Ascend

The World is Yours

[ancientorigins]

Maya Canoe Found in Sinkhole Provides Clues to Belief in Underworld

Archaeologists from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) recently announced the completion of a study of a rare an

A rare Maya canoe found in sinkhole near Chichén Itzá was discovered along with armadillo bones and a human foot. Archaeologists believe it was part of a Maya ritual at the gateway to the underworld.

[roachpatrol]

ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this.  you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.

humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.  

i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy. 

[roachpatrol]

i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet. 

it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more. 

have a cookie.

i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine. 

[quotesfrommyreading]

This was the case with the B.s, the autistic family I had visited in California—the older son, like the parents, with Asperger’s syndrome, the younger with classical autism. When I first arrived at their house, the whole atmosphere was so “normal” that I wondered if I had been misinformed, or if I had not, perhaps, ended up at the wrong house, for there was nothing obviously “autistic” about them or it. It was only after I had settled down that I noticed the well-used trampoline, where the whole family, at times, likes to jump and flap their arms; the huge library of science fiction; the strange cartoons pinned to the bathroom wall; and the ludicrously explicit directions, pinned up in the kitchen, for cooking, laying the table, and washing up—suggesting that these had to be performed in a fixed, formulaic way (this, I learned later, was an autistic in-joke). Mrs. B. spoke of herself, at one point, as “bordering on normality,” but then made clear what such “bordering” meant: “We know the rules and conventions of the ‘normal,’ but there is no actual transit. You act normal, you learn the rules, and obey them, but …”

“You learn to ape human behavior,” her husband interpolated. “I still don’t understand what’s behind the social conventions. You observe the front—but …”

The B.s, then, had learned a front of normality, which was necessary, given their professional lives, their living in the suburbs and driving a car, their having a son in regular school, etc. But they had no illusions about themselves. They recognized their own autism, and they had recognized each other’s, at college, with a sense of such affinity and delight that it was inevitable they would marry. “It was as if we had known each other for a million years,” Mrs. B. said. While they were well aware of many of the problems of their autism, they had a respect for their differentness, even a pride. Indeed, in some autistic people this sense of radical and ineradicable differentness is so profound as to lead them to regard themselves, half-jokingly, almost as members of another species (“They beamed us down on the transporter together,” as the B.s liked to say), and to feel that autism, while it may be seen as a medical condition, and pathologized as a syndrome, must also be seen as a whole mode of being, a deeply different mode or identity, one that needs to be conscious (and proud) of itself.

  —  An Anthropologist on Mars (Oliver Sacks, 1993)

[librarycards]

Pigeons are doves. They are rock doves, and I wonder if we began to call them that if people would hesitate to hate them, as doves have that history as messengers of peace. It is true that in my neighborhood nobody hates the mourning doves, dusky and elegant with wings that squeak as if they flap on rusty hinges. They roost on the wires like little Audrey Hepburns, while the pigeons troll the ground, tough and fat, some of them look like they should be smoking cigarettes. They look poor and banged up, like they could kick the mourning doves’ asses but are wise to the divide-and-conquer tactics we use on one another, so they coo wearily at the mourning doves and waddle forth in search of scavenged delights. What you may not know is when you call a pigeon “a rat with wings” you have given it a compliment. The only thing a rat lacks is a pair of wings to lift it, so you have named the pigeon perfectly. When you say to me, “I hate pigeons,” I want to ask you who else you hate. It makes me suspicious.

I once met a girl who was so proud to have hit such a bird on her bicycle, I swear, I thought that it was me she hit. I felt her handlebars in my stomach and now it is your job to feel it also. The pigeons are birds, they are doves. They are the nature of the city and the ones who no one loves. When people say they hate pigeons, I want to ask them if they hate themselves, too. Does it prick the well of your loathing? Do they make you feel dirty and ashamed? Are you embarrassed about how little or how much you have, for how you have had to hustle? Being dirty is not a problem for the pigeon. You can ask it, “How do you feel about having the city coating your feathers, having the streets gunked up in the crease of your eye?” and the pigeon would say, “Not a problem.” You will now stop blaming the pigeon. It is not the pigeon’s fault. The pigeon was once a dove, and then we built our filthy empire up around it, came to hate it for simply thriving in the midst our decay, came to hate it for not dying. The pigeon is your ally. They are chameleons, gray as the concrete they troll for scraps, at night they huddle and sing like cats. Their necks are glistening, iridescent as an oil-slick rainbow, they mate for life, and they fly.

Michelle Tea, Against Memoir. [emphasis mine]

[riben-deactivated20230922]

Fucking. Wow im gonna die

[edwordsmyth]

Heather Havrilesky

[luxurylearry]

[eatmangoesnekkid]

“Speak to your Beloved in the same tones and textures you speak your prayers.”

— India Ame’ye

[liberatingreality]

We find that whole communities suddenly fix their minds upon one object and go mad in its pursuit; that millions of people become simultaneously impressed with one new delusion and run after it, till their attention is caught by some new folly more captivating than the first. Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1852)

[tropic-havens]

​Sharm El Sheikh Beach, Egypt

[eatmangoesnekkid]

“The strategies that this system has given us for being disconnected to our bodies are endless. Most people have one single voice/tone/note they use for everything. There is no difference between the way they sound when they are summoning a heart-connected lover, reading a book out loud, ordering food, speaking to a neighbor, talking to the police, asking customer service for help, or animating the erotic in lovemaking. I have at least 21 different flavors of voices as part of my vocal pantheon and sometimes I use them all in a given day. Some voices can be cleansing and detoxifying. Others can be energizing or relaxing. And special ones can be magical and healing. Our sound/vocal range is the thrust of being truly alive in the instruments of our bodies and meeting the depth of our vulnerability and greater possibility. In the absence of voice, sound, breath, and spirit is a loss of great creative power. There is something weakening about being alive in a human body but not having a pantheon of magical, enchanting, and cultural voices, sounds, rhythms, and tones to invoke for different circumstances, needs, and purposes to help decipher and discern this chaotic world more fully and generate desired possibilities. But do always keep in mind that we live in a world that consciously seeks to diminish our potential while, at the same time, extolling our possibility to be unlimited. You must be willing to be, move, and sound vastly different from what is common.”

— India Ame’ye Author (via eatmangoesnekkid)

[liberatingreality]

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth. I sat at a table where rich food and wine were in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

I'm writing this in the present, and you're reading it in the present. Except there is a gulf of time between between us.

I might even be dead.

Yet, here I am.

Between the page and your eye.

Countless paradoxes like this redeem language.

But the voice cleaved in two during childhood is not a paradox of language. It’s a division of self, which is the multiplication of possibility. Don’t worry. Again, I’m not saying it’s bad. It might even ripen in us the appetite for love, the impulse to dab color onto stretched cotton, to make sounds that are beyond anything rational, but that sharpen rationality and make us see for the first time what we’ve been looking at our whole lives.

— Simon Van Booy, from The Presence of Absence (Godine, 2022)

[shewhoexploresthewoods]

“Some of the old goddess tales were twisted to suit the takeover of male powers, in order to win converts to their new gods. For example, Pandora (All-Gifts) was originally a Great Mother Goddess, whose box (womb, cauldron, cave, cup) was a reservoir of beauty and life-sustaining gifts. Patriarchal myth tells us that Her box contained all manner of destructive demons, which once unleashed upon the world, brought evil and suffering to all. Eve was also a Mother Goddess, whose tree was the Tree of Life. The serpent was her own sensual wisdom, and the apple was her sacred fruit. Athene, whom we are told was born fully grown out of the head of Zeus, dressed in armor and ready for war, was originally the daughter of the matriarchal goddess Metis. (Meter, method, measure, matter, mother…) Both mother and daughter were worshipped by the Amazons at Lake Triton, and were born parthenogenetically—without sperm.”

This quote was taken from the book, Ariadne’s Thread A Workbook of Goddess Magic by Shekhinah Mountainwater. The quote comes from the Myth-Making section of Cycle 1 on page 26.

Reading about the true origins of Pandora, Eve, and Athene (female mythical figures we’ve all heard about and seen in popular media) is cathartic. My heart is filled with joy!

[succulentsiren]

Similar the stories of Medusa and how she was ‘evil’ when in reality she was really just defending herself.

[eatmangoesnekkid]

Also can be said for modern day Patriarchal divine feminine leaders and the Serenas of the real world as depicted in “handmaid‘s tale.”

[theambitiouswoman]

Don’t forget the lifestyle you promised yourself.

[csuitebitches]

KEEP. READING. STUFF. THAT. MATTERS.

Yes, I’m about to sound like a pick-me right now and I don’t care because you need to read this.

There’s nothing wrong with reading about fiction, romance, fantasy, all that stuff. However- it does separate you from the real world. Sometimes, its an escape and I understand that. BUT. In order to function positively in social settings - any social settings - you need to be on top of stuff that’s happening.

That doesn’t mean that you have to be a geopolitical expert or a current affairs news anchor. But it does mean that you need to at least read the news everyday. Once you accomplish that, take that a step further and start looking at reports.

Read what Morgan Stanley’s reports for your country are. Take a look at EY’s or Deloitte’s insights. This will give you an idea as to the years ahead could be like, which is important to know in the case of getting jobs, applying for Masters, talking and connecting to people - you need to what’s going to be relevant and how YOU can benefit from it. Read case studies relevant to your industry/ what you want to work in. Make it a note to read at least one case study a week, from different parts of the world.

You’re too old to keep watching the same beauty gurus rant about the same 5 products over and over again. Even if you’re in the cosmetics industry, its important for you to read about things like manufacturing (what is your country’s stance with China, and how will that affect manufacturing?), ingredients (what have been banned by governments/ FDAs/ equivalents and why? What is the alternative?), rising trends not just in terms of the next “cool” item but the future of the industry itself.

Knowledge is power. You are blessed to live in a time where you have access to things that can put you 10 years ahead at your current job/ profession/ situation. Be smart. Use it wisely. There’s a lot of distractions, but that means that there’s equally as many opportunities.

[theambitiouswoman]

[houseofnadeen]