I had a thought...

People talk about how you can’t see stars in the city and yeah, that’s true, but their concept of “seeing stars” is being able to make out orion’s belt.

So, so few people have see the sky in all its glory and it’s not sad. It’s a fucking crime. Seeing a perfectly dark night, no clouds, not a hint of light pollution? That’s a fucking religious experience.

The sky the vast vast majority of us grew up with is not the sky that inspired us to look up. It is not the sky that inspired constellations. You can’t even see most constellations.

Your ancestors looked at the night sky and said “surely, that is where the gods must live.” And you might be lucky if you can see hardly more than a handful of stars.

When we were on a field trip to the middle of the red sea, I remember us all crowding at the end of the boat that didn’t have lights and just lying on our backs and staring

When you see a properly dark starscape

You understand why people wrote poems and made up legends and built rockets and said heaven’s in the sky

You think of the night sky like fairy lights on black velvet, but it’s not it’s not it’s like, like, dust in sunlight, like - I can’t find the words.

The stars are everywhere, like sugar, like glitter, like dust. You can’t find the constellations at first, not because you can’t recognise them, but because there’s so many stars you can’t pick out the familiar line of Orion’s belt. The North star has gone from bright familiarity to almost vanishing among a thousand, a hundred thousand, a million other lights. The milky way is a line of light arcing across the sky like a moon-trail on water only infinitely, infinitely bigger.

And for the first time in your life you’ll understand why people call it a dome, because it is, it’s three dimensional in exactly the way a city skyscape isn’t.

You’ll understand why Luthien Tinúviel danced under starlight, not moonlight, why people in a time before we knew the earth was round still looked up and wondered and built telescopes and dreamed about the stars.

The stars are endless and ancient and infinite and you will stand with your head craned back and your rucksack forgotten at your feet and you’ll feel like you’re falling upwards into that great bright sky like it’s calling you home and you’ll wonder how you ever thought the stars were beautiful before tonight when all you’d ever seen were the naked empty skyscapes of your home. And you’ll cry and you’ll spend the rest of your time there gazing up and wondering and imagining what it would be like to stand among those bright silver flecks

I’d often set an alarm to wake me in the middle of the night, so it was as dark as possible and my eyes as dark-adapted as they coud get, and starlight alone was enough to guide me

this post was inflicted upon me so now i’m inflicting it on all of you

HYPERBASS FLUTE

I present, THE OCTOBASS

It’s so big that it needs keys to hit the strings.

And in the reverse direction there exists the Pochette. Translated from French, it means pocket, as it was a pocket sized violin like instrument.

Bartholomew

Dolores

Norman

Harold

Magnolia

Names that are normal for babies but weird when you're old:

Maddison

Tanner

Skylar

Mckenzie

Logan

Names that are normal for old people and normal for babies:

Elizabeth

Mary

Michael

Finnegan

Peter

Names that are weird when you're a baby and weird when you're old:

Radish

Kerosene

Australopithecus

Anthill

Hedgemony

Names that are weird when you're normal:

Balthazar

Romulus

Clandestia

Persephone

Kremulon

Names that are normal when you're weird:

Winter in Yellowstone can be harsh at times. The circle of life is cruel but necessary for survival. A bison had a “miscarriage” and dropped her calf in the snow. The opportunistic coyote happened upon the fetus and made a meal of it. While cruel, it is nature and the pure untamed wild.

This is maybe unlucky for the bison mother and lucky for the coyote, but there’s nothing cruel about a sometimes-scavenger cleaning up after a ranging herbivore’s miscarriage. It’s not like the bison mom was planning to drag her miscarriage through the snow, ceremonially wailing, to a common place of burial. Somebody was going to eat that thing, and good for them - food is harder to come by in the winter.

And one cannot start a caption telling me this takes place in Yellowstone - one of the most carefully managed parks in the world - and end the caption telling me this is “the pure untamed wild.” People are so invested in this fantasy of a nature that does not include us, a “wilderness” whose violence is somehow more truthful than our own, or which somehow confers authority on (professes the inescapability of) our own violent impulses. Men in particular seem to love to take photos of larger carnivores and caption them with this kind of sensationalized language. But is it cruel when a chickadee goes through an oak tree hunting every spider it can find? Is a family of chickadees massacring arthropods in a pine forest “the pure and untamed wild?” You’re never going to hear some guy talk about a cute little bird like that, even though chickadees are more active predators than coyotes. Why is there an attraction in labeling canids and other charismatic carnivores with this kind of language, and why do we use totally different language to describe smaller hunters of primarily non-mammalian prey?

you're making a sandwich!! Spin THIS wheel 3-5 times for the toppings!

It made you want to kick down walls and ascend the sky on steps of fire. It made you want to pull all the switches and throw all the levers and stick your fingers in the electric socket of the universe to see what happened next. It made you want to paint your bedroom wall black and cover it with posters.

And growing up we lived an hour plus from shopping and had not a lot of money — our shopping trips tended to be “until the clothing requirements are met”. And honestly there’s a point of exhaustion and misery where I’ll lie to myself and say requirements are met by a piece of clothing so I can leave.

Also my mom noticed this and took advantage of it — and even into adulthood would push me into overwhelm so that I’d be more biddable about choosing clothing. She explained this one weird trick to get her daughter to buy socks to my spouse, who was like “hey what the fuck?” and then repeated it to me when I was not overwhelmed. “Oh!” I thought, “that explains things!” and then donated about 65% of my wardrobe that I hated but felt guilty about not wearing.

Also I stopped clothes shopping with my mom.

Anyway! Here’s my tip for clothes shopping with like significant overwhelm issues and sensory issues and a human body and probably some trauma don’t worry about it.

Sit outside the store, think about the clothing item you’d like to buy. Set minimum standards for the item: comfort, price, appearance, quality. (Don’t sacrifice on comfort! Do prepare a generous fallback for the other options.) Set a timer for a short period of time: I usually do twenty minutes. Walk into the store, navigate directly to the appropriate area, identify several items that meet the minimum standards*. Try those items on, pick the most comfortable one.

*if there are no items that meet minimum standards leave the store, armed with additional knowledge, and either go to a different store OR stand outside and recalibrate standards. Do not recalibrate inside the store.

If at any time the alarm goes off, get up and exit the store. Check in with yourself after five-ten minutes outside about your ability to go back in. If you can’t: hey you have valuable market data! If you can: set the timer. Put five minutes less on the timer. Back inside.

(You don't really have to be friends with them now, just at any point in your life, did you know them/interact with them in some capacity. They don't have to be identical. Idk if we want to count triplets/quadruplets/etc. in here, ig we can. Lol sorry).

macbeth: but not like that

hamlet: if you’re in a duplicitous violent world, your king and your peers and your girlfriend may lie to you, so only follow the advice of your steadfast best friend

othello: but not like that

as you like it: if you undergo a misfortune that causes you to hate your life in your city, give yourself a makeover and run away to the woods

timon of athens: but not like that

two gents: if you’re in love in italy, you can quickly and easily communicate important information via the verona postal service

It's great when Lidl does American week, it's so fun to see all the foreign foods that they eat like

you can have these with the traditional

with the on the go sides such as

and Americans love their burger and bbq

with the normal American toppings

and don't forget the sweets!

and a nice drink

Also remember Americans love loads of peanuts

that way we know we’re from tumblr without revealing anything

I’m just going to say this to strangers until i find a tumblr person

must keep reblogering!! Im going to be so suspicious if any one tells me this now!

Remember the answer is: I stole them from the president.