One day, I will be able to pronounce the word “agate” in my head like a normal (read: non-Minnesotan) person again. But not today.
…. I am suddenly aware of the fact that I’m completely unaware of what the normal and what the Minnesotan pronunciation is….
most people I know pronounce it… basically how it’s spelled: AG-at
Minnesotans, on the other paw, think for some reason that that word should be pronounced: EGG-it
You have to learn to say “bag” right first.
make sure you put your egg-it in a beg and teg it with your name
but hey, while I’m thinking about it, let’s eat some baggles for breakfast tomorrow
we can go oat on the lake and listen to the loons
HAHA!! One of my good friends and coworkers in college was from MN and we were gettin ready to leave. She said, “oh, let me go get my baeyg and we can go.” Now, keep in mind I’m from Memphis and this was across the state in the mountains of Appalachia. I’m supremely unaccustomed to Northern accents, especially then. So, I say, “you huh?” She repeats herself and I’m like “I have zero clue what you’re sayin.” And I just know I had this look on my face the whole time.
Finally, she goes “my purse, my baeyg” and I almost fell in the floor laughing at how 2 Americans who both speak English as a first language were having so much trouble with a simple sentence lol.
I am from Minnesota, and even I am perplexed by the Minnesotan accent.
GJDGHKHHK MY SISTER LEARNED TO SAY IT AS “BAEYG” FROM A FRIEND AND IT KILLSSSS MEEEEEE WE’RE WASHINGTONIANS SAY IT NORMAL AAAAAHHHHHHH
ok, i’m built like a noble ox. like i am 6′1 and i am sturdy lady. like thighs for days. if you try to move me. you will be moved. body images aside (lol, i am self conscious about my size, yeah it’s life)
so like, i am very used to girls standing next to me in public places. i end up acquiring a pack of ladies. just because women are like, that lady is a lady men stay away from. i am jerk kryptonite (usually, i get my fair share of creeps, such is life) but most men have self preservation that this 6′1 ox will break them. and i will
so usually i am in my own phone and look up to another lady standing next to me. and i will immediately look up and make eye contact and nod. like, you know, that nod. i see you and you can talk if there is something wrong. i end up on a reg basis being a defacto bodyguard to these young ladies and small women while waiting for buses and in the metro.
i am a large oak tree. i protect the other birds.
ladies, we all got roles. find tree in the wild. we’re always happy to provide shelter from the creeps.
i’ve regularly said, “move on, she doesn’t want to be your friend”
I’m in love
Story time: So I’m 6’2 and “big boned” as my mother would call it. This happens to me all the time and a couple years ago I managed to get the the front row of a Macklemore concert. This woman, probably 5’4, squeezes up next to me and says, “Hey, I’m here alone, do you mind if I stand in front of you?” Of course not. So we’re all having a good time, dancing around, when all of a sudden this Bro™️ is behind me telling me that I’m too tall to be in the front row and it’s not fair. Now, keep in mind that this concert was outside, in February, in Vail CO. It was FREEZING so not only am I of the stature I am but I had my hair up and a beanie on and a big coat and boots. We try our best to ignore him but Bro™️ is drunk and very clearly thinks I’m a man and proceeds to punch me in the back of the head.
LIL SIS WENT OFF, FOLKS. This tiny woman literally moved me out of the way, jumped up, and head butted Bro™️ in the face with such a fury. I thought she was going to kill him, it was truly a beautiful moment in my life.
The moral of the story is that for every tree in the wild there is a cute little birdy who will defend its shelter to the death. Stick together ladies👯♀️
Tumblr likes to spin its wheels and spend time yelling at each other, so here’s a nice comprehensive guide. Five Things You Can Do Now That You Know We Were Serious About The Antisemitism:
1) Accept that if you’re in this to be an ally, you’re going to have a tough road ahead of you. We’re traditionally very wary of outsiders in our spaces because when we welcome them, well … this happens. In fact, if you want to convert to Judaism, you traditionally get rejected three times, just to make sure you’re serious and not shitting with us. Expect wariness. Expect to get your feelings hurt, because a lot of us are very raw right now. Stick with us anyway–once we know you’re not just bandwagoning us, you’re going to end up with a lot of friends who are relying on you. Nobody said allyship was easy.
2) Learn about Judaism. Note that I DO NOT MEAN LEARNING WITH INTENTION TO CONVERT. We don’t proselytize and it would be against Torah for me to even suggest it. What I mean here is, you can’t call bullshit if you don’t know what we’re about. Some good basic resources are The Jewish Book of Why by Alfred Kolatch; My Jewish Learning; and for a strict Orthodox standpoint, Chabad. You’ll find that some things in these sources contradict each other. That’s pretty par for the course in Judaism; we don’t have a single dogma or point of view.
3) Consider calling a local synagogue and asking if they have volunteer work for a gentile ally. Introduce yourself, explain (briefly) what got your attention, and offer your services–to stand outside during services, to walk folks to and from shul (this is particularly important in Orthodox communities, where driving on Shabbat is forbidden), hell, to help stuff envelopes for whatever vigil or service they may be holding in memoriam. Anything will help.
4) You may wish to make a donation to a local synagogue or Jewish charity. I strongly recommend the ADL (Anti-Defamation League), which is a Jewish charity focused on combating antisemitism. Jews traditionally give monetary gifts in sums of $18, which corresponds to the numeric value of the word “chai,” or “life.” The last time this happened I made a post about this tradition and got accused of being a Nazi because of the whole 1-8 A-H thing, so let’s just nip that right in the bud: yes, we know. It’s a horrible coincidence. We’re not giving up a few-thousand-year-old tradition because of some dipshit with a bad moustache. If you can’t afford $18, consider moving the decimal over and donating in multiples of 18, like $3.60. Your meaning will still be perfectly clear, and anything helps. If you wish to make a donation in memory/in honor (which many synagogues appreciate), I suggest either choosing the name of one of the shooting victims–giving tzedakah, or charity, in their names is considered a great mitzvah and a blessing to their families–or using the phrase “am Yisrael chai.” It means “Israel lives.” Although the country in the MENA region is called Israel, this is not what the phrase refers to–the traditional patriarch of Judaism was named Jacob, and renamed as Israel following a wrestling match with a messenger of G-d. To say “am Yisrael chai” is to say his people, that is, the Jewish people, live.
And on that note …
5) In the coming days and weeks, you’re going to see a lot of people making this about Israel or Zionism. Please tell them to shut the fuck up. Israel, Zionism, and Jews are three completely different, albeit related, things. To wit: Israel is a geopolitical country situated on the site of our ancestral homeland and currently headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Zionism is the belief that Jews deserve a safe homeland; and Jews are a group of people spread across six continents and most countries who are united by a common group of ancestors from the Levant (the part of the world now occupied by the geopolitical entity known as Israel). Saying the victims of this shooting had anything to do with the political situation in Israel would be like saying I, personally, am responsible for Vladimir Putin because I have a Russian ancestor. I speak exactly two words of Russian, have never been to Russia, have no family left living there (and haven’t for four generations), but I’m totally responsible for Russia. You see how ridiculous that sounds? The same applies to Jews and Israel. Please, please, PLEASE do not conflate this event with Israeli politics. I’m not saying Israeli politics aren’t a topic worth discussing–I’m saying this is not a discussion they belong in. Don’t let the powers that be (or the alt-right sleaze that sucks the dicks of the powers that be) distract from the topic at hand, which is “out of control guns meet out of control xenophobia and antisemitism,” by throwing OMG ISRAEL AND ZIONISM AND GLOBALISM into the mix.
And finally: yes, gentiles, this is okay for you to reblog. In fact I encourage it. And I will answer any questions you have to the best of my ability, if they’re asked in good faith. Please just follow the most basic tenet of Judaism, which is: don’t be a dick.
If you’re ready to stand and help, now is the time.
“we didn’t know any better,” the crewman says, and swallows, presenting the chest to the captain. “what do we do now?”
“kill it,” the captain says, but the ice is melting in his eyes.
“we can’t,” the first mate says desperately, praying she won’t have to fight her captain on this. “we can’t. we – i won’t. we won’t.”
“i know.”
x
“daddy,” she says, floating in a tub of seawater in the hold, “daddy, la-la, la-la-la.”
her voice rings like bells. her accent is strange; her mouth isn’t made for human words. it mesmerises even the hardiest amongst them and she wasn’t even trying. the crew has taken to diving for shellfish near the shorelines for her; she loves them, splitting the shells apart with strength seen in no human toddler, slurping down the slimy molluscs inside and laughing, all plump brown cheeks and needle-sharp teeth. she sometimes splashes them for fun with her smooth, rubbery brown tail. even when they get soaked they laugh. they love her.
“daddy,” she calls again, and he can hear the worry in her voice. the storm rocking the ship is harsh and uncaring, and if they go down, she would be the only survivor.
“don’t worry,” he says, and goes over, sitting next to the tub. the first mate, leaning against the wall, pretends not to notice as he quietly begins to sing.
x
“father,” she says, one day, as she leans on the edge of the dock and the captain sits next to her, “why am I here?”
“your mother abandoned you,” he says, as he always has. “we found you adrift, and couldn’t bear to leave you there.”
she picks at the salt-soaked boards, uncertain. her hair is pulled back in a fluffy black puff, the white linen holding it slipping almost over one of her dark eyes. one of her first tattoos, a many-limbed kraken, curls over her right shoulder and down her arm, delicate tendrils wrapped around her calloused fingertips. “alright,” she says.
x
“why am I really here?” she asks the first mate, watching the sun set over the water in streaks of liquid metal that pooled in the troughs of the waves and glittered on the seafoam.
“we didn’t know any better,” the first mate says, staring into the water. “we didn’t know- we didn’t know anything. we didn’t understand why she fought so viciously to guard her treasure. we could not know she protected something a thousand times more precious than the purest gold.”
she wants to be furious, but she can’t. she already knew the answer, from reading the guilt in her father’s eyes and the empty space in her own history. and she can’t hate her family.
“it’s alright,” she says. “i do have a family, anyways. i don’t think i would have liked my other life near as much.”
x
her kraken grows, spreading its tendrils over her torso and arms. she grows too, too large to come on board the ship without being hauled up in a boat from the water. she sings when the storms come and swims before the ship to guide it to safety. she fights off more than one beast of the seas, and gathers a set of scars across her back that she bears with pride. “i don’t mind,” she says, when the captain fusses over her, “now i match all of you.”
the first time their ship is threatened, really threatened, is by another fleet. a friend turned enemy of the first mate. “we shouldn’t fight him,” she says, peering through the spyglass.
“why not?” the mermaid asks.
“he’ll win,” the first mate says.
the mermaid tips her head sideways. Her eyes, dark as the deep waters, gleam in the noon light. “are you sure?” she asks.
x
the enemy fleet surrenders after the flagship is sunk in the night, the anchor ripped off the ship and the planks torn off the hull. the surviving crew, wild-eyed and delirious, whimper and say a sea serpent came from the water and attacked them, say it was longer than the boat and crushed it in its coils. the first mate hears this and has to hide her laughter. the captain apologizes to his daughter for doubting her.
“don’t worry,” she says, with a bright laugh, “it was fun.”
x
the second time, they are pushed by a storm into a royal fleet. they can’t possibly fight them, and they don’t have the time to escape.
“let me up,” the mermaid urges, surfacing starboard and shouting to the crew. “bring me up, quickly, quickly.”
they lower the boat and she piles her sinous form into it, and uses her claws to help the crew pull her up. once on the deck she flops out of the boat and makes her way over to the bow. the crew tries to help but she’s so heavy they can barely lift parts of her.
she crawls up out in front of the rail and wraps her long webbed tail around the prow. the figurehead has served them well so far but they need more right now. she wraps herself around the figurehead and raises her body up into the wind takes a breath of the stinging salt air and sings.
the storm carries her voice on its front to the royal navy. they are enchanted, so stunned by her song that they drop the rigging ropes and let the tillers drift. the pirates sail through the center of the fleet, trailing the storm behind them, and by the time the fleet has managed to regain its senses they are buried in wind and rain and the pirates are gone.
x
she declines guns. instead she carries a harpoon and its launcher, and uses them to board enemy ships, hauling her massive form out of the water to coil on the deck and dispatch enemies with ruthless efficiency. her family is feared across all the sea.
x
“you know we are dying,” the captain says, looking down at her.
she floats next to the ship, so massive she could hold it in her arms. her eyes are wise.
“i know,” she says, “i can feel it coming.”
the first mate stands next to the captain. she never had a lover or a child, and neither did he, but to the mermaid they are her parents. she will always love her daughter. the tattoos are graven in dark swirls across the mermaid’s deep brown skin and the flesh of her tail, even spiraling onto the spiked webbing on her spine and face. her hair is still tied back, this time with a sail that could not be patched one last time.
“we love you,” the first mate says simply, looking down. her own tightly coiled black hair falls in to her face; she shakes the locs out of the way and smiles through her tears. the captain pretends he isnt crying either.
“i love you too,” the mermaid says, and reached up to pull the ship down just a bit, just to hold them one last time.
“guard the ship,” the captain says. “you always have but you know they’re lost without you.”
“without you,” the mermaid corrects, with a shrug that makes waves. “what will we do?”
“i don’t know,” the captain says. “but you’ll help them, won’t you?”
“of course i will,” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. “i will always protect my family.”
x
the captain and the first mate are gone. the ship has a new captain, young and fearless – of the things she can afford to disregard. she fears and loves the ocean, as all captains do. she does not fear the royal fleet. and she does not fear the mermaid.
“you know, i heard stories about you when i was a little girl,” she says, trailing her fingers in the water next to the dock.
the mermaid stares at her with one eye the size of a dinner table. “is that so?” she hums, smirking with teeth sharper than the swords of the entire navy.
“they said you could sink an entire fleet and that you had skin tougher than dragon scales,” the new captain says, grinning right back at the monster who could eat her without a moment’s hesitation. “i always thought they were telling tall tales.”
“and now?”
“they were right,” the new captain says. “how did they ever befriend you?”
the mermaid smiles, fully this time, her dark eyes gleaming under the white linen sail. “they didn’t know any better.”
She protects her family.
Oooh, love this art, I haven’t seen it before!
Oh my god this is amazing
WHOLESOME
This story always makes me emotional. It’s so lovely.
i’m honestly not very experienced in spiritwork, so i couldn’t reliably tell you. i think……. @magicianmew might be?
@hamburgay i would suggest becoming very good at energy sensing. At least good enough that you can trust your impressions of spirits/deities. Its much harder for them to mislead you when you can tell they’re not who you wanted to talk to.
In my experience, the deities who….. hmm….. are already involved in your life, i guess, will be very easy to contact. For example, a whole host of Greek gods have been looking after me since I was very young. Peacocks and poppies galore and I never realized those were symbols. So when I reached out to the Greek gods, they answered quickly and were relatively easy for me to get to know. As opposed to say, Egyptian or Norse gods, which feel so distant to me that I have to put a huge amount of energy into contacting them. I’ve never had a problem with deities trying to pretend to be someone else. I have very solid impressions of the Greek gods and can “see” the energy of other gods enough to know them, even if i’ve never had a conversation with them.
If you already have a sense of the ghosties that haunt your household, you should be able to tell pretty easily if they’re messing with you. They may “look” different on the outside, but the core of their energy isn’t going to change. For me, when it comes to human spirits, I prefer to send sort of like a mental telegram to wherever I feel they are (heaven, elysium, whatever) and then wait for them to visit me. Most often they come down in a dream that night or within a few nights, but if you were very close to them in life you might find them randomly checking on you throughout the day once they know they’re welcome. I have tripped over many a ghost cat come back to say hello. For me it’s very important after a person dies to periodically send up “prayers,” reminding them that they are loved and missed and always welcome to visit if they want to.
The Chaos Bitches 