#tasting plate

[vampseats]

Cheese and fruit platter 🥰

[thatasterisk]

Tasting Plate No. 4: Look Up

“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.” -Interstellar

“Lose sight of the sky, and you become a rat in a lab.” -Francis Hodgson, on Thierry Cohen’s “Darkened Cities” project

[thatasterisk]

Tasting Plate No. 3: Power

“Anger is within each one of you, and I will share a secret for a few seconds: that if we are confined in the narrow shells of egos, and the critics of selfishness, then the anger will turn out to be hatred, violence, revenge, destruction. But if we are able to break the circles, then the same anger could turn into a great power. We can break the circles by using our inherent compassion and connect the world through compassion to make this world better. That same anger could be transformed into it.” Kailash Satyarthi, TEDtalks

“It is impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power. There is a word, an Igbo word, that I think about whenever I think about the power structures of the world, and it is ‘nkali.’ It’s a noun that loosely translates to ‘to be greater than another.’ Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: how they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power. Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another person, but to make it the definitive story of that person. The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and start with, ‘secondly.’” Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi, TEDtalks

“The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.” Susan Sontag, “On Courage and Resistance”

[thatasterisk]

Tasting Plate No. 2: The Past

"The past is just a story we tell ourselves." Her dir. by Spike Jonze

"Accumulated experience always alters perceptions of the past." Siri Hustvedt, The Blazing World

"But time…how time first grounds us and then confounds us. We thought we were being mature when we were only being safe. We imagined we were being responsible but were only being cowardly. What we called realism turned out to be a way of avoiding things rather than facing them. Time…give us enough time and our best-supported decisions will seem wobbly, our certainties whimsical." Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

[thatasterisk]

Tasting Plate No. 1: Fittingness

"Claire spoke often in her poetry of the idea of 'fittingness': that is, when your chosen pursuit and your ability to achieve it--no matter how small or insignificant both might be--are matched exactly, are fitting. This, Claire argued, is when we become truly human, fully ourselves, beautiful. To swim when your body is made for swimming. To kneel when you feel humble." Zadie Smith, On Beauty

“He walked slowly through the market. The merchants were assembling their stalls, and the boy helped a candy seller to do his. The candy seller had a smile on his face: he was happy, aware of what his life was about, and ready to begin a day’s work. His smile reminded the boy of the old man—the mysterious old king he had met. ‘This candy merchant isn’t making candy so that later he can travel or marry a shopkeeper’s daughter. He’s doing it because it’s what he wants to do,’ thought the boy.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

"My ribcage, something definitely happened there. It was as if it unknotted itself from itself, like the hull of a ship hitting rock, giving way, and the ship that I was opened wide inside me and in came the ocean." Ali Smith, Girl meets boy

Other people are so much better at articulating things I'm feeling or thinking (see above). The idea of fittingness seems elusive, but the pursuit of it is worthwhile. It is especially pertinent as a college student trying to figure out what I like to study and do, a refreshing take on the hackneyed advice to discover your passion.

[isleofhope-blog]

Feast in Bali, Tasting plate