A Generation Speaks

NYC 20 something, Southern Raised, Ivy Educated. Watch the World from My Eyes

[wellconstructedsentences]

“Perhaps you think it wrong that I dwell so much on the horrors, the pain, but pain is what shapes us, after all. We are creatures born of heat and pressure and grinding, ceaseless movement. To be still is to be… not alive.”

— The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

[wellconstructedsentences]

Among our Potawatomi people, women are the Keepers of Water. We carry the sacred water to ceremonies and act on its behalf…‘Women have a natural bond with water, because we are both life bearers,’ my sister said. ‘We carry our babies in internal ponds and they come forth into the world on a wave of water. It is our responsibility to safeguard the water for all our relations.’

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

[metamorphesque]

“Look at the Darkness, giving birth to the Sun.”

—

Peace XVIII, Khalil Gibran

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Mahmoud Darwish, Palestinian Poet & Writer

[toastbutteregg]

[toastbutteregg]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[whitepeopletwitter]

[quotefeeling]

“Your mind, emotions and body are instruments and the way you align and tune them determines how well you play life.”

— Harbhajan Singh Yogi

[firstfullmoon]

Alex Dimitrov

[lunchboxpoems]

OCTOBER

1.

Is it winter again, is it cold again, didn’t Frank just slip on the ice, didn’t he heal, weren’t the spring seeds planted

didn’t the night end, didn’t the melting ice flood the narrow gutters

wasn’t my body rescued, wasn’t it safe

didn’t the scar form, invisible above the injury

terror and cold, didn’t they just end, wasn’t the back garden harrowed and planted–

I remember how the earth felt, red and dense, in stiff rows, weren’t the seeds planted, didn’t vines climb the south wall

I can’t hear your voice for the wind’s cries, whistling over the bare ground

I no longer care what sound it makes

when I was silenced, when did it first seem pointless to describe that sound

what it sounds like can’t change what it is–

didn’t the night end, wasn’t the earth safe when it was planted

didn’t we plant the seeds, weren’t we necessary to the earth,

the vines, were they harvested?

. 2.

Summer after summer has ended, balm after violence: it does me no good to be good to me now; violence has changed me.

Daybreak. The low hills shine ochre and fire, even the fields shine. I know what I see; sun that could be the August sun, returning everything that was taken away —

You hear this voice? This is my mind’s voice; you can’t touch my body now. It has changed once, it has hardened, don’t ask it to respond again.

A day like a day in summer. Exceptionally still. The long shadows of the maples nearly mauve on the gravel paths. And in the evening, warmth. Night like a night in summer.

It does me no good; violence has changed me. My body has grown cold like the stripped fields; now there is only my mind, cautious and wary, with the sense it is being tested.

Once more, the sun rises as it rose in summer; bounty, balm after violence. Balm after the leaves have changed, after the fields have been harvested and turned.

Tell me this is the future, I won’t believe you. Tell me I’m living, I won’t believe you.

. 3.

Snow had fallen. I remember music from an open window.

Come to me, said the world. This is not to say it spoke in exact sentences but that I perceived beauty in this manner.

Sunrise. A film of moisture on each living thing. Pools of cold light formed in the gutters.

I stood at the doorway, ridiculous as it now seems.

What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature. Very simple. But there was no voice there.

Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing.

Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal — I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher —

death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life.

. 4.

The light has changed; middle C is tuned darker now. And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. —

This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared.

The songs have changed; the unspeakable has entered them.

This is the light of autumn, not the light that says I am reborn.

Not the spring dawn: I strained, I suffered, I was delivered. This is the present, an allegory of waste.

So much has changed. And still, you are fortunate: the ideal burns in you like a fever. Or not like a fever, like a second heart.

The songs have changed, but really they are still quite beautiful. They have been concentrated in a smaller space, the space of the mind. They are dark, now, with desolation and anguish.

And yet the notes recur. They hover oddly in anticipation of silence. The ear gets used to them. The eye gets used to disappearances.

You will not be spared, nor will what you love be spared.

A wind has come and gone, taking apart the mind; it has left in its wake a strange lucidity.

How priviledged you are, to be passionately clinging to what you love; the forfeit of hope has not destroyed you.

Maestro, doloroso:

This is the light of autumn; it has turned on us. Surely it is a privilege to approach the end still believing in something.

. 5.

It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world. It is also true that I am not competent to restore it. Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.

I am at work, though I am silent.

The bland

misery of the world bounds us on either side, an alley

lined with trees; we are

companions here, not speaking, each with his own thoughts;

behind the trees, iron gates of the private houses, the shuttered rooms

somehow deserted, abandoned,

as though it were the artist’s duty to create hope, but out of what? what?

the word itself false, a device to refute perception — At the intersection,

ornamental lights of the season.

I was young here. Riding the subway with my small book as though to defend myself against

the same world:

you are not alone, the poem said, in the dark tunnel.

. 6.

The brightness of the day becomes the brightness of the night; the fire becomes the mirror.

My friend the earth is bitter; I think sunlight has failed her. Bitter or weary, it is hard to say.

Between herself and the sun, something has ended. She wants, now, to be left alone; I think we must give up turning to her for affirmation.

Above the fields, above the roofs of the village houses, the brilliance that made all life possible becomes the cold stars.

Lie still and watch: they give nothing but ask nothing.

From within the earth’s bitter disgrace, coldness and barrenness

my friend the moon rises: she is beautiful tonight, but when is she not beautiful?

LOUISE GLUCK (1943-2023)

[mindofserenity]

[mindofserenity]

There’s this quote that stuck to me ever since I read it, “be the kind of soul that others wish they could meet you a thousand times”.

الترجمة الصحيحة: ‏كن الروح التي يتمنى الآخرون مقابلتها ألف مرة.

To be the best of who you are, your heart and soul, for everyone that crosses your path. Be simplistic and powerful with your words, be meaningful in your actions, have purity in every intention you make. With Allah ‎in my heart, I want to make sure others see that first before they meet with me and that in itself is empowering in the most humble way.

I don’t want to leave a mark in this world. Allah already has.

[mindofserenity]

Closing this chapter of my life, to welcome the new beginning.

This journey has and always will be, my greatest life lesson. Everything in this book, encompasses my thoughts, my emotions, my sorrows and joy, my lessons and my promises. Messages to myself, and my messages to you. I made a promise to myself, that when a chapter in my life ends, let it end. For a new beginning awaits and all my fears will cease if I remember that Allah has full control of it.

All of my works and my moments, every blessing, inspiration and beauty, do not belong to me but to Allah. Finally sharing my journey with you all, I hope it can bridge our hearts together as an ummah. I pray nothing more for it to aid in your journey too إن شاء الله

You can find my book here.

And the free pdf version here ‎إن شاء الله

From my heart, thank you 🌹

[rudjedet]

Something must be wrong with me, I haven't talked about the beadnet dress in forever.

It consists of seven thousand faience beads in blue green and blue to imitate turquoise and lapis lazuli. It is 4600 years old (the threading is modern, but the beads were found in their original pattern so this reconstruction is as accurate as it can be). It is one of the most gorgeous garments in existence and was owned by a woman who was a contemporary of king Khufu.

The dress was found in her tomb in Giza, known as Tomb G 7440 Z, and it's the earliest known garment of this type.

[van1lla-v1lla1n]

Salvage, by Rachel McKibbens

[intimatum]

Rachel McKibbens, salvage

[genybuzz]

Last Love / Untitled

To my daughters, I need to say:

Go with the one who loves you biblically.

The one whose love lifts its head to you

despite its broken neck. Whose body bursts

sixteen arms electric to carry you, gentle

the way old grief is gentle.

Love the love that is messy in all its too much,

The body that rides best your body, whose mouth

saddles the naked salt of your far gone hips,

whose tongue translates the rock language of

all your elegant scars.

Go with the one who cries out for her tragic sisters

as she chops the winter’s wood, the one whose skin

triggers your heart into a heaven of blood waltzes.

Go with the one who resembles most your father.

Not the father you can point out on a map,

but the father who is here, is your home,

is the key to your front door.

Know that your first love will only be the first.

And the second and third and even fourth

will unprepare you for the most important:

The Blessed. The Beast. The Last Love,

which is, of course, the most terrifying kind.

Because which of us wants to go with what can murder us?

Can reveal to us our true heart’s end and its thirty years

spent in poverty? Can mimic the sound of our bird-throated mothers,

replicate the warmth of our brothers’ tempers?

Can pull us out of ourselves until we are no longer sisters

or daughters or sword swallowers but, instead,

women who give and lead and take and want

and want and want and want,

because there is no shame in wanting.

And you will hear yourself say:

Last Love, I wish to die so I may come back to you

new and never tasted by any other mouth but yours.

And I want to be the hands that pull your children

out of you and tuck them deep inside myself until they are

ready to be the children of such a royal and staggering love.

Or you will say:

Last Love, I am old, and have spent myself on the courageless,

have wasted too many clocks on less-deserving men,

so I hurl myself at the throne of you and lie humbly at your feet.

Last Love, let me never roll out of this heavy dream of you,

let the day I was born mean my life will end

where you end. Let the man behind the church

do what he did if it brings me to you. Let the girls

in the locker room corner me again if it brings me to you.

Let this wild depression throw me beneath its hooves

if it brings me to you. Let me pronounce my hoarded joy

if it brings me to you. Let my father break me again

and again if it brings me to you.

Last love, I have let other men borrow your children. Forgive me.

Last love, I once vowed my heart to another. Forgive me.

Last Love, I have let my blind and anxious hands wander into a room

and come out empty. Forgive me.

Last Love, I have cursed the women you loved before me. Forgive me.

Last Love, I envy your mother’s body where you resided first. Forgive me.

Last Love, I am all that is left. Forgive me.

Last Love, I did not see you coming. Forgive me.

Last Love, every day without you was a life I crawled out of. Amen.

Last Love, you are my Last Love. Amen.

Last Love, I am all that is left. Amen.

I am all that is left.

Amen.

— Rachel McKibbens