AAVE is not TikTok Slang 

AVE is not TikTok slang, not generational slang etc. It's AAVE that gets popularized by others in their communities and repeated to the point online of it being labeled as such. Point blank. Thanks for coming to my TedTalk 🙃

— India Ame’ye, Author (via eatmangoesnekkid)

— India Ame’ye, Author (via eatmangoesnekkid)

— India Ame’ye, Author

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via beyournottygirl on IG

Text reads: "Let this be the last time ever.

The last time that you intentionally choose habits that are out of alignment. You've been told time & time again, it's your time.

Make that new beginning Spirit had been showing you come true."

I’m wherever the love at.

Facts

I want to make people see how much has been taken away from them.

Did you know that there are dozens of species of fireflies, and some of them light up with a blue glow? Did you know about the moths? There are thousands of them, bright pink and raspberry orange and checkerboard and emerald. They are called things like Black-Etched Prominent, Purple Fairy, Pink-Legged Tiger, Small Mossy Glyph and Black-Bordered Lemon.

Did you know that there are moths that feed on lichens? Did you know about the blue and green bees? The rainbow-colored dogbane beetles? Your streams are supposed to teem with newts, salamanders, crawdads, frogs, and fishes. I want to take you by the hand and show you an animal you've never seen before, and say, "This exists! It's real! It's alive!"

There are secret wildflowers that no website will show you and that no list entitled "native species to attract butterflies!" will name. Every day I'm at work I see a new plant I didn't know existed.

The purple coneflowers and prairie blazing star are a tidepool, a puddle, and there is an ocean out there. There are wildflowers that only grow in a few specific counties in a single state in the United States, there are plants that are evolved specifically to live underneath the drip line of a dolomite cliff or on the border of a glade of exposed limestone bedrock. Did you know that different species of moss grow on the sides of a boulder vs. on top of it?

There are obscure trees you might have never seen—Sourwood, Yellowwood, Overcup Oak, Ninebark, Mountain Stewartia, Striped Maple, American Hophornbeam, Rusty Blackhaw, Kentucky Coffeetree. There are edible fruits you've never even heard of.

And it is so scary and sad that so many people live and work in environments where most of these wondrous living things have been locally extirpated.

There are vast tracts of suburb and town and city and barren pasture where a person could plausibly never learn of the existence of the vast majority of their native plants and animals, where a person might never imagine just how many there are, because they've only ever been exposed to the tiny handful of living things that can survive in a suburb and they have no reason to extrapolate that there are ten thousand more that no one is talking about.

It's like being a fish that has lived its whole life in a bucket, with no way of imagining the ocean. The insects in your field guide are a fraction of those that exist, of all the native plants to your area only a handful can be bought in a nursery.

Welcome to the Earth! It's beautiful! It's full of life! More things are real and beautiful and alive than a single person could imagine!!!

Sometimes the cost of growth is loneliness.

Soft Life 🤎

daily affirmations

My needs are met.

I am calm and I receive.

The universe provides.

I am open and I express gratitude.

— India Ame’ye, Author

You discover that your garbage disposal is really the mouth of an eldritch monster. However, you realize this as you reach inside of it to recover your wedding ring.

“No no no no no!” I fumble for my ring as it teeters on the edge of the drain.  “Oh come on!” I exclaim as it tips sideways and disappears. I had taken it off and placed it safely to the side of he sink while I worked, I don’t even know how it got knocked into the sink.  Grumbling to myself I roll up my sleeves, make a face, and shove my hand into the garbage disposal.  

“Give that back,” I mutter to myself as I feel around, blindly searching for my ring.

“WHAT WILL YOU GIVE ME FOR IT, MORTAL?”  

I look around, no one else is in the room.  I lean as far to the side as I can, still keeping my hand in the drain, craning my neck for a glance at the TV in the next room.  It’s not on.  I glance at my phone, still playing the podcast I had started when I started to work.  

“I SAID, WHAT WILL YOU GIVE ME FOR IT, MORTAL?”  Yup, the voice was definitely coming from the drain.  

“How can you speak so clearly with my hand in your mouth?” I ask the garbage disposal?

“I WILL GIVE YOU BACK YOUR….. WAIT? WHAT DID YOU SAY?”

“I asked how you can speak so clearly with my hand in your mouth.”  I reach further down the drain, I had just felt something round and metal  “This isn’t telepathy,” I continue,  “I’m hearing you with my ears, not my brain.  But you enunciation is perfect..”

“WHY AREN’T YOU SCREAMING” the voice interrupts me. “USUALLY THE MORTALS SCREAM WHEN I ADDRESS THEM THE FIRST TIME.”

“Buddy,” I say pulling my hand out of the drain to wipe on my apron, “Think about what I’ve put down this drain today.  I have to guess you’ve been eating it.”

There’s a faint grinding, unsurprising like a garbage disposal chewing through kitchen scraps.

“YARROW, MUGWORT, MOSTLY THE STALKS, SOME LEMON RINDS, AND A WHOLE LOT OF SALT…..DAMNIT, ARE YOU A WITCH?”

I chuckle, “You caught on faster than the thing in the basement.  Took it years to figure out why I said hi to it every time I went down to do laundry.  You’re welcome to stay, but I need to finish this spell and I would like my ring back.”

“WHAT WILL YOU GI…” The drain thing starts to ask again, before I cut if off.

“Dude I’ve been feeding you, and I just offered you a place in my home.  Give me back my ring.”  I hold my hand out palm flat, waiting.

“FINE.”  And with that my ring shoots out of the drain to land neatly on my palm.

“Thank you.” I say as I head back to my work table, slipping the ring back on my finger.

“DO YOU HAVE ANY MORE OF THOSE LEMON RIDS?” my new house mate asks.  “THEY WERE TASTY.”

“I’ll have a few more in a little bit, be patient.”