wit & wisdom

what i'm reading & thinking about

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

“I get deeply tired because everything touches me, I am never indifferent.”

— The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 2: 1934-1939

[omyheart]

I just wanna say, can we back up a little bit and talk about this whole international development charity aspect of this? You know, we have places around the world that are not doing well, and yet they're rich in natural resources, there's hard-working people there. They're poor, but they're not poor because some young person in Canada doesn't care enough about them. They're poor because of the legacy of colonialism, imperialism, neo-imperialism, continued corporate exploitation, state intervention with world trade organizations, banks, even armies. And there are solutions to this. We could end foreign debt, we could end or change these predatory international regimes, we could pay back all the loot we've stolen from them, we could teach young Canadians about that, that history, about the on-going exploitation. But instead, we tell young people it's all about them. It's their inherent worthiness as good Canadians that's going to save the world, so forget about politics, forget economics, you know, forget about restructuring the way the world works, you're going to save the world by being a good person. [references a recent Canadaland article that ask what it is Me to We actually does] So what does We do? Not a whole lot apparently. I think it's really the perfect neo-liberal structure to not change the world.

Tim Bousquet, on Canadaland episode #271 Bottom Of The Barrel, discussing Me to We scandal with Jesse Brown

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

— Angela Carter, from The Sadeian Woman and the Ideology of Pornography, c. 1978.

[dearorpheus]

In many ways, women are death’s natural companions. Every time a woman gives birth, she is creating not only a life, but a death. Samuel Beckett wrote that women “give birth astride of a grave.” 

— Caitlin Doughty, from Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

— Samantha Hunt, interviewed by The New Yorker

— Claudia Dey, ‘Mothers as Makers of Death’

[omyheart]

The one other thing I want to say before we more on to those issues you brought up is related to, you know, how people are able in engage in this time of a global pandemic, where the economy has largely been shut down, people have largely been in their homes, or have been forced to continue working as essential services. In perhaps a reduced way, or perhaps their just doing more, depending on how the economy has affected you. Generally, more and more people are at home, and the fact that people can now engage in their democracy in this way, in such a way where we can literally see the shift in how we engage on an issue and how we prioritize an issue so effectively, should also get us thinking about how much we work, and what that does to our political engagement and civic engagement, and how we give up – how much we give up – on building our society.

Sandy Hudson, on Sandy & Nora podcast, episode “no police? no probelm”

[omyheart]

And America moves on, America moves forward. I think to a large extent, white power structure waits for us, as black people especially, to quiet down. Settle down. Get it out of our system. In terms of unrest, in terms of online protests, I'll be writing my column, and that moment will happen. But whether or not it will result in any concrete change, is really up to people who may be least involved with the trauma. It matters whether or not people who are not affected by this do something.

Jamil Smith, on Code Switch episode “A Decade Of Watching Black People Die“

[stuffedgrapeleaves]

postcards say IM HERE. IM HERE AND I LOVE YOU. IN THIS SPACE AND TIME AND WHEREVER AND WHENEVER YOU ARE. THERE IS A SPACE BETWEEN THOSE SPACES THAT CONNECTS US AND ITS FULL OF LOVE. I’LL MEET YOU THERE.

[stuffedgrapeleaves]

same energy

[summerboyfriend]

thinking..

[summerboyfriend]

finished thinking and have decided it’s simply all too much

[lazyyogi]

The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image.

Thomas Merton (via lazyyogi)

[owlmylove]

i may not know a lot abt life but i know it’s how keith haring said “touching people’s lives in a positive way is as close as I can get to an idea of religion” and how kurt vonnegut said “and I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exlaim or murmur or think at some point, if this isn’t nice, I don’t what is,” and olga jacoby said “to leave a good example to those I love [is] my only understanding of immortality” and felix poswolsky said “I think we found the answer to the universe which was, quite simply: spend more time with your friends”

[proustiansleep]

Form? I didn’t have any; that is, I didn’t know I had one, or rather I didn’t know you could have one. I grew more or less on all sides, at random;

Ιtalo Calvino, “The Spiral”, Cosmicomics (via bergmans-ghost)

[lonequixote]

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.

Lao Tzu (via lonequixote)

[lonequixote]

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

Carl Jung (via lonequixote)

[gothhabiba]

It is absurd to tell women to love themselves in a world that alienates them from their own flesh. No amount of one-quarter-moisturiser soap can wash away the knowledge of what your female body means to others: sex object, breeder, wank fodder, window dressing, on-set extra. The distress women feel when confronted with image after image of extreme thinness cannot simply be characterised as “I want to look like that so that men love me”. A woman might actually be thinking “women are supposed to look like that because men do not like us at all”. Or “I want to look like that so that my body will be less fleshy, less female and less real”. Women starve, binge and purge because they feel trapped in bodies that are not “theirs”. The trouble is, there’s never a female body that fits.

No More Skinny is a campaign to redirect the objectification of women, not fight it - Glosswitch (via gothhabiba)

[myfairylily]

[medievalswords]

when lizzo said “self love is survival” and when hannah gadsby said “do you understand what self-deprecation means when it comes from somebody who already exists in the margins? it’s not humility. it’s humiliation” and when mitski said “i used to rebel by destroying myself, but realized that’s awfully convenient to the world. for some of us our best revolt is self preservation”

[gnascher]

when audre lorde said “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare”

[darkalleysunflower]

when Jenny Slate tweeted, “As the image of myself becomes sharper in my brain&more precious, I feel less afraid that someone else will erase me by denying me love”

[omyheart]

“What makes the trauma worse is not the event itself. It’s the isolation, the secrecy, and the shame that you have to then live with afterward.“

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/love-is-not-a-permanent-state-of-enthusiasm-an-interview-with-esther-perel

[garlic-gal]

Questioning ur gender as an afab person is hard bc ur like do I genuinely identify as Not A Woman or do I just not identify with the negative images of women that have been shoved at me since I was born? Like do I not like being referred to as a girl because that really isn’t who I am or is it because being connected to femininity comes along with some not great associations? And then there’s the question of am I really Not a Woman or am I just butch? And then u get into questioning what gender even is to begin with. What is gender? What is masculinity? What is femininity? Is there anything inherent to either of them, or is it all socially constructed bullshit? Does gender actually exist?? If not, then what the fuck is my relationship with gender?