“No woman wants an abortion like she wants an ice cream cone or a Porsche. She wants an abortion like an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.”
WIP – I’m sure you have already figured out who this little guy is. I’m at least 25 hours into him right now. Gah! I regret the size of my guys’ heads when I’m making a hoodie.
BTW, I may end up selling this one so if you know a superfan…
Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of Herman Delman, 1954
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: leather
By the 1820s, ankle boots were becoming the favored daytime footwear for ladies in both the United States and Europe, especially for outdoor wear. Like the shoes of the time, however, fashionable boots were often constructed of thin and flimsy materials, which made walking on cobbled or unpaved roads torturous. As a minor concession to utility, this pair of thin-soled boots is paired with a matching set of pattens which provide a heavier sole for walking. Pattens were basically utilitarian, hence it is somewhat unusual for them to survive in good condition, and even rarer to find a pair matching the boots with which they were worn.
When you learn that diamond companies (De Beers mostly) has been artificially inflating the price of diamonds for years, you really dont care if China screws them.
Not only have they been hoarding and slow releasing them to ensure they are artificially inflated on value but they are mined by literal slave labor and the company actively politically destabilized the area it’s mines are in so that they could ensure there was no system to help it’s workers seek better treatment
Diamonds are the most common gemstone and De Beers used marketing tricks to get the public to think they’re rare and valuable while resorting to murder and torture to maintain a monopoly on them. Even now, they still have control of 80% of the market and control vast reserves to artificially reduce supply, which doesn’t just affect the cost of jewelry but also machines and scientific equipment that uses diamonds.
All those movies where African warlords are conquering each other and torturing people and shit? That’s because of DeBeers.
The idea that if a ring doesn’t cost three months’ salary, then he isn’t serious about the relationship or a decent human being? That’s also because of a campaign started by DeBeers, to make people think they needed diamonds.
Why three months’ salary? Two reasons: first, so a woman could judge how serious a prospective husband is and how good of a provider he’ll be; and second, because if he breaks the engagement her reputation will be ruined forever, she’ll be unmarriageable, and she’ll need to sell the ring for money on which to live (which gives you an idea of how long ago DeBeers started this whole scheme, and how long they’ve been on the side of holding back social progress so something sort of like this social model still applies to help push their blood gravel).
“I will love you as a thief loves a gallery and as a crow loves a murder, as a cloud loves bats and as a range loves braes. I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong. I will love you as a battlefield loves young men and as peppermints love your allergies, and I will love you as the banana peel loves the shoe of a man who was just struck by a shingle falling off a house. I will love you as a volunteer fire department loves rushing into burning buildings and as burning buildings love to chase them back out, and as a parachute loves to leave a blimp and as a blimp operator loves to chase after it.
I will love you as a dagger loves a certain person’s back, and as a certain person loves to wear dagger proof tunics, and as a dagger proof tunic loves to go to a certain dry cleaning facility, and how a certain employee of a dry cleaning facility loves to stay up late with a pair of binoculars, watching a dagger factory for hours in the hopes of catching a burglar, and as a burglar loves sneaking up behind people with binoculars, suddenly realizing that she has left her dagger at home. I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. I will love you until all the codes and hearts have been broken and until every anagram and egg has been unscrambled.
I will love you until every fire is extinguished and until every home is rebuilt from the handsomest and most susceptible of woods, and until every criminal is handcuffed by the laziest of policemen. I will love until M. hates snakes and J. hates grammar, and I will love you until C. realizes S. is not worthy of his love and N. realizes he is not worthy of the V. I will love you until the bird hates a nest and the worm hates an apple, and until the apple hates a tree and the tree hates a nest, and until a bird hates a tree and an apple hates a nest, although honestly I cannot imagine that last occurrence no matter how hard I try. I will love you as we grow older, which has just happened, and has happened again, and happened several days ago, continuously, and then several years before that, and will continue to happen as the spinning hands of every clock and the flipping pages of every calendar mark the passage of time, except for the clocks that people have forgotten to wind and the calendars that people have forgotten to place in a highly visible area. I will love you as we find ourselves farther and farther from one another, where we once we were so close that we could slip the curved straw, and the long, slender spoon, between our lips and fingers respectively.
I will love you until the chances of us running into one another slip from slim to zero, and until your face is fogged by distant memory, and your memory faced by distant fog, and your fog memorized by a distant face, and your distance distanced by the memorized memory of a foggy fog. I will love you no matter where you go and who you see, no matter where you avoid and who you don’t see, and no matter who sees you avoiding where you go. I will love you no matter what happens to you, and no matter how I discover what happens to you, and no matter what happens to me as I discover this, and now matter how I am discovered after what happens to me as I am discovering this.”
