brand management for brown girls

[thewordy]

i'm completely in love with the intention you posted a while back. i read it whenever i'm overwhelmed and existentially anxious. thank you <3

<3 i hope to write more; SO GLAD it helped u xx

[thewordy]

An Intention

You're walking through a beautiful garden at night. You are alone. The garden is your mind. All around you is lamplight, and the stars are thickly clustered and shining. You walk on and on endlessly, not seeking any specific destination, not worried about getting anywhere. 

While you imagine this, other things may come into your mind - your daily cares, anxieties, desires. Forgive yourself for being distracted. Acknowledge these thoughts, but leave them in the background until they quietly fade away. 

Listen to your breathing.

Close your eyes.

In your garden there are fountains in the moonlight, and whatever music you hear is for you and you alone. 

Tell yourself "I accept the difference between things as they are and as I would like them to be. I forget that I want things to be different. I learn to accept myself and others the way that they are." 

For a while, the endless longing and pain that plagues existence disappears, and everything is calm and sumptuous. You feel the inner richness of life. You feel yourself deeply refreshed. When you open your eyes, you will carry this peace inside you.

You are deeply refreshed.  

[thewordy]

Love Letter From A Mathematician

Kolmogorov’s axioms of probability suggest that the probability of  a coin landing on either heads or tails is 1, but that the possibility of it landing on neither heads nor tails, is 0. Either I would have met you, or I would never have met you. If I met you, I would have loved you. If I did not meet you, I would not have loved you. I find myself, contrary to all reasonableness, wishing for an outcome in which neither of these events occurred or did not occur. I postulate that the probability that I would be able to heal our relationship is unfeasibly small.  In the event that I could heal our relationship, the probability that I would be able to reverse the inexorable progression of time is 0. And yet, I imagine myself defying logic, forever watching, suspended in time, your hair lit by the bar lamps until it appeared to me like a corona. I imagine Probability, against all the rules of probability, as a little demon, one whose life I extinguished long ago so that we could be together in every iteration of the world, every what-if, every universe in which every possible event that occurred was only me loving you.

[agnesnutter-deactivated20150313]

W: There’s so much talk about women believing in fairy tales or being ruined by fairy tales, but it holds true for many, many men. S: At least most women recognize it as a “fairy tale.” Men don’t even recognize it as a construction; they think that narrative is their right.

The Sexual (and Racial) Politics of Nerd Culture: A Dialogue (thetoast)

[thewordy]

Priya, You alright? your twitter is gone and I hope you're well.

i'm doing great! be right back :) just taking a teeny break

[thewordy]

Forgetting

Practice like the fish who hold the freshness of rain. This is the curse that their ponds hold in the dark; This is every stippled water-strider erased again.

It is the ache-bright delay of the missed plane. Nobody will hold you close to their heart; the guest in the ivory car who never remembers their name.

Not for you the smugness of not asking the way: no deliciousness of saying 'I know that's the path.' Walk tired. Hold heaviness at the death of the day.

Break into lockers forever. Put aside shame. Let them suspect held sorrow or a drink in the park. Grow fat on the plumpness of bank tellers' disdain.

Wander milk-chilled grocery aisles in vain. Write lists that lack certainty, full of question marks. Pork - yes. Hold bread uncertainly. Rye? Plain?

This is it, this is your life. This is the gift of pain smoothed over; this is the deepness, the strange spark; the pure burn of altars. This is that nothing, nothing remains. This is happiness. This is the forgetting of a face.

[thewordy]

'Reverses' made me cry. Sending posi internet vibes your way.

this is so kind, gosh thank you! sending em right back your way <3

[thewritestway]

"I find it extremely impossible not to cry when I hear Stevie Nick’s ‘Landslide’ especially the lyric: "I’ve been afraid of changing, because I’ve built my life around you." I think a good test to see if a human is actually a robot/android/cylon is to have them listen to this song lyric and study their reaction. If they don’t cry, you should stab them through the heart. You will find a fusebox."

Mindy Kaling (via thewritestway)

[thewordy]

On spring break a couple years ago, my long-distance boyfriend, A, broke up with me. He called me on a Friday night to "talk about our relationship." 

At the time, I was at a friend's apartment for an after-party.I went in her bedroom to talk to A in privacy. It was an incredibly intense conversation, which quickly denigrated into drunken sobbing on my end. At some point in the call, I saw the bedroom door open and thought my friend had come in to see what had happened to me. I was about to tell her that I would talk to her later, but then I saw it was one of the guys from the party. To my amazement, he walked into the dark room and sat next to me (note: I was slumped dramatically on the floor, my back against the wall), and crossed his legs as if he was just getting comfortable.

I said, Hang on a second to A, and turned to the dude. I said 'Uh, what are you doing here? Are you lost?' I couldn't be arsed being polite in my state of distress.

He said 'No, I just want to hang out with you. It's fine, continue your call. I'll be quiet.'

I didn't understand what was happening, (was he trying to comfort me? was he writing a book about dramatic break-up phone calls?) but I picked up the phone again and motioned to him to go away. He didn't. He just stayed there for the next - it must have been at least twenty minutes, at a conservative estimate- while I finished the messy process of breaking up with my boyfriend of more than a year. Had I been entirely sober, I wouldn't have been able to have that kind of conversation with a STRANGER EAVESDROPPING on me. But I wasn't, so I managed it.

When I was done, I was even more upset than before. Mascara running down my face; my nice outfit crumpled and reeking of vodka where someone had spilled their drink down it. It was 3 or 4 AM and I wanted to cry myself to sleep. I'd forgotten about the strange man sitting next to me, but then he put a hand on my leg and said "I think you did the right thing there." He must have sensed my incredulity, because he explained: "I'm sorry about that, but all the points you made, I think you were right about them. It's best to just end a relationship like that."

I said, "Sorry, who ARE you? Why are you here? Why aren't you in the living room?"

He didn't give me a straight answer, but I'm fairly good at putting the pieces of a disjointed story together. Apparently his friend was flirting outrageously with my friend, and he wanted to give them some time together to hook up. I was the only other person (read: girl) left at the party, so he wanted to "hang out" with me the rest of the night.

Here's the condensed version of the rest of the story: I spent an hour trying to get him to leave the apartment. He spent an hour trying to hook up with me. I don't have the heart to relate the number of ways and tricks he tried, including the infamous "I just want to cuddle with you and make you feel better, and forget about your boyfriend."

He left only at sunrise, when it finally dawned (sorry) on him that he wasn't getting any.

This story isn't particularly noteworthy. Also, this story isn't particularly tragic. He didn't assault me - silver lining! What was it besides an hour or so of being inconvenienced? Is that what you're thinking?

Here's the thing: it truly, truly disturbs me to think of how indifferent some men are to our emotions. Men joke about 'hooking up with vulnerable women' because our emotions are only relevant insofar as they relate to their desires. This is a running joke in popular culture, and life reflects that. If you've ever seen a sad-looking girl in a bar be approached by some dirtbag who uses her sadness as a tool to lever open her legs, you know exactly what I mean.

Look, I'm not looking for empathy from a stranger. I don't expect that the strange man at my friend's apartment would have passed by, handed me a box of tissues, and left after a comforting pat on the shoulder. That would have been nice, of course, but it's not something I expect. All I expect is my little space to cry and be upset because for fuck's sake, a relationship has just ended. The phone is still wet from my tears. I just want one night of being alone so I can go cry and maybe raid my friend's fridge for ice-cream and fall asleep to sad music like you have the right to do when you've been dumped. Just one hour of being alone and not being bothered! Can I get that? God, can I get that? Instead of having to spend an hour trying to come up with ways to say NO - because clearly, the number of ways I have already said it is not enough - I just want the luxury of being able to think about whatever I want. It's a luxury because I often don't get it.

If you're a guy, consider the amount of time women are forced to spend thinking of defenses to people who harass them, safety measures, ways to say No, ways to get away, plots and schemes just to be left in peace for a little while with their thoughts. I promise you it's more than you can imagine.

[thewordy]

me: the patriarchy-

men on twitter: UM *puts on monocle, reads wikipedia* actuaLLY did u know that's an ad hominem attack? insulting the patriarchy is a straw man. where is the empirical proof? is there a PEW study. this is an appeal to probability. the sample size is flawed. talking about the patriarchy is a RED HERRING!!! the patriarchy is innocent until proven guilty!!!!! generalizations!!!!! LOGIC IS DEAD!!!!!! 

[thewordy]

The 'Simple Mystic': People of Color in Horror Movies

        Annabelle (2014) begins with alluring images of a fresh-scrubbed white couple, picket fences, blondeness: a suburban dream. The husband is a doctor; the protagonist a pregnant stay-at-home wife. 

         The rest of the story is true to formula: the couple buys a doll that becomes a conduit for demons. When the protagonist, Mia, is attacked, she turns to friendly local Evelyn for help (a relatively minor role played by actress of formidable talents Alfre Woodard, who is clearly the most famous person on the cast). Evelyn runs a local Shop of the Occult, complete with creepy books on witchcraft and Satanism. Ultimately, she is called upon to sacrifice her own life so that the white couple may live. She does so of her own free will, going so far as to say that this is what her life has been leading up to: this sacrifice.

This role (wise woman, spirit guide, trader in the occult) is nothing new for black women/WOC. Half of Morgan Freeman's movies involve the trope of 'magical black man guiding the white man', but it doesn't end with Morgan Freeman or Alfre Woodard. It extends to other minorities, too, in a trope I like to call 'The Simple Mystic.' Here are a few other examples off the top of my head:

1) Shohreh Aghdashloo as Dr. Sadira Adani in The Exorcism of Emily Rose (Iranian) 2) Vivis Cortez as Martine in Paranormal Activity 2 (Hispanic) 3) Dileep Rao as Ram Jhas in Drag Me To Hell (Indian) 4) The hoodoo practitioners in The Skeleton Key (Black) 5) Gloria Foster as The Oracle in The Matrix (Black) 6) Jacob Vargas as Ramirez in Devil (Hispanic) 7) Adriana Barraza as Shaun San Dena in Drag Me To Hell (Hispanic)

                 Of course, there are even more literary examples from this century. In Marisha Pessl's recent book Night Film (essentially a horror movie in book form), I stumbled across a scene in which a Hispanic chambermaid runs from a young girl who she realizes is accursed, who bears the huella del mal, or the mark of evil. The protagonists, of course, are white, and have little patience for such superstitious foolery. The chambermaid is relegated to the place of the simple mystic.

             That's what each of these examples cited above have in common. They are all experts in the realm of the unreal. In each case, they guide a skeptical white person through something that he or she does not recognize (in one case, they have to convince an entire courtroom). They are psychics, oracles, fortune-tellers, exorcists: people on the fringes of society. Sometimes they are regular people who are deeply devout. Whatever their profession, they have no lives or desires of their own. They are there to serve those whiter than they, and to die in that service. They are depicted as one-dimensional characters who lack the sophistication of the white characters. Hence the name 'simple': they may have spent years in the jungles of the Amazon stalking large bat-shaped creatures and ancient evils, but there is nothing complex about their existence. They are intriguing, yes, often dressed strangely, often given to vagaries of speech or action - but ultimately they're nothing to the wonderbread Neo characters that are given the time and the attention to develop fully before our eyes. It's always the people of color who are not given the breathing space to be realized fully on celluloid, and this is dangerous because stereotyping people of color is dangerous. 

             Although they may be proved right ultimately (there really is a demon stalking your home!) they are nothing more than placeholders: people of color whose personhood is erased in order to create an 'exotic' fantasy for Hollywood. They are the people we cannot identify with: the Roma, the witch-doctors, the brown men and women who kiss their crucifixes, light candles to keep out the evil, and pray in languages we do not understand. Within the context of the horror movie, they may be regarded as a crucible that distills important information that white people need to survive, but when the movie ends and the lights come up? We remember that horror isn't real, we laugh at the fantasy, and we go home to our nice suburban picket-fenced houses. Where does that leave the Mystic, the person of color who is expert in a world that isn't real? The movie may have ended but the stereotypes linger on.