The Freedom of Soul @mieracledroplets - Tumblr Blog

I feel unspeakably lonely. And feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown. I am often questioning myself what I further want to do, who further wish to be; which parts of me, exactly, are still functioning properly. No answers, darling. At all.

- Anne Sexton, A Self-Portrait In Letters

clove-pinks

To admit once for all, without flinching at the consequences, that the decisive actors here are the adventurer and the pirate, the wholesale grocer and the ship owner, the gold digger and the merchant, appetite and force, and behind them, the baleful projected shadow of a form of civilization which, at a certain point in its history, finds itself obliged, for internal reasons, to extend to a world scale the competition of its antagonistic economies.

— Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism (translated by Joan Pinkham)

Action of 18 October 1782 between the 74-gun Scipion and the 90-gun HMS London (detail), Auguste-Louis Rossel de Crecy.

dreaminginthedeepsouth

(Art: ‘Illusion of Freedom’, 2019 by Igor & Marina)

* * * *

Most people are convinced that as long as they are not overtly forced to do something by an outside power, their decisions are theirs, and that if they want something, it is they who want it. But this is one of the great illusions we have about ourselves. A great number of our decisions are not really our own but are suggested to us from the outside; we have succeeded in persuading ourselves that it is we who have made the decision, whereas we have actually conformed with expectations of others, driven by the fear of isolation and by more direct threats to our life, freedom, and comfort.

~Erich Fromm

(Book: Escape from Freedom)

[Philo Thoughts]

ursadtoy

i strive to make my room look like this

365filmsbyauroranocte

The Masseurs and a Woman (Hiroshi Shimizu, 1938)

allofthemwitches-deactivated202

Investigating the undying tyranny of terrazzo.

It is hard to imagine ourselves growing old — to imagine the time, nearly upon us already, when “millennial” no longer means “young.” Likewise, it is hard to imagine how the millennial aesthetic will age. Its blank, clean surfaces aspire to a world without clutter or scuffs, unmarked by the passage of time. In this aspiration, the millennial aesthetic is somewhat democratic — anything can be new, for a while. It is a style that looks, in its ideal state, like a purchase.

997

changed me

lovelustquotes

muzahmat

The Women’s Movement in Pakistan:

The neoliberal Western media loves to play with the stereotype of burqa-clad women surrounded by children when it comes to representing South-Asian Muslim (particularly Pakistani and Afghan) women. Likewise, you have people in South Asia saying that feminism is a ‘Western’ import that has no basis in South-Asian culture. Both set of people are equally unaware of the struggle of South Asian feminists and the entire history of Women’s Movement in South Asia that often does not make it to the mainstream media. One particular chapter of this often-ignored history involves Pakistani women rallying under several organizations, most notably Women’s Action Forum (WAF), and taking to the streets to protest against the state-imposed Islamization by the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s. A large number of women organizations held protest rallies, especially against Zina and Hudood Ordinance that incriminated any rape victims who were unable to provide four male witnesses and Qanoon-e-Shahadat, which reduced women’s testimony to count to half of male testimony. The Feb. 12, 1983 protests in Lahore saw police baton-charging these group of women protesters and using tear-gas to disperse them. These protests were a landmark development in the Women’s Movement in Pakistan since these enabled many women right’s organizations to develop a support-base and streamline their efforts for gender equality in Pakistan.

I came across some photos of these protests that portray Pakistani women in a very different light as compared to how the Western media portrays them and how the neo-imperialist audience wants to see them, and I am sharing some of the most powerful ones here. I have entered the dates, places and photographers in the caption of the photos for which I had the information.

Sources: (x/x)

orientaltiger

A Crown for the Queens

The Perak has long been the symbol of wealth and status of women in the Himalayan Kingdom of Ladakh. Defined by the Turquoise stones and semi precious jewels sewn onto a leathery base cut in the shape of a serpent’s hood, the headgear was adorned by Ladakhi women to display their rank in the society. Though adorned by queens and commoners alike, the number of rows of turquoise stones indicated the status of the wearer.

Today, Dolma is the only Perak maker in the village and the Palmo is the only maker of Tsaru. Together, they having been making and restoring Peraks for all the women who have desired to wear their wealth over their heads.

fdsfjdsfjkf93723679267-deactiva

Due to unfortunate circumstances, I am awake.

mitten

ucresearch

Empathy & Compassion in the brain Empathy is a complicated task for the brain.

Reptiles probably can’t do it and it’s going to occur in pretty simple forms for most mammals. But in humans, it really engages the frontal lobes: these newer regions of the brain that are involved in more complex symbolic processes like language, considering alternatives and imagining the future. Empathy requires that you think: there’s someone else out there who has feelings and thoughts that may be different from mine. That’s a complicated cognitive achievement!

Compassion —the caring instinct— is located down in the center of the brain, near the top of the spinal cord where a lot of our basic instincts are regulated. It’s a very old part of the brain called the periaqueductal gray, which is common to mammals when they take care of their young.

So that’s striking: there’s one kind of thing —empathy— that’s really about understanding people (very complicated!) in the frontal lobes. But caring is is really old in the nervous system.

Learn about the evolutionary roots of compassion & empathy →

archatlas

Intricate Architectural Collages

Marian Hill creates these amazing collages images constructed from carefully selected fragments of paper stuck down with glue.

From the artist:

My work has become more intricate as time passes, each picture is comprised of hundreds of tiny snippets cut from old magazines and discarded books. Frequently I go out on location, make drawings and take photographs of my chosen subject.

Later, I make a final line drawing of my composition and then build up a coloured version using collage. In order to show more clearly how my collages are constructed, I have made a time lapse animation of the evolution of a piece of work. I made this film by fixing a camera above my desk and taking a photo every 10 minutes or so.

Images and text via

refinery29

Watch: Linda Sarsour gets real on being a Muslim feminist

As the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, Sarsour serves as an unapologetic advocate for her religious and ethnic heritage. And she’s not ignoring how women are represented in Islam, either.