Had to do something short and sweet for these guys, I'm being consumed by them. I haven't decided yet if I might expand this into a three-part series, with this one, a Kanera one, and a Sabezra one (which, fair warning, would probably be platonic bc I have complicated feelings about them being a couple). The point is, this is a delightful little break for Kalluzeb and they're having a nice time together. IN case you were wondering, the title is another Wayne Visser reference; that part of the poem kinda melted and gooified together in my brain like crayons left in the sun with that art @kappamelone did of trans kallus a little while ago to create my favorite scene in here (which will be terribly obvious when you see it). Read on and enjoy!
The crew of the Ghost had been offered (ordered) shore leave for a few days after a stunning misadventure involving Chopper, a bag of explosives, and a remarkable inability to count. Kanan said it was because their nerves were all stripped after that; Hera muttered about being put in time-out and kicked a couple of crates.
Zeb, like Ezra and Sabine, didn’t really care why they had been sent away to a remote moon for a bit of quiet time. He joined them in making excited plans about how to make the most of it, especially after learning that Kallus had been commanded to go with them.
“They want me to keep an eye on you,” he said, then a little more irately, “I’m pretty sure Rebel Command is as sick of me as they are of you.” Having been recruited into the Rebellion by the Specters, he had picked up their annoying habits of rarely listening to orders in the way in which they were intended.
But once again, Zeb didn’t care why Kallus had been packed up and shipped off with the Ghost’s crew, and he convinced Kallus to stop caring at least until they got back from leave. Then he could be annoyed about it all he liked.
The minute they landed, Ezra and Sabine raced out of the Ghost, shoving each other to the side, to take in the view. The planet was warm, covered in tall trees with vines hanging from the branches and brightly colored spiky flowers. Zeb had never seen another planet quite like it; the kids probably hadn’t, either.
Kanan and Zeb sat down together on the ramp, while Hera went through her post-flight checks and powered down the ship. “I used to go camping with the other Honor Guards,” Zeb said. He was still a little bit surprised, himself, every time he mentioned his life on Lasan. It seemed to happen more frequently these days; he wondered if maybe letting go of his pain enough to make room in his life for Kallus had helped him be more at peace with it in general. “I could show the kids how to set up tents.”
Kanan smiled, his head tilted towards where Sabine was gushing over how good the spiky flowers would be as pigments for her paints. “They’d get a real kick out of that,” he said. “You’ll probably have to drag Hera off the Ghost by her ankles, though.”
“What about my ankles?” Hera sat down between them, leaning against Kanan’s arm. “I guess—to spare you boys the effort—I could be convinced to spend the night outside. Sleeping among the stars is one thing, but there’s something special about sleeping under them, too.”
Kanan’s grin grew wider, and he kissed the side of Hera’s head. “You old romantic,” he teased.
Zeb rolled his eyes, standing up to stretch. “I’ll get the tents,” he said. Let those two have their moment. He went back into the Ghost and hefted the top off of a storage crate that he’d stuffed a couple of tents into before leaving the base. He’d only been able to find three; he expected Sabine and Hera would probably share a tent and leave Ezra and Kanan to commune with the new planet’s nature in that Jedi way of theirs—and of course he and Kallus would bunk together.
Speaking of Kallus, where had he gotten off to? He was prone to sort of drifting off while everyone else was busy, and half the time he neglected to even mention to Zeb where he was going. It was hard for him, Zeb thought, when he was with the Spectres; they had been a family unit when he met them, and he hadn’t figured out how to integrate into it just yet.
Zeb stopped to set down the tents outside before following the path that Kallus’s boots had left in the soft grass. Ezra and Sabine had stopped their frenzied exploration to lay back on the ground for a minute, and he gently nudged Sabine’s shoulder with his foot as he passed. It was good for them to enjoy themselves. They didn’t get to be kids often enough.
He didn’t mind getting the time to relax himself. He didn’t really care how long it would take him to catch up to Kallus, with fresh, greenery-scented air to breathe and nothing to distract him from appreciating the scenery. There were certain bright orange flowers that reminded him of ones that grew on Lasan, and soft white ones that looked like the drifts of snow on Bahryn.
Zeb finally stopped when he saw the waterfall up ahead. It was one of the most stunning views he’d ever seen.
Standing at the very edge of the fall, feet submerged in the pool it created, was Kallus, shirt, jacket, and boots discarded on a nearby rock, his head tilted back ever-so-slightly and his damp hair clinging to his face and neck. Where the water spilled across his freckled shoulders, it shifted and shimmered in the light, the mist forming a rainbow in the air like a cape.
There was that feeling Zeb was still trying to get used to: looking at Kallus and being sure that his heart was going to beat against his lungs so hard he would pass out, like there wasn’t enough room for love and oxygen in him at the same time and his body would rather go without the oxygen.
It was easy to say he had never been in love with anyone the way he had fallen for Kallus. He wondered sometimes at the designs of the Ashla, but he was certain it had guided them towards each other, softening each of them in turn to make what they had now possible.
Zeb released a sigh and walked across the clearing to stand at the edge of the pool. “Enjoying nature all by yourself, handsome?” he teased. Kallus’s face instantly broke into a wide, unguarded smile, such that Zeb only ever saw when they were alone together, his amber eyes lighting like sparks from a flint. There weren’t many lines by those eyes yet; like Zeb, Kallus had spent more of his life frowning or scowling than he had smiling, but he was making some progress. A few of the worry lines, at least, seemed to have become less pronounced, now that Kallus was a little bit less tense than he had been as an Imperial agent.
“I don’t have to be,” Kallus said. Zeb stepped into the shallow water and waded over to Kallus, ripples fanning out around his legs as he walked.
Zeb cupped his hands around Kallus’s upper ribcage, thumbs covering the beautiful twin scars beneath his pectorals. The lines were thick and pale, mostly even; only jagged at the edges. “Have I ever told you how much I like these?” he asked, leaning his forehead against Kallus’s.
“Every time you see me with my shirt off,” Kallus answered, resting his hands on Zeb’s forearms.
“Which isn’t often enough for my taste,” Zeb said. Kallus laughed (Ashla, did Zeb love that deep, hoarse laugh), fingers playing across a set of dark purple stripes that were a little bit darker still than the others on Zeb’s body.
“How long do you think we have before they miss us?” Kallus asked. His face was flushed from sun—it made the freckles on his face seem just a little bit more vivid by contrast.
“A half hour before the kids hunt me down to set up the tents.”
Kallus smiled at him, more softly than before, but with just as much earnestness. “Ever the family man, aren’t you, Garazeb.”
Then he put his arms around Zeb’s neck and kissed him, and there was nothing on the planet except the two of them and the stones beneath their feet and the mists spilling across their shoulders, and for just a moment nothing could ever be wrong again.
I love Wayne Visser for accidentally writing the most Kalluzeb-coded poems I've ever seen:
It's really giving Bahryn to me. Gentle embraces in the midst of pain especially; there are so many moments in the Honorable Ones (besides the obvious life-sparing one) when Zeb is clearly putting the fact that Kallus is injured ahead of the fact that he's an enemy, and he's not so rough with him as you might expect. And of course it was a night of anguish for both of them, as they recounted the most scarring moments of their lives side-by-side with their enemy, in the freezing cold, but there was the contrast of hope, of understanding, just like the contrasts in the poem.
This is giving post-Zero Hour. A whole lot. Courage blossoms in the midst of fear—I mean come on, Kallus just turned his back on his entire life up to this point to join a rebellion that may or may not succeed, but he still did it. And now he and Zeb are no longer mortal rivals, but friends and compatriots, and whatever healing either of them has yet to do can be done together, as two wounded warriors fighting for a better future.
This is just...very Kalluzeb. This is them. Their lives during the Rebellion, when they're not always together on the same missions; their lives after the Rebellion, when they've found peace and they have to adjust to not being at war anymore; their lives together at all knowing they used to be enemies, but also that they were somehow pulled together by the Ashla for better things.
The poem is called Kismet. And how could they believe that it took anything less than an act of fate to bring them together, with all the history they had? How much more blessed could their union be, if destiny itself worked on their behalf?
CSR 2.0: Reinventing Corporate Social Responsibility for the 21st Century Part 2 of 3 by @WayneVisser - Director at CSR International
Solution
CSR 1.0: Burying the Past
CSR must be seen for what it is: an outdated, outmoded artifact that was once useful, whose time has passed. If we admit the failure of CSR, we may find ourselves on the cusp of a revolution, like the one that transformed the internet from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. The emergence of social media networks, user-generated content and open source approaches are a fitting metaphor for the changes CSR must undergo to redefine its contribution and make a serious impact on the social, environmental and ethical challenges that the world faces.
For example, just as the internet of Web 1.0 moved from a passive audience content consumption approach to a collaborative mode of Google-Facebook type interaction, CSR 1.0 is starting to move beyond the outmoded approach of CSR as philanthropy or public relations (widely criticized as ‘greenwash’) to a more interactive, stakeholder-driven model. Web 1.0 was dominated by standardized hardware and software, while Web 2.0 encourages co-creation and diversity. So too in CSR, where we are beginning to realize the limitations of the generic CSR codes and standards that have proliferated in the past 10 years.
The similarities between Web 1.0 and CSR 1.0 are illustrated in the following table.
If this is where we have come from, where do we need to go to? The similarities between Web 2.0 and CSR 2.0 are illustrated in the following table.
Article by Wayne Visser http://www.waynevisser.com/biography
CSR 2.0: Reinventing Corporate Social Responsibility for the 21st Century Part 1 of 3 by @WayneVisser - Director at CSR International
The Failure of CSR
Why has CSR failed so spectacularly to address the very issues it claims to be most concerned about? This comes down to three factors – the Triple Curse of Modern CSR:
Curse 1: Incremental CSR
One of the great revolutions of the 1970s was total quality management, conceived by American statistician W. Edwards Deming, perfected by the Japanese and exported around the world as ISO 9001. At the very core of Deming’s TQM model and the ISO standard is continual improvement, a principle that has now become ubiquitous in all management system approaches to performance. The most popular environmental management standard, ISO 14001, is also build on the same principle.
There is nothing wrong with continuous improvement per se. On the contrary, it has brought safety and reliability to the very products and services that we associate with modern quality of life. But when we use it as the primary approach to tackling our social, environmental and ethical challenges, it fails on two critical counts: speed and scale. The incremental approach of CSR, while replete with evidence of micro-scale, gradual improvements, has completely and utterly failed to make any impact on the massive sustainability crises that we face, many of which are getting worse at a pace that far outstrips any futile CSR-led attempts at amelioration.
Curse 2: Peripheral CSR
Ask any CSR manager what their greatest frustration is and they will tell you: lack of top management commitment. This is ‘code-speak’ for saying that CSR is, at best, a peripheral function in most companies. There may be a CSR manager, a CSR department even, a CSR report and a public commitment to any number of CSR codes and standards. But these do little to mask the underlying truth that shareholder-driven capitalism is rampant and its obsession with short-term financial measures of progress is contradictory in almost every way to the long-term, stakeholder approach needed for high-impact CSR.
The reason Enron collapsed, and, indeed, the reason that our current financial crisis spiraled out of control, was not rogue executives or creative accounting practices, but rather a culture of greed embedded in the DNA of the company and the financial markets. It is difficult to find many substantive examples in which the financial markets reward responsible behavior.
Curse 3: Uneconomic CSR
If there was ever a monotonously repetitive, stuck record in CSR debates, it is the need for the so-called ‘business case’ for CSR. CSR managers and consultants (even the occasional saintly CEO) are desperate for compelling evidence that ‘doing good is good for business’ (i.e. CSR pays). Indeed, the lack of sympathetic research is no impediment for these desperados endlessly incanting the motto of the business case, as if it were an entirely self-evident fact.
The more ‘inconvenient truth’ is that CSR sometimes pays, in specific circumstances, but more often does not. There is low-hanging fruit – like eco-efficiencies around waste and energy – but these only go so far. The hard-core CSR changes that are needed to reverse the misery of poverty and the sixth mass extinction of species require strategic change and massive investment. These may be lucrative in the long term, economically rational over a generation or two, but we have already established that the financial markets don’t work like that; at least, not yet.
Article by Wayne Visser http://www.waynevisser.com/biography
I am an AfricanNot because I was born thereBut because my heart beats with Africa’sI am an AfricanNot because my skin is blackBut because my mind is engaged by AfricaI am an AfricanNot because I live on its soilBut because my soul is at home in Africa When Africa weeps for her childrenMy cheeks are stained with tearsWhen Africa honours her eldersMy head is bowed in respectWhen Africa mourns for her victimsMy hands are joined in prayerWhen Africa celebrates her triumphsMy feet are alive with dancing I am an AfricanFor her blue skies take my breath awayAnd my hope for the future is brightI am an AfricanFor her people greet me as familyAnd teach me the meaning of communityI am an AfricanFor her wildness quenches my spiritAnd brings me closer to the source of life When the music of Africa beats in the windMy blood pulses to its rhythmAnd I become the essence of soundWhen the colours of Africa dazzle in the sunMy senses drink in its rainbowAnd I become the palette of natureWhen the stories of Africa echo round the fireMy feet walk in its pathwaysAnd I become the footprints of history I am an AfricanBecause she is the cradle of our birthAnd nurtures an ancient wisdomI am an AfricanBecause she lives in the world’s shadowAnd bursts with a radiant luminosityI am an AfricanBecause she is the land of tomorrowAnd I recognise her gifts as sacred
