chameleon soul

"expectations?"

"none. nothing. just sit with me"

his own mother making his desperate call for help sound like a bootycall

 All Ashore - Jack Standish

American , b. 1949 -

He thinks this must be a joke so he goes to the comments, and sure enough it's absolutely full of people who not only seem to think this spoon is worthy of rating in the first place, but who seem to have very strong opinions on what makes it a good or bad spoon. To Ilya a spoon is a spoon is a spoon. It's absolutely baffling to him that people seem to think the handle looks like it's not weighty enough, or that the shape of the bowl is wrong, or that it's too flat or too square. He opens the playlist of cutlery rating videos because surely this can't be the norm, and sure enough every single one has a comment section full of very strong opinions about how good or bad this normal fucking fork or knife is.

And then a memory returns to him, as he looks over at his peacefully sleeping husband, of Shane moving in and having to get rid of all his cutlery to replace it with his.

"Sorry, I know it's stupid, but yours are really bad to hold, baby. It's literally all I can think about every time I eat here."

And Ilya didn't mind at the time. So Shane likes his own cutlery better? That's a small compromise when Ilya doesn't have strong feelings about silverware in the first place. But now things are beginning to click, and he's beginning to draw a line between the opinionated spoon people and the day he had to drive his cutlery to the nearest goodwill.

Ilya (Carefully. So so very carefully): My Shane, I came across some things online and I was thinking... Do you think you might be autistic?

I never really realised how much difference it makes until I went to England and realised that here the change of seasons is an obvious, visible, physical change in the world. Like, everything REALLY IS orange and foggy in autumn! In spring there are flowers EVERYWHERE, so much more than any other season, and the trees really do have all blossom and no leaves. Even if it doesn't snow, in winter there's frost all the time and the trees are bare and the sky is visibly greyer all the time. You don't need to be told "this date is the first day of spring", you can SEE IT (although this is getting way messier and less precise due to climate change).

By contrast, most places in Australia the seasons we're taught feel like arbitrary categories - and is it any surprise considering they're colonial constructs? Orange-leaved autumn and blossom-covered spring is a cartoon stereotype with no relevance on a continent where ALL NATIVE TREES ARE EVERGREEN!! Snowy winters are a joke in the desert, and even sunny summers don't ring particularly true considering that much of the country is in the tropics, where summer means monsoons - not that I've ever seen the concept that WE HAVE A MONSOON SEASON taught at an Australian school.

the 4 season model as you and i know it is a european invention, though 4 season models aren't unique to europe! most notably china has the same type of season subdivision.

Such a gorgeous bikini, too! We should all know her. We should all admire and respect her.

1. military family / strict af dad

2. russian schools in the 90s still had more emphasis on penmanship than in the west

3. children were often taught cursive from an early age & spent a lot of time copying text