I can rest easy knowing somebody used defenestration in a sentence. Even better, maybe GRRM killed off the character like that just to be able to use the word.

Defenestration: The act of throwing someone or something out of a window

i’m looking to clear out a massive pile of printed papers, essays, and self-printed literature/ philosophy readings that are taking up too much space around here. there’s no grand occasion or special event behind this it's just a routine decluttering, and instead of ወረቀቱ በኪሎ ተሽጦ ዳቦ ከሚጠቀለልበት, someone here might actually want to read them.

​a few quick details:

​what’s in the pile: a mix of philosophy texts, literary essays, and various books/readings i’ve printed out over time. (these are self-printed and bound copies, not store-bought published editions.)

​if anyone is interested in taking them off my hand @zablon_7

"For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name."
-Ephesians 3:14-15

It's a pity that it takes these international holidays for me to feel justified in posting tributes to my parents but that doesn't matter.

What matters is that I have a father to write loads about.
Whenever I am disembodied by these bouts of doubt, parental love is the only conviction that screws me to place.

If our fathers are our first experience of how a heavenly father would be, my dad did not disappoint whom he champions.

He made me unafraid in what to demand from a father, heavenly or otherwise.

My earthly father let me question him when he was questionable because there's no desire for tyranny in his heart.

I have countless things to praise him for. Flashy things like how he cooked for me and hand washed my stained garments. But we connect exclusively on subtleties now, and though his face never betrays his deepest thoughts, I know him.

I tell him about how much I had loved the camel milk we drank when I was little and he tells me about that time he gave me a bath while I was fast asleep and I had whined the next morning because I had no recollection of it. Then we talk about things neither of us believe in deep down or care about. We feign faith and political affiliation and get worked up about drama that does not enrage us. We feign belief in a fair dealing of cards.

We do not say what hums in our bosoms. We both know it's the same song.

I'm seeing that my fallible, many times fallen, earthly father is the only father whose goodness I can vouch for even when he makes mistakes, and maybe he's the only father I've got.

"A fool
stays awake all night
worrying about everything.
He’s fatigued
when the morning comes,
and his problems remain unsolved."

- None other than Odin the Allfather


Sleep early tonight.

One of the most incredible things about reading is that you will find a white man from another era whose life couldn't be more different from yours, that has written a book , and you have either written or agree with everything he has written line for line. The disappointment of not having written it first is absolutely nothing compared to the joy and wonder of being completely known by another human being. Long after having given up on being understood, it's delightful to find out that some dead person somewhere not only spoke your language but also got everything right. Keep reading until you find that person and stay with that author for as long as you want to. Then resume the search for another that speaks a language that you didn't even know you spoke. There's a part in The Graveyard Book where the main character is taken to hell and meets some historical and fictional figures and I imagine my literary heroes like that. They reach out from the belly of the earth and whisper goodies in my ears. I also imagine demons, different kinds of them that divide roles among themselves and fly out of hell to possess different kinds of people ,and the same plight obsesses those of us that have been possessed by the same kind of demon.

F. Pessoa

"The cure for poverty has a name, in fact. It's called The Empowerment of Women."

- Christopher Hitchens

If you've heard the saying that one can either be a Wuthering Heights person or a Jane Eyre person, disregard it and read both for yourself.

Also, if you've seen people paint Charlotte Bronte as the villain sister, know that her only fault is outliving her family and ignore those comments too.

“Let me be torn away, then” I cried. “Let another help me!”

“No; you shall tear yourself away, none shall help you: you shall yourself pluck out your right eye; yourself cut off your right hand: your heart shall be the victim, and you the priest to transfix it.”

-Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte

"To prolong doubt was to prolong hope."

-Jane Eyre

"Who told thee that thou wast naked?"

-Genesis 3:11

"Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?"

“Yes,” I want to say. I have eaten of consciousness. The lowest form of it at that. Self-consciousness.

Who told me that I was naked?

Who hasn't?

And why should they not?

I AM naked after all. Fig leaves are pathetic substitutes to grace. Awkward, cover-up contortions stand in place of my innocent vulgarity.

I have a face now, so I blush, as recognition precedes expectation.

Exposure maims, exposure kills
Wounds admit invasion.
Still, beasts huddled together survive the cold.

As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, each step could be my last. But death is the noblest of all indecencies, isn't it? It's the truest.

Yet, truth takes me only so far.

All because I am naked.
No, not quite.
All because I KNOW that I am naked.

That's what I like about Michaelangelo's David.

He doesn't know.

Let no religious rite be done or read
In any place for me when I am dead,
But burn my body into ash, and scatter
The ash in secret into running water,
Or on the windy down, and let none see;
And then thank God that there's an end of me.

-John Masefield

Some of us haven't been compensated. Clearly, the universe has favorites.

- Rabi'a Al Basari

My name was pointed out to me twice this week.
It reminds me of a college essay that a brilliant girl sent me years ago, which, according to her, played an important part in her acceptance.

In the essay, she recounted her life and used the meaning of her name to tie it all together. It had me thinking what my own name had to do with my life.

I thought my name held a bit of family lore and paradox to it but ultimately names have nothing to do with a person unless it's something we were bullied for. However, let's indulge in symbolically linking it to me for art's sake.

I'm writing something about it.

Call me Thomasene.

My name means Faith. Well, the irony isn't lost on me. I know I don't live up to it.  

I don't even think seeing is believing. I leave room for perception and the possibility of illusion.

I speak in "Maybe's" and "Mostly's". I'd rather say, "I think" than "I feel". And "I feel" than "I know".

I gravitate towards symbolic thinking because it has flexibility and there's little margin of error. This can be manipulative and cowardly sometimes.

The one thing I can stick to is the fact that I'm at least two at a time.

Whenever I find myself desperately searching for a footing, I wish to stand unmoved, having used the full force of my insteps. But perhaps some of us need to play the role of the devil's advocate and challenge the prosecutor in defense of a cause we may not believe, just to ensure the punishment is befitting the crime.

However, we should remember that our mild personas make extremists want to mold us in their image and we, in turn, admire their unflinching stance as we don't have it. Our unsure non-judgement attracts diamonds as well as rust. We should take care not to be the vector of their disease.
We should be sounding boards, not blank slates.

Back to self...rare as they are, I have convictions. But fewer loyalties. I have beliefs but not a belief system. Everything is liable for change.

I am ambivalent but not neutral. I like to think that duality is not duplicity. Or nonpartiality an equivocation.

I own that my ambivalence comes with a heap of self-doubt, guilt, indecisiveness and a potential for dangerous nonalignment. But it's not apathy or double-dealing.
I have beliefs dear to me too, yet I don't always think I'm right about them. I don't always agree with the established metrics of discernment.

My chi is The Titan of Braavos, with his broken sword and unyielding shield, a foot on each of two separate lands and waves of the narrow sea crashing onto them.