“Many people could say things in a cutting way, Nanny knew. But Granny Weatherwax could listen in a cutting way. She could make something sound stupid just by hearing it.”
— Terry Pratchett, “The Sea and Little Fishes” (A Blink of the Screen)
Tarana Burke, the woman who created the #MeToo movement, is calling on her fellow activists to press forward in light of news that one of the group’s most prominent voices, Asia Argento, allegedly paid off an accuser of her own
The god sat beside her on the hill, and his mouth was sour with old wine and the leavings of richer, sweeter things. Dates, and the sweet persimmon of other women. He would have to give them up, he supposed, if he was to be a bridegroom. But at least she was pretty, this girl left like an offering on a hill on Naxos; and inexplicably, he felt pity for her. (He had never felt pity before, it was a novel sort of experience.)
“I could marry you,” the god said, after a while. They were watching the birds wheel overhead, and in the brightening morning he could see where the paint on her face had smeared. She was made up like a bride already, her hair cropped around her ears and wet with dew, like a loutra offered by his great-grandmother, the earth, who made the world so fair.
The girl, on his hill, on Naxos, was at least so fair.
“I—” the girl said, and she fell silent again. Finally, after a long silence, she said, “I would like that.”
The god blinked. It had been a long time since he was surprised.
“Are you sure?” he asked. She was very pretty, the girl on a hill, made up like a bride and watching her first-intended bridegroom disappear over the horizon.
“Yes,” the girl said, and this time, she sounded sure.
“I could make him turn back,” the god said, surprised even as he said it. “I could make him come back to you. I could make him lovesick, mad with it, like a cow stung by a fly. He would have no choice.”
“He had a choice,” the girl said. She reached up and delicately, carefully wiped her eyes, only smearing a little the black kohl there. She had kind eyes, the god thought. “He chose. Would you truly marry me?”
“I could make him suffer,” the god offered instead. “I could make him a goat for slaughter, cooked for his kinsmen to devour. I could make him a wind that blew only on your skin. I could make him wine to be drunk and yet turned to vinegar, or music unheard. In madness and suffering, he would wander in search of—”
“No,” the girl on the hill said. “I do not want him to suffer. Would you truly marry me?”
“Yes,” the god answered honestly, for she had been left on his hill, dressed in a bride’s chiton, and her hair cropped and wet around her ears. He had never had a wife, but—he mouth tasted of old wine, and longing.
“What do you offer,” she asked, “in bride-price?”
“I am a god,” he said, and she quirked an amused and yet distinctly unimpressed smile in his direction. When she made no reply, he added, “I am not cruel, or cold. I will not abandon you. My court is—half-mad, drunk, but it will look to you in joy and merriment. And,” he said, “sister to a monster and almost-wife of a hero, that is a princess I would welcome into such a motley band as follow me.”
She looked at him, the dark and lovely girl on the hill; thoughtfully and then cannily. “You know my brother.”
The god has never been in the habit of lying, even when madness carried the day. “All of the world knows your brother. If not now, then when the story is told on distant shores and in times other than these. Labyrinth-queen and Giver-of-thread. You will be queen, thereafter, and beside me—with me.
“This,” the god said, after a moment of silence, “is my bride-price.”
For a long and silent moment, the girl said nothing, and the god thought that perhaps she would refuse. Like this, he was only a man—curls slicked to his forehead with wine-sweat, clutching his sandals and a certain bleary look, puffy in his face. Perhaps he should have taken his cousin’s counsel, and come to her as a bull instead, let her see his power. Or brought her gifts, as Apollo had suggested; tree boughs and spices and hymns.
Instead, he was just himself, sitting beside her on a hill on Naxos. (Uncertainty was a novel experience too.)
“Yes,” the girl on the hill said finally. “Let us be wed.”
Her hand was cold, still cold from the night, when she held it out to him. The god took it, and pressed his mouth to her dark fingers. “Thank you,” he said, and then, more formally, “So mote it be.”
The girl, with her kohl smeared a little, just at the corner of her left eye, and the dew wet on her hair, her cheek, her hand—said with the dignity befitting a goddess, “May it be, according to your will.”
(That night the god took her to his bed, which was a soft place of grape leaves and dirt, kicked up from the dancing. She let him put hands on her, and tilted her face up to him, a plea—not a bride, the god thought then with pleasure, as he suckled at her throat. A goddess, expecting an offering.)
I think leftblr is a little too quiet about sensible drug policy and that’s really telling 🤔
Access to clean needles should be free
Testing kits for fentyl and stricnine and other laces should be free
Narcan should be free (and is given out by a lot of opioid awareness groups thank god)
Access to methadone and suboxone should be free
And this is all like… really basic stuff. I personally want full repeal of the scheduling system and other measures regarding the prison system
Drug addiction is a direct result of suppression of certain populations and the pharmaceutical industry’s push for the normalization of opiate use.
Anti drug policy is almost entirely rooted in racism and it serves to build up our prison system, while simultaneously denying addicts access to safe withdrawal measures. The war on drugs never served to help the people as a whole, and always served to isolate people of color and divide the classes even further. There’s a reason mostly poor people and/or people of color face real time for drug charges.
A lot of you are inherently against drug addicts and supplying them with clean materials because you have no idea how addiction works. If you come off certain drugs like meth, heroin, or spice cold turkey, you could DIE. Needle exchanges provide safety, health screenings, and information on recovery while providing disease free, smooth needles to taper with.
And if we don’t destroy the system that enables addicts (capitalism) then we’re not going to solve the 97% relapse rate that addicts have.
You can’t claim to align with the left if you want addicts to die. It’s a blatant ignorance of why addicts become addicts and it’s an engrained hatred of neurodivergent people.
The overdose-prevention site that’s been running in my city for the past year has saved a lot of lives, and more were to go up across the province but the new Conservative provincial government (the same people who’ve sent public school health classes back to 1998) have imposed a funding moratorium. The new site in Parkdale has opened anyway, but they’re having to run it out of tents: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/parkdale-unsanctioned-injection-site-1.4791652
Mooncustafer 