The young people in Taganga suffer from that same sickness that brought on the Gran Olvido in Macondo - La Peste del Insomnio. I may have been infected as well as I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t awake to see the sunrise.
“You don’t have to be pretty. You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.” —
Diana Vreeland (via mirroir)
Wow. This is almost word for word the admonishment I give myself every time I silently judge the appearance of a woman who’s made no promises to me nor done anything to invite my gaze apart from happening into the moment I’m also inhabiting. My inward admonishment goes further though, reminding that the the women I do find pretty are not pretty for me - that is, not for my pleasure. My consuming gaze and their bodies are incidental to one another. With this frame I’ve never understood why one would ever tell a stranger in the street, say, that they are beautiful. The arrogance in the idea that their beauty was waiting for your recognition is bizarre at best.
(Source: popiatom, via spicyfruit)
Let the glass we smash be doubt,
the wine free will,
the bouquet, a mosaic of mercies.
On ritual’s stage, each prop represents.
Symbolic as the Red Sea’s courtesy:
the miracle was faith—not dry land.Make this a day of amnesia
when we forget tattered truths and lidded counsel
caution’s wraith,the Angel of Death’s demands.
—Patty Seyburn, from “Where there is rejoicing, there should be trembling.”
Art Credit Zarina Hashmi
“I am not the first person you loved.
You are not the first person I looked at
with a mouthful of forevers. We
have both known loss like the sharp edges
of a knife. We have both lived with lips
more scar tissue than skin. Our love came
unannounced in the middle of the night.
Our love came when we’d given up
on asking love to come. I think
that has to be part
of its miracle.
This is how we heal.
I will kiss you like forgiveness. You
will hold me like I’m hope. Our arms
will bandage and we will press promises
between us like flowers in a book.
I will write sonnets to the salt of sweat
on your skin. I will write novels to the scar
of your nose. I will write a dictionary
of all the words I have used trying
to describe the way it feels to have finally,
finally found you.
And I will not be afraid
of your scars.
I know sometimes
it’s still hard to let me see you
in all your cracked perfection,
but please know:
whether it’s the days you burn
more brilliant than the sun
or the nights you collapse into my lap
your body broken into a thousand questions,
you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I will love you when you are a still day.
I will love you when you are a hurricane.”
— Clementine von Radics, Mouthful of Forevers (via wethinkwedream)
(Source: waydowntown, via powderdays)
The roosters here in Taganga are all confused. They cry at every hour of day and night as if mourning their unmooring.
Tonight, I danced in the rain, and the whole town followed. My wet clothes bear witness to my nakedness, awaiting the next day’s sun on my balcony.
Sometimes the most cruel thing you can say to a person is ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for’, hungry for their disappointment when they find it, assuming they’re capable of tragedy, of course.“…a broad man with an earpiece asked for ID, pushed our arms up and dragged us toward the police van. Apparently we matched a description. Apparently we looked like someone else. We sat in the van for 20 minutes. Alone. But not really alone. Because 100 people were walking by. And they looked in at us with a look that whispered: ‘There. One more. Another one who is acting in complete accordance with our prejudices.’ I wish you had been with me in the police van. But I sat there alone. And I met all the eyes walking by and tried to show them that I wasn’t guilty, that I had just been standing in a place and looking a particular way. But it’s hard to argue one’s innocence from the back seat of a police van. And it’s impossible to be a part of society when everyone continually assumes that you are not. After 20 minutes I was released. No apology. No explanation. Instead: ‘You can go now.’ And in the knowledge that others have it much worse, I chose silence instead of words. After all, I was born here. I know the language. I am not threatened with deportation.” —
Swedish-Tunisian novelist/playwright Jonas Hassen Khemiri (via thesmithian)
This resonates o much. As a matter fo fact, wrote something similar in resposne to Quora question on racial profiling: What does it feel like to be racially profiled?
On a single incident basis, being profiled is humiliating. I’ve seen grown men break down, crying hot, helpless tears of frustration. On an ongoing basis, being profiled begins to corrode your sense of belonging and personhood. You begin to believe on some level, that the things being projected onto you, might actually be true. It marks you, shapes your habits, leaves you feeling permanently precarious, like you might be jettisoned off the edge of society at the whim of strangers.
(via lagatamontesa)
Why do you think most poor people remain poor? -
I’d add that in many places (e.g. in American inner-cities) poverty is not just a condition of limited access to resources and opportunity. Poverty, of the entrenched, cyclical sort, is also a condition of culture, of the soul of a community. It is a chronic failure of hope, a sort of mass-scale depression, which has roots in material conditions, but becomes something more insidious, even, than the material conditions that engender it…
Interesting discussion on Quora.
“I take much pleasure in being alone but there is also a strange warm grace in not being alone.” — Charles Bukowski (via beryl-azure)
(Source: henrycharlesbukowski, via ken-bryant)
In conversations with young, professional women peers of mine, I hear a great deal of angst about how their career ambitions will play out alongside other things they value, namely family. Indeed, there are a lot of things to be anxious about when it comes to navigating workplaces and professions that structurally and culturally disadvantage women, while also building family. That said, I think that implicit in some of the anxiety is the idea that they will have mediocre partners. That is, less-than-partners really, who wont take on at least an equal share of the burdens (and joys) of home-making and care-giving, making career sacrifices when necessary. That makes me sad. I can’t speak for other men, and I struggle myself with social norms at the intersection of masculinity and career, but I am committed to the work and sacrifice of true partnership. I want to be involved in the messy, exhausting, beautiful work of care-giving and home-making, and of making a life with someone at least as ambitious and capable as I am.
“Admit it. You aren’t like them. You’re not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them, watch the same mindless television shows as they do, maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider, watching the “normal people” as they go about their automatic existences. For every time you say club passwords like “Have a nice day” and “Weather’s awful today, eh?”, you yearn inside to say forbidden things like “Tell me something that makes you cry” or “What do you think deja vu is for?”. Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others…” — Timothy Leary (via encephalous)
(via tortillaknife)
The ‘Harlem Shake’ and the Western Illusion of Freedom -
This meme has such global appeal because it embodies the great promise of capitalism. It juxtaposes two extremes: the extreme of mindless, monotonous work with the extreme of libidinal freedom. This is the great promise that capitalism extends to youth around the world: if you spend your days and nights doing the menial, repetitive tasks that corporations depend upon, then your reward will be an orgy of unlimited freedom in the form of consumptive power.
and
Absurdism communicates a certain willingness to play with symbols that suggests a familiar ease with the world, with meaning, and with authority. This is the domain of elite class privilege, and particularly of white male privilege. We can go further still: absurdism not only reflects acquired status, it also enables access to that status. Mastering absurdism signals one’s ability to speak a certain class language; it flags participation in a distinctly white-collar world of college educated youth.
Perhaps overreaching, but certainly an interesting critique. Is there a similar critique to be made of, say, Lady Gaga? I.e. when the pursuit of the novel leads us to praise the mediocre-obtuse as some high manifestation of creativity, liberty, progress.
“It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them. I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me. When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell. And of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light. So throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.” —
- Aldous Huxley, Island
This came yesterday, scrawled on note paper, a pre-amble to a letter from a dear friend.
Truth.
(Source: retrospeckt, via spicyfruit)
“
Epitaph
When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.
I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.
Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on your eyes
And not on your mind.
You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting
Bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.
Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.
- Merritt Malloy
” —
“With thanks to those who blew the wind,
And those who sailed the ship,
We sailed it tight against the tide,
And I shall be forever in your debt.”
— “Forever In Your Debt”