Sure Looked Strange To Me

One of the most photogenic tornadoes in history

From the site:

Project Rainbow Turtle is a mutual aid fund and network that provides direct financial assistance, support, and resources to our 2-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQ+ Relatives within the united states.

We understand that our current colonizing reality has kept us from being ourselves and free. We aim to challenge and disrupt such current circumstances.

We will assist our 2-Spirit and Indigenous LGBTQ+ Relatives within the united states with the following:

Name Change Fees

Passport Fees or Identity-related documents fee

Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT)

Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT)

FFS

Laser Hair Removal

Transition-specific clothing, like binders, tucking garments, make up, wigs, or traditional clothing

Travel expenses related to accessing gender affirming care, such as ceremonies or other

Relocation Assistance

If you'd like to support Project Rainbow Turtle:

because to hear even Tumblr the "gay gender website" talk people only wear harnesses while strapped into a sex swing while being fisted

but the reality is that the harness, both leather and spandex, in gay male world is like stiletto pumps, a bright red lip stick, a short skirt or push up bra.

sure some people are wearing those things because they're about to get laid or hoping to. But lots of people wear them just to feel sexy, confident or powerful. And there's nothing X rated and "shouldn't be seen in public" about any of that.

lots of gay guys wear harnesses to bars or clubs not because its a sex thing, but because its a sexy thing, they feel attractive and confident.

I get that gay men feeling attractive and confident terrifies people, but if you're at Pride and a guy walks past you in jeans and a harness, either shirtless or over his shirt, he didn't violate your civil rights or do a sex thing in front of you, he's wearing a totally appropriate outside that makes him feel confident and powerful.

Per wikipedia:

The Titanic was made of steel, presumably to resist corrosion (i mean. thats why boats are made of steel i assume) but even when iron/steel rusts people did not expect to find like. decomposition. bacteria are EATING the titanic.

and there's wood furniture from the titanic that isn't decaying. hell, there are wood ships at the bottom of the ocean that archaeologists study. so the expectation people have for the titanic is not that the steel would decompose at the bottom of the ocean. Even in 100 years, since there are much more ancient preserved wooden ships iirc.

The sister ship HMHS Britannic is still perfectly preserved because of the way it sank, and partly in due to the coral that has grown around it keeping the structure in tact I believe was the reason.

One night the seminar was given by a specialist who was pointing out the difference between children who’d been abused and children who’d been neglected. Neglected children felt invisible, as if their presence had no bearing on anyone or anything. Abused children felt all too visible, as if they were the center of everyone’s world, because they had been the center of someone’s world, the recipients of an abnormal amount of attention.

I thought about my own ridiculous attachment to what others might be thinking of me. When I chose a seat on a bus, I often thought the people I had not sat next to were taking it personally, that they’d assume I’d avoided them because of their race or their weight or their age. Thoughts like this churned and reeled in my brain until I talked myself out of what I knew was a particular form of narcissism.

And it wasn’t just with strangers; it extended to jobs and relationships. The idea that I could not quit an assistant job because everyone was depending on me, that my boyfriends would be devastated without me in their lives. I had an incredibly inflated concept of my effect on others, a misconception that trapped no one but me.

One night, a friend dropped me off at the apartment I shared with six random people on Ashbury Street. I had forgotten my keys. Because it was after ten o'clock, I refused to ring the bell. I climbed back into my friend’s car and told her I had to spend the night at her house.

“Well, didn’t you ring the bell?” she asked.

I told her I wasn’t going to ring the bell. It was after ten and I was in the wrong. She assured me that my roommates were probably awake and, even if they weren’t, one of them would come to the door and go back to sleep. It wasn’t that big of a deal. Instead of ringing the bell I did several laps around the house, trying to determine if anyone was awake or if there was an open window I could climb into. My friend was getting annoyed. When I got back in the car I said I’d rung the bell and no one answered and could I please just sleep on her couch.

“How many times did you ring the bell?” she asked.

“Trust me. Enough.”

She didn’t trust me. She insisted on getting out of the car and ringing it herself, until I broke down in tears and begged her not to.

“Why’d you lie?” she asked.

The tears were really coming down. I just wanted to curl up on her couch and go to sleep. It was a Sunday and both of us had to work the next day and I was dressed in shorts and hiking boots, which meant I would have to borrow work clothes from her. We sat in the car for a while. She was annoyed and I had shut down. All I knew was she didn’t get it. She didn’t get that I was in the wrong and I had to pay the price. I didn’t get just how much of Dad’s thinking I’d accepted as my own.

“You can sleep on my couch. You can sleep on my bed. It’s not that. It’s just so stupid that you can never be wrong, Rachel.”

“But I am wrong,” I said. “And now I can’t go home.”

“Shit happens,” she said. “You’re not gonna ruin anyone’s life.”

I hadn’t seen it like that. I had come to know my fear as martyrdom. I went back to Erika’s, crawled into her sleeping bag on the couch, where I lay awake until one in the morning. Then I put my hiking boots back on, walked to my apartment, and sat on the porch for a good half an hour before I rang the bell.

“No worries,” was what my roommate said when he came to the door in his bathrobe.

For days I avoided going home when my roommates were around. I’d convinced myself they thought I was negligent and selfish. I’d opened the door late at night for them, but it seemed an entirely different situation when I was standing outside without my key. I, who was larger than life. I, who would ruin their night, leave each of them awake for hours, lying on their backs thinking of me, hating me, knowing how irresponsible I was for forgetting the key, how selfish I was for waking them up. Overcoming the internalized belief that I was at the center of everybody’s world, that I could ruin somebody’s life, was my biggest battle.

And yet, talking about boyfriends and classes and jobs, Jenny constantly said, “They don’t hear me,” and “They don’t see me,” and “No one even notices I exist.”

Archaeology has traditionally had a fundamental bias against fabric. Fabrics are after all highly perishable, withering away within months or years, and only rarely leaving traces behind for those coming millennia later to find. Archaeologists—predominantly male—gave ancient ages names like “Iron” and “Bronze,” rather than “Pottery” or “Flax.” This implies that metal objects were the principal features of these times, when they are simply often the most visible and long-lasting remnants. Technologies using perishable materials, such as wood and textiles, may well have been more pivotal in the daily lives of the people who lived through them, but evidence of their existence has, for the most part, been absorbed back into the earth.

congrats! Now you have a motif! A recurring theme! A focus for your art! Something to haunt you!

Seventeen still lives of dandelions? Three hundred poems about grief? A sketchbook dedicated to your grandmother’s house? Two books trying to unravel the complexities of familial relationships?

An early exploration of the themes Hokusai would keep coming back to is Spring in Enoshima, done in 1793 when he was 33. The wave is small and there are no boats, but Mt Fuji is clear in the background, and Enoshima is in Kanagawa, so we are clearly beginning to work towards something here.

A second pass, eleven years later in 1803 when he was 44. The title of this one begins to get more familiar: The View of Honmoku Off Kanazawa. It has a towering wave over a smaller boat, but Mt Fuji is not present, and the boat is considerably larger and has a sail. But the feeling of danger in the wave and the smallness of the boat are here, and of course the general composition is definitely recognizable.

This is A View Of Express Delivery Boats, done in 1805, merely two years later at age 46. Here we find the wave and the boats almost exactly as we'll find them in The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, though Mt Fuji isn't present, and the location is uncertain. And it's a good picture! The wave is threatening, the boats are small -- but the feeling of "ocean" isn't really there yet, is it? It's unlikely this picture would have become a classic for the ages. But that's okay, there's still time.

And here we have it, a full 26 years later, done by Hokusai in 1831 at the age of 72. The Great Wave Off Kanagawa, one of the most recognizable pieces of art in the world. The boats are there, the mountain is there, the wave is there, and the FEELING is there. He did it! He reached the apex of his ongoing motif and theme!

Or did he? Because the whole point of a motif is not that you're striving to get to the perfect version of it, the one idealized image you carried in your head all along, and when it is done, you are also done. Hokusai is on record at the age of 73 saying he'd only just begun to feel like he was learning how to draw things properly, and that "if I keep up my efforts, I will have even a better understanding when I was 80 and by 90 will have penetrated to the heart of things. At 100, I may reach a level of divine understanding, and if I live decades beyond that, everything I paint — dot and line — will be alive." He had drawn The Great Wave, but he didn't believe he was finished -- he thought that he was still just beginning to get started.

And he wasn't finished with his ocean motif, either. Please check out his Mt Fuji At Sea, done in 1834 at the age of 75.