Ann Pat @aminesselephant - Tumblr Blog

“While I do believe that it was hard work for my mother to give birth to me, it also took me every ounce of my own strength to endure the extremely difficult process of being born. After all that time inside my mother's belly growing into a human being with nobody to guide me, all of a sudden I was thrust into an entirely new and strange environment. Imagine what an awful shock it must have been to come in contact with air for the first time, not knowing where I was. Of course I've forgotten what that felt like now. But it's why, whenever I feel happy or glad about something, I count my blessings and think to myself, 'Now, wasn't that worth all the effort of being born?’”

— What You Are Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama (English translation by Alison Watts), p. 140

smokefalls

From big things to little, there are some things we simply cannot force to go to plan, no matter how hard we try.

Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking for Is in the Library (translated by Alison Watts)

smokefalls

In a world where you don’t know what will happen next, I just do what I can right now.

Michiko Aoyama, What You Are Looking for Is in the Library (translated by Alison Watts)

feral-ballad

Michiko Aoyama, tr. by Alison Watts, from What You Are Looking for is in the Library

[Text ID: “Now he’s in your thoughts, and you’re making a place for him to live on in this world. Don’t you think that’s enough? / Is that how you make a place for somebody – one person thinking about another?”]

For some, the letting go of the stars was horrifying. It made them feel too small, too pointless, too out of control. They would not believe it. They shot the messengers...

For others, it inspired ambition, invention, engineering. Generations of humans would grow up hell-bent on figuring out how to launch ships to the other side of intuition. Their wildest dreams are why we can now lay hands upon the moon.

#why fish don't exist #lulu miller

letterkive

"Chaos is the only sure thing in the world. The master that rules us all. My scientist father taught me early that there is no escaping the Second Law of Thermodynamics: entropy is only growing; it can never be diminished, no matter what we do."

Lulu Miller, "Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life"

thebooksaidthat

“When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them. But because they are as much a part of Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot.”

— Lulu Miller, Why Fish Don’t Exist: A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

smokefalls

“Everything that ever happened belonged to a vast ocean of time. Each moment was a wave, connected to every other wave.”

— Sumi Hahn, The Mermaid from Jeju

smokefalls

“Here is a secret: The dead, they dream too. Just like the living.”

— Sumi Hahn, The Mermaid from Jeju

prokopetz

I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.

prokopetz

Seriously, we’ll never figure it out. I’ll wager trying to understand “exit, pursued by a bear” with the text of The Winter’s Tale as our primary source is like trying to understand loss.jpg when all you have access to is a single overcompressed JPEG of a third-generation memetic mutation that mashes it up with YMCA and “gun” - there’s this whole twitching Frankensteinian mass of cultural context we just don’t have any way of getting at.

sandovers

no, but this is why people do the boring archival work! because we think we do know why “exit, pursued by a bear” exists, now, and we figured it out by looking at ships manifests of the era -

it’s also why there was a revival of the unattributed and at the time probably rather out of fashion mucedorus at the globe in 1610 (the same year as the winter’s tale), and why ben jonson wrote a chariot pulled by bears into his court masque oberon, performed on new year’s day of 1611.

we think the answer is polar bears.

no, seriously! in late 1609 the explorer jonas poole captured two polar bear cubs in greenland and brought them home to england, where they were purchased by the beargarden, the go-to place in elizabethan london for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports.’ it was at the time run by edward alleyn (yes, the actor) and his father-in-law philip henslowe (him of the admiral’s men and that diary we are all so very grateful for), and would have been very close, if not next to, the globe theatre.

of course, polar bear cubs are too little and adorable for baiting, even to the bloodthirsty tudor audience, aren’t they? so, what to do with the little bundles of fur until they’re too big to be harmless? well, if there’s anything we know about the playwrights and theatre professionals of the time, it’s that they knew how to make money and draw in audiences. and the spectacle of a too-small-to-be-dangerous-yet-but-still-real-live-and-totally-WHITE-bear? what good entertainment businessman is going to turn down that opportunity?

and, voila, we have a death-by-bear for the unfortunate antigonus, thereby freeing up paulina to be coupled off with camillo in the final scene, just as the comedic conventions of the time would expect.

scientia-rex

you’re telling me it was an ACTUAL BEAR

every time I think to myself “history can’t possibly get any more bananas” I realize or am made to realize that I am badly mistaken

wenamedthedogkylo

Not just an actual bear. A polar bear cub.

Imagine a fully grown man running offstage to be “killed” by a baby polar bear.

ghostcat3000

exit, pursued by bear. i.e. THE BEST STAGE DIRECTION OF ALL FUCKING TIME

capricorn-0mnikorn

[Image description: an animated GIF of a tiny baby polar bear and their human keeper. The human places the bear cub on the floor and it waddles, very unsteadily toward the camera. Description ends]

This post has lived in my head since it was first posted almost 5 years ago.

The thing is: for modern audiences and theater producers The Winter’s Tale is something of a mess. Because most of the action immediately after “Exit, Pursued by bear” is a harvest/shepherd’s feast, with the guests breaking into random songs, and then stopping to watch a troupe of dancers perform, rinse and repeat, for a full half hour or so, and doesn’t seem to do much to move the story forward at all.

But Shakespeare wasn’t writing the play for us. He was writing for an audience with a whole bunch of people who didn’t usually go to hear a play, and only showed up to catch a glimpse of this bear everyone’s been talking about. That moment happens in the middle of the story. So how do you keep a whole chunk of the audience from leaving, after the cute white fluff ball has waddled his way across the stage?

You give them a musical concert and acrobat show – get them singing along to favorite songs they already know, get them to feel like they’re actually guests at a real feast, instead of just watching one. And then, at the height of the fun, when everyone’s laughing and having a grand ol’ time, you bring the plot back, and threaten the young heroine and her family with death by hanging.

Brilliant audience wrangling, if you ask me.

If I were going to do a revival/retelling, I might make it a Space Opera, and instead of a polar bear, promise a spectacle of a Jim Henson Workshop monster. And turn the shepherd’s feast scene into a rock concert with wild dancing and songs. I don’t know enough about current music to know who I’d try to get as Autolycus (pickpocket and song-leader at the party) though.

aridante

Jonny Bolduc, Ending

anonymousalchemist

being 25 is like: im dying. im living my best life. im a failure. my life hasnt started. everything interesting has already happened to me. im achieving my dreams. im cutting my hair with kitchen scissors. im starting a skincare routine. im a corporate professional. im a sellout. im out of groceries. i have too many groceries. i am never going to be successful. i am going to win a hugo award before im 30. im crazy. im boring. i need to finish this essay. i need to finish this story. i need to start a newsletter. i need to start tweeting more. i need to stop tweeting. i need to ghost all my friends. i need to tell my friends i love them. i need to find a new apartment. i need to take out the trash. i am the trash that needs to be taken out.

hirokazukoreeda

Grave of the Fireflies (Hotaru No Haka) 1988, dir. Isao Takahata.

aminesselephant

man, I first watched this movie in like early primary school and its always been in my memory. esp that scene where u see the ghost of the boy outside the train window. then years later I tried to find it again and im so sure its an sg movie cause the train looked like it. then one day at daiso I see this fucking can of sweets and know INSTANTLY its got to be ghibli.

im never gonna watch it again tho. but nice to know what it was...