2022-06-18

In love with the idea of rhythm, in music, in poems, in stories, in the quiet breathing of stray dogs, in the soft wind moving clouds, in the way my mind spins, in the way the world moves, everywhere, all the time. depersonalisation, I am somewhere inside the lizard hiding in the dusty crook of your bedroom, I am simultaneously in the pigeon nesting at twilight. Everywhere, all the time. 

Queen of hearts, bows to the fools parade, insanity is a strange thing to take comfort in. ‘Mere blood and bone’ will lure you to depths of life/hell which human hand (only) must (only) touch. Vega of the lyre and bellatrix of the Orion in a dance of lights and life, bitterness sings a frayed melody to the hearthstone, listen to her woebegone voice in the soft refrain, fold away your letters and give away your life, for its not sadness but despair that requests it. Believe in phantoms, and one as old as yourself wants to touch your windows and watch its fragile hands pass through the glass. 

Please make a post about the story of the RMS Carpathia, because it's something that's almost beyond belief and more people should know about it.

Carpathia received Titanic’s distress signal at 12:20am, April 15th, 1912. She was 58 miles away, a distance that absolutely could not be covered in less than four hours.

(Californian’s exact position at the time is…controversial. She was close enough to have helped. By all accounts she was close enough to see Titanic’s distress rockets. It’s uncertain to this day why her crew did not respond, or how many might not have been lost if she had been there. This is not the place for what-ifs. This is about what was done.)

Carpathia’s Captain Rostron had, yes, rolled out of bed instantly when woken by his radio operator, ordered his ship to Titanic’s aid and confirmed the signal before he was fully dressed. The man had never in his life responded to an emergency call. His goal tonight was to make sure nobody who heard that fact would ever believe it.

All of Carpathia’s lifeboats were swung out ready for deployment. Oil was set up to be poured off the side of the ship in case the sea turned choppy; oil would coat and calm the water near Carpathia if that happened, making it safer for lifeboats to draw up alongside her. He ordered lights to be rigged along the side of the ship so survivors could see it better, and had nets and ladders rigged along her sides ready to be dropped when they arrived, in order to let as many survivors as possible climb aboard at once.

I don’t know if his making provisions for there still being survivors in the water was optimism or not. I think he knew they were never going to get there in time for that. I think he did it anyway because, god, you have to hope.

Carpathia had three dining rooms, which were immediately converted into triage and first aid stations. Each had a doctor assigned to it. Hot soup, coffee, and tea were prepared in bulk in each dining room, and blankets and warm clothes were collected to be ready to hand out. By this time, many of the passengers were awake–prepping a ship for disaster relief isn’t quiet–and all of them stepped up to help, many donating their own clothes and blankets.

And then he did something I tend to refer to as diverting all power from life support.

Here’s the thing about steamships: They run on steam. Shocking, I know; but that steam powers everything on the ship, and right now, Carpathia needed power. So Rostron turned off hot water and central heating, which bled valuable steam power, to everywhere but the dining rooms–which, of course, were being used to make hot drinks and receive survivors. He woke up all the engineers, all the stokers and firemen, diverted all that steam back into the engines, and asked his ship to go as fast as she possibly could. And when she’d done that, he asked her to go faster.

I need you to understand that you simply can’t push a ship very far past its top speed. Pushing that much sheer tonnage through the water becomes harder with each extra knot past the speed it was designed for. Pushing a ship past its rated speed is not only reckless–it’s difficult to maneuver–but it puts an incredible amount of strain on the engines. Ships are not designed to exceed their top speed by even one knot. They can’t do it. It can’t be done.

Carpathia’s absolute do-or-die, the-engines-can’t-take-this-forever top speed was fourteen knots. Dodging icebergs, in the dark and the cold, surrounded by mist, she sustained a speed of almost seventeen and a half.

No one would have asked this of them. It wasn’t expected. They were almost sixty miles away, with icebergs in their path. They had a respondibility to respond; they did not have a responsibility to do the impossible and do it well. No one would have faulted them for taking more time to confirm the severity of the issue. No one would have blamed them for a slow and cautious approach. No one but themselves.

They damn near broke the laws of physics, galloping north headlong into the dark in the desperate hope that if they could shave an hour, half an hour, five minutes off their arrival time, maybe for one more person those five minutes would make the difference. I say: three people had died by the time they were lifted from the lifeboats. For all we know, in another hour it might have been more. I say they made all the difference in the world.

This ship and her crew received a message from a location they could not hope to reach in under four hours. Just barely over three hours later, they arrived at Titanic’s last known coordinates. Half an hour after that, at 4am, they would finally find the first of the lifeboats. it would take until 8:30 in the morning for the last survivor to be brought onboard. Passengers from Carpathia universally gave up their berths, staterooms, and clothing to the survivors, assisting the crew at every turn and sitting with the sobbing rescuees to offer whatever comfort they could.

In total, 705 people of Titanic’s original 2208 were brought onto Carpathia alive. No other ship would find survivors.

At 12:20am April 15th, 1912, there was a miracle on the North Atlantic. And it happened because a group of humans, some of them strangers, many of them only passengers on a small and unimpressive steam liner, looked at each other and decided: I cannot live with myself if I do anything less.

I think the least we can do is remember them for it.

Untitled

White, as if a shroud for one's dead,

Came the rain to cover the twisted

Smile with which the city laid.

The salt-wet cloud pressed down

Apologetically down on the wails

To muffle down the alleys where

Fear smelt sharper than the guilty

Lust for life.

The smoke rose up and died

In the arms of the rain

And the bruised earth cooled itself

Down to sleep on the sidewalk

Tattered from toes to head

And a loaf of wet, burned bread

Fed the hunger in their

Grim, kerosene-masked eyes.

There was a road from living,

So they said, and it was hope

That shone on the edge of

The blade. Prayers curled up

In its handle like a dirty scroll

Pushed up in a crypt, to hold onto

And to give up to the fire when

Rain shattered all.

- pollosky-in-blue

Journal entries

25th June,

Pardon the hand that once wrote with astonishing impudence that sunsets were better than sunrises. I had woken early this morning with the sole purpose of watching the sun rise and stumbled drowsily up to the terrace, expecting a glaring orb of sunflower tints, but was pleasantly surprised when a golden and blue frenzy of cloud met my gaze. I caught my breath and spun around, inhaling all the delightful freshness of the dawn. The sky was entirely covered in a single expanse of white cloud, breaking away here and there to reveal some soft lavender or violent cobalt. I strolled over to a ledge and seated myself upon it, my foot dangling a few foot above the ground, preparing to lose myself in a reverie. The place where the mountains usually were was shrouded in a fog so thick that the only things visible were the glistening peaks of the far off valley. I found myself thinking of the sea, for the entire thing seemed to be an elaborate imitation of the ocean. In the indented wave of the soft white cloud, in the unpredictable changes of tint, in the light twinkling upon the slim corners of a half broken drift, in the glints of the half risen sun from behind a pale golden shroud, every where I turned, there it was. And the sun ascended leisurely, flooding the mist covered valley with a light that transformed the whole range into a dreamy golden harbour. I have fallen in love with gold, not the crude yellow of the metal, but this intoxicating hue which has now adorned the sky with its gorgeous shades. And so the prodigal son has returned, I whispered under my breath, as my eyes traced the path of a swallow across the scene. I looked at the sun until tears started to my eyes and I could no longer bear the scorching intensity of her gaze, whereupon an old friend of the squirrel tribe wandered across to say good morning and all was forgotten and I now sit here, as a cool breeze blows, twirling a loose strand of hair and writing.

the song of achilles, madeline miller // 1 samuel 18:1, kjv translation of the bible // wuthering heights, emily brontë // memory, @aristosmusical // sonnet xvii, pablo neruda // [i carry your heart with me(i carry it in], e.e. cummings // “the origin of love”, hedwig and the angry inch // star trek iii: the search for spock, dir. leonard nimoy

As punishment for his sins, a human is sentenced to battle endlessly against hordes of demons with nothing but a knife. Satan’s court laughs at him for a few thousand years… until he starts winning the battles. Then they start screaming in terror.

when you get this, please respond with five things that make you happy! then, send to your last ten people in your notifs (anonymously). you never know who might benefit from spreading positivity♡

Thank you for the ask!

1. Walks alone with no destination where I can gather lots and lots of weeds and ferns and just wander as I please.

2. Keeping all the doors and windows open during rain.

3. Some odd songs that are just so dear and impossibly sweet that you want to throw your arms around them.

4. Old chocolate wrappers.

5. Finding silly notes written in book margins long ago.

Rained yesterday. went upstairs and sat on a wall for the best part of an hour with my legs folded and eyes closed. spiritual experience.