Petunia All my life, I have been accompanied by petunias but I have never really paid attention, until now. Today, I feel like a six-year-old again: discovering that flowers exist and that there are mountains capped with snow and that snow leopards are real. The novelty of a first time. Imagine: that this still happens well into adulthood! Come to think of it, is that why we are mostly very tired as grown ups? Is it because, by now, we all know what a snow leopard is, and that mountains are sometimes capped in snow, and we have all seen probably every species of flower that has existed since the time arachnids evolved their many legs (and eyes)? We’ve all heard about the tallest building, the richest man, and the longest river. Even the deepest lake with the meanest loch monster (we secretly all hope and pray it exists, and that, one day it will rear its head, make the news, and ignite all our senses with wonder once again!) But until the loch monster rises to save all our inner children; we remain tired. Don’t we? Because we’ve seen everything, we’ve decided our preferences, we’ve stated our stances and then we just are. We just are. We are just here, like this, and if we’re lucky we get to travel and perhaps see how sweet potatoes are roasted in a lantern-lit town over in Japan, or, taste a type of coffee bean for the first time while perched on an old stone in Montenegro. Fleeting moments of newness; we get to be the child, again. It dawned on me while I was doing my rounds this morning. I have been walking around this same neighborhood for probably ten years now: nearly every morning and almost every twilight. In the mornings, I stop and stoop at the petunia gardens that so reluctantly grow alongside the buildings where nobody really looks. Or maybe they are not reluctantly growing, at all; I should reword this: they grow unstoppably where they have been reluctantly planted. There, that’s better. As if to intentionally show us all that they couldn’t care less about the reluctance of humans. I always stop to stoop and scoop a petunia between my fingers. I never pick her, I only hold her for a few seconds. I skim the skin of her petals and I say, “You are beautiful.” Then I go on with my day, I continue on my rounds. Today, as I let the blossom snap back into place amongst her sisters, and the coolness of morning bit my cheek, it dawned on me that I have always been accompanied by petunias for as long as I can remember! They have become so common to my story that I believe I’ve taken them for weeds. I suddenly felt slight shame for my lack of awareness. How could I have allowed something so velvet and violet to blend into the background of my life? Certainly, such opulent hues of purple so velvety to the touch do not belong in anyone’s distant background. But instead of turning away from this shame, I felt that I wished to walk through it, and there, through the sidewalks and corners of my childhood roads and cities: violet petals came into focus! I had just made my turn at the corner of the cathedral where they were holding a church service, and the priest’s voice hummed the same homilies as the week before, when I smiled, beholding the scenes in my mind that were now all erupting with petunias!

As an opera singer, I am qualified to say that you absolutely do not have the right to inject your own political beliefs into a performance that the public expects to be treated as the composer intended. It is extremely disrespectful to the paying audience, and your professional colleagues. He should never work in any house ever again.

Whoever this officer is, send him to France NOW.

RT @DiosaKhalinda: 🇫🇷 “Esta farmacia era toda mi vida. Soy madre de tres hijos. Todo está arrasado y quemado. Tenía medicinas para paciente…

The fact that they feel so at ease enough, and confident enough, to say these words in front of a camera just goes to prove what little respect they have for the authority of France. They are now the authority of France.

WOW! Young Italian delivered a furious, emotional speech after violent riots erupted in his city Milan, caused by third-world invaders. “I can’t stand these people anymore. I know so many people who come here from all over the world, work hard, and are already out working at five in the morning. If you come here and destroy my country, you’ll be sent back to your own country kicking and screaming! I’ve had enough of this bullshit. I can’t take it anymore! And then they come here, and everything is supposed to be fine? Well, if they rape my daughter or my sister, then we’ll talk! Let’s see Ashline come here and say all this bullshit to our faces! I can’t stand these people anymore. I’m 23 years old, and I want to live in my own city! And we have to be the ones to start. We have to be the ones to rise up and fight back! My city doesn’t even exist anymore. My grandfather, my great-grandfather—they built all of this.”

Check out how the French riots are being framed on Threads:

I think he has been replaced.

C’est le magasin de mon papa. 30 ans de travail acharné, sacrifices, et journées interminables. Il a consacré sa vie à cette boutique, c’était toute sa fierté. Aujourd’hui, en quelques heures, on lui a arraché ce qu’il a mis 30 ans à construire. J’ai le cœur brisé pour lui.

五十岁的阿琳是巴黎第十区一家小餐馆的老板。 她是华裔二代，讲一口纯正的巴黎口音。 七年前，她从一位阿尔及利亚裔犹太老先生手里买下这家门面，一家人守着灶台过日子。 事发那天下午两点半。 街上突然乱了。 阿琳看着窗外的动静不对，立刻把店门口的铁卷帘门全部拉到底，反锁在店里。 她以为铁门至少能挡一阵。 很快，门外传来了沉重的撞击声。 外面聚了六七个人。 他们几个人一起发力，硬生生把拉到底的铁卷帘门从四面抬了起来。 随后是密集的打砸声，沿街玻璃被全部砸碎。 暴徒直接翻了进来。 阿琳甚至来不及退到后厨，迎面就挨了一顿重击，右眼被打出一大块乌青，当场倒地昏了过去。 等她恢复一点意识，眼前的一幕让她完全无法理解。 第一个从碎玻璃窗钻进餐馆的，是一个只有十二岁模样的男孩。 紧跟在小男孩后面的，是一群年轻女孩。 她们手里没有拿铁棍，拿的是大号购物袋。 有人翻收银台，有人砸冷柜，有人把货架上的酒水、调味品和后厨食材成箱往购物袋里装。 搬得走的装进袋子，搬不走的砸烂。 最后，有人在餐厅里放了一把火。 在巴黎苦心经营了七年的小馆子，不到半个小时就化成了焦黑的废墟。 七年每天起早贪黑攒下的家底，最后就毁在下午两点半，一群拎着购物袋的未成年人手里。 当街头秩序彻底失守，几道铁卷门保护不了任何普通人的生计。

First they came for the Communists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the Socialists And I did not speak out Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists And I did not speak out Because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews And I did not speak out Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me And there was no one left To speak out for me. - Martin Niemöller 1946

In 2011 I was in the north of France, in Nord pas de Calais, where I was staying with a French family in their lovely family home. Quentin, my host, along with his father, picked me up in Paris and we travelled to their family home together. I was in Nord pas de Calais to enroll my toddler in school, I wanted to give him a French education from elementary to high school. But very early on, I realized there was something unexpected brewing in the undercurrents of French daily life. Before taking any turn on a road, before entering a train, before even taking a turn down a hallway in a mall; Quentin would go first to inspect the path. He explained he needed to “inspect for Moroccans”, as crossing paths with them always turned out to be hazardous. “They treat you violently without reason.” He then taught me how to do the inspection myself, so that when the time would come, I could keep myself and my son safe. That was back in 2011, which was a long time ago. My son was accepted at the pre school in Lille and all of the papers were prepared for our move, but we never did make that relocation. We stayed in Metro Manila, and my son continued going to school at a Singaporean-run school here. Even though, I hadn’t even realized at the time, that the reality on the ground in France (and in Europe really), was not just a stale puddle of water remaining stagnant; RATHER, it was actually a growing body of flowing water more akin to a hungry river. I thought that the puddle would stay that way and people would be able to maneuver life around it. What I didn’t have the knowledge to predict yet, was that, the puddle would turn into a brook, and the brook into a river and the river would lead to an ocean. I have been following the progression of the events in France for many years now. The daily reality for them on the ground: their grandmothers raped and murdered inside their homes for the aged, by refugee asylum volunteers; their young girls beh€@d€d then thrown into public dumpsters; their stray cats and dogs raped by refugees who have free access to their healthcare and roofs over their heads. Daily events so horrific you wouldn’t dream about them in your worst nightmares. And now, we watch the erasure of French history in real time, while stupid influencers who know nothing but: clout, money, and fame; continue to post reels tapping their fingernails on Parisian balconies as if intentionally planted in order to blindfold the world to the everyday reality of ordinary French citizens. The events of today are not isolated, they are not spontaneous, and they are not sudden. The days, months, and years leading up to this were spelled out well in the making. This is not a story of “the French being the French”. This is the story of multiple-decades-long cultural and physical French invasion. As the structures that hold French history burn to ashes while French authorities make babytalk from their pedestals paid for by the orchestrators of this invasion, we realize that, one day the children of France will not even know the flag of France, will not even see the architecture of France, and perhaps one day, will not even speak French. The face of the geography of this planet is undergoing reconstruction. But unlike the reconstruction done for Hollywood actresses; this is more like the emergence of a new Frankenstein.

🚨 NOW: Liberal feminists silent as a French business owner is beaten and her livelihood TOTALLY DESTROYED by rioters She stands there totally defeated realizing France is NO LONGER FRANCE, and her leaders left her out to dry under the name of "tolerance" You can punish and lock up the people who did this, but the real solution as shutting the border and mass deportations!

Civil War is inevitable

She voted for it. She welcomed them. Faced with the encore, she begs them to stop. In her heart she knows they will not. Everything she believed. That they were French like her, fighting for the same cause. That the ones who warned her were full of hate. That she would be safe. It all falls apart in this moment. She is terrified of what comes next. In her heart she knows. Only remigration can save her.

Pour moi, c'est l'image la plus horrible de ce 17 octobre: Un couple d'octogénaire dépouillé de tout, en pleine rue, laissé à moitié nu. Comme si les Rolex, les Vuiton, les Hermès, les Dior, les Sephora pillés n'étaient pas suffisants pour la revente. L'image qui devrait être un signal d'alarme pour tout l'occident. L'image d'un pseudo président qui a perdu le contrôle. Qui a totalement échoué envers son peuple. L'image d'une gauche radicale qui a sacrifié votre propre identité pour faire de votre pays une zone de guerre, aux arrières-plans culturels qui n'ont rien à voir avec les vôtres. Cette image est effrayante!

Meanwhile in China.

RT @16persontype: MBTI, Evolved! From 16 to 64 types. Ever wondered why you and your fellow INFJ are so different? Discover the hidden s…

"That motherfucker back there is not real." You know how syphillis makes people go mad? Well similarly, Botulinum toxin is the most lethal substance known by weight. It's a neurotoxin. It's highly likely that continuous injection of Botox has made those that use it less human. Emotional blunting is a known side effect, and emotional blunting is a component of psychopathy. ⚕️

It’s Been a While   She leaned forward and it felt like slow motion cinema aiming for my head; her torso pressed onto the edge of the glass tabletop, glint in her eyes, mauve-and-fuchsia-toned sky reflecting on the table between us. Then she cupped her mouth with her right hand and whispered to me:   “The truth was never absent from you   You were merely distracted from its presence inside of you.”   It’s the noise that calls you out and away from the lands of truth within. Everybody else’s noise, all of those stories that don’t belong to you; nevertheless, you’re expected to care about. The loudness, the distraction. Voices in hallways belonging to ghosts untethered to bodies buried in the ground but affixed to stories all around you. Apparitions begging for your attention the same way people beg for whatever chemicals they’ve got circulating their veins.   Go inside again. Be quiet again. Walk the halls of your own mind—again. Name every creature whom you meet. You will find truth sitting on a violet sofa, sunbeams spotting her face, looking like a cheetah; and she’ll say to you, it’s been a while.   06 October 2026 C. JoyBell C. instagram.com/p/DeQtXg_mFR8/…

Can I Look In You? (On the reason why we are here)   There is admiration that says: You have accomplished something extraordinary.   And there is wonder that says: How extraordinary that you are precisely this way.   I tend to find people wondrous simply for being exactly what they are like. I am amazed by people’s peculiarities that make them oddly who they are. And I think people like to be found amazing for no other reason other than: they are here. They are here just like that, just in this exact way. And those are the spaces I am curiously meticulous about, those are the spaces I ask to walk into. And why so? Because I like filling myself up with wonder, I love being in a state of awe. I have somehow learned to cultivate awe even in the narrowest of places, even in overlooked corners. Wonder and awe, I am convinced, are the meaning of life, are the reason why we are here.   07 October 2026 C.JoyBellC.