Foster-child of Silence And Slow Time

[soracities]

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

[eagans]

[librifeminaequecano]

“There is no safety, and there is no end. The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss.”

-THE FARTHEST SHORE, by Ursula K. Le Guin

[barcarole]

As I Was Moving Ahead Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, dir. Jonas Mekas, 2000.

[soracities]

"Dancing sends wavy beats and the beats wake up the universe. The uninterrupted movement of the universe causes the phenomenon of multiple dimensions, and we dance that universal dance when we write. If we are self-censors, the dance is ruined."

Dunya Mikhail, from Diary of a wave outside the sea (trans. Elizabeth Winslow and Dunya Mikhail)

[soracities]

How Samuel Beckett Sought Salvation in the Midst of Suffering, by Andy Wimbush, pub. Aeon [ID'd]

[luthienne]

Rainer Maria Rilke, from The Dark Interval

[scuhlly]

Devin Kelly, All that wanting, right?

[chloeinletters]

To love life even when you have no stomach for it as they say!

[firstfullmoon]

I made it through April, May, June; it seemed I had outsmarted grief but pulled the hanged man card repeatedly—the self-same sorrow said a different way.

— Maya C. Popa, from “Signal”

[primulaceas]

Gillian Flynn, Sharp Objects

[agostinoarrivabene]

La madre . 2017 Oil on ancient wood .

[aconissa]

John William Waterhouse, Circe Invidiosa / Sally Gall, Thirst

[geryone]

Death by Sex Machine, Franny Choi

[metamorphesque]

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us, even in the leafless winter, even in the ashy city. I am thinking now of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots trying to leave the ground, I feel my heart pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.

Mary Oliver, "Starlings in Winter"

[geryone]

Explodingly Yours, Chen Chen

[hangsawoman]

Adam Fuss - Love, 1993 & Bryan Christie - Every Angel is Terror, 2014

[jareckiworld]

Tomoko Kashiki — With Benjamina and Wall  (acrylic, pencil, pastel and linen on wooden panel, 2012)

[artemisiasea]

When Toni Morrison said the grandeur of life is the attempt, not the solution… And how she went on to explain that it’s about behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances. The power that has, you know? It’s really just the making room for what breathes in the presence of the attempt. In the coming-to-be. 

[berakar]

[artemisiasea]

This is the one.

[seashell-strut]

Q: How do you survive whole in a world where we’re all victims of something?“

Ms. Morrison: Ummm, how do you survive whole–I can’t do this quickly, for one–how can you survive whole and when we’re victims of something, um. You know that’s a nice fat, eastern/western philosophical question about ‘how do you get through’?

Sometimes you don’t survive whole, you just survive in part. But the grandeur of life is that attempt, it’s not about that solution.

It is about being as fearless as one can, behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances. It’s that, that makes it elegant. Good is more interesting. More complex, more demanding.

Evil is silly. It may be horrible but at the same time it’s not a compelling idea: it’s predictable, it needs a tuxedo, it needs blood, it needs fingernails, it’s all that costume, in order to get anybody’s attention.

But the opposite, which is survival, blossoming, endurance, those things are just more compelling intellectually, if not spiritually and they certainly are spiritually. This is more fascinating job.

We are already born. We are going to die. So you have to do something interesting that you respect in between.”