ilsa-makes-things:

renniequeer:

When hurricane season hits its peak and the storms are damn near constant, sure, I’ll pour out my offerings to Thor.

But we name those storms. We personify and anthropomorphize them. We hail them as beings with their own energy and presence. Even people who claim no belief in any higher power will do this.

“Remember Andrew? He was a bastard.”

“Irma’s angry; she’s going to hit us hard.”

The strongest? We never call another storm by that name, and in the areas heaviest hit, you see a sharp, sharp decline in children bearing that moniker. Around here we know–you don’t give a kid that name, it has too much power and rage behind it. It’s ill luck.

So I offer to the storms, too. To tell them, hey–I see your power, your might, your rage. I see your majesty. Please, slow down. Please, be calm. Transform your rage into gentle showers and winds that are just strong enough for us to know it’s you. 

Be kind to us, great storms; show us your power in a way that causes the least amount of harm.

A writer-friend wrote this about how we Floridians deal with hurricanes. It resonated HARD and promoted the following.

–

The World Meteorological Organization publishes a list, every year, of the names they’ll use for that season’s hurricanes. They do this because names have power.

True names would be stronger, of course, than these arbitrary designations. In 2017, UF meteorologist Jeff Huffman heard a single syllable of Hurricane Irma’s true name on the gales. He drove out to Gainesville Regional Airport (airports, fun fact, are the easiest place to fight the element of air from—after all, that’s what planes DO) in the driving rain, while lightning split the live oaks around him and power lines creaked under the weight of the sky. When he got there, they let him walk out onto the barren runways. He stood alone and defiant on the tarmac, and he shouted that syllable into the sky.

The storm parted around the city.

By the time he had recovered enough to share the piece of Irma’s name with his colleagues Jacksonville, though, the storm had changed, and its name with it. That’s the problem with true names: they twist and claw and slide out of ours hands and minds like unwilling cats. So most of us use the fixed, static names we’re given, instead.

And names shape reality.

Names are how you get someone’s attention. Yes, there’s danger in naming the storms. When we name them, when we talk about them, we call to them. We pull them to us. But consider how much we talk about them, and from where. Last year, everyone from my mom in New York state to my sister in New Zealand to a friend in Scotland emailed me, and the names were on all of their lips. Harvey, Maria, Irma. Twitter and Facebook and every news page flooded with pictures and stories and forecasts of the storms. Millions of people around the world, around the oceans, all saying the names.

Imagine a million people calling to you all at once from every direction. Even if it’s not your real name, it would get your attention—demand it. And you wouldn’t know where to turn. You’d hesitate. And if you waited look long, you’d fall apart, just scatter to the four winds.

So don’t let people tell you that it’s ill luck to talk about the storms. Don’t listen when you’re told that if you speak a thing, it will come to pass. Consult the list of names, and spread them far.

Confound the storms. Call their names.

noonymoon:

• stick a pencil behind your ear — pencils are usually made of cedar wood (juniperus virginiana) which is said to carry spiritual and visionary energies, but can also help with self-mastery; pencil can be enchanted!
  
• moon phases + zodiac signs — use new moon water for starting new painting projects and full moon water for finishing them; use the zodiac of the current moon for your creativity (fire sign: creative and passionate energy; water sign: emotional expression; air sign: planning and mental work; earth sign: hand-made material items like arts and crafts);
  
• planetary rulers of creative days — monday is ruled by the moon (emotions, inspiration); wednesday is ruled by mercury (expression, communication); friday is ruled by venus (love, beauty, art) sunday is ruled by the sun (personality, creativity, expression of self);
• surround yourself with crystals — yellow fluorite, carnelian, chrysoberyl, citrine, orange calcite, tangerine quartz, mookaite jasper, fire agate, tiger’s eye, garnet, bloodstone, rhodochrosite, moonstone, pink kunzite, amethyst, ametrine, (herkimer) diamonds, chrysoprase, blue apatite, blue chalcedony, blue fluorite, blue kyanite, lapis lazuli, celestite, blue lace agate, larimar, azurite, opal; …
  
• create your own color meanings — there are traditional and common meanings for colors but it also really helps to think about the colors and feel into the colors yourself. what do you associate with each color and what do different color combinations make you feel? then pin down which color makes you creative and surround yourself with it;
  
• ask the Archangels for help — Archangel Gabriel can help with creativity and dissolving fear; Archangel Jophiel can help with wisdom and communication; Archangel Raphael helps with intuition and creative visualization, also brings healing and harmony; Archangel Haniel can help with expression of self and soul, also helps us to expand our spiritual horizon and therefore our art;
• use essential oils while working — tangerine for joy and creativity; lavender for relaxation; clary sage for clarity and vision; jasmine for optimism and confidence; frankincense to calm; rosemary for mental clarity; eucalyptus for enthusiasm and creativity; peppermint for concentration; …

skepticaloccultist:

“Take a length of waxed cotton twine to bind the spirits tight,
as long as your forearm, soaked in red wine for a fortnight.

Tie three sprigs of mugwort, culled under the summer moon,
dried through the winter, burned as spectre’s commune.

With cunning words we bind together in aged knotted script,
three iron nails dug from the earth of a rotted crypt.

Take an old penny with a hole driven into the Queen’s eye,
and through it slip the wine soak cotton so that it may lie.

Bind a rabbit bone to give agency to that earthbound wight,
that from the grave they may ride out in harrowed flight.

With an iron key to anchor our spell and lock away secrets true,
or open forgotten doors through which our dreams are born anew.”

earhartsease:

nitewrighter:

nitewrighter:

I’m in a YA Library-services focused class now (basically it’s a lot less “Teens like vampires!” and a lot more “Jesus fucking christ how did we get to the point where it is so socially ingrained in us to treat teenagers like shit”) and we’re on this module on teen space design in libraries and it’s like “Well, by including teenagers in the design process, we found that when it comes to spatial design, teenagers like lots of natural light, green and sustainable building praxis, clean, casual, and comfortable atmospheres,  interesting and appealing colors, and also absolutely bullshit furniture that even they have no idea how to sit on.”

So it’s like…

“Tell me… what do The Youths™ want?” 

“We still don’t know, but they seem to respond well to victorian fainting couches remodeled to look like they came out of that one time in the early 2000′s where our idea of futuristic was making everything look like it was made out of jell-o.” 

Like in this one library, they introduced this piece of furniture that was referred to as “the disk” or “The round thing” and it was just this kind of… solid, padded squat cylinder, not a table because it was padded, too big and connected to the floor to be an ottoman, and not a couch because it was… a cylinder. And like, at first the teens didn’t use it because they thought it was reserved as like, a cushy stage for like, storytimes or something, but as soon as they realized they could sit or lay down on it and it was for them, you would have friend groups of teens literally piling on each other on it. Like that’s honestly the cutest shit.

How to build a teenarium

blue-lives-aint-shit:

spacefroggity:

I joke about being mean and evil but then people are Actually just genuinely shitty and I’m like. Doesn’t it make you feel bad when you act like that

Just want everyone to know when I say ‘evil’ I really just mean “villainous and campy like a cartoon antagonist”

unpretty:

unpretty:

andrew came downstairs from the office to give me a hug and seemed really worried about me and it turned out that i had reblogged a picture of a jellyfish with the tag “sometimes i wish i could be this” and while i had meant “beautiful, ethereal, and full of light” he had interpreted it as meaning “brainless and totally free of the burden of consciousness”

this was the jellyfish

glazedeye-s:

MONUMENT TO DANTE (1865): Piazza Santa Croce, Florence, Italy.

sunflowervolvimp3:

there’s just so much that’s so wrong with society’s views and attitude towards fat women that you don’t realize affect you until they do like. it’s 6 year old me thinking a classmate in the same dress is prettier than me because her dress is a smaller size.  it’s 16 year old me being secretly pleased when a man catcalls me because it means that he finds me attractive. it’s 21 year old me feeling like i need to send a disclaimer to any man on a dating app so they know what i look like before they meet me. it’s my dad saying “you look good, have you lost weight?” when he hasn’t seen me in a while.  it’s my ex friends telling me how brave they think it is that i wear a bikini to the beach.  it’s practicing how to sit and stand and hold myself in a way that makes me appear smaller and more compact than i am.  it’s being afraid to take up space. it’s the assumption that fat = unhealthy and thin = healthy.  it’s the survival of the phrase “you’re not fat, you’re beautiful!!”  it’s the desire to have thick thighs and protruding hips and large breasts but not wanting the stomach and love handles that come with it.  it’s the fat actress always playing the comedic best friend.  it’s the few, so very few, love stories with a fat romantic lead being centered around weight loss and body image.  it’s the popularity of the biggest loser.  it’s the concept of a revenge body.  it’s the need for fat women to be femme and fashionable to be slightly accepted.  it’s flat tummy teas. it’s thigh gaps. it’s waist trainers. it’s everything the kardashian jenners push and advocate.  it’s all around us and you don’t realize it until you realize it and then you can’t stop realizing it.