Exhibit A

Shari Falling in and out of love with humans, circa 1990.

[hotelzero]

A Murakami-esque Wednesday: walking into a coffeeshop to see a young man in his late twenties waiting for me patiently, newspaper spread out wide in front of him as he leaned back into his chair. I noted his tall cup of black coffee, cold due to my own inevitable lateness. At that moment I wished he was for me.

[untxt]

Lomography Tag of the Day - reflection

[pittedpeach]

I want to forget that my body is borrowed from dirt.

Holy, Holy Whomever, C. Dylan Bassett  (via a-witches-brew)

[explore-blog]

It’s gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.

Zadie Smith at the 2014 New Yorker Festival, commenting on her spectacular recent essay on the modern cult of self-actualization (via a-witches-brew)

[secretcinema3]

Classic Scene #17

The Apartment, 1960, Billy Wilder

’Ring out the old year, ring in the new, ring-a-ding-ding.’

What better way to start another year than with that line sighed by Miss Kubelik near the end of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, the words hollow with derision for the lies of festive hope, the final flourish mocking the flip verbal smartness of the executives at Consolidated Life, the heartless ease with which they seem to pass through life, leaving girls like Fran Kubelik in their wake. Wearing that paper crown over her blankly disappointed face she seems, briefly, like the loneliest person in New York, her heart soured forever. But then that wonderful smile slowly lights up her face, sweet with release, as the drunken crowd mindlessly sing ’we’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne.’ And then she’s running, in one of the most purely happy shots in all of cinema, her face blissful in the breeze, running towards C.C. Baxter, towards fruit cakes and card games and the kindness she deserves. 

[secretcinema1]

Kakunodate, Akita, 1972, Issei Suda

[journalofanobody]

“This world is not enough, but it will have to do. You can either hold on or let go.”

 Margaret Atwood (via journalofanobody)

[istangraph]

Sultan Ahmed Mosque from Hagia Sophia @ Istanbul, Turkey

[ezibota]

Do you know how many nights I’ve spent twisting your English off my tongue? I do not take pride in your English. I want to stumble on my words. I want to speak with an accent so thick that it requires silence. I want you to struggle to understand me. Realize your English is not superior. Your English does not equate intelligence. Do not compliment me on how well I have accepted colonization. I do not want your pat on the back. I was forced to learn this language. I didn’t choose to. Your English disconnects me from my people. I am deaf to my own sacred language because of your English. Your English has done nothing for me.

Bilphena Yahwon; “You Speak Good English”  (via dearest-)

[allasianflavours]

[agomezmeade-deactivated20220920]

Incense burner, Shubra El-Kheima, Al Qahirah, Egypt.

[2094445321-deactivated20180826]

The Patience Stone (2012), directed by Atiq Rahimi 

[hiddenshores]

Someone enters your life on a day you no longer remember. The years pass, and she becomes the mother you never had, the older sister smoking before breakfast, the first friend. She lies back on the worn sofa in the heat of summer and shares a season of baseball. When you are twelve she explains the world, how the people were sold down the river, how someone will always work and waste away to these essential bones, muscles, and tendons. She explains your brother, who at sixteen needs two clean shirts a day and will grow to command, she explains you, who will never, and she blesses you with a hand mussing your hair. One day she is gone, over forty and she has fallen in love again, and love has taken her off to a man with one leg and no prospects. A postcard from California and then a silence that lasts. The ironing board waits in the corner, the worn black shoes are kicked back into the closet, her yellowing slip sags on the back of her chair until your mother, cursing, tears it into rags and garbage. You will look and find her in the long jaws of other women, in the hard eyes that can gleam without hope, you will find her again and again because with two open hands, with a voice that said anything, with a new smile for each new loss, she showed you a world she could die for.

Philip Levine, “She’s not Gone” (via hiddenshores)

[enmiljontystnader-deactivated20]

[heteroglossia]

A man unrequitedly in love will stand outside your home and knock, throw, kick, holler, relentless in pursuit. Foreign to the idea of a space he is unwelcome in. A woman unrequitedly in love will sit. She’s far away from your house. She knows it’s not for her. She will wait, she has gifts prepared if she is ever invited in. She has herself prepared if she’s not.

[coldgreentea]

I suddenly thought of flowers poppies cacti daffodils In Istanbul in Kadikoy in a daffodil field I kissed Marika her breath smelled of almonds I was seventeen my heart was a swing moving in and out of the clouds I didn’t know I loved flowers comrades send me three red carnations in prison 1948 I just remembered the stars I didn’t know I loved them whether I’m watching them bewildered from below or flying among them. –Nazim Hikmet, from Things I Didn’t Know I Loved     Picture from Ikiru

[roadtofalah]

(يأيها الذين امنو عليكم انفسكم)

“Take care of your souls.”

— Surah al Ma'idah  5:105 

(“وَقُولُوا لِلنَّاسِ حُسْنًا)

“And speak to people kindly.”

— Surah al-Baqarah 2:83