Black Victorian Mourning Jewellery.

Hand and snake gutta percha mourning brooch.

DAY 20 - SURVIVORS GUILT

“Don’t worry Mom and Dad, I’ll make you guys proud…!”

aaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH IM SO FUCKIN SADDDDDD

Angstober prompts by @birdiiielle (curse you angst lord :’^0  )

Mourning Tiara | c. 1880s⠀
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Jet is the fossilised remains of driftwood. In Britain, the main source is Whitby, in Yorkshire. It became particularly popular in mourning jewellery in the mid 19th century.⠀
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The custom of wearing mourning dress was encouraged by Queen Victoria’s prolonged mourning after the death of her husband Albert in 1861. Formal mourning required black crepe or bombazine clothes along with ‘a few trinkets to accentuate the general sombreness of the costume’. This tiara shows that jet or its substitutes was worn at the highest level of society: only those above a certain social class would have had the occasion to wear a tiara. It is interesting that it is made of 'French jet’, a cast glass substitute for jet. As supplies of jet were not sufficient to keep up with the demand, dark cast glass known as 'French jet’ or 'Vauxhall glass’ was often used. (Via @vamuseum
Museum number:⠀
M.133-1984)⠀
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#13daysofhalloween #black #mourning #tiara #victorian #victorianfashion #macabre #jewelry #fashion #history #art #style #design #mode #moda
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4GBpLfgNIl/?igshid=z8s2q97a5k9b

Mourning Court Dress and Veil | c. 1889⠀
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Empress Sisi was known for her 19” waist achieved with extreme tight lacing, ankle length hair, bizarre beauty regimens and for her inclination to wear a lot of black clothing. She felt dark colors accentuated her alabaster skin and dark eyes and hair and wore black frequently throughout her adult life. However, after her son, Crown Prince Rudolf died in a murder suicide pact with his mistress she wore only black as an act of devotion (she may have worn color on trips to Corfu but that’s up for debate). This court gown worn months after her son’s death doesn’t meet standard mourning “rules” of dress. It is very elaborately trimmed and made of lush, luminous silk satin. But Sisi was never one to follow the rules, especially when it came to her vanity. ⠀
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#13daysofhalloween #fashion #history #art #dress #style #black #mourning #victorian #victorianfashion #mode #moda #empresssisi #empresselizabeth #austria #bavaria #halloween #silk
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4C_TD2g3qL/?igshid=1ehwobs8lmvix

ENDORPHIN WITHDRAWAL:  When humans and other animals are around their close companions, their brains secrete endorphins that ease anxiety and produce happiness. When they feel separation from those companions, the brain stops producing endorphins, leading to a kind of chemical withdrawal. Some call this “love withdrawal.”

Alita learns of Ido’s death in BATTLE ANGEL ALITA Chapter 26, “Collapse.”
[Read right to left, top to bottom, manga-stylee]

I read an analogy once likening our sense of security and well-being to a fuel tank replenished largely by positive interactions with our friends and loved ones. Abundant nurturance, support, affection, and validation results in a healthy “fuel” level; in the absence of such affirmation and nurturance, the tank may very well be depleted or even empty. This in itself may seem obvious, but the secondary implication is that if we suffer rejection or loss on a sufficiently full tank, the loss may hurt, but it won’t destroy us. On the other hand, if our “tank” is fueled ONLY by the nurturance of a single person or a small group of people, the loss can be devastating when that energy is withdrawn.

[Probably more accurately characterized as “oxytocin withdrawal” in this case, but I think the basic principle is sound and beautifully illustrated here.]

Please see also

thomastapir.tumblr.com/post/639176005686362112/something-ive-been-thinking-about-for-a-long-time
thomastapir.tumblr.com/post/656566599681294336/most-all-of-us-run-at-a-deficit-of-positive-energy

Here is the spine that joins them. // Back view of the “The Nature of Things” joined #skeletons #mourning inspired #ring by @pegandawl // View details at www.Occulter.org/collections/peg-awl

Pieter Bruegel’s “The Misanthrope” photographed by Alinari while on display at the National Museum in Napoli, Italy. postcard, c. 1910s. A Flemish inscription at the bottom reads:

Om dat de werelt is soe ongetru / Daer om gha ic in den ru
(“Because the world is perfidious, I am going into mourning”).

“Tomb of Maria Christina, Duchess of Teschen” - located in the Imperial Crypt in Vienna, Austria. Postcard, c. 1910s.

My cat in mourning

Well I’ve been there,
sitting in that same chair,
whispering that same prayer half a million times,

It’s a lie though,
burying disciples,
one page of the bible isn’t worth a life. 

It took me a while to process what I wanted to say about the death of Anne Rice, and what she meant to me. There’s a long story, as there is for so many, but in the whole, Anne’s struggle with religion and meaning spoke to me in a very real way through Armand. So many times, even in her autobiography, she spoke of emerging from the darkness, and on the page, through Armand, she told a story of devotion, obsession, and eventually, martyrdom. What I believe though, is that this supposed darkness is the only place some of us can see any light at all.

I was raised Catholic. “Normal” Catholic. Go to mass but don’t read the Bible Catholic. More statues of Mary than pictures of Jesus, catechism classes, trussed up like a child bride for Christ. All that. I grew into an independent and liberal, ally and feminist teenager, but somehow, eventually, I was scared into what I can only call fundamentalist Catholicism. Cover my hair for church, confession twice a week, giving up everything in life that made me happy, because happiness outside of Christ was a sin.

Over the course of about 6 years, I evolved past this, from Catholic to trinitarian Wicca to Greek Pagan to, eventually, atheist. But trauma, obsession and issues with mental health have only become more pronounced as I got older, and around summer 2019 I realized I had some severe religious trauma to sort through. Then comes fall, and something snaps in my brain. To this day I don’t know what sparked it or triggered it but I suddenly became intensely convinced of the idea that Holy Mother Church was not only true, but Truth with a capital T, and I was, once again, going to hell. Because there is no liberal Christianity in my world. There is no love and light, no universalism, no salvation. In my teachings and the cult beliefs I know, almost nobody goes to heaven. Short sleeves, cut hair, homosexual thoughts, appearing to others that you are sinning- souls “fall into hell like snowflakes” so says our lady of Fatima, and there is absolutely no salvation outside the church.

I saw suicide once again as my only option, because if you are convinced beyond any doubt that you will go to hell, then what use is your life? 40 years on earth suffering and anticipating an inevitable eternity, what does it matter? I was beyond terrified. I am trans, I am queer, I had finally escaped an abusive home and family and was flourishing. Now here I was, looking at our new house with my wife and girlfriend, them so excited to begin moving in and planning renovations, and I was wondering how to tell them I was going to leave them forever. I was sick. I lost 20 pounds, I ended up in urgent care for heart palpitations and I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t sleep, I had constant nightmares when I did. I spent over 6 months in an unending state of terror from the time I woke up to the time I eventually passed out.

Early 2020, my wife, who I hid all this from, started listening to Anne Rice audiobooks, and getting obsessed. I listened to SOMETHING all the time, trying to distract myself somehow and I wanted to die. So, out of nothing else to do, I started to listen, and they were nice. They distracted me, they were dark, pleasant stories. But I wasn’t obsessed like I usually was with a media I would grow to love. So one day she comes home and throws me a copy of The Vampire Armand and tells me here, your daddy issues will love this. SO I started to read it. Only Venice. I didn’t know a lot of the set up, since I was going out of order and had only paid some attention to IWTV and TVL, but I devoured this story of Venice. It was the rescue fantasy I had played out in my head so many times as a child, isolated and hungry and made very well known the fact that I was unwanted. It was a gothic, morbid little Cinderella, and though I knew Armand’s story with Marius didn’t have a fairy tale ending, I didn’t care. I had that connection now, to continue to read, and devour one book after another. I fell in love with Marius, with Daniel, and with Quinn, but it was Armand who drug me back from that pit, Armand, through Anne’s words. Armand and his prayers and his willingness to die as a sinner, Armand with his rings as he reclaimed the beauty of the world.

Anne gave up her vampires for a time as she went back to the church, and while I can’t pretend to be an expert or say I’ve read hardly any of her interviews or articles on the subject, I can imagine her sorrow and pain to have to shelf something that once saved you. I put away, gave away, and turned away so many parts of myself to fit the good little Catholic mold, and that mold is a *lie*. It’s wicked, it’s foul, it does nothing but steal joy and light while claiming to cure us of all that ails us.

I do not believe Anne is with Stan and Michele. I know for so many fans that is a comfort, but it’s simply not a part of reality for me. Anne isn’t anywhere. She died, and she has left us words and pictures and love, but there is no soul, no afterlife, no eternity, and *that* is the true light I see in death. To some it’s so sad to think that we won’t see those we love again, and as someone who lost their mother this year, I know that mourning. But it also means our loved ones aren’t burning and being tortured for eternity for not being Catholic or not being Catholic *enough*. All I can hope is that Anne, no matter what she thought at the very end, faced her last moments in peace and conviction and was without the fear that our past religion says we should all carry in our hearts. I hope she only thought of her own beautiful darkness. 

“Elegy for Jane,” from The Collected Poems of Theodore Roethke

HALO.CAME PARTS #NUMB 3D
(hearse parse #nunn#too)

u will leve me
u will desapare
jest liek Joan

u donte LOV me

u Nevere LOV me

u donte red my Tween poams

u dont navir Evan herd my MEMOIRIES

u donte no
u dont wan 2 kno
u only wan 1 theng

u Fukien ANAMY

U JUS WAN THE CONTENTS

i kno.
HEAR wat u wand form GARY FIELD:

there is a 3 thinf about me:

1. les noir
1. Lenore
1. la nuit
2. hat Mondale
2. MANNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDANAMOOOOOOOOOOO
3. the fire that feeds me has grown low.

everythinge is nothinge.

live is oaver.

u jest usien me 4 plesure

my pane

my endinge

U=0
0=2
2=GARIFELDS

n i m stick hear 5ever

n thes gay ass hell

n em6ty voide

no1 can c me

no1 can 7ouch me

no1 has 2 care a bot a monsdare
no1 can LOV a morrdener
U kno i h8 mondes but do u kno i h8 murdaringe

at lest beleif wat i teld u

wat i rote

it rely hapen

n 4 me

ther no escappinge it

traped hear

number

these is my reality:

Gon is Gon.

(pls reed picjurs n reveres form botam 2 tap jest liek orgainals)

Mourning dress ca. 1900

From the Irma G. Bowen Historic Clothing Collection at the University of New Hampshire

Mourning dress, 1872-74

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art