You can call me J, I'm 23. This blog will probably be chaotic. I might reblog some nsfw things now and then. My own posts (unlikely) will be under the tag #mine
NASA
I'd rather be in outer space šø

Discoholic šŖ©
Acquired Stardust
tumblr dot com

pixel skylines
art blog(derogatory)
d e v o n

tannertan36

blake kathryn

⣠Chile in a Photography ā£

ā
Sade Olutola
noise dept.
Xuebing Du
No title available

Andulka

JVL
Aqua Utopiaļ½ęµ·ć®åŗć§čØę¶ćē“”ć

Kiana Khansmith

seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Hong Kong SAR China
seen from United States
seen from Canada
seen from Japan

seen from United States

seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Canada

seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States

seen from Australia
seen from Malaysia

seen from United States
seen from Saudi Arabia

seen from United States
@tough-beans
You can call me J, I'm 23. This blog will probably be chaotic. I might reblog some nsfw things now and then. My own posts (unlikely) will be under the tag #mine
You ever meet a person who you can just tell is constantly fighting against their own impulse to be kind
so I have this one colleague, right? I donāt know him super well, but we work together on shift sometimes and heās reliable, got his shit together, efficient and timely.
And heās polite with the public, too. Says all the right things, smiles when appropriate, patient and helpful, would never step out of line. One hundred percent follows the rules to the letter, hands-off, no abusive language, no violence. Straight and narrow all the way.
And when I first met him, I was put off about how he talks about people. I still am, honestly. Itās private and quiet and discrete, not where anyone could see or overhear, but he says things to me. āThat one got hit with the ugly stickā. āHe looks fuckinā handicappedā. āLook at that crackheadā. āMaybe Iād feel bad for them if they got off their asses and got their lives togetherā.
It started quite a few arguments between us, but it never changed that his ACTIONS were always fair and respectful, so I let it slide as one of those things you canāt change about others and just kind of have to put up with. We work together fine, and I donāt react to it anymore, and he treats people well.
One day he said he saw me buying a coffee for a homeless guy when I was off shift.
The guy in question was someone we both knew from work was a pain in the ass, high or drunk more often than not, criminal record a mile long, with the kind of mental health issues that arenāt as sympathetic because they mostly just make him act like a violent asshole. Too ill to be prosecuted, to aggressive and unpredictable for a care aid and public housing, so he gets by stealing and shooting up and threatening anyone who tries to stop him.
Heās an unhappy soul. There are very few places heās welcome.
But I was buying myself a drink, and he was outside, and it was cold out, and out of uniform I know itās an 80% chance heāll have no idea who I am or that he said heād cut my head off last week, so I figured Iād grab him a coffee. Double-double, cause sugar helps and Iād seen him eat ice cream before so cream probably wouldnāt hurt.
I handed it to him on my way out. Told him to stay safe. He took it. Didnāt say thank-you, but I wasnāt really expecting him to anyways. Iād never spoken with him outside of an active conflict before, so I donāt even know what heād have sounded like not-angry and mostly-sober.
But anyway, apparently my colleague saw, and he asked why the hell Iād waste the money.
I didnāt know what to tell him. It was just two dollars. Iād spent more than that on the second-hand bowl that had fallen off my dish rack and shattered the other night. And it was cold out, and the guy was probably banned from anywhere warm in town, and if he wanted something bad enough heād probably just steal it anyways, and then itās be someone elseās problem. But mostly, he was just the kind of guy nobody is happy to see, who was welcome nowhere, and had nowhere to go, and maybe when youāre trapped in a life like that something small and decent doesnāt come around very often.
I didnāt know what to tell him. So I just said, āI felt like it.ā
He rolled his eyes a bit, but didnāt hassle me about it. I got the feeling he still thought I was being stupid or naive. He seems to think I donāt understand how he world works, or how awful and heartless people can be.
I donāt know why he thinks that. We work the same job, and weāve shared a lot about where weāve been. We both know how awful people can be.
But then maybe a month later he shows up for shift change. And when he does, he has this weird energy about him, like a little kid who just found their first rubikās cube and hasnāt figured out if they like it or not.
āI pulled a you,ā he said, like he was making fun of himself. I asked what he meant, what had happened.
He said heād seen a guy, a different guy, another person on the street when we both saw all the time. āI went to grab lunch and he was there,ā he said. āAnd you know, heās got no money, heās homeless, but he never causes trouble, never steals, doesnāt show up drunk. So I figured, what the hell, and I covered his bill.ā
He wasnāt looking at me as he said it, just staring off with an odd energy. If it wasnāt so subtle Iād call it excitement, like little-kid excitement, but it was almost nothing. āI told āem not to say it was me. Didnāt wanna have to talk to him. Thought itād be weird.ā
It was totally out of left-field. Completely against the image he projected of polite distance, judgemental side comments.
I asked him, āfeels good, huh?ā
He shrugged, but it seemed like he was still thinking about it.
He still says unkind and hurtful things about people, though. But the other day he said something about how he didnāt care about people, didnāt care when the news said folks were dying of the flu, didnāt get upset over strangers like that.
I said, āBut itās sad, isnāt it?ā, and he shook his head. āYou canāt care about everyone. That would be exhausting.ā And I think thatās when I figured it out.
We both do the same work. Weāve both come from similar places. And yet the way we feel about others is different.
This is a guess, but I donāt think heās a cruel or unkind person at heart. A guess, but I suspect that after seeing so much stupid, senseless cruelty⦠Je cares about people, but caring hurts. Caring means you can be let down, disappointed, fucked over. Caring about everyone means suffering when they suffer, and thatās a lot of pain for one person to handle. And I suspect that maybe when he says cruel things, when he says he doesnāt care, itās because heās scared of his own empathy. That if he truly let himself love everyone, he couldnāt survive the hurt of it.
Which is purer, in a way, than my own sort of caring. My caring, I think, is much more selfish.
Iāve been hurt too. Iāve seen bad things, too. And when I closed myself off like that, I became a cold and bitter person, and the colder and more bitter you are, the colder and more bitter others are back, until all you can see is the worst in everything and almost nothing can drag you out of the pit youāve dug yourself into.
I think heās cold because heās afraid of love. I think he knows that loving others makes you vulnerable regardless of your actions, so he does what he can to dislike people before he becomes attached.
I think I love because if I didnāt, Iād hate. Iād hate everybody. Iād hate people I care about.
I think I need to love everybody, care about everybody, at least a little tiny bit, because if any single person was unworthy then anyone could be unworthy, and how on earth would I know?
The man I bought coffee for didnāt bother us that day. Didnāt bother us for a few weeks. I try not to hope the two things are related.
Another guy I knew from the street got clean. Got a house. Was going back to school, before he fell off the wagon. Heās on the street again, now. Seeing him back out there hurts. It probably wouldnāt hurt if I didnāt give a shit, if I wasnāt kind of excited for him, if I wasnāt still kind of hoping heād get clean again.
He has no idea who I am, though. We only met once, maybe four years ago now.
Iām still hoping Iāll see him around town again soon, standing upright without the black stains on his fingers, smiling like he was when he came by with his social worker.
I think most people have the impulse to care. I think the choices they make donāt reflect their capacity for love so much as they indicate what scares us more- pain and power and how we let it in.
We have shift change again twenty minutes.
Iām not sure what else to say.
Would you rather be stabbed in the back, or buried alive?
Okay so some people canāt see objects in their imagination and some people donāt think in words and some people hear their thoughts like a voice and others donāt. I get that
But how many distinct channels do most folks have playing at once? cause my normal range is 2-4 and I though that was just what thinking was LIKE but CBD brings that down to just 1
Like is this the experience
are you ever like. iām not the right Me right now to hang out with people. wait until the better guy shows up lol this one kind of sucksĀ
Sometimes it feels like you've lived your whole life in a house that's always a little bit on fire. Like it's usually just in one room and you make sure to wet the walls around it so it doesn't spread and that usually works. You were expected to take more responsibility over fire containment when you were like seven because it's not like you can expect your parents to always be 100% on guard about making sure the whole house doesn't catch fire, and you figure that's just how things are like.
And sometimes as a kid you visit your friends' homes and some of then whisper to you - grimacing with embarrassment - about how they're not supposed to tell anyone this, but there's a whole room in their house that's currently on fire. And you're like yeah it's ok I'm not supposed to tell people about the way our house is a little bit on fire all the time, too. And then you visit some other friend's house and there's no trace of fire anywhere, and you think "wow, these people are really good at hiding their house fire."
And one day you show up to work like "hey sorry I'm late, I forgot to wet the walls before going to bed last night and my whole house burned down", and you're startled by the way people react, acting like that must be the worst thing that has ever happened to you. And you're just like "chill, it's been years since the last time this happened, and it wasn't even that bad this time", and that just makes people more shocked, acting like that's the weirdest and most concerning thing they've ever heard anyone say, which only confuses you more.
And then someone tries to explain to you that people aren't supposed to have an ongoing house fire. Most people actually never experience a house fire in their lives. Like not even once. Not even a little bit. The normal amount of having your house be currently on fire is zero.
I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.
"Would you like to?"
"Sure!"
So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.
Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.
I suddenly have the unpleasant phantom sensation of eating sandy lettuce or something. Crunchy dirt in my teeth. Hey, who's watching the four year old in the innerworld? Is she eating sand?
the thing about being nonbinary is that you really do start to forget that other people have such strict walls around what is and isnāt allowed for genders. i thought we all agreed that we made that up. could you climb out of the cave real quick and feel the sunshine for a minute.
is there actually anything more irritating than depression apathy⦠like why am i sitting here arguing with myself āi kinda wanna play a video game but i kinda donāt because, what, iām just gonna boot up a game and play it and have fun and close it when iām done? get realā
ādonāt eat honey because it exploits the bees and they canāt consent!!!ā bees are literally unionized and will walk out if they donāt like being in the beekeeperās hives
It's true.
I worked with a beekeeper (not at beekeeping, guy had a day job as a machinist and kept bees as a side thing). One day there was a swarm in the parking lot and people were freaking out because, y'know, BEES EVERYWHERE. Beekeeper guy went to his truck. Pulled a swarm-catching box out. Put it on the ground and walked away. Bees went in the box after a while. Guy put the box back in his truck and drove home with them.
You cannot prevent bees from leaving a hive they don't like the conditions of, without also preventing them from being able to make honey. The latter is dependent on them being able to come and go as they please. If they don't like their hive THEY WILL LEAVE.
Beekeeping is probably the single most non-exploitative animal agriculture in the entirety of human history. I don't know how it's even possible to exploit bees. They answer only to their queen.
They absolutely do not answer to the queen. If she sucks they will kill her and make a new one.
We could learn a lot from bees
bro-
bit mad innit. This whole thing
everyone trying to minimise their intake of microplastics is going to be so mad when we invent the blood filter that can extract it and everyone who was plasticmaxxing gets a cool toy made from their poison blood as a souvenir