Mariposa.

who you are lasts a lifetime.

[soracities]

“To love someone else is easy, but to love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing, red-hot iron; it burns into you and that is very painful. Therefore, to love somebody else in the first place is always an escape which we all hope for, and we all enjoy it when we are capable of it. But in the long run, it comes back on us. You cannot stay away from yourself forever. You have to return, have to come to that experiment, to know whether you really can love. That is the question - whether you can love yourself. And that will be the test.”

— Carl Jung (via macrolit)

[archiveofyearning]

Ijeoma Umebinyuo, your love poems need politics to survive //  June Jordan, Directed by Desire // Warsan Shire, Conversations About Home // bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love // Mahmoud Darwish // Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light // Rod Smith // Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

[imagedescs]

[ID: eight images of black text over white backgrounds. image one reads: “where does politics end / and your love poems begin? / sometimes, they are both rhe same thing / sometimes, they have to be the same thing.” end image one.

image two: all-caps text that reads: I said I loved you and I wanted / genocide to stop / I said I loved you and I wanted affirmative / action and reaction / I said I loved you and I wanted music / out the windows / I said I loved you and I wanted / nobody thirst and nobody / nobody cold / I said I loved you and I wanted I wanted / justice under my nose. end image two.

image three: text reads: “i want to love, but my hair smells of war and running and running.” end image three.

image four: text reads: Love is profoundly political. Our deepest revolution will come when we understand this truth. Only love can give us the strength to go forward in the midst of heartbreak and misery. Only love can give us the power to reconcile, to redeem, the power to renew weary spirits and save lost souls. The transformative power of love is the foundation of all meaningful social change. Without love our lives are without meaning. Love is the heart of the matter. When all else has fallen away, love sustains. end image four.

image five: text written in arabic. the translation given below reads: When are we going to see each other, she asks / After a year and a war, I say / When is the war going to end, she asks / When we see each other, I say. end image five.

image six: text reads: Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. end image six.

image seven: text reads: We work too hard / We’re too tired / to fall in love. / Therefore we must / overthrow the government. // We work too hard / We’re too tired / to overthrow the government. / Therefore we must / fall in love. end image seven.

image eight: text reads: “All this time I told myself we were born from war–but I was wrong, Ma. We were born from beauty. Let no one mistake us for the fruit of violence–but that violence, having passed through the fruit, failed to spoil it.” end image eight. /end ID]

[funneeb]

One of my favorite names of Allah is Al-Fattāh (الفتاح). The Opener. He’s the one who can open a path for you when you see no way out. He’s the one who can untie you from the things that hold you back. He’s the one who can open your eyes to seeing His love and reflection in the world. He’s the one who can open your heart to receiving His mercy and guidance. So may Allah, the Opener, grant us the openings we need.

[moonagedisaster-deactivated2025]

jenny slate, twitter // @lexiraq // 8 word story, madisen kuhn // portrait of a lady on fire dir. céline sciamma

[mithli-archive]

'Palestine, (un)Naturally' , Steven Salaita

[thethief1996]

[text id: Palestinian would never destroy a healthy olive tree. This reality clarifies the so-called complexities of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Who is Indigenous, Jews or Palestinians? A Palestinian would never destroy a healthy olive tree. Who is the aggressor? A Palestinian would never destroy a healthy olive tree. Who has a deep history on the land? A Palestinian would never destroy a healthy olive tree. Who wrecks the environment with irresponsible human settlement? A Palestinian would never destroy a healthy olive tree.

Even if it is incomprehensible to capitalists, politicians, and much of the American public, it is the correct answer to any inquiry about instigations of violence: a Palestinian would never destroy a healthy olive tree / end id]

[amouthfulloflove]

“To survive, I had to stay unfamiliar to myself, neutralized, at arm’s length. Sometimes, I think, all these years later, I’m still hunting the part of myself I exiled.”

Places I’ve Taken My Body; ‘The Broken Country: On Disability and Desire’ by Molly McCully Brown

[soracities]

“A tongue will wrestle its mouth to death and lose— language is a cemetery.”

— Natalie Diaz, “Cloud Watching”

“Where do words come from? They come from the dead. We inherit them. Borrow them. Use them for a time to bring the dead to life.”

— Ruth Ozeki, A Tale for the Time Being

“All the dead voices. They make a noise like wings. Like leaves. Like sand. Like leaves.”

— Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot

“Do they sense it, these dead writers, when their books are read? Does a pinprick of light appear in their darkness? Is their soul stirred by the feather touch of another mind reading theirs?”

— Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

“The sentence is adorned with all of its dead.” 

— Jacques Derrida, Cinders

“There are no people in what I’ve written. Only ghosts.”

— Susan Sontag, Reborn: Early Diaries, 1947-1963

[nomorechoirs]

“Sometimes we have no beauty to offer but the words with which we present an ugly thing. Nonetheless, that is beauty. Sometimes we have no beauty to offer but the fact that we have survived to tell a tragic tale. Nonetheless, that is beauty.”

— Magdalene Benveniste, “Letter from the Editor #1” from March Hare Magazine (c. @godgum)  (via amouthfulloflove)

[muirin007]

Do you ever see people whose faces echo another era? I’ve seen women with the round faces, sparse brows and high foreheads of medieval illuminated manuscripts. Men with dark brows that meet in the middle, olive skin, strong noses and jaws–Byzantine men, ghosts of Constantine, reanimated faces from the Fayum Mummy Portraits. Women with soft figures and the large eyes and prim, petaled mouths of the 19th century. Grizzled men whose brows predicate their gaze, whose wrinkles track into their thick beards and read like topographical maps of hardship and intensity–the wanderer, the poet; Whitman, Tolstoy, Carlyle.  Faces sculpted into the perfect, deified symmetry of the pharaohs–almond eyes, full lips, self-assurance 3,000 years in the making staring at you at a stoplight.   Plump, curved white wrists curled over purse handles in the waiting room and you think Versailles, Madame Pompadour, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great. Wide cheek bones, courage and sorrow in the scrunched face of the old man in line behind you and it’s Geronimo, Sitting Bull, Tecumseh. Reddened skin, thick forearms, hair and beard and brows burned by the cold into a reddish corn silk and you think Odin, the forge and the hammer and skin stinging from the salt of the ocean. Virginia Woolf’s quiet brand of gaunt frankness surveys you in passing in the parking lot. Queen Victoria’s heavy-lidded stare and beaked nose are firmly, uncannily fixed on a sixth-grade classmate’s face. Renaissance voluptuousness on the boardwalk by the beach. Boticelli’s caramel androgyny in a youth smoking on a bench outside the mall. Jazz age looseness spurs the tripping gait of the man who watches you paint with his hands in his pockets, and he smiles a Sammy Davis Jr. smile and tells you that you look familiar, that he’s sure he’s seen you somewhere before, but he doesn’t know where or when.

[inqilabi]

If you had to recommend 2-3 basic books to a person in their 20’s who has absolutely no introduction to Marxism, feminism , radicalism ( the only 3 words I know), please recommend some books. Plisssss.

ok this is my drive of essential readings (I have both PDF and epubs where possible). I’ve made a suggested reading order. Change the viewing to ‘list view’ so that you can see the order easily.

For Marxism start with:

1) What is Marxism All About, this Dialectical Materialism Intro and this anticonquista article on Dialectical Materialism

2) Then read through this Marx & Engels folder in roughly the order as numbered

3) Some ways down the road, you can read through this folder for Lenin, Luxemburg, Kollontai, Stalin & Mao

4) You can also listen to RevLeftRadio and Red Menace podcast to supplement as you read. E.g., you can search Red Menace podcast’s on Socialism: Utopian and Scientific after you read it

For Anarchism start with:

- this folder, it is already ordered by books that are introductory to anarchism. The only fiction book I have in the drive is here, The Dispossessed by Guin.

For Feminism:

1) Read this book on Philosophical Trends by Ghandy first

2) Then read through the marxist feminism folder or radical feminism folder

Islamic Feminism:

1) If you are a non-Muslim radical feminist who is constantly talking about Islam, read Leila Ahmed. You should also read this if you are from a Muslim background.

2) If you struggle with your sexuality & being Muslim, read Kugle.

3) If you are interested in how women are conceptualized within Islam, rights, criticism of Sunni jurisprudence read Wadud, Mernissi or Ali. 

[virgomoon-deactivated20240514]

video essays i love and think about a lot (mainly in relation to pop culture):

aaliyah, britney & the apathy of lifetime “biopics”

baby phat enterprise:  how kimora lee simmons pioneered 2000’s fashion

whiplash vs. black swan — the anatomy of the obsessed artist

born sexy yesterday

parasite — the power of symbols

hilary duff, lizzie mcguire, and the teen idol pigonhole

why this font is everywhere

it’s time to talk about the r@cism in dan schneider’s shows

a legally blonde fashion analysis

ghost singing: jennifer lopez’s stolen vocals and songs

the late capitalism of kpop

jennifer’s body and the horror of bad marketing

let’s get sad: a last of us video essay

video vixens got paid like rappers

how midsommar brainwashes you

beyonce’s voice is changing (part one, part two, part three)

explained: smoking and the voice

here’s what we missed on glee

how one netflix movie broke the entire internet

naughty dog’s game design is outdated

jeffree star faked everything about… well, everything

how we failed megan fox

mariah carey’s voice

token black girl: how tyra banks vs. naomi campbell was orchestrated by the industry

colorism in your favorite black sitcoms

that 80s show and the limits of nostalgia

‘us’ and the american dream: what it means

unraveling the madness of kanye west

life is strange: the worst best friend

[fidnru]

“Girls know they are losing themselves… Girls become fragmented, their selves spilt into mysterious contradictions. They are sensitive and tenderhearted, mean and competitive, superficial and idealistic. They are confident in the morning and overwhelmed with anxiety by nightfall. They rush through their days with wild energy and then collapse into lethargy. They try on new roles every week: this week the good student, next week the delinquent and the next, the artist.”

— Mary Pipher, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls (via fyp-psychology)

[engulfes]

on love❣️

i can’t think of any greater happiness than to be with you all the time, without interruption, endlessly, even though i feel that here in this world there’s no other undisturbed place for our love, neither in the village nor anywhere else; and i dream of a grave, deep and narrow, where we could clasp each other in our arms as with clamps, and i would hide my face in you and you would hide your face in me, and nobody would ever see us any more. (franz kafka)

this post:

“does she love you?” “yes” “did she say so?” “no” “so how do you know?” “well… each time she returns my books, there are flowers inside” (…) “does she read them?” “of course she does!” “does she? have you asked her?” “i can see she’s underlined the good bits” “does she want to save mankind too?” “yes” “how do you know?” “by the sentences she underlines” “is that enough to know she wants to save mankind?” “yes” (a moment of innocence, 1996)

that’s not what i meant to say at all / i mean, i’m sick of meaning i just wanna hold you (…) those are you got some nice shoulders / i’d like to put my hands around them (car seat headrest)

peaceful embrace by briony marshall:

“hey,” he said, half asleep, “what were you before you met me?” / “i think i was drowning.” / a pause. / “and what are you now?” he whispered, sinking. / i thought for a second. “water.” (ocean vuong)

i love you. i want us both to eat well. (christopher citro)

come let me love you, let me give my life to you / let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms / let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you / come let me love you, come love me again (john denver)

this painting by salman toor:

i could say something fantastically rare and exotic but really, love is the rarest thing of all. (roja dove)

don’t think i fell for you, or fell over you. i didn’t fall in love, i rose in it. i saw you and made up my mind. (toni morrison)

you kiss the back of my legs and i want to cry. only the sun has come this close, only the sun. (shauna barbosa)

oh! if you could only walk / into this room / again and touch me anywhere / i swear / i would not long for heaven or / for earth / more than i’d wish to stay there / touched / and touching you (june jordan)

this:

i wanted to tell them that i never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren’t meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. (benjamin alire sáenz)

from here:

someone will remember us / i say / even in another time (sappho)

i have let tenderness in. every night i am coming home to warm food and lamplight leaking out of the windows into the night, and tenderness is holding the door open. (oumaima @douceurs)

that’s how i loved you. / you, off the long train from red bank carrying / a coffee as big as your arm, a bag with two / computers swinging in it unwieldily at your / side. i remember we broke into laughter / when we saw each other. what was between / us wasn’t a fragile thing to be coddled, cooed / over. it came out fully formed, ready to run. (ada limón)

trevante rhodes about moonlight:

Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. (leonard cohen to marianne ilhen)

Couple on a train, photo by Vivian Maier, 1956

[candybanshee]

towards a gentle academic

be up front and honest about the things you do not know

acknowledge the intrinsic value of others’ knowledge bases, even if they do not seem important to you from your institutional context

do not feign mastery where you have none

respect the gaps in others’ knowledge bases

be generous, not only with others

but also with yourself

you overwork yourself at the risk of legitimizing a culture of overwork 

privilege voices and perspectives that have historically been left out of the academy

nothing is ever neutral or apolitical

support the progress of other scholars

collaboration over competition

[fiti-vation]

[brittle-things-delicately-sewn]

No one who has common sense and decency ever gave a shit about Obama, or saw him as anything more than Deporter in Chief. He was a conservative president, and part of the US imperialist establishment + continued US crimes against humanity, but just presented himself as suave, which is even more dangerous if you consider the reputation laundering he is doing now through his memoir and opinion pieces.

[moodsandmatters]