Catch 22 By Joseph Heller // Mash (peace On Us)

Culture Shock

Guys, I am currently experiencing culture shock, in the city I live in since my birth.

Let me explain...

After my school burned down (again), I got a letter from an unknown source (though I believe it's from one of the Wayne Kids).

The Letter said that I had received a full scholarship, allowing me to visit Gotham Academy for my senior year.

My entire family was overjoyed, because that meant that we didn't have to look for a new school AND that i get a decent education (plus Gotham Academy doesn't look too bad on College Applications).

In the letter I was also invited to a visitation day (which was today) and let me tell you, that school is... it's something else.

It looks as if it's never been burned, they have non damaged and clean tables, PLANTS!!!, and MORE THAN ONE room full of Computers that aren't from 2002.

We also ate in their cafeteria, and y'all, it's edible food.

I am absolutely floored.

They also gave me my school-uniform and honestly, those are the nicest clothes I've ever owned.

(I mean I guess you can expect these things for the price tag. I mean I couldn't afford the books, let alone the tuition, so thank you whoever gave me the scholarship <3)

Anyway, I am excited for my first day of school.... tommorow?? (Damnit Gotham Academy is in a different school district, my twin brother got another 2 weeks of holidays(Im not gonna hear the end of it)).

The poetry in this is that it's from 2021, and the user deactivated.

this year will be wonderful. you will meet new people who will feel like sunlight. someone out there will be lucky enough to meet you. you will see breathtaking views. you will learn so much knowledge from your studies and gain so much wisdom. there will be bad days but you will heal and start again in the morning. you will discover what makes you happy. you will fill up journals with scribbles and messy drawings. you will feel low and make mistakes but they will help you become a stronger person. you will pick up new things that give your life meaning and you will pour your heart into it. you will find songs that speak to you more than anything else in the world. you will grow. this year is waiting for you and it’s beautiful.

you know what, screw falling uncontrollably in love. Nah man. I want to meet your eyes across the room for the first time and start grinning. A slow, spreading smirk. I want to think 'oh, you bastard. I've been waiting for you. Hello.' and I want you to smirk back.

Andrea Gibson, Lord of the Butterflies

i have so much rage in me one day i think i will explode. i dont think i know how to forgive as much as i know how to forget

the coward's way out

if the fates conspire that only one of us may live, then lover, it must be you.

i will save you the grand speeches about how you are good and deserving. you are. you are. you are, but in the end, that is not the reason why.

the world may call me brave or strong or selfless but lover, you know the truth don't you?

in the end, i am only more afraid of facing a world without you than i am of facing death of facing anything.

in the end, i am only too weak to be the one left behind to pick up the pieces of a broken life a broken promise a broken heart and keep on bleeding when the blood in your heart is already dry.

i'm sorry. i'm sorry. but will you let me be selfish one last time?

can i ask you to live for me? to face what i feared most so that i might find peace in my eternal sleep with a smile upon my face?

if it is cruel of me to ask, then i beg you to forgive me. or curse my name and hate me if you must, only live.

only live, my lover so that my life and my death and all that came in between may mean something. may mean everything.

What I can't cope with, OK, is L.M. Montgomery's use of bedrooms as a site of both autonomy and belonging. When Emily arrives at New Moon, she has to share the bed with Aunt Elizabeth and feels she is in bed with a griffon but when she moves into Juliet's old bedroom in the "lookout" she is overcome with the sense of nearness to her mother as well as having true space and freedom for the first time at New Moon. Later, she loses a lot of this sense of place and independence moving into Aunt Ruth's spare room where she doesn't have to share a bed, but can't even choose the pictures hanging on the walls - at the same time she loses her freedom to write fiction. Jane hates her bedroom at 60 Gay Street, finding it "hostile and vindictive" - in many ways just like Grandmother Kennedy, but at Lantern Hill, her father lets her choose everything that goes into her bedroom and she is allowed self expression. Her friends give her gifts to furnish it, as emblems of their love for her. Like Jane, Valancy has no control over the furnishings in her room, from the painted floor to the tacky artwork to the dingy and unwelcoming furniture, but she's so constrained that her only rebellion is to throw the jar of potpourri out the window because she's "sick of the fragrance of dead things". To have a sense of self, she imagines a magnificent castle as an escape and is delighted to find Barney's house is just as good a place to be who she wants to be - free from her family, making her own choices. Anne, upon marking the first anniversary of coming to Green Gables, reflects on the garrett room and finds it "as if all the dreams, sleeping and waking, of its vivid occupant had taken a visible although unmaterial form and had tapestried the bare room with splendid filmy tissues of rainbow and moonshine." Before Green Gables her life was probably a mix of dormitories and makeshift beds in attics that she couldn't change, in versions of her life with no freedom or affection. THEIR BEDROOMS ARE SYMBOLS FOR THEIR LIVES OK. When their rooms are controlled by others, their inner/emotional/creative lives are constrained. When they have their own rooms, they have autonomoy, they choose furniture, they have freedom, they have themselves, they have love, they have me gnawing armchairs about it.

Also funny that both Valancy and Emily are tormented at various times by inescapable portraits of queens - I do wonder if LM had one in her home that no one would let her take down.

"There's no hope for the future." And that's how they felt during the Atomic Age, during the World Wars, during the Enlightenment Revolutions, during thr plagues, during the Viking raids, during the fall of Rome.

Yet, we persisted.

its so brave that you have such a 2012-coded url in this 2024 world

would you call a bear brave for standing in a new construction suburb or would you recognize the unfamiliar world they built around him