āNever,ā said my father,
'Never cut a pomegranate
through the heart. It will weep blood.
Treat it delicately, with respect.
Just slit the upper skin across four quarters.
This is a magic fruit,
so when you split it open, be prepared
for the jewels of the world to tumble out,
more precious than garnets,
more lustrous than rubies,
lit as if from inside.
Each jewel contains a living seed.
Separate one crystal.
Hold it up to catch the light.
Inside is a whole universe.
No common jewel can give you this.ā
Afterwards, I tried to make necklaces
of pomegranate seeds.
The juice spurted out, bright crimson,
and stained my fingers, then my mouth.
I didnāt mind. The juice tasted of gardens
I had never seen, voluptuous
with myrtle, lemon, jasmine,
and alive with parrotās wings.
The pomegranate reminded me
that somewhere I had another home.
(literally had to figure out how to screenshot from paramount for this one, so please appreciate my dedication and ignore the random borders <3)
one of my favorite design choices in the aang movie is the use of lighting and shadows to show how much aang is being swayed by tagah. it doesn't apply all the time, but it DOES come up during some of the big emotional beats during the trip to the island and through the immortal storm.
(if this happens in other parts of the movie, feel free to add some examples onto this post as well!)
the first part that clued me into this design choice was aang's conversation with tagah about restoring the airbenders. during the conversation, tagah's face is shadowed, and so is aang. tagah is successfully isolating aang hereāas the last two airbenders left in the world, only tagah can understand aang. and aang, who is clearly so desperate for some connection to his people, is very much grabbing onto it.
the next time tagah and aang have a conversation with clear lighting/shadows, it's when tagah asks how aang can trust zuko after what the fire nation did to their people. when aang explains how zuko is a friend who helped end the war, aang's face is lit; tagah's isn't. i also find it really interesting that aang is leading the conversation here and placed on the right. in other scenes, including the one before this, tagah is usually placed on the right instead, and also usually is the one leading things.
and then we get into the immortal storm.
in the first shot on the left, tagah's face isn't really lit up or shadowed, but you can make an argument that some of aang is. either way, the important part here is that aang's face isn't in the shadows. then when tagah says that they can clear a path for the ship together, RIGHT after aang suggests that they find another path, the lighting flashes and immediately casts tagah's face in shadow.
(i'd need to rewatch to do a fact check, but it's important to note that, as far as i could see while looking for these specific moments to screenshot, a lot of the same lighting flashes usually illuminates the gaang's faces inside of the airship.)
but then the storm continues. and as aang is helping tagah, he starts to get more doubts about this plan of his. he turns around, face illuminated, and says they need to turn back as soon as he realizes they're falling behind.
but as soon as tagah convinces him that they need to push on forward and that his friends can handle it (which he admittedly isn't wrong) aang turns around and is IMMEDIATELY cast in shadows again. another important note is that tagah is STILL placed to the right/in the lead here.
as soon as they get through the storm, it's katara and aang's fight on the ship. when katara points out how risky what aang did was, her face illuminated. aang, who has already been convinced by tagah that he did the right thing, is cast into shadow still. (and tagah, like always, is off to the right and cast in shadows, too. the framing also puts him behind aang, almost like aang's reasoning isn't really his own here.)
when aang claims that none of his friends understand what he's been throughāexcept for tagah, of course, even if it's never saidāaang is still cast in shadow.
once they get successfully through the storm, aang tries to thank tagah for helping them navigate it. tagah insists it was all because of aang. both of them are still in the shadows. afterwards, when aang explains why they had push through, he still isn't fully illuminated. there's also an interesting detail of tagah literally putting himself between aang and the others (face still mostly in shadows) while putting aang on the right side. aang is the "leader" here, and DID believe in the strength of the team, but only after tagah told him to.
afterwards, aang is mostly illuminated during his search for the staff on the islands. i don't know if the lighting is ever as clear cut as it is during the flight/immortal storm scenes.
but at the end of the movie, once aang is safely on top of appa with his friends surrounding him after fighting tagah and falling through the sky?
he's back in the lightāand alongside the real family he has left.
a good meal can leave you flat on your back helpless tender and open, a good poem can set your head on fire, a good book can make you feel like the walls of the world have blown open, a good song can shift everything in your life just a little to the left. these are very serious things & not to be reckoned with
Today I eat eggs. The roses in the garden grow taller than me, reaching for the sun. I do not drink coffee. I crave it but it does not hurt me to drink ginger tea instead. I am not tired. The stray kittens keep trying to get inside the house and my father says, Let them. Their little brown noses in our laundry, under the dining table, in the kitchen drawers. There are so many sun-warmed spots to sit. I have a desk. I put aloe vera in the drawers for when my hands and lips get dry as I work. I work. I watch two flowers bloom. I guess their names. The kittens are not afraid of wasps. Their mother finally trusts me. I do not pluck a single hair from my face. I make goals and fail and make more. I watch the sunset from the attic window. My father sits in the light. My hair smooths to two curtains down the sides of my face. Even the wood whispers, I love you.
ā Sanna Wani,Ā āEven the wood whispers,ā in My Grief, the Sun
Carl Fischer,Ā Muhammad Ali as Saint Sebastian, 1967
ā(Ali) was deep in thought, mulling the similarities between his own martyrdom and that of the saint he portrayed. āHe took his right hand out from behind his back and pointed at each of the arrows,ā recalled Lois to Rolling Stone. āThen heād say the names of the people in this world that were out to get him.ā Names of government figures whoād emerged from Aliās mouth slowly and deliberately: Lyndon Johnson, General Westmoreland, Robert McNamara, and moreāone for each of the six wounds.
When the cover hit newsstands, on April 4, 1968, the loaded metaphor wasnāt lost on the American public; readers were shocked and in awe. The same day, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, endowing the image with even deeper significance, and highlighting themes of racial persecution and peaceful protest.ā
The Photograph That Made a Martyr out of Muhammad Ali
college is catered towards the able bodied and able minded. school applauds people who can stay up all night, skip meals, and work endlessly. that kind of extreme contribution is expected. why are disabled people being squeezed out of academic institutions? why should I feel inferior because of some arbitrary and ridiculous standard?
I tried to talk to one of my college professors about my ADHD once and he literally stopped me and said if I couldnāt handle it I shouldnāt be there
Read the book Academic Ableism on this subject. Itās an excellent read and I genuinely think about it all the time still even though I read it a couple years ago.
