Sketchbuck

Lovely Subway Tile Art at 81st St B,C stop at Museum of natural history

“Is there anybody else? I'm looking for a Sergeant James Barnes.”

Nonduality is so simple, but it can never be understood by an individual, which is only a sense of being someone and therefore doesn’t understand anything at all. A sense of self can’t do anything because it’s not actually a thing with its own existence. Instead, understanding belongs to awareness, consciousness, being, or whatever you’d like to name it—literally, whatever seems to stand under all appearance of phenomena. And this “pure consciousness” is the best candidate for being our Self—not the bundle of thoughts and sensations we normally take ourselves to be.

Direct pointing can sound obtuse, like you’re holding back the punchline, asserting claims without proof, or making word salad. But direct pointing is pointing to what is always immediate, always here, always available—the you in which “you” appear and which precedes all concepts.

Conceptual thought can only produce a conceptual facsimile of understanding. Look directly. You are not and never were the self you have always believed yourself to be (or have at least believed since around the time you were two years old).

Awareness can see that it’s not the mind, not the body, and not the person. And yet the sense of being a person seems to stick around and still seems to be real even after the initial recognition of its unreality. That’s just how it seems to work.

(Sorry to use “seems” so much, but much is only seemingly so.)

But if a person persists in being exposed to concepts that point beyond the conceptual, then it seems like there’s the potential for the “body-mind system” to do something different. I.e., when the conditions are right, the mind gradually stops layering the sense of doership/ownership on everything that seems to happen.

Eventually the recognition of non-doership/non-ownership can “stabilize” and become the default mode of living for what seems to be an individual. And eventually for everyone, the person dies for good—either when the body dies or allegedly, in the case of enlightenment, before the body dies.

Nonduality is the most liberating shit on offer. Continue to go back to it and when you’re ripe for awakening, the person will be exposed as being empty and the emptiness will be exposed as being you. And that will change everything without changing a thing.

Or don’t think about nonduality at all. That’s fine too. Whatever happens, this is just this, exactly as it is.

buckyxsteve

자세참고

Eternal Hero. Version 1 Oils on primed watercolor paper.

Oooh it’s all because of my summer seasonal affective disorder, how the hell do I keep forgetting that?

Oscar Pierre MATHIEU

2 or 3 Things I Know About Her, 1967

Lauren Bacall, 1940s

This post about fic length came across my dash. It got me thinking about how many truly incredible Stucky fics under 5k I've read — specifically about the short fics that have broken and/or healed my heart.

So, I made this quick rec list of 10 under 5k Stucky fics that are deeply heart-affecting and emotionally devastating.

(There are so many beautiful, moving, and painful fics in this fandom that come in at under 5k. In the interest of keeping this list to 10 fics, these fics are all also canon/canon-divergent.)

💔 Cheat Days | chicklette | Mature | 2,033 words | Pre/Post TWS

Quote I'm unwell about:

Only on the very worst days – when he is tired and sore and hurts all over, hurts inside and out. Sometimes it’s the fight that does it, his need to be held, to be loved after throwing himself on the line. Other times it’s something else - something more cruel – a joke that he knows Bucky would find hilarious, a movie that Bucky would have loved, a book. Sometimes Steve is just so goddamned lonely that he feels like he’s going to come out of his skin. Then he has what he calls a cheat day. A day when he closes up his apartment and uses the coin, and sighs into Bucky’s embrace.

💔 029. Mirror | aimmyarrowshigh @aimmyarrowshigh | Mature | 2,400 words | Pre-War

Quote I'm unwell about:

“I wanna sit at his bedside when he’s sick,” Bucky says finally. “And buy him hot dogs at Dodgers games. And uh… I guess, I wanna…” He exhales and looks down, away from Mrs. Rogers’ eyes. They’re too much like Steve’s and Bucky’s never said this out loud, not even to him. “I wanna get an apartment for the two of us and curtains that close, and I want to teach him how to dance to Cole Porter records. I want to finish all his stupid fights. I want… I dunno. A lotta impossible things.” Sarah’s voice is so soft. “Like what?” “I want to see him grow old,” Bucky mutters. “Right beside me. I want it to be a hundred years from now and look to my right and see Stevie standin’ there.” He blinks away the heavy wetness in his eyes.

💔Not the Needle, Nor the Thread | steebadore | Explicit | 2,017 words | Post-TWS

Quote I'm unwell about:

"Okay, sweetheart, okay," Bucky whispers, running his thumbs over Steve's brow, his wet eyelids, down that bumpy, ungainly nose--the only physical evidence that Steve is a flawed human and not a figure cut from marble. If you asked Bucky what he loved most about Steve, he might say something like his goddamn earnest heart, or those too beautiful-for-spacious-skies eyes, but really it was this: the bump on Steve's nose, put there by Bucky himself, age eleven. Selfish, maybe, but Bucky never pretended to be otherwise these days. He doesn't know why the serum didn't fix that--Bucky likes to think it couldn't. Steve always said how it didn't change anything, just amplified what he already had, and what he had was Bucky's mark on him, down to the bone. This one's mine, it said. You cannot have him. Not the whole of him.

💔Through the notches in your spine | caughtinanocean | Explicit | 4,460 words | Post-TWS

Quote I'm unwell about:

Maybe Steve was right to worry, and maybe he's not ready and—he's breathing too fast, and Steve's going to notice any moment now, going to stop and leave. Steve lets go of Bucky's hand to stroke the side of his face, tender and soothing. He leans in to give Bucky a soft kiss on the lips, and Bucky doesn't feel so panicky anymore. He's with Steve. Steve is inside of him, as close as someone could be, and nothing bad could ever come of that. Bucky wills himself to focus on the moment, to watch Steve's face, soft with affection, to relax and enjoy this. “'s like it's my first time all over again. How many people get a shot at that twice?” Steve groans. He looks flushed and giddy and bright, and Bucky's inordinately proud that it's his words and his body making Steve glow like that. “I'm gonna make it way better for you this time.” “Our first time was bad?” Bucky asks, trying not to sound crushed, even though he feels it a little.

Steve traces Bucky's jaw and down the line of his neck to caress his chest. “No, our first time was perfect. We had no idea what we were doing, but it was perfect.”

💔A History of Birds | OddityBoddity | Not Rated | 2,580 words | Post TWS

Quote I'm unwell about:

“I don’t remember,” he says. Steve holds his breath. “I don’t remember telling anybody about that.” It’s like there’s something stuck between his lungs, like something’s pulling them apart in his chest. “You mean about the bird?” he whispers. Bucky looks at him. Not staring, not really, but looks at him like Steve’s looked at paintings before. Like he’s trying to work out how it’s done. “That little bird,” Steve says quietly. When he speaks, he speaks like the words are a spell or a prayer. Like the words are going to reach into Bucky the way his name once did. Like they’re going to catch his arms and pull him up to safety. This secret they both kept. Something so little, so inconsequential that no one has touched it.

💔You Will Meet a Stranger | spitandvinegar | Mature | 3,081 words | Post-TWS

Quote I'm unwell about:

"Steve," she says, unruffled. "He needs someone who'll look at him without pining for who he used to be."

Steve sets his coffee cup upright again. He mops up the mess with a napkin. "Honestly," he says, "All I ever pine for is for him to look back."

💔This is the place | dharmashark @dharmasharks| Explicit | 4,654 words | Canon divergence

Quote I'm unwell about:

With a metal hand there, under the small of his back, Steve might as well be weightless. It’s terrifying. For Steve to be so fragile in ways that Bucky isn’t, and might never understand. But Steve has never been afraid, has never shrank away. Not ever. Not even when Bucky could have—when he would have—when he almost hurt him—Steve had only balled his fists and locked fierce, red-rimmed eyes on his. Steve is fragile; he is unbreakable. Bucky’s memory is full of contradictions.

💔i've seen my share of trouble and i've held my weight in shame | inevitablemeow  | Teen | 4,166 words | Post-TWS

Quote I'm unwell about:

Bucky is a ghost, still, in the wind so far they haven’t been able to find him. It’s been six months since the helicarrier, and Steve hasn’t lost hope, not fully, but he’s slowed his search. Seeing this heart, knowing that all the others are his, has that hope roaring back to life. They’re his. They’re all for him.

💔sorrow sings a song in me | unicornpoe | Teen | 4,425 words | Post-TWS

Quote I'm unwell about:

Bucky’s note is on a thick piece of cardstock, and the words are a little more steady, this time. STEVE, IT HELPS ME TO READ THESE THINGS. I THOUGHT IT MIGHT HELP YOU TOO. I MISS YOU. I WANTED TO CRAWL UNDER THAT BLANKET WITH YOU, BUT I DIDN’T KNOW IF I SHOULD. I DON’T THINK I’M GENTLE ANYMORE, AND I WANT TO BE GENTLE WITH YOU.

💔more than anything | jehans | Explicit | 2,938 words | Pre-War

Quote I'm unwell about:

Steve is a reckless asshole who Bucky loves unconditionally and wholeheartedly, and when Steve is quietly undoing him in their bed, loving on him openly and indulgently the way Bucky doesn’t always let him, it becomes difficult to keep pretending that Bucky wouldn’t go to the ends of the earth for any of Steve’s whims. But mostly, what makes him so honeyed in these moments is the way Steve transforms. When he climbs on top of Bucky, all of Steve’s usual, too-close-to-the-surface anger drains out of his eyes, clearing away into pure blue skies of utter adoration. It’s an honesty that Bucky cracks under, breaking open the clay of mundanity and allowing him to shine brightly under Steve’s hands.

Fic rec series