Soir

yìn

This lone character means "to lean on," as the poet is doing to the tree. It could also be yin3, meaning secret or hidden. I think that double meaning could be purposeful, given what's written in the longer portion.

僊人飲鶴

xiān rén yìn hè

This is a simple four word description, meaning "An immortal (xiānrén) gives a crane (hè) something to drink (yìn)." yìn here is a verb that is like the beverage equivalent of "to feed." The reason I think the meaning of concealment and hiddeness is relevant in the other piece is because we do not know for certain who is the immortal, or if they are appearing so. Immortals are more typically depicted amongst the clouds or in grand opulence befitting their status, but here we have a relatively humble depiction of a poet and a younger boy (presumably a servant). (Disclaimer thay I don't have an art degree, lol, and I could be way way way reading into this.)

戚次壬午年

qī cì rén wu3 nián

So, the calligraphy here and on is much harder to read, especially as it gets into running script, and I don't trust that my transcription of the characters is entirely correct or this translation is correct. That said, this is date stuff.

Qī cì is some sort of ordinal, because cì literally means time; think of it like the nd in 2nd. I have no idea what qī is except possibly a surname, some ordinal system I don't know, or maybe its referring to the character's literal meaning of grief? As in time of grief? Beats me. Mostly likely I think this is referring to some larger era.

Rénwu3 refers to the 19th year of the 60 year calender zodiac cycle, which I believe is the year of the water horse. Nián means year, so overall this portion means 19th year of whatever era cì denotes (qī era).

Edit: @sibeliusxx translated this also, and they definitely got some stuff right that I misread! What I thought was 戚 qī was actually 歲 suì, meaning year. I think their translation of suìcì rénwu3 nián as referring to 1942, 1882, 1822, or mayyyyybe 1762 is most likely. (Based on preservation and likeliness, 1942 and 1882 just seem like better bets, but again. No art degree).

写袗写車

xie3 zhen3 xie3 chē

Yeah, this is where the running script screwed me, so you can basically take this with a pile of salt. I've no idea if any of this is right, but I'm taking a stab at it.

Xie3 means to write, and also refers to painting in the calligraphic styles, aka painting scenes and pictures using only the calligraphy strokes so you are not actually painting (huā) but writing (xie3)

Zhen3 refers to a piece of fabric and chē now means car but used to mean something like machine or lathe, so I think zhen3 is referring to the long rectangular piece of this and chē refers to the top, curved piece. This is entirely speculation. Godspeed.

Edit: @sibeliusxx also made good corrections here, prompting me to reexamine my transcription. I think they're right that the last character is 南 nán, meaning south, and frankly I can't unsee it now that it's been pointed out! Big whoops on my part.

I still think the first character is 寫 xie3, but I'm wondering if the second character might be 於 yú, which is a preposition indicating where or when. (I did a little practice running script to see if I could get the character to look something like that, and I was surprised it actually looked pretty close? The 方 radical got really crowded to the point it looked like the 衣 radical in 袗. That gives the reading:

寫於X南

xie3 yú X nán

Since I don't think that third character matches up with any of the Chinese provinces I know end in nán (河南，湖南，海南, 云南) or the list of larger cities I checked, I'm kinda stumped.

Anyhow, thanks to @sibeliusxx for their translation and corrections ♡

How do you protect a culture that is being wiped out?

For Uighurs, this is more than just a hypothetical. Repressive measures against the ethnic minority have progressively worsened: The Chinese government has corralled more than 1 million of them into internment camps, where they have been subjected to political indoctrination, forced sterilization, and torture.

The targeting of the Uighurs isn’t limited to the camps. Since 2016, dozens of graveyards and religious sites have been destroyed. The Uighur language has been banned in Xinjiang schools in favor of Mandarin Chinese. Practicing Islam, the predominant Uighur faith, has been discouraged as a “sign of extremism.”

Beijing frames these moves as its way of rooting out terrorism, separatism, and religious extremism. But the aim of China’s actions in Xinjiang is clear: to homogenize Uighurs into the country’s Han Chinese majority, even if that means erasing their cultural and religious identity for good. What is taking place is a cultural genocide.

The repercussions bear heavily even on Uighurs living outside the country. Their burden is more than just raising awareness about what is taking place in their homeland—a task many have taken up at great cost to themselves and their families. It’s also about preserving and promoting their identity in countries where few people might know who the Uighurs are, let alone what the world stands to lose should their language, food, art, and traditions be eradicated.

In an effort to understand what this kind of cultural preservation looks like in practice, I spoke with seven Uighurs residing in Britain, France, Turkey, and the United States. As chefs, poets, singers, filmmakers, language teachers, and musicians, each of them is contributing to this work in different ways. All of them are passionate about ensuring that their heritage will be passed on to future generations. None of them is under any illusions about what’s at stake if they fail.

I don’t think it makes you a piece of shit to have more than one emotion about something. I think it makes you a human being who is grappling with complicated things, and you are doing the hard work of being honest with yourself about where your biases and prejudices are.

I also come out of a religious tradition where same-sex relationships are vilified. It is not easy work, to leave behind the worldview in which one was raised. It took me many years to be able to say, I cherish and respect these things from my tradition, and I reject these other things. You don’t have to reject all of your faith tradition just because there are some areas where it is in error. It was a little easier in my case because I had my own queer experience to draw on — I could say wait just a minute, I know this can’t be true because my own experience tells me something different. But that still took time, to heal the divide inside of me.

Fictional narrative can be a kind of experience, too. The world that I write about is a real world — no, not the superhero stuff, but the character stuff. Real men and women act like the people in my stories. They love like that, they argue like that, they commit to each other like that. I promise you that whatever else I make up in my writing, it’s not that. It is a real picture of queer love.

If watching a pride parade feels uncomfortable and alienating, don’t do it. Because most of society has made queer folk feel ashamed of themselves for countless generations, pride parades are often about pushing back on that idea, sometimes pretty aggressively. They can be over-the-top performances of transgressive sexuality that don’t really have a lot to do with the way that ordinary queer people live their daily lives, or their daily loves. So maybe stop watching pride parades, and instead get to know some gay people. Get to know some trans folk. Be a respectful listener and learner. Honor their experiences.

You can also watch and read some non-fictional voices that might help you start learning and seeing from a queer perspective — Hannah Gadsby’s Nanette is a good place to start, and I am hoping other people will add their comments and thoughts.

Keep reading. Keep learning. Keep questioning. And know this for sure and certain: queer love is holy and beautiful, and the voices that say otherwise are mistaken. This kind of human love is created by God, it reveals crucial aspects of God’s nature, and (when rightly lived, just like hetero love) it gives glory to God.

I initially was ambivalent to Amber Heard. Before I began to research the case, I was firmly in the “they both suck” camp, having only briefly glanced through articles. I started to pay more attention to the media coverage over the past six weeks and was really staggered by how Heard was being portrayed as a lying, crazy, gold-digging woman through narratives that were not only going unchallenged, but were heavily perpetuated in the public discourse. Even worse, that the abuse she experienced had been capitalized on by “true crime” junkies and mocked in TikTok videos and Youtube compilations. So I began watching the trial live and found that there was far more evidence and far more substantial evidence which shows that JD was the perpetrator of abuse within their relationship.

The evidence collected through JD’s personal texts and emails show an early pattern of abuse. He exerted control over the clothes Amber wore and would become angry when she didn’t dress “conservatively”. He would consistently accuse her of having affairs with acquaintances, friends, and various co-stars, even with an openly gay director, Clive Barker. He didn’t like that she was ambitious and would scorn her when she took opportunities to advance her career. He would constantly refer to her with misogynistic language. He also referred to Amber, an openly bisexual woman, as a “lesbian camp counsellor”. He messaged other men to discuss killing her through drowning and burning her, and then raping her burnt corpse to prove that she was truly dead. This all occurred while they were still dating. She was in her early 20s and he was in 50s. All of these coercive, paranoid, jealous, controlling behaviours are deeply and unequivocally abusive.

None of this includes the evidence which shows physical and sexual abuse. There are audio tapes in which he admits to headbutting her, so hard that she was concerned her nose was broken. In another recording, they discuss how her family and friends have seen her bruises, broken blood vessels, and bald spots from her hair being torn out of her scalp. In another one, she screams “stop hitting me!” Another shows him stating “I will smack the ugly c**t before I let her in.” A video shows him aggressively breaking and smashing furniture near her. One interaction reveals that Stephen Deuters, his assistant, begged her to come back to him after her assaulted her on a plane in front of his bodyguards, pleading to her that JD was remorseful for his actions. Heard also has stated he sexually assaulted her multiple times. Remember, he previously discussed violently raping her in those infamous messages to Paul Bettany.

As for witnesses, several testified to seeing bruises on her numerous times, including JD’s witnesses, such as their marriage counsellor. A makeup artist, Melanie Inglessis, testified to covering swelling on her lip and two black eyes. Raquel Pennington saw several injuries, including bloodied bald spots on her head, a swollen nose, and cut lip. She expressed fear JD would eventually kill Amber if she didn’t leave. Josh Drew also testified to seeing her with injuries, including black eyes, a swollen cheek, and a busted lip. iO Tillet Wright (who Depp misgenders throughout his testimony) recalled hearing JD assault Amber and scream “oh, you think I hit you? You think I fucking hit you? What if I peel your fucking hair back“. iO then called 911. This was the incident which led Heard to file for a divorce and a restraining order, two days afterwards. It is worth noting that Pennington, Drew, and Wright all corroborated this incident in their depositions, as did iO’s 2016 essay.

Is she guilty of fighting back? Absolutely. She never lied about doing so, even dating back to her 2016 deposition. However, fighting back against a man who has beaten you, sexually assaulted you, controlled your career, finances, and who you can associate with does not equate to being an abuser. It’s simply surviving. And yes, I’ve heard those audio tapes, the in which she’s expresses her incredulity at him for stating their fights were fair when she feared he would kill her.

His case has relied upon deeply misogynistic narratives to discredit both her claims and her character. She was after his money all along, even though she refused the 30 million dollar fortune she was legally entitled to, as there was no prenup. She painted on bruises, even though a makeup artist testified to covering up her swollen lip and two black eyes. She cut off his finger, even though multiple texts and even an audio recording showcase him admitting to doing it in the midst of a bender. She didn’t donate her money, even though she and the organization created a 10 year plan for her to make yearly payments (in my personal opinion, what she does with her money either way is nobody’s fucking business). Also worth noting, an ACLU representative testified to her being ahead of schedule until Depp began suing her. She made up a hoax, because she documented her abuse - as we advise all people who are in abusive situations to do. She’s a liar, because women are inherently deceitful liars.

None of the evidence that JD’s attorneys presented has proven that she defamed him through her op-ed piece. That’s likely because their goal was never to prove that her article - which never explicitly references him or their relationship - impacted his career. Those who watched the trial will know, Tracy Jacobs, his agent of 30 years stated that it was his drug and alcohol abuse, anger issues, chronic lateness (7 or 8 hours late to set each day), and unprofessionalism that led to his career decline. Film crews grew tired of working around these problems, and eventually, so did Hollywood. Tina Newman, a Disney Corporate Representative who worked on POTC stated no one knew of Amber’s op-ed until Depp sued her. 

The trial was always meant to humiliate, shame, and terrorize her. We are witnessing in a powerful man terrorize his ex-wife through the legal system, all while the world makes TikToks of her sexual assault testimony. JD has a documented history of violence and is due for another court date after assaulting a crew member of the set of City of Lies. To quote his own words, “If I’m angry and I’ve got to lash out or hit somebody, I’m going to do it and I don’t care what the repercussions are. Anger doesn’t pay rent, it’s gotta go. It’s gotta be evicted.”