Y’know, I ain’t around these parts too much anymore (Yahoo can go huff a dong), but I just wanted to tell y’all my tale of the 2018/2019 holiday season…
December 17-20: Got the flu (later confirmed to be one of the strains protected by this season’s vaccine). Felt shite, took cold meds, still felt shite but not so much that I could justify not starting the Q1 spreadsheets at work.
Dec 21: Knew the crackles in my lungs were pneumonia. Couldn’t keep my blood oxygen above 90%. Went to the ER that night. They wanted to send me home. I said “I know something is wrong, I would be very uncomfortable going home.” They managed to find a bed in the hospital, said “fine, we’ll give you observation until tomorrow.”
Dec 22: Decompensated quickly. Parents apparently came up north, though I don’t remember seeing them before I woke up again. Couldn’t get aortic O2 saturation above 65% so I ended up intubated.
Late Dec 22-Early Dec 30: Completely unconscious, with the first
two days on paralytics so that the ventilator did 100% of my breathing.
The 36 hours on either side of my sedation are completely blank in my
memory.
At some point my secondary infection (which was never discerned, though extensive testing for bacteria and fungi was done) caused me to become critically ill, and there were preparations made to fly my to Mayo for ECMO. Thankfully, the high-dosage steroid treatment they gave me when I started getting worse helped, and I began improving slowly.
Dec 31: I start to see the world again. My first “memories” are strange delusions brought on by the anesthetics. I thought I had been in a coma for 6 years, and that I was in Cleveland. Why the fuck would I be in CLEVELAND?
I remember seeing the news, something about New Year’s Eve. I fell back asleep, into Seroquel dreams.
Jan 1: My memories start genuinely coming back. I discovered I was too weak to
extend my arm fully, and too shaky to eat Jell-O. The Jell-O DID get
delightfully wobbly, though.
Jan 2: Little Raven’s Birthday. Finally get out of ICU. Moved up to the general wards. Still can’t breathe easily. Food is vile-tasting. Can barely eat. Choke down a lemon bar and cry about how much better Brendan’s were and how much I miss my brother and how I refuse to make my parents go through that again.
Jan3: Manage my first wobbly steps with a walker. The floor hurts my knees and feet. The blood in my eyes is finally being cleared by my body.
Jan 3-5: Slow improvement. Slow for an otherwise-healthy young adult, at least. It feels like forever. My dad and I watched an unbearable amount of cross-country ski qualifying races for the Olympic teams. There’s a terrifying night-vision cam in my hospital room, which wouldn’t bother me if it didn’t have a creepy smiley face.
Jan 5-9: Transitional care, getting physical and occupational therapy. I finally
got home to my apartment (and cat!) that afternoon. I spent the next week regaining my strength and seeing specialists to try and find out why I got so sick. Consensus so far is “flu sucks and you’re unlucky?” I’m hoping to have better answers next month at my secondary follow-ups.
I aged my husband and parents about a decade during my hospital stay. I missed a month of work and am still fixing problems that arose with the backlog.
My Christmas dinner was a 10% dextrose solution, since I was still paralyzed and couldn’t have anything down my NG tube yet. New Year’s Eve drinks? “GIVE ME SOME FUCKING WATER!” – but not being able to have any, because I was still overloaded with fluid due to the standard protocol to prevent hypoperfusion when someone goes into septic shock.
Just to make it clear: I would not have survived without the tens of
thousands of hours of training and practice that my medical team devoted
their lives to acquiring. I would not have survived without the
millions of hours of research and trials that allowed the machines that
kept me monitored, cooled when my fever continued to spike, and breathing in a life-sustaining way when my lungs weren’t able to exchange gasses.
I am a fat bitch, but I am physically active, eat fairly decently, and don’t smoke or drink excessively. I am not someone who “should” be threatened by deadly complications due to influenza-caused pneumonia.Yet I was.
And YOU could be, too. Get yer flu shot, if you can. If you can’t, yell at others until they do.
It’s not too late in the season, trust me. People still die in March. People like you.
Okay, so, Labradorite. Labradorite is complicated and sciencey, as all good rocks are. I’ll see if I can explain it in a way that makes any sense! (Once again, I’m not a scientist! Correct me if I’m wrong!)
Most minerals, when they’re bright and pretty and colorful, look like that because while they were forming some impurities got mixed into them – usually metals like iron, copper, or titanium. Without any impurities, these rocks would naturally be colorless. We call these guys allochromatic (other-colored).
Other gemstones are certain colors because those elements are an important part of how they formed. They’re not impurities that got mixed in, they’re actually part of the gemstone. Their natural color IS the color you’re seeing. We call them idiochromatic (inherently colored).
But labradorite doesn’t get its color from either of those things. Labradorite is special. It’s part of a third group: psudochromatic (false colored). These rocks aren’t colorful at all, but they LOOK that way when light passes through them.
See, labradorite is actually just… grey. From most angles, it looks like this:
You have to look at labradorite from a pretty specific angle to get those flashy colors, so when we cut it into cabochons for jewelry, or just polish up big pieces of it, we’re careful to do so at the most flattering angle, the angle that shows the most schiller, or “those cool glowy colors.”
Why just the one angle? It’s all about labradorite’s crystal structure, and how it’s formed.
Labradorite is a rock that cooled down really slowly. Because of that, it’s made of lots of very very thin layers of crystal, stacked on top of each other and all pretty much aligned in the same direction. These are alternating layers of albite (mostly sodium), and orthoclase (mostly potassium), which solidify at very slightly different temperatures. Labradorite is a rock that cooled in just the right way for a thin layer of albite to form, then a thin layer of orthoclase, then another thin layer of albite, and so on.
When light hits labradorite at the perfect angle to pass through a bunch of these layers, you get the schiller effect. Basically, a little bit of the light gets bounced off the first layer and back to your eyes. The rest of the light passes through to the second layer, and a little bit gets bounced back to your eyes again, and so on. Every time more light gets sent back to you, it’s a little out of sync, and this makes it look like a different color.
(This is a very simplified way of explaining this.)
If these layers were all perfectly the same size, you’d get a uniform color, like the blue in moonstone. But in labradorite, these layers might be different widths in different places, so different parts of the stone will reflect back wildly different colors! We call this effect labradorescence to differentiate it from the uniform colored adularescence found in moonstone and some opals.
Depending on where it’s found in the world, labradorite can reflect all sorts of different colors!
But whatever color it is, Labradorite will always be the Best and Coolest Rock.
Shiny rock science!
I’ve actually started collecting labradorite specimens.
“‘No’?” echoed the space emperor. “‘No’?! No one. Ever. Tells me. ‘No’.”
He advanced, close enough that the threads on his rich robes could be counted by the naked eye. After a furtive glance over his shoulder, he dropped his voice to a desperate whisper and said, “Could you… could you do it again? Please?”
“No.”
The space emperor’s eyes shone like embers as he leaned forward, clasping his hands in front of his face. “So this… this ‘democracy’ you speak of. You’re telling me that people might… disobey me? They wouldn’t have to do everything I tell them to?”
“Not if they disagree with you.”
“They can do that?!” He licked his lips, trembling with excitement. “And voting! You say I… you say I could lose?!”
“Yeah, uh. And you probably would.”
“Incredible,” he breathed. “Why, I could kiss you!” With a surprised laugh, he stopped himself mid-step. “But—you wouldn’t like that! Right? You’d have an ‘opinion’? Gosh… do you think other people have those?!”
The space emperor let out a long, melancholy sigh and turned to the hero, his lip trembling with delicate misery. “I’m going to miss you,” he sniffed. “I don’t think I’ll watch, you know, when they… when they do it.” The tear that had been clinging valiantly to his eyelashes finally broke free and rolled down his cheek. “Oh!” he cried, and threw his arms around the hero’s neck with a great, shuddering sob. “Yours will be the only skull I drink from ever again—I promise! I will think of you every time, and I’ll pretend you’re still here with me!”
“Or you could just… not have me executed.”
The space emperor inhaled sharply and took a step back, his face red and puffy from crying. “That’s an option?!”
The serving-woman stood with her back ramrod straight and her eyes fixed firmly on the floor. Every muscle in her body looked tense, and only the rapid rise and fall of her shoulders betrayed her terror.
“You’ve ruined my gown,” said the space emperor, regarding the growing purple stain on his sleeve. “These fibers were harvested on Lutoya-29, a planet that was demolished six units ago. There is no other like it in the galaxy. I could have you harvested for washing-water for this.” He looked up and met the hero’s eyes, his thoughtful expression melting into a delighted grin. “But I don’t have to, do I?”
“No, Your Incandecense,” whispered the woman. Her sweat-beaded skin had grown translucent with fear.
“I don’t even have to have you killed at all!” he exclaimed. “I could… I could…” he cast around the chamber, as though searching for inspiration in the lavish furnishings.
“Please, Your Incandecense.” The woman’s voice was low and unsteady, but her gaze remained fixed on the floor. “I’ll do anything, please, forgive—”
“Anything! You’re right!” He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, stamping his feet in a little dance. “I could do anything! In fact—” he reached over the table and clasped the hero’s hand in his own. “Nothing is anything! I could do nothing! Nothing at all!” He giggled merrily and then froze, gingerly releasing the hero’s hand and leaning back. He tapped one bejeweled finger against his temple and gave an exaggerated wink. “Oh, right. Consent.”
The serving-woman’s eyes flickered to the hero’s for a moment, nervous questions burning in them. The hero gave a barely-imperceptible shrug and a very tiny, reassuring smile. The emperor did not seem to notice.
“Is there more wine?” he asked. “Splendid. Please. Do it again.”
“What…?” The woman’s skin flashed an alarming yellow.
The emperor gestured enthusiastically between himself and the crystal pitcher. “The wine. My gown. I think you should reacquaint them.”
“He wants you to spill the wine on him again,” explained the hero. “No, really. He’s, uh… he’s having an interesting day.”
“I am learning so many things,” said the emperor. “Did you know that you have feelings, too? It’s not just me! My new friend has feelings, that man over there has feelings, that… whatever that thing is has feelings!” He stood up and threw his arms wide in a sudden, emphatic motion, flinging droplets of purple liquid from his soiled sleeve. “Maybe everyone has feelings! Maybe robots! Maybe my enemies! Maybe—” he stopped, and the delirious grin vanished from his face. “Maybe the Lutoyans have feelings…” His voice dropped to a whisper, and he stared at the hero with a strange expression. “But… there aren’t any more Lutoyans…”
The space emperor took his breakfast in bed, bathed in sweet oils, allowed his hair to be combed and coiffed and his face painted with rare minerals, and then sighed in delicate frustration.
“None of this seems right,” he confessed to his wardrober, after rejecting the seventh gown he was presented with. It was deep blue silk, studded all over with crystals that glinted and sparkled like a night sky. “It’s just not working for me today.”
“That is one of the finest gowns in the galaxy, Your Incandescence,” said the wardrober. “It is an accurate starmap of the constellations as seen from your boyhood home, rivaled in beauty and quality only by your other raiments. But perhaps this is more to your impeccable tastes–” It offered an eighth gown, a trailing cascade of iridescent blue-green fabric layered with shimmering, diaphanous beetle wings. “A species of rare insect went extinct for the construction of this one,” it said. “It was considered sacred to the inhabitants of that world. Wearing this gown declares your might and majesty to the galaxy.”
The space emperor pursed his lips. “Hmm,” he said. “Not that one, I think.” There was an unfamiliar twisting sensation in his gut when he looked at the gown.
no but seriously I still get chills thinking about turning off my headlamp in the cave and The Hand That I Did Not Actually See, and it’s been twelve years since it happened
it’s such an unreal experience
like
you turn off your light in a cave and wave your hand in front of your face
and
you can see this shadowy thing moving in the black space where your hand is
it looks like the same shadowy thing you would see in your room at night if you waved your hand in front of your face, it’s there and vaguely hand-shaped, and your brain recognizes it as your hand because your brain is aware of where your hand is and what it is doing
But You Are Not Seeing Anything
Inside a cave, there is No Light. No matter how far your pupils spread, there is no light for them to draw in, no light to put an image on your retina.
But your brain just Fucking Assumes that because it knows where your hand is and what it is doing, clearly it can see it.
So it creates a shadowy thing for your eyes to be seeing.
Brain is like “there’s a hand there”
Eyes are like “yup sure thing brain I can totally see it”
Brain is like “nice”
but there is no hand, you cannot see the hand, you are seeing a literal actual hallucination in the cave because your brain thinks it knows best
Caves are awesome, but also terrifying. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
we once went spelunking, and a our guide said that once he was in a cave with a stream, so he could hear running water, and his brain was like ‘oh, running water? that means there must be Ducks out there’. and he saw like…low light shadows of ducks. that his brain just Put There.
As a cave guide: we call that ‘cave blindness’! True darkness absolutely wigs your brain out – we’re such visual creatures that after a while our brain throws a hissy after not seeing anything. Sensory deprivation is a very real kind of torture. We have a huge, deep cave system at work and there are a lot of places where you’re hundreds of meters in solid rock in this tiny, dark, still space.
I like to turn my torch off, sit down with my back against the wall, and wait to see how long it takes before I start seeing things or feeling like the ground is moving, or hearing things. Because I know I’m not – I’m in complete darkness, utter silence, sitting in rock that hasn’t moved in hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
Proof that brains are Ridiculous and over-react to a lot of stuff!
So I get really narky when people pull the whole ‘oh Eowyn’s
storyline came to such a sucky ending; she was really cool going around killing
orcs and Witch-Kings and then she got shoved into a traditional girly role by marrying
Faramir and becoming a healer’ thing, because no. No-no-no-no-no. Not only does that
stray dangerously into the territory of ‘women only have worth if they’re doing
traditionally blokey things’, but that misses almost the entire point of Lord of the Rings.
Tolkien was in the trenches in the first world war, right?
He got all that ‘for death and glory’ shit shoved down his throat, that was the
whole point about the war, it was when so many people came to see how awful and
misleading all the propaganda about winning glory through violence and death was. And Tolkien’s work completely shows
that: it’s why the hobbits, who’ve never craved power or battle the way men do,
are the heroes of the book; it’s
why strong men like Aragorn and Faramir are shown to be lovers of peace rather
than war. It’s why the quote – but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for
its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory; I love only that which they
defend – is so poignant and beautiful, when
seen in the context of all Tolkien had gone through. He’d seen all but one of
his closest friends die in an utterly pointless war; the prevalent message in
his books is ‘if you’re going to have that many people die, let it be for
something worth dying for.’ (Like
defending your home from the lord of all darkness, for example.)
And Eowyn
might be a fantastic female character, but she’s also got so much development
to go through, and she’s by no means perfect. I find it really interesting that when Eowyn talks to Aragorn
about wanting to go off and fight she never really actually mentions protecting
her people, but speaks about wanting to ‘face peril and battle’, and to
do ‘great deeds’. And it’s not that Eowyn doesn’t want to protect her people, because of course she does, but she’s also got such a
driving motivation within her to do glorious and fell deeds simply for the sake
of valour and renown. It’s one of her defining features, having an attitude
that got so many young men killed in the war and which, obviously, Tolkien
would have been very wary of.
(Also, I think, there’s so much in Eowyn that wants to prove
herself to be more than ‘a mere woman’; because twice in that conversation she
asserts that she’s no mere ‘dry-nurse’ or ‘serving-woman’, but a member of the
house of Eorl and therefore capable of greater things. There’s almost this
slight sense of Eowyn considering herself more than ‘just’ a domesticated woman that I
sometimes get from her in the books? Which is very sad – the idea of Eowyn having less regard for others of her sex who do mind the house or raise the children – and why I so love that ‘I am no man’ moment in RotK. Eowyn’s no longer hiding herself, or dismissing fellow women as the weaker sex,
but acknowledging and embracing the fact that women in all their forms can fuck you up.)
And then we reach
the Houses of Healing, and Eowyn yearning for death in battle just like her
Uncle Theoden, and basically buying into that whole world war one ethos that
Tolkien would have considered so poisonous. Which is why her friendship and
courtship with Faramir is so fricking beautiful.
Remember that quote I wrote earlier? That’s from Faramir. He’s not backing down
from conflict, he’s in no way less of a ‘real man’ than anyone else; he’s just
saying there needs to be more to the fight than simply having a fight. There needs to be a reason; something worth
fighting for. Eowyn recognises that Faramir is a good man in every sense of the
word: he’s strong and valiant, but he doesn’t fight simply to prove himself or
for the sake of winning glory, he fights for other people. And Faramir gently challenges Eowyn on her
idolisation of battle-glory and encourages her not to scorn gentleness or
peace, and he’s so freaking good for her.
(Seriously. Can we just stop for a moment and think about how
wonderful Eowyn and Faramir are for each other: Faramir encouraging Eowyn to
turn towards life and healing and openness while never denying her strength or courage, and Eowyn giving Faramir the
validation and security he never got after so many years of an awful
relationship with his father? I honestly don’t know why I don’t get all giddy
about these two more often, because they make the very best otp.)
And the result of the departure of the Shadow and her
friendship with Faramir is Eowyn’s decision that ‘I will be a shieldmaiden no longer, nor vie with the great Riders, nor take joy only in the songs of slaying. I
will be a healer, and love all things that grow and are not barren.’
I think that last bit is so important because I’m certain
that Tolkien doesn’t mean for Eowyn to immediately pack up her sword and shield
and become a good girl sitting at home with her knitting and waiting for the
men to return home after the fight – after all, she’s going to be the wife of
the Steward of Gondor and there’s a lot of mess to clean up after the War of
the Ring. Eowyn’s probably still going to find herself defending hearth and
home from time to time. But the important thing is that she’s no longer
defining herself simply by the doing of valiant deeds; she’ll no longer compare
herself to the great warriors of her house and feel lacking simply because she
hasn’t killed as many men. Most importantly, she’s not going to take joy only in the songs of the slaying, in
destruction and death. Tolkien was all about healers symbolising life and
rebirth, and Eowyn’s decision to become one – to aid in the preservation of
life rather than the taking of it – is so beautiful. I don’t think Tolkien ever
wrote Eowyn’s ending to make her reclaim her ‘lost femininity’; I think it’s a
lovely way of adding to the ever-present theme in Lord of the Rings of hope and
frailty and healing and friendship over glory and battle and strife.
Ah, fuck, you’re gonna catch me smiling and crying about this excellent and terrific piece of analysis you got here OP. Thank you for sharing this 💖
thank you
the thing about Eowyn is that it’s very clear that her attitudes towards battle don’t come out of a healthy place. and I don’t just mean a place of “war is glorious” or “fighting is more worthy than ‘womanly’ things.” there’s some of that, yes (and who could blame her, really, growing up among the songs of great men and great deeds, while feeling an ill fit for the role in life she was forced into?) but there’s something else too.
when Eowyn’s being tended to in the Houses of Healing Gandalf and Aragorn talk about how she’s been suffering for a long time. Aragorn says that there’s been a darkness over her since before the Witch King ever got to her. when Eomer is confused because he never noticed anything, Gandalf points out that Eomer at least could ride out and defend his country when it was under attack but Eowyn had to stay home and look after Theoden while Wormtongue corrupted him and abused her.
Eowyn went through hell. she was trapped in an awful, awful situation, watching her country crumble and her people suffer, war break out, her brother get exiled, her uncle who was like a father figure to her become ill and twisted by the machinations of this horrible man who was leching on her in his spare time, and there was nothing she could do about it. nothing but sit at home and tend to Theoden and watch.
the narrative and characters come about as close as they possibly can without using modern language to saying that Eowyn went through severe depression culminating in serious suicidal ideation. all of which fits into the ongoing themes in the book about how war can psychologically affect people.
yes, Eowyn wanted glory in battle, but I think that largely came out of her desperate need to just do something when for so long she was effectively powerless. and even after killing the Witch King, which I think can be pretty much universally agreed to be about as good as it gets when it comes to glory in battle, she was trying to get back in the fight. she’s literally wandering around the Houses of Healing with a broken arm angry that she’s not being allowed to fight some more while the healer begs her to go lay down already.
and that makes sense to me because at that point what Eowyn wanted wasn’t to do great deeds and be praised for them. she wanted to die in battle–gloriously, yes, but she wanted to die. and then she doesn’t. and she doesn’t know what to do afterwards. and the war is still on. and everyone’s gone to attack Mordor and she’s been left behind, again, and again she cannot do anything but wait.
and then she meets Faramir, and Faramir understands her because he has been through the same things. he has watched his country come under attack from within and without and been able to do nearly nothing about it. he has been the unfavored one in the shadow of a sibling who was a great warrior. he has seen his father die. he has been hurt by the Nazgúl. we have both come under the same shadow, and the same hand drew us back. Faramir doesn’t magically step in and make Eowyn better because he’s a man. they help each other because they are two people who can relate to the hell they have been through and they hold hands and walk back into the light.
I don’t see Eowyn’s story climax as being a woman who goes “oh, I’ll stop being badass then and let the men do everything.” I never have. I see it as Eowyn choosing to live, and that to me is the most amazing, profound strength, to overcome everything she has been through, to fight through the hell in her own head and the darkness that has plagued her and to start moving forward.
deciding to live when you have spent so long only wanting to die is not an easy thing. it is an act of tremendous courage. it should not be mistaken for weakness simply because it coincides with putting down the tools of war.
brb, crying from the most beautiful addition to this post ever; thank you!
[Caption: A realistic digital painting of personified Mercury. Portrait is from the hip up. Mercury is a pale headless man dressed all in black with a silver pinky ring on his right hand, which he holds over his heart. His shape is blurred on either side of him as if shifting faster than we can blink. The “planet” Mercury floats where his head should be, a deep burgundy crystalline sphere with a ragged crack down the middle revealing glowing-hot violet crystals inside. The background is a gradient from soft pale violet to deep pink.]
