Cancer and Gardens Fixes Everything on The List @bless-the-arrows - Tumblr Blog

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My dad died today. It was sudden, but not sudden. We all kinda knew it was coming.

You know what’s weird about grief? That it’s so m-f ing WEIRD.

For example, I did not expect that I would end up triggered about my mom’s death.

I expected to be relieved. I expected to feel mixed feelings including sadness and guilt. I even expected to feel the other things I’m feeling.

I did not expect to be sitting on a milk crate on the floor, squeezed in the corner surrounded by rotting produce, cryin’ my eyes out because I miss my mama.

Like, I don’t know for sure if I believe in god but damn dude it took you way too long to even that shit out

and like... couldn’t you have had him tell me where all the important papers are? because i’m stressed the fuck out that this is gonna be a total shit show, and my sis is gonna end up homeless, and frankly “sir,” you of all non-corporeal beings should know how stressed out i have already been. are you trying to kill me?

i mean, you could have come to him and just told him what to do!

it’s not like he wouldn’t have listened to you!

by the way,

what exactly is your excuse for generational trauma?

because this shit

i don’t even know

Do you think we could all go in and get you get a personal assistant to help you with your planning? because sometimes... i think.... it needs a little work

#heathen prayers #faith #fate #trauma #intergenerational trauma #grief #shenpa #i may make terrible jokes when i'm stressed but at least i'm not dissociating #are you sure about that?#yeah pretty sure

“Oh Fuck Boy, how did I live without you? Why didn’t I know I needed someone to drink all of my Hennessy?”

#youtube poets

lost in the delta quadrant

I don’t know if this poem should come with a trigger warning.

Captains’s log.

Since about 2011,

The Universe has had me on a bizarre,

sometimes

demoralizing mission.

I don’t know exactly what it is.

The only part

that wasn’t redacted in the file was

“qualitative analysis of

male misrepresentation

in order to manipulate females

into intercourse”

When I protested,

they said

don’t worry about the rest

that’s on

a need-to-know basis

and I don’t need to know,

I just need to live.

It’s always an adventure.

I’ve been some strange places.

Spent a lot of time alone,

and had to learn how to get

really creative

with fuel for the ship.

Some days

have been really close.

Some days are marvelous

and safe.

Today, for example, I visited

a little known planet

where they have chocolate croissants

which are pretty much forbidden

on the ship

since visiting the planet

where all the

real medical officers

are stationed.

The humans I visited

were interesting

and friendly.

And the weather

in the system as i left

was frigid

and

beautifully

tempestuous.

overall

It’s a lonely journey

and even that

you have to find ways

to appreciate

the pressure

out here

will crush you.

But

I am the only captain

crew

scullery

navigation

security

medical

officer

office clerk

and communications

we have

on board

so frankly,

it’s exhausting.

Thankfully, it is the future

and one needn’t go

totally mad alone

in the vacuum of empty space.

communications

has tools

and windows.

I’m a little scared

to keep going

especially since

I’m not sure

how much oxygen is left.

I’ve spent so much time

in the swamps of mankind

the take-off and landing gear

is beginning

to malfunction

and the last time

i trusted a man

aboard the ship

well

he de-polarized

and then smashed

the navigation station.

there’s been a little

more turbulence lately

than usual.

over.

redefine meaningful

i have a couple old emails from my mom. written to much younger me in 1997 or something. I keep it because it’s the only thing i have of her that’s words that’s speaking directly to me.

it’s hilarious because i still read it sometimes, halfway thru my thirties. and thank the great mystery that i still have these two pages of mom talk: sharing books and poetry, mom-advice about boyfriends, friendship, and soulmates, growing by your mistakes, life’s curves, inner strength, specific encouragements, other stuff...and an obvious hope that i would grow up to be someone who didn’t take any shit from any ol mfer but also wasn’t at all mean in any way, shape, or form. And I find this piece also hilarious, but am way too tired to unpack it, since it has to do with abuse, essentially. Anyway, I am getting totally off-track.

The point is, there is a part where we must have been talking about employment, and dreams/plans for the future, because she says some encouraging things about aspirations i apparently had back then to become a writer (something along the lines of, “i didn’t think it was stupid when you said you wanted to be a veterinarian. why would i think it was stupid when you say you want to be a writer?” (Awww, moms)

And I guess, it’s probably not funny to anyone else but i find it hilarious, now, as an adult who blew through all those english, writing, and creative writing courses with flying colors and heaps of praise, that my A-student brain loves to troll me so fucking hard by criticizing my own writing, as it is here, which is about as deep in the rough as it gets other than stuff stashed in notebooks. The A-brain is a very talented but rather rude critic. Always wanting everything to be sharper. Eliminating run-ons. Never leaving a patch of roughness to settle down later. Never be too real. Never be too revealing. Your metaphors are stupid. Everything you do is pedantic, and not even in a better sense of the word that actually implies precise skill. It’s all exhausting to read. WHY would anyone bother? Sometimes I find myself embarrassed by my own writing.

SCB has told me, multiple times, that I should write a book. She’s said it when I’m stressing about money, but usually it’s right after I have said something that makes her laugh with one of those laughs that makes my soul feel it’s freakishly scary , heart-slamming gratitude about being alive amongst my people. She says, “If you just wrote it exactly how you talk... LORD have mercy”

i don’t usually write like I talk.

Maybe that would really get the ball rolling on this project.

Maybe that’s what bothers critical me about it so much, blocking up the whole creative freeway, which has been running smoothly with all these other projects.

Too.Many.Words.

too.

many.

too.

many.

Who has time for all that editing, anyway? Sleeping is way more important right now.

Anyway, if I wrote like I talk I’m sure every single publisher would write back in their rejection letter: “too many derivatives of the word ‘fuck’“

music therapy

it’s been a Lou Reed, Prince Be, and 90′s jams kind of winter.

Here for it.

whatshouldwecallarttherapy

Radical softness is the idea that unapologetically sharing your emotions is a political move and a way to combat the societal idea that feelings are a sign of weakness

Lora Mathis

(via

whatshouldwecallarttherapy

)

Lou Reed - Animal Serenade 2004

Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby Recorded Live: 9/25/1984 - Capitol Theatre - Passaic, NJ More Lou Reed at Music Vault: http://www.musicvault.com Subscribe to Mu...

#pianoJAMS

nasa

Infrared is Beautiful

Why was James Webb Space Telescope designed to observe infrared light? How can its images hope to compare to those taken by the (primarily) visible-light Hubble Space Telescope? The short answer is that Webb will absolutely capture beautiful images of the universe, even if it won’t see exactly what Hubble sees. (Spoiler: It will see a lot of things even better.)

The James Webb Space Telescope, or Webb, is our upcoming infrared space observatory, which will launch in 2019. It will spy the first luminous objects that formed in the universe and shed light on how galaxies evolve, how stars and planetary systems are born, and how life could form on other planets.

What is infrared light?

This may surprise you, but your remote control uses light waves just beyond the visible spectrum of light—infrared light waves—to change channels on your TV.

Infrared light shows us how hot things are. It can also show us how cold things are. But it all has to do with heat. Since the primary source of infrared radiation is heat or thermal radiation, any object that has a temperature radiates in the infrared. Even objects that we think of as being very cold, such as an ice cube, emit infrared.

There are legitimate scientific reasons for Webb to be an infrared telescope. There are things we want to know more about, and we need an infrared telescope to learn about them. Things like: stars and planets being born inside clouds of dust and gas; the very first stars and galaxies, which are so far away the light they emit has been stretched into the infrared; and the chemical fingerprints of elements and molecules in the atmospheres of exoplanets, some of which are only seen in the infrared.

In a star-forming region of space called the ‘Pillars of Creation,’ this is what we see with visible light:

And this is what we see with infrared light:

Infrared light can pierce through obscuring dust and gas and unveil a more unfamiliar view.

Webb will see some visible light: red and orange. But the truth is that even though Webb sees mostly infrared light, it will still take beautiful images. The beauty and quality of an astronomical image depends on two things: the sharpness of the image and the number of pixels in the camera. On both of these counts, Webb is very similar to, and in many ways better than, Hubble. Webb will take much sharper images than Hubble at infrared wavelengths, and Hubble has comparable resolution at the visible wavelengths that Webb can see.

Webb’s infrared data can be translated by computer into something our eyes can appreciate – in fact, this is what we do with Hubble data. The gorgeous images we see from Hubble don’t pop out of the telescope looking fully formed. To maximize the resolution of the images, Hubble takes multiple exposures through different color filters on its cameras.

The separate exposures, which look black and white, are assembled into a true color picture via image processing. Full color is important to image analysis of celestial objects. It can be used to highlight the glow of various elements in a nebula, or different stellar populations in a galaxy. It can also highlight interesting features of the object that might be overlooked in a black and white exposure, and so the images not only look beautiful but also contain a lot of useful scientific information about the structure, temperatures, and chemical makeup of a celestial object.

This image shows the sequences in the production of a Hubble image of nebula Messier 17:

Here’s another compelling argument for having telescopes that view the universe outside the spectrum of visible light – not everything in the universe emits visible light. There are many phenomena which can only be seen at certain wavelengths of light, for example, in the X-ray part of the spectrum, or in the ultraviolet. When we combine images taken at different wavelengths of light, we can get a better understanding of an object, because each wavelength can show us a different feature or facet of it.

Just like infrared data can be made into something meaningful to human eyes, so can each of the other wavelengths of light, even X-rays and gamma-rays.

Below is an image of the M82 galaxy created using X-ray data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, infrared data from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and visible light data from Hubble. Also note how aesthetically pleasing the image is despite it not being just optical light:

Though Hubble sees primarily visible light, it can see some infrared. And despite not being optimized for it, and being much less powerful than Webb, it still produced this stunning image of the Horsehead Nebula.

It’s a big universe out there – more than our eyes can see. But with all the telescopes now at our disposal (as well as the new ones that will be coming online in the future), we are slowly building a more accurate picture. And it’s definitely a beautiful one. Just take a look…

…At this Spitzer infrared image of a shock wave in dust around the star Zeta Ophiuchi.

…this Spitzer image of the Helix Nebula, created using infrared data from the telescope and ultraviolet data from the Galaxy Evolution Explorer.

…this image of the “wing” of the Small Magellanic Cloud, created with infrared data from Spitzer and X-ray data from Chandra.

…the below image of the Milky Way’s galactic center, taken with our flying SOFIA telescope. It flies at more than 40,000 feet, putting it above 99% of the water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere– critical for observing infrared because water vapor blocks infrared light from reaching the ground. This infrared view reveals the ring of gas and dust around a supermassive black hole that can’t be seen with visible light.

…and this Hubble image of the Mystic Mountains in the Carina Nebula.

Learn more about the James Webb Space Telescope HERE, or follow the mission on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Image Credits Eagle Nebula: NASA, ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team Hubble Image Processing - Messier 17: NASA/STScI Galaxy M82 Composite Image: NASA, CXC, JHU, D.Strickland, JPL-Caltech, C. Engelbracht (University of Arizona), ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Horsehead Nebula: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA) Zeta Ophiuchi: NASA/JPL-Caltech Helix Nebula: NASA/JPL-Caltech Wing of the Small Magellanic Cloud X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ.Potsdam/L.Oskinova et al; Optical: NASA/STScI; Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech Milky Way Circumnuclear Ring: NASA/DLR/USRA/DSI/FORCAST Team/ Lau et al. 2013 Mystic Mountains in the Carina Nebula: NASA/ESA/M. Livio & Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

#morethanmeetstheeye #athomeintheuniverse

giddy

I just learned there is a podcast that has a thing called X-Men Mondays and this knowledge released an intense amount of feeling and excitement that I guess can only be described as fangirling. The only other time I’ve really felt like this was in the beginning of the (then newest) Star Trek movie, when kid kirk steals the car and “Sabotage” starts playing. Actually, that was more intense. Shit made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. But maybe it was also just how much in that moment I was also feeling like my mom would be loving that movie, had she lived to see it.

Anyway, X-MEN MONDAYS PODCAST! HOLY SHIT! So excited so discover what that’s all about. (edit, i started listening, and turns out they are talking about new stuff, so i’m gonna be totally lost, but i don’t mind) I’ve been loving podcasts lately. I stumbled upon one on Patreon about science (sort of... more like, the scientists themselves in some ways?) called Ologies, and so far it’s good. It’s funny. and pretty dang educational sometimes. Thanks, podcasts, for bringing pure entertainment (and a little bit of free education) to people to poor to pay for things like movies and graphic novels.

It’s nice to feel this excitement for things that just go way, way back. Art, science-fiction, wonderment at the natural world. Especially since so much of my creative time lately has been spent in real work mode building and mapping out ways that I can work towards generating income from my art and maybe even coming back to my business plan for the side gig that isn’t art. I’ve been working really hard at all that in my free time and not really doing much in the way of just being in creative free-flow. It’s nice to feel my mind in a more open state after the contractions of the last few days because of some pretty intense stressors, mostly work, but also being present/holding space with some friends i love while they are coping with some real life big fucking issues, which is scary when it’s people you are really close. i think a lot of “new normal” is finding a balance between unspeakable terror, and pure, uninhibited delight. like, ok life. i’m here for the ride. i’m hangin on. I can’t tell if cancer/ptsd/healing work from trauma has made me a better buddhist, or a worse one, bc it definitely has made me embrace being alive and ecstatically appreciate simple pleasures in ways that i think might be frowned upon...for lack of a better description. i don’t know if it really matters, though. what matters is it’s mostly working bc even when life is fluxing hard, i can usually bring myself back to a state where i can cope, within a day or two, if i just keep working the things i know work. it wasn’t always this way. i used to let myself get dragged or frozen by my emotions for days, weeks, longer. not saying it’s perfect but it’s overall, way healthier than it has been in the past. i think it’s good to keep going. i’ve only been working on this for maybe 6 or 7 years. it’s natural to stumble, to feel unmoored, and to gently bring it back. i love reading books by buddhist teachers who admit that they still practice meditation and loving-kindness, bc that’s what it is. it’s not an end-point. (tumblr is trying to tell me that the words fangirling, kirk, and stressors aren’t real words. i guess someone should tell tumblr’s spell-check what people really use tumblr for?) ((journaling feels exhausting ... one gets irritated or bored with all the self examination, i , i , i, i that feels necessary at the time. but it’s good to set these things down somewhere, so they don’t become the mental tape playing all the time. plus i also feel like, it’s healthy to let oneself release the reality of what’s been happening, especially if one has been spending a lot of time in freeze mode as a method of coping w/ some acute stressors))

today is a strange american “holiday” where, oversimplified: people who aren’t terribly woke inflate the bank accounts of slave-labor chocolate moguls and get stressed out or ashamed about not having dates or getting laid. but i am just happy to have a day off in winter where i can lounge in PJs, blissed out in a sunbeam, writing, painting, and reading. maybe later if i’m feeling very, very motivated, baking a cake, some of which can be eaten by this body without fear of getting the shakes and a stomach ache. therapy in the evening, which always makes me feel loved, and accepted, even if it’s a time like i left there with the lid off (yesterday.) the human that is me and has experienced feelings about fellas wrote a lot of poems/raps these last couple months. i want to share my faves but they are so personal, you know? one is almost-definitely a love poem, the other is maybe an anti-love poem. They felt so good to write, so satisfying. And I want to share them. NO JOKE: anti-love poem even has an x-men pun in it. But I’m shy, y’all.

Here are those podcasts instead.

https://uncannynerdverse.podbean.com/e/x-men-monday-episode-1-welcome-to-the-club/

Here’s the Ologies episode on Vulcanology (have listened) https://art19.com/shows/ologies-fb/episodes/26fa2611-2a28-47af-afe8-bf84db0f6935

and the one on Sexology (haven’t yet listened) but YOU’RE WELCOME, NERDS https://art19.com/shows/ologies-fb/episodes/e5fde22e-179f-43fd-9f27-5373742354c0

#nerdery #equilibrium #flow

zenpencils

“Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken.“ - C.S. Lewis

bless-the-arrows

Blessthearrows: I haven’t read much of the classics, so I don’t know if C.S. had a lot more to say about that than what is quoted here in this comic. But. It makes me flinch. I wanna be like, oh C.S., maybe it’s not so bad. It can be a good kind of wrung!! Like, almost exactly how exercise makes you feel: “Holy shit I’m alive and my entire body is throbbing with the flow of existence!” and if it’s been too long since you exercised or you went particularly hard at it this time it can be like “Oh fuck there is also some pain involved oh fuck uh oh” and if that happens you just kind of slow down and self-care: what do you need? slow down? rest? drink some water? relax and let yourself be however you’re feeling? bring yourself back to the flow of your breathing, nothing more, nothing less. And you walk home and keep going with life as it happens and after days or months of practice you’re stronger and you can exercise more, more easily. Barring some underlying unresolved issue or trauma, it doesn’t hurt as much. And every day you do this you are stronger and stronger. Sometimes you have to go slow. That’s ok. And every day may be different. That’s ok. Stay open. Keep going. Rest. Keep moving. Rest. And keep moving. And keep practicing gratitude. Gratitude for an exhausted or broken heart is like physical therapy for an acute injury to your body: you don’t fucking want to do it and it doesn’t seem to make a difference and it may even hurt a little or exhaust you more in the moment but you do a little bit every day. and every. little. bit. matters. The smallest, gentlest flexions are the foundation of stability, and strength.

The heart is a muscle.

(notes to myself, bc i forget this. and i know from talking with friends lately that i think other people are feeling a lot of conflict in this area and i guess i’m just writing all this down bc i know this helps me, all the time, thru lots of shit, (not just struggles with romantic love) even though i may forget it from time to time, it really works. )

the ramble is all me, but the comic is from Zen Pencils

#letgo #vulnerability #trust #radicalselfacceptance #exercise #heart

lazyyogi

To truly let go of a thought does not mean that the thought disappears. It means that you abide as you are regardless of whether or not that thought arises.