Often and Loudly

notbecauseofvictories:

[rebloggable by request]

Because people are intricate and fascinating and full of secret passions and breathtaking worth; we think and dream and feel and create whole worlds and break them with a thought and we doubt even what seems most obvious and we love despite the abyss and at the exact moment when it is most important to cut through the fog of adolescent alienation and communicate that none of us are alone in the endeavor of making ourselves

English teachers assign Catcher in the Rye.

notbecauseofvictories:

[rebloggable by request]

CATHERINE OF ALEXANDRIA, oh my god, anon, let me tell you about my patron saint.

It’s third century Alexandria. Maximinus I is emperor, and he’s called take backs on Galerius’s Edict of Toleration. Christianity is punishable by death again, in a myriad of entertaining ways. (Torn apart by lions, boars and dogs, oh my! Also beheadings and crucifixions and being burnt at the stake, according to Tacticus.) Catherine, however, was the daughter of a noble pagan family. She showed so much intelligence at such a young age that her parents allowed her to study with great scholars of art, science, and philosophy. When men began asking for her hand, she declared that she would only marry someone who surpassed her beauty, intelligence, wealth, and dignity.

(Spoiler alert, it’s Jesus.)

When she was eighteen, she visited Emperor Maximinus with the intent of pleading the case of the persecuted Christians. Maximinus found her amusing (tiny girl spouting treason! hilarious) but he wasn’t exactly the brightest denarius in the coin purse. So he called in all his philosophers and orators, because while it’s been a while since Cicero, Rome is still on top of the “talking shit” game.

Catherine just smirks, and unleashes the incredible force of her intellect until all these learned men are at her feet, defeated and begging to be converted.

Maximinus throws a hissy fit, and had her scourged and thrown in the dungeon, where the Emperess visits her and asks to be converted, because Catherine was just too legit to quit. Of course, this wouldn’t stand (ladies talking to one another about things? I’m sorry, do you think this is Elementary?) Plus there was the whole “refused to stop converting people to Christianity” thing. So the emperor had her beheaded, making her a martyr.

Now she’s the patron saint of lawyers, philosophers, apologists, women, scribes and students. And since I am or hope to be all of those things, I chose to take her name at my Confirmation, as a promise to myself and the kind of faith I want to have.

allyourprettywords:

Salinger, I’m sorry, but “Don’t ever tell
anybody anything” is a string of words
I would like to wrap up in canvas and sink
to the bottom of the Hudson, or extract
by laser from the ribcage of all of us
who ever believed it, who felt afraid
to miss someone, to be the last one
standing. “Tell everyone everything” is
not exactly right, but I do believe that if
your mother looks radiant in violet
you should tell her, or when a juvenile
sparrow thrashes its wings in dustpiles
and reminds you of a lover’s eyelashes,
you should say so. We are islands all of us,
but we are also boats, our secrets flares,
pyrotechnic devices by which we signal
there’s someone in here we’re still alive!
So maybe it’s, “don’t be afraid.” We can
rewrite Icarus, flame-resistant feathers,
wax that won’t melt, I mean it, I’ll draw up
a prototype right now, that burning ball
of orange won’t stop us, it’ll be everything
we dream the morning after, even if we fall
into the sea—we are boats, remember?
We are pirates. We move in nautical miles.
Each other’s anchors, each other’s buoys,
the rocket’s red, already the world entire.