osmanthus tea

lives unwillingly

[osmanthus-tea]

Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper

Close the blinds and kill the birds, I surrender my desire for a logical culmination. I surrender my desire to be healed. The blurriness of being alive. Take it or leave it, and for the most part you take it. Not just the idea of it but the ramifications of it. People love to hate themselves, avoiding the necessary recalibrations. Shame comes from vanity. Shame means you’re guilty, like the rest of us, but you think you’re better than we are. Maybe you are. What would a better me paint? There is no new me, there is no old me, there’s just me, the same me, the whole time. Vanity, vanity, forcing your will on the world. Don’t try to make a stronger wind, you’ll wear yourself out. Build a better sail. You want to solve something? Get out of your own way. What’s the difference between me and the world? Compartmentalization. The world doesn’t know what to do with my love. Because it isn’t used to being loved. It’s a framework problem. Disheartening? Obviously. I hope it’s love. I’m trying really hard to make it love. I said no more severity. I said it severely and slept through all my appointments. I clawed my way into the light but the light is just as scary. I’d rather quit. I’d rather be sad. It’s too much work. Admirable? Not really. I hate my friends. And when I hate my friends I’ve failed myself, failed to share my compassion. I shine a light on them of my own making: septic, ugly, the wrong yellow. I mean, maybe it’s better if my opponent wins.

- Richard Siken // Self-Portrait Against Red Wallpaper (War of the Foxes)

[osmanthus-tea]

Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light

There is something terribly wrong with his face– empty, restless, one side older than the other. What is a thing? Sediment. A slow river clogged with silt. I sussed the gesso into foam and white roses, stalling. I troubled the shadows and silvered his edges. What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. You can’t light up all sides at once. Add a second light and you get a second darkness, it’s only fair. He is looking at the wall and I am looking at his looking. Difficult thing, to be scrutinized so long. I find parts that overlap with mine and light them up in clays and creams, yellow music singing pink, the flicker of his mouth a purple rust. His face congeals as he settles in. His hair is bronze in here, not gold: walnut, bark, and cinnamon, chipped brick tipped in ink. My shadow falls across his face, blue milk and pistachio, his eyes shine like wedding rings. My shadow falls across him and it doesn’t go away. Some hours later the light has shifted, the floorboards creak. You can’t paint the inside of anything, so why would you try? Painting the inside of anything is dangerous. I imagined my wrists broken just enough to keep the feeling from crawling up my arm. Dangerous thing: an open arm, an open channel. All these things, rungs of the ladder. Lovers do the looking while strangers look away. It isn’t fair, the depths of my looking, the threat of my looking. It’s rude to shake a man visible and claim the results. This side of his face, now this side of his face. His profile up against the tulips. I put down the brush and walked around the room. Even when I look away I am still looking. He is inside his body and I am inside my body and it matters less and less. Shared face, shared looking. A collaboration. He didn’t expect to be handed over, to be delivered. To be tricked into his own face. Anyone can paint a mask. It’s boring. And everyone secretly wants to collaborate with the enemy, to construct a truer version of the self. How much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it’s some kind of murder? Difficult, to be confronted with the fact of yourself. Opaque in the sense of finally solid, in the sense of see me, not through me. The selves, glaze on glaze, accumulating their moods and minutes. We tremble and I paint the trembling. I enlarged his mouth and everything went blurry, a forgery. It might as well be. And all my fingers turned to twigs. Inside himself he jumped a little. Why build a room you can live in? Why build a shed for your fears? The life of the body is a nightmare. This is my hand over his face, which isn’t his face anymore, revising. I made a shape of the shape he made, subtracted what he shared with anyone else. There wasn’t much left but it felt like him, wild and scared. It was too much to bear. I put down the brush and looked at my hands. I turned off the headlights of my looking and let the animal get away.

- Richard Siken // Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light (War of the Foxes)

[osmanthus-tea]

Birds Hover the Trampled Field

I saw them hiding in the yellow field, crouching low in the vanished dark. I followed them pretending they were me because they were. I wanted to explain myself to myself in an understandable way. I gave shape to my fears and made excuses. I varied my velocities, watched myselves sleep. Something's not right about what I'm doing but I'm still doing it-- living in the worst parts, ruining myself. My inner life is a sheet of black glass. If I fell through the floor I would keep falling. The enormity of my desire disgusts me. I kissed my mouth, it was no longer a mouth. I threw a spear at my head, I didn't have a head. Fox. At the throat of. The territory is more complex that I supposed. What does a body of knowledge look like? A body, any body. Look away but I'm still there. Birds flying but I'm still there, lurk there. Not just one of me but multitudes in the hayfield. Want someone to chase you? Run. Take a body, dump it, drive. Take a body, maybe your own, and dump it gently. All your dead, unfinished selves and dump them gently. Take only what you need. The machine of the world--if you don't grab on, you begin to tremble. And if you do grab on, then everything trembles. I spent my lamp and cleft my head. Deep-wounded mind, I wasn't doing anything with it anyway. And the birds looking for a place to land. I would like to say something about grace, and the brown corduroy thrift store coat I bought for eight-fifty when you told me my paintings were empty. Never finish a war without starting another. I've seen your true face: the back of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking. 

- Richard Siken // Birds Hover the Trampled Fields (War of the Foxes)

[osmanthus-tea]

Drinking Alone under the Moon, Li Bai - “Chinese Poetic Writing : with an Anthology of Tang Poems” by François Cheng, tr. by Donald A. Riggs & Jerome P. Seaton

[osmanthus-tea]

And if time is not real, then the gap which seems to be between the world and the eternity, between suffering and blissfulness, between evil and good, is also a deception.

Siddhartha // Herman Hesse

[osmanthus-tea]

Ishuzoku Reviewers is the most brilliant anime ever created. look at dem titties. look at dem thicc thighs. MAL might've rated it a 7/10 but it shall forever be a 10/10 for me. also I'm pretty sure it's a hentai

[osmanthus-tea]

Tenki No Ko - Hodaka’s Choices?

This is the first post I’ve made on tumblr, so forgive me if it’s total crap. Because it most likely would be. Post would probably grow more informal the more I write, please forgive me. I just needed somewhere to vent about Tenki no Ko. There are MAJOR spoilers ahead, so be warned.

Tenki No Ko does a great job showcasing human nature at its finest. The choice that Hodaka makes to literally sacrifice housing in Tokyo is pretty dang good. Yes, bringing Hina back is great and all but there must have been lives destroyed by the flooding and snow.

The cliche is usually that of the hero sacrificing their loved ones for the world, but this time the hero picked the maiden over the world. The choice that Hodaka makes is alone his responsibility and he understands that there will be lives weighing down on his conscience, yet he would do anything to be with Hina even if it means dooming the world.

The audience clearly sees the destruction bringing Hina back is causing yet cannot help but side with Hodaka, because they too understand the feeling Hodaka has or are too deeply invested into both Hodaka and Hina. Hodaka is selfish but that is just how we are built. Humans are selfish creatures intrinsically. The sacrifice of Hina highlights an important point of how far are we willing to go for our loved ones?

I know many who would hurt or even kill for them but are we even able to cause floods and bring property destruction to about half (?) the country? Not many of us would be able to answer that question decisively. 

The audience is shown what Hodaka sees and feels; we can only see things from his perspective. Hodaka also keeps and fires the gun not once but TWO times, both to protect Hina. He’s an extremely loyal person, so to him he’s willing to go to extreme ends to stay with Hina. Tokyo is probably still raining and is already half submerged in water. 

But yet, Hodaka doesn’t have the moral obligation to save tokyo and the other cities and prevent skyrocketing housing prices. Hina might have felt the obligation since she lives there and all. But Hodaka doesn’t and that is what shocks us. We are used to see the hero save the world and shit. So someone choosing not to is a shock and we realise, hey they have a choice too. Is it wrong? Probably. But what can we do about it?

You can only open the door, you can’t force them to walk through it. He doesn’t owe the residents anything. He doesn’t own the world anything. He is just living his life till a girl entered and swept through his world. It just so happened she had weather powers.

Nonetheless, no choice would have been the right choice.

Side note: the food and scenery were great. Nagi too.