a litany for survival

"So it is better to speak / remembering / we were never meant to survive."

[junglejim4322]

Not having a traditional job or plans to get an education will have people asking you things like so what is the purpose of you staying alive?

[pastperfectcontinuous]

bell hooks mentioned going through a time in her life where she was severely depressed and suicidal and how the only way she got through it was through changing her environment: She surrounded her home with buddhas of all colors, Audre Lorde’s A Litany for Survival facing her as she wakes up, and filling the space she saw everyday with reinforcing objects and meaningful books. She asks herself each day, “What are you going to do today to resist domination?” I also really liked it when she said that in order to move from pain to power, it is crucial to engage in “an active rewriting of our lives.”

[ritavonbees]

I have come to think of the suicidal impulse as the brain waving a flag to say three things:

something needs to change here

this is urgent

I don’t know how to do it

death is the ultimate metaphor for drastic change. it’s a general specific. whatever your problems are, it is very likely that dead people don’t have to deal with them. a real solution to your problems may demand a very narrow range of action that’s likely to be out of reach at this moment, but death is sold on every street corner, so it feels like a more realistic fantasy than happiness.

you don’t really want to die per se but it’s also not completely random chemicals swamping your brain for no reason. you want the pain to stop, you want to be somewhere else, you want to be someone else. it’s urgent. you don’t know how to do it. the end is not the end but a means that feels within your reach right now.

this is the wisdom of bell hooks: daily rituals of meaning and resistance and solidarity are part of slowly building a future where you can make the change you really need. and only alive people can do that. every step you take towards change and power is another step away from death.

[ryebreadgf]

[lustcannibalism]

[serenitybay]

[metamorphesque]

Hammond B3 Organ Cistern by Gabrielle Calvocoressi

[sorrrowfull]

[miniangel]

saw a monarch on my walk

[mieleterno]

[warmfigure]

bits of my week

[m0ney]

lonelybob on flickr ･ﾟﾟ･｡☆

[sacred-portal]

[theoptia]

Audre Lorde, from Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

Text ID: The very word erotic comes from the Greek word eros, the personification of love in all its aspects-born of Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the lifeforce of women; of that creative energy empowered, the knowledge and use of which we are now reclaiming in our language, our history, our dancing, our loving, our work, our lives.

[this-girl-loves-images]

[godsbestvictim]

[zandrapaints]

there’s always a new day // watercolor, gouache & ink on paper

[2utora]