Yesterday my dad told me something that I think maybe more people need to hear.
You’re allowed to just do things for fun.
He told me that in this modern society, especially the United States, we seem to have this attitude that we shouldn’t do something unless we’re aiming to be the best at it. If we can’t sing like Beyonce or Frank Sinatra or something there’s no point to singing. If we can’t make the next big breakthrough there’s no point in looking into mechanics and engineering.
But, he tells me, it took him a long time to figure out that life doesn’t have to be a race. If you want to take up the piano when you’re a teenager or later you’re not going to master it. You’re not going to be able to play to huge concert halls, but that also shouldn’t stop you. You can study a language out of curiosity and then drop the ball if you want. You can just get okay at something or even be terrible at it. You can drop it for days or years and then pick it up again and it doesn’t have to be a shameful thing.
I’m really glad he told me that because today I opened my sketchpad for the first time in months and just started drawing. And it looks terrible. But I don’t care. I don’t have the talent or patience or spacial awareness to get anywhere near good at drawing, but it’s fun. It helps me focus my mind and nobody has to see it.
And because of what he told me, I’m thinking maybe someday soon I will take up the bass guitar. And I won’t worry about how well I do, or how fast I learn, or that I haven’t played an instrument since sixth grade, or that I don’t have that much time to practice. I’m just gonna enjoy the experience. Maybe I’ll try swing dancing again and take a class because I’m not the best dancer but damn if it isn’t fun.
Yeah, you don’t have to be good at things. It’s not a requirement. Maybe that seems obvious but it had never occurred to me before. You’re allowed to just enjoy what you’re doing. For me, that feels like a life changing revelation. I don’t have to be good at something to like it. I don’t have to put 100% effort into everything I do. It’s kind of amazing.
OKAY WAIT I WANNA TALK ABOUT THESE AMAZING BABS FOR A HOT SECOND
okay so like. for a long time, this species was like, IMPOSSIBLE to grow in captivity. this is a REALLY important step in the protection of exotic plants like villosa, because as soon as the plant can be grown and bred in captivity, its value goes down on the black market, meaning that poachers are less likely to damage the natural populations. with nepenthes (asian carnivorous pitcher plants) like the babs here, this is even more important because 1. these plants have male and female individuals, so if too many of one sex is taken a population can become inbred very easily and 2. these plants are HIGHLY spectated to the point where one species might be native to like, ONE ridge on ONE mountain and NOWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. which brings us to these especially toothy babs.
heres the challenge: Villosa is a highland pitcher plant, meaning that it grows in mountains, in the cold. and this species grows in unusually cold temperatures. so like, it’ll only grow in conditions that are between 75-80 degrees F during the day and between 40-50 degrees F at night– this is because Villosa is native only to two mountains in Borneo at and elevation of 3,200 meters.oh, and they also have very specific feeding, light, and humidity requirements, so add that to the list. it also just so happens to be one of the most valued and sought after pitcher plans in the world for its beauty (general market prices today range around $100-$150 based on the plant’s size and the seller).
so like, yeah. rare plant. hard to grow. habitat is at high risk for damage by poaching because of demand.
and then in 2003, the International Carnivorous Plant Society publishes a paper in it’s newsletter. It’s written by a horticulturalist named Jeff Shafer. He figured out how to grow Villosa in cultivation.
he put it in a chest freezer.
behold, the amazing and exotic high tech technique that has been used widely since 2003 for growing villosa and it’s relatives by professionals, nurseries, and hobbyists alike: buying and repurposing a straight up chest freezer by rigging it with fans, lights, control panels, and misting systems. nowadays, some people even go farther. the species is still listed as vulnerable under the IUCN, but it’s been doing well in cultivation ever since!
(you can read Shafer’s paper on it here. he describes all the exact conditions that the plant lives at and how he pulled it off lol)
TIL that a cat once co-authored a physics paper. In 1975, a physicist had just finished writing a paper and was ready to publish but realized that he had used ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ throughout, despite being the sole author. Not wanting to edit the paper, he listed his cat, Chester, as a co-author.
Ok but the best part is, physicists loved the joke. When people called the author’s university and he wasn’t available, they’d ask to speak with the co-author instead. The author issued a limited number of copies of the article signed by both authors. (Chester’s was obviously a pawprint.) And to this day, physics papers will often have F.D.C Willard (Felix Domesticus, Chester Williard [Willard was the author’s father’s name]) mentioned in the footnotes thanking his “useful contributions to the discussion”.
(Who am I kidding. They’re all his favorites. These are just some of them.)
Viktor is eighteen. It’s the shoot for SKATE that he did after the Turin Olympics. He’s standing in front of the Hermitage, wearing an open parka and a sweater underneath, tight jeans and high boots. The sweater’s folk art-style pattern would be ugly on anybody who isn’t Viktor Nikiforov. His hair is still long, still flies out for what seemed like a mile behind him. His medal is around his neck. He stares down the camera, feet planted, face determined–a man who has just reached the top of the world and plans to stay there. It was one of the first pieces of Viktor merchandise that Yuuri purposefully bought for himself–Viktor’s face looked out at him from the magazine rack in a Kiosk in a train station in Fukuoka and he couldn’t help himself. For a long time, Yuuri thought that the Hermitage background must have been photoshopped in. He thought this, in fact, until Viktor found the magazine in one of the Boxes Under Yuuri’s Bed and informed him that he vividly remembers that photoshoot because it was done at three in the morning during one of the coldest nights on Saint Petersburg record.
“The only thing they photoshopped is my lips, because I’m pretty sure they’d already turned blue.”
When Yuuri is thirteen and hasn’t yet realized that the term “I want to be above Viktor Nikiforov” can have two meanings and he means it both ways, his favorite Viktor photoshoot is attached to an interview that he did about volunteering at a poodle rescue. The image is of Viktor with his hair all frantically knotted up on top of his head, kept in place by five different rubber bands and a lot of hope. His shirt is lime green and bears the logo and name of the rescue organization in question, which Yuuri has been reliably informed is some Russian pun that is the equivalent of something like “PAWSOME POODLE RUFFSCUE.” He is surrounded by a litter of puppies which the description below the photo informs readers are all named after Russian pop stars. He’s busy making faces at the two closest to him and doesn’t notice two others who are paws-and-head first inside a massive bag of puppy chow behind his back. Yuuri still makes involuntary cooing noises whenever he’s shown this image without prior warning.
The Versace photoshoot Viktor did for the Swimwear/Summer 2013 collection. It’s on a beach. His hair is salted and his eyes are the same exact color as the ocean behind him. He’s on his knees. One hand is planted firm in the sand, behind him gripping a half-handful. The other is on the waistband of his jeans, pulling them down to reveal his hip and a Versace swimsuit. His iliac furrow is stark; the hair below his bellybutton is neat and dark blond. His eyes are half-lidded. He’s shirtless. His nipples are hard. Someone has artfully misted him with water to make it look like sweat, or maybe sea-breeze. Even Viktor telling him that this particular photo was actually done in a studio, on a pile of sand with a beach umbrella stuck in it (And also that the reason his eyes are half-shut is because the fans kept blowing sand into them) cannot ruin this image for Yuuri.
(”Oh, the pages of this magazine are stuck together!” says Viktor, when he finds it in a Box Under Yuuri’s Bed. “AHHHHH,” Yuuri responds. “AHHHH!”)
A beautiful and melancholy Annie Leibovitz shoot. It’s natural light done in a wash of blue, and Viktor is looking towards the camera with his chin resting on his hand. He’s laying on a bed, or maybe a couch, and it’s foreshortened to where his face is in focus but the rest of his body is just a hazy line until one sees the blurry form of his bare feet just barely in frame. The sweater he’s wearing is large and looks warm. His hair isn’t as styled as it usually is, and one can actually see the darker blonde low-lights that usually get lost in that blinding sea of platinum. His gaze is pensive, maybe even a little lost. The camera is so close to his face that one could count every eyelash if they had the inclination. It’s beautiful, and made something ache inside Yuuri that he’d never actually realized was part of him.
(”We weren’t even supposed to shoot that day,” Viktor told him once. “She met me in my hotel room a few weeks before it was supposed to happen and she just happened to have her camera with her. We were discussing…I can’t even remember now. Schedules, maybe. I had a headache and I asked her if she minded if I laid down. She said no, she didn’t mind. She asked me if I minded if she took a few pictures and I said I didn’t. She sent me that picture a few days later and I knew it had to be that one.” “You look so sad,” Yuuri whispered, their faces inches apart. So close that Yuuri could count every eyelash if he wanted to. “I think I was,” said Viktor, and Yuuri kissed him.)
A photo that is actually part of a larger spread done in the follow-up to the Sochi Olympics, focusing on Viktor and his prospects with the home-team advantage. He’s crouching down on the ice, forearms stretched out over his knees to keep himself balanced on his blades. He’s looking at something off-camera, attentive, eyes striking. His shirt has a cropped hem, rising up over the jacket he has wrapped around his waist and playing at the line of his spine. His gloves are fingerless. His hair is a little long and it’s pinned back choppily at the crown of his head. The line of his collarbone is exquisite.
A unedited photo that wasn’t supposed to make it out into the world but did, accidentally, because some intern momentarily posted it as the header image for an online interview. It was saved to many, many hard drives in the ten minutes it was up. Yuuri, who has an alert for Viktor’s name set on his phone, dropped it into a snowbank when he opened it. The image isn’t really anything remarkable–a shot of Viktor taken from above, laying with his legs crossed a the ankles and smiling. He’s done many shots like it, some even in that exact same pose, and there would be nothing special about it (Except that it’s Viktor Nikiforov–they’re all special to Yuuri) if it weren’t for the fact that wardrobe obviously put Viktor in a pair of jeans that were either one size too small or had been poorly tailored.
Or, Yuuri later finds out, were suffering from the fact that Viktor forgot to wear underwear that day. “Yuuri actually got down on his knees and thanked God,” Phichit tells Viktor, very drunk at a party years later. “I DROPPED MY PHONE, PHICHIT. I WAS LOOKING FOR MY PHONE.” “HIS DICK,” Phichit continues, in a bad imitation of Yuuri’s voice and accent. “HIS DICK, PHICHIT. HE’S CIRCUMCISED.”
Viktor, delighted: I always knew something good would come of Dickgate 2014!
La Vie En Rose playing from another room Edith Piaf
Me standing on a gorgeous stone balcony outside of a grand ballroom, breathing in some fresh air because the fumes of the champagne and the loud joyous noise gave me slight sensory overload. The wind beautifully moves my gown.
me dissociating in the waffle house off some highway at 1 AM after poppin a dime in the record machine in 2017
