Under the Van Gogh

**IMPORTANT**

Cris (the owner of this blog) passed away on Wednesday, October 10th, 2018, due to complications with illness that landed her in the ICU.

My name is Pat (over at @labrattish​), and like y’all, it was a shocking revelation when I found out. Cris lived a short life burning brighter than any star. She was an amazing person—as anyone following this blog knows. She was obstinate beyond belief but also one of the kindest dreamers I’ve ever met. She will be missed. And while sadness is inevitable, know that Cris would roll her eyes at all of us (and possibly punch us in the boob) if she managed to catch us crying too much.

Her family asked that anyone wishing to do something in remembrance of her, think about donating in her name to reputable animal foundation/charity, some suggestions:

The Argus Service Dog Foundation (service dogs for veterans)

Best Friends (general animal charity)

DELTA Rescue (the largest animal sanctuary of its kind)—I picked this one because she would have thought it was only fitting since Delta is also her dog’s name.

Well, yes. But who are 20 and 22 for?

catch-the-ghost replied to your post: “B-Side: The Ice Prince Speaks”:

Practically crying, also laughing at his views on sex, but mostly sad. XD

Considering my take on writing is getting to know them as if they were real people, it probably won't surprise you to know that Ean's views on sex just kind of developed out of years and years of writing and talking about him with others. I don't know if he would label himself asexual or not (he's never quite been the kind of guy who describes himself with labels the way that, say, Viticus tends to do), but he's very certain about his feelings on the matter. He doesn't like it, isn't interested, and we already know that he is not the sort of guy to be pressured into doing anything he doesn't want to do. I just hope I don't screw up conveying that part of him.

(This might also be the first time he's ever talked about his last girlfriend at length. I was half-expecting it to be a lot more bitter about it. He surprised me.)

Also, I wanted to get across the point that he's a natural introvert, too. Ean seriously values his time and how he shares it. I recommend Anneli Rufus' Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto. It's a really great book for anyone wanting to get a peek inside how introverts and loners really are or can be. That's how he normally is, but then you take his childhood issues and all that time spent all alone in the hospital...

[The last of three short tales about Ean Amherst, as requested by catch-the-ghost based on items from wonderland-decipere's list of prompts! The list is here, the first story is here, and the second one is here. This is a story based around the ❤ prompt: Describe a physical action that shows complete trust.

I struggled with this one for a week and a half; then I sat down with a notebook and coffee, and suddenly this happened.]

.::.

It isn’t so easy, you know. People have a way of taking advantage of you. They screw you over. My last girlfriend left me after she found out that I had cancer. Before that, she’d been cheating on me with one of my few supposed “friends” because she was tired of the fact that I wouldn’t “meet her needs”—her way of saying that I wouldn’t have sex with her.

In hindsight and all honesty, her sleeping with someone else might not have been such a big deal to if not for the cancer thing. That sort of major change just has a way of altering your reactions to anything that comes your way once the reality sets in. So I ranted. I raved. I shattered a few of our coffee mugs like I gave a damn.

Maybe I did give at least half a damn, but not for the reasons she or anyone else—anyone normal—might expect. Not for the “right” reasons, I guess. That she left over the issue of sex was not the point that stung, not when I made it abundantly clear at the start of our relationship that its value ranked lower to me than, say, handholding. It wasn’t even the lying that got to me, really. People lie all the time, even when they don’t have to. It’s just a fact of life. People will lie if they believe it will convenience them, make their lives easier somehow.

No, what really got to me then was realizing the amount of time and energy I’d wasted. It burned to think about the futility of extra effort I’d made for her at the occasional expense of my own well-being. Parties where I knew no one. Lunches with family. Club crawls with her friends. Concerts, fairs, and loud street festivals. Exhausting ventures, all of them; events that demanded the presence of a sociable veneer and so much time.

Hours and days and weeks of time, and she left me because I wouldn’t devote…what, fifteen, twenty minutes to plowing away at her like some pig in heat? And, I mean, it wasn’t even so much that I…that I wouldn’t, exactly. I couldn’t, not because I wasn’t physically able to—I’ve had sex before, once, just to see what the hell it was all about—but I just…

I didn’t want to. It had nothing to do with her. She was beautiful, kind—a cat lover who spent her childhood in fancy boarding schools and spoke three languages. I’ve just never really wanted to. Kissing is fine. Cuddling’s all right. But sex? Sex just didn’t appeal to me. Still doesn’t. Doubt it ever will, especially now.

Before she left, she said I was cold. I was the frigid one, distant, even though I lost entire Saturdays huddled in blankets with her on the couch. She walked out because I apparently neglected her need for intimacy, even though I was the best kisser and had the most skillful hands.

Of course, it’s like I said—people lie all the time.

So she left. I raged for another day or two, broke some more things—which I’m not proud of, because even though it was my stuff, I could’ve probably just sold it—and then I made a decision. Whatever time I had left, I wasn’t going to waste it on anyone else. I wasn’t going to throw away energy doing what I didn’t want to do. Living, dying… It’s gonna sound crazy, but that shit didn’t matter to me at the time, not as much as having only myself to answer to and care about did. When you become aware of your own agency, everything else kind of…dims and reilluminates. You see the possibilities that weren’t there before. It’s… Y’know, it is what it is. Freedom. Selfishness. I’ve been called an asshole so many times I’ve considered getting business cards. I’ll get them printed on high-quality paper, with the letters in really fancy font so that it looks professional: Ean W. Amherst, Certified Professional Asshole.

It might’ve saved me a lot of trouble and time if I’d had a stack of those to hand out. Oh, but then, I wouldn’t have a story to tell, would I? And it’s not like they would fully guarantee to keep people away. Take Allys, for instance—

Or, come to think of it, let’s not. You’re already familiar with that tragedy. No point in retracing it. Besides, it’s not really the best example, given all of the special circumstances. There’s no way it would have worked outside of the confines of that hospital room.

[The second of three short tales about Ean, as requested by catch-the-ghost, based on items from wonderland-decipere's list of really awesome headcanon prompts! (You can see a reblog of the list here, and the first story is over here. I'm also still taking characters and prompts!) This story is based on the ☁ prompt: Describe how they would spend a stormy, overcast/rainy day.]

.::.

These are the days that Ean loves the best. No blinding sun, not a single spot of blue in the sky; just a full blanket of clouds in blended shades of gray, quietly promising rain by the afternoon. It’s not quite as pretty as the grayness of Seattle—though, truly, no skyline will ever be as pretty to him—but it comes close. It reminds him of home (of the better parts, anyway) and that is comfort enough.

He walks barefoot through his morning routine, the itinerary slightly altered on account of being a Saturday. It starts with a warm bath while the coffee brews and the eggs boil. He drops two slices of bread into the toaster while he gets dressed. It’s something simple today—an old shirt, a hooded jacket from his high school track days (the only souvenir from those days even worth keeping), and his running pants. He stuffs a pair of ankle socks into a pocket. The absence of his desired pair of shoes pulls a small frown out of him until he remembers where he last left them—by the door, near the corner where he leans his umbrella.

Which, Ean has to admit as he drinks his coffee, is where he almost always leaves his running shoes.

There are some who would call it a habit—perhaps, given his slender frame, even an unnecessary one—but Ean has never paid much attention to the opinions of others. Besides, to him it isn’t so much a habit as…

Well, to call it the difference between life and death would almost be exaggerating, except that his doctors seem inclined to think it is. At the very least, it has kept him out of the operating room, kept him off transplant lists and medication, and Ean is just so good at it. But it has always been that way, hasn’t it? Ean being not just good at things, but good—having that subtle difference that separates the naturally talented from the technically skilled. Everything just comes naturally. Playing the piano, performing in choir and theatre, years and years of boring schoolwork… Hell, he probably could have even succeeded in law if he had been willing to bend to his mother’s will and followed in his stepfather’s footsteps!

But running…is…different, somehow; he has yet to find the words to accurately explain—and even if he ever does, he doubts he ever will—but running has always served to help him in a way that nothing else has. The help has nothing to do with its physical benefits on his heart and figure. Ean wouldn’t call it psychological, either. It goes deeper than that, encompassing some intangible thing that lacks a proper name. It’s the same with his art, though he understands its purpose a little bit better—or, at least, well enough to verbalize its importance to him. With his art, he purges himself of the things that bother him. The daily stresses, the absence of his father and the eternal conflict with his mother, the uncertainty about his future…

And, as of his seventeenth birthday, the nightmares that lurk in the in the shadows of sleep.

Running feels like that, but not quite. There is nothing of the drained, empty feeling that comes with an intensely fulfilling art session. He feels freer after he runs; like the things that bother him, the things he confronts and purges on canvas and paper, can’t get their claws into him in the first place.

“Like he’s running from the Devil himself.”

Isn’t that what the nuns used to say about his speed in high school?

[The first of three short tales about Ean, as requested by catch-the-ghost, based on items from wonderland-decipere's list of really awesome headcanon prompts. This one is based on the ☆ prompt: Would they ever wish on a falling star? If so, what would they wish for?]

.::.

If ever he were asked whether or not he believes in wishing on falling stars, Ean Amherst would more than likely scowl at the person asking. Depending on his mood at the time, he might even go the extra step of answering that he believes in the existence of stupid questions. For Ean, wishing on falling stars ranks well below the existence of unicorns and just slightly above believing in humankind’s inherent goodness.

Wishing on falling stars is a waste of time. They aren’t even really stars! Just glorified pieces of space junk. Romanticized rocks too stupid to stay afloat in the freezing void, or maybe one of the dozens of long forgotten spy satellites, or maybe even a broken piece of some famous spaceship; all of them getting the same burned up fate as they make their way down Earth’s atmosphere to land unceremoniously in some farmer’s field.

Allys would probably tell him that he is being too pessimistic for his own good.

Then again, Allys actually believes in humankind’s inherent goodness, thus proving that nobody in this world is truly perfect.

Besides, what sort of purpose does it serve, wishing on stars and not doing anything of your own to make what you want happen? And what about the things will simply never happen? Wishing on a falling star won’t pull his father’s car out of Puget Sound; won’t clear the water from his lungs and restart his heart. It won’t make his mother any less colder than the winters she experienced in her native Poland.

Wishing on some falling bit of space junk certainly won’t help him live to see much of next year, that’s for fucking sure.

Still, sometimes Ean wonders if maybe there is something to be envied in the way they all go down in a blaze of glory. They’re lucky, aren’t they? Nobody pities the death of a falling rock. Nobody cries over the crash of an old satellite. Instead, they almost worship it. They see it not as a burned-out husk or lump of coal, but rather as something beautiful and powerful—as something completely capable of altering fate.

Who wouldn’t want that as their final legacy?

The average annual temperature in Poland is about 8'C/46'F and varies for the regions of Poland depending on height above sea level and distance from the Baltic Sea. In the summer, for instance, temperatures are lower in northern Poland because of the Baltic Sea. The lowest temperatures are in the mountains and the highest are in western and central Poland.

[. . .]

Early autumn is generally sunny and warm before a period of rainy, colder weather in November begins the transition into winter. Winter, which may last one to three months, is cold and cloudy and brings frequent snowstorms but relatively low total precipitation. The average temperature in January is about -4'C/25'F but it can fall as low as -35'C/-31'F.

Sometimes writing is doing research into something that only gets referenced in one sentence or even barely even half a sentence, but I'd rather do that research if it means making sure that it's accurate. And since part of this blog is to share the creative process with you guys, now you know a bit more about the average climate of Polish winters!