
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burntcopper

SPOILER:  SEAN BEAN DOESN’T DIE. He keeps leaving the screen mid-dreadful situation so you automatically assume he’s died offscreen because SEAN BEAN and then he turns up again later and I actually heard the audience go ‘wtf? he’s alive?’

IT IS GLORIOUS. SEEEEE IT.

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fuunsaiki

Also Sam Barnett.

Seriously, this is the film every geeky 14 year old girl would make given the budget, and we are BLESSED to live in the same period as it.

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