marina michelson

storytelling, botany, books, feasts, and pictures www.marinamichelson.com

[marinamichelson]

[marinamichelson]

susie keefe smith, desert landscape photo from the 1930s

[marinamichelson]

And I was Alive

Pursuing deep thinking and moral imagination, social courage and joy, to renew inner life, outer life, and life together. A media and public life initiative.

And I was Alive

Osip Mandelstam

And I was alive in the blizzard of the blossoming pear, Myself I stood in the storm of the bird–cherry tree. It was all leaflife and starshower, unerring, self–shattering power, And it was all aimed at me.

What is this dire delight flowering fleeing always earth? What is being? What is truth?

Blossoms rupture and rapture the air, All hover and hammer, Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot. It is now. It is not.

(May 4, 1937)

[marinamichelson]

LATE TO THE PARTY, FASCINATED NONETHELESS.

[asrielsarchive]

[girlsgetbusyzine]

“god should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men”

[marinamichelson]

All we want from women is for them to be pretty, and for them to be kind. And it's those shallow qualities associated with womanhood that we see on screen. So we always feel less than. We always feel like the predator's prey. We always feel that boot of male influence and power... This movie is a realistic journey into women gaining ownership of their lives. And not at the expense of who they are. The feminine energy and vulnerability are still there. But I think it's a fantasy in ever woman to do something bold and brash and not nice, to bust out of themselves and social norms to get at some level of authenticity.

Viola Davis

[marinamichelson]

Nonstop thinking about American Psycho after last night’s screening at FFFest and this piece, The Female Gaze of American Psycho by Angelica Jade Bastien, which reminded me of the Margaret Atwood quote, “Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

This movie feel searingly fresh today living under Trump’s America.

[marinamichelson]

List: 17 Real-Life Would-You-Rathers I, a Woman, Have Had to Ask Myself

1. Would you rather have a career or a family? 2. Would you rather be perceived as likable or competent? 3. Would you rather be told to...

Our current state of female affairs.

[marinamichelson]

Can’t wait to watch this on the big screen!

[da-da-sk]

Autochrome photo of flowers made by unknown French photographer, 1910s.

[marinamichelson]

School Walkout: Photos From Across the Nation

Students protested gun violence across the country on Wednesday in the wake of a recent school shooting in South Florida. Here are some compelling photos from the demonstrations.

These photos are arresting. Over the summer, I met with the West Coast Director of the ANSWER Coalition, a nationwide activist organization. I asked him about the key moments in his life that brought him to activism and how to identify what sparks it in people. He told me the story of a group of 3rd graders in Santa Rosa whose classmate was killed in a police shooting. The next day, the students--not even 10 years old, erupted into organization and staged a walkout. He said, if you asked those kids the day before if they were activists, they would have said no. But life and love impels even the youngest of us to act swiftly to protect our core humanistic values. This gallery of adamant, young faces is sure to stir up radical hope in even the most hardened and cynical among us.

[gael-garcia]

“I wanted the club scenes to become weirder and weirder. I love clubs the way I love cinemas: the way we all join in the dark and look at light phenomena. The difference is, when you are in the cinema, you are looking at a screen, and when you are in a club, you look at other people, and they’re transformed. We have this house music, which we loved at the time — it was like party music but there was also a kind of melancholy and anxiety in this. And at the end of the film, the music feels like gospel. The last club scene, the people are not looking at each other. As we say, ‘To go to the cinema is to be alone together.’ And the club scene at the end, for me, is something about cinema. We are like light filaments, like stars — we will at some point fade away, absolutely.” — Robin Campillo, director of 120 Battements par minute (2017)

[marinamichelson]

i absolutely adored this move - BPM

[marinamichelson]

I love you like ladybugs love windowsills, love you like sperm whales love squid. There’s no depth I wouldn’t follow you through. I love you like the pawns in chess love aristocratic horses. I’ll throw myself in front of a bishop or a queen for you. Even a sentient castle. My love is crazy like that. I like that sweet little hothouse mouth you have. I like to kiss you with tongue, with gusto, with socks still on. I love you like a vulture loves the careless deer at the roadside. I want to get all up in you. I love you like Isis loved Osiris, but her devotion came up a few inches short. I’d train my breath and learn to read sonar until I retrieved every lost blood vessel of you. I swear this love is ungodly, not an ounce of suffering in it. Like salmon and its upstream itch, I’ll dodge grizzlies for you. Like hawks and skyscraper rooftops, I’ll keep coming back. Maddened. A little hopeless. Embarrassingly in love. And that’s why I’m on the couch kissing pictures on my phone instead of calling you in from the kitchen where you are undoubtedly making dinner too spicy, but when you hold the spoon to my lips and ask if it’s ready I’ll say it is, always, but never, there is never enough.

Traci Brimhall “Love Poem Without A Drop of Hyperbole In It”

[snpsnpsnp]

Francesca Woodman, self-portrait in rare colour. 1979.

[marinamichelson]

ALL I WANT TO LISTEN TO

[marinamichelson]

A RAD LOOK AT FEMALE CINEMATOGRAPHERS WORKING TODAY

[marinamichelson]

CAN’T. WAIT.