delivery for a special someone
*blows kiss*
my heart would like to share…
who will we be when this is all over?
sent to me by libby. On missing, on loss. <3
a peek inside joe pesci’s house.
i totally forgot to mention one of my favorite articles i read last week: public safety by paul rousseau (cw: gun violence)
fifth dimension?!!?
the surge of violence against asian americans.
the power of a walk!!!
risking everything to come to america.
modern day valentines.
absolutely GORGEOUS piece on grief by hanif abdurraqib.
*nine days voice* This is the story of…my life.
bumping smilegoth’s dublab special “Motion” feat. Gabi!!!
and finally, I read this in Aminatou Sow’s newsletter, a quote from Audre Lorde:
“I was going to die, sooner or later, whether or not I had even spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silences will not protect you.... What are the words you do not yet have? What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence? We have been socialized to respect fear more than our own need for language."
I began to ask each time: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" Unlike women in other countries, our breaking silence is unlikely to have us jailed, "disappeared" or run off the road at night. Our speaking out will irritate some people, get us called bitchy or hypersensitive and disrupt some dinner parties. And then our speaking out will permit other women to speak, until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever.
Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end.
And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers, and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you. And you will still flirt and paint your nails, dress up and party, because, as I think Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution." And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking.”
jill galbraith has something to say… with love:
On the Fluke of Being
I’ve been thinking a lot about luck recently this past year my entire life, and I think I’ve finally settled on something about it, and about the simple miracle of existence. Quite frankly, in the enormous, inscrutable expanse of time, the fact that any of us are living right now, as creatures with hearts and lungs and brains and the ability to write the word FUCK on THE FUCKING INTERNET is a ridiculous, absurd phenomenon.
We could have been spineless jellyfish floating aimlessly 5,000 fathoms beneath the sea. We could have been a part of a clan of enormous mammoths that were constantly bumping into one another. Or we could have been a singular and totally kickass member of the polyplacophora class that, milliseconds after we breached the surface of the water for the very first time, were swallowed by a fucking PTERODACTYL and subsequently disseminated into a belly full of acid.
But even as I write these words, I gotta say— being a jellyfish way down deep is probably fucking baller as fuck, dude. Have you SEEN how these jellies can light themselves up? And this is only what they’ve shown to us. Imagine what kinda madness they’re getting up to when we’re not around. And if we were mammoths, well, we’d be warm. And GIANT!!! And don’t pour one out for the polyplacophora just yet… When it disappeared from the visual plane, that mollusk did not cease to exist; rather, it became a part of a fucking pterodactyl. As the First Law of Thermodynamics states, nothing and no amount of matter can either be created or destroyed. All that is, simply, grandly, fucking stupendously, is. Energy transforms and drips and dances from one host, from one form, to another. That polyplacophora inside the pterodactyl is us, baby. Weare the polyplacophora. And the pterodactyl. And mammoths, and jellyfish, and anger, and love, and pain, and excruciating joy, and sweet potatoes, and pancakes, and thunder, and three-leaf clovers, and each other. Everything is energy. It’s all the same. And different. And reflections of refractions. And radical, glorious, disparate shards. And literally made of identical elements.
It’s not about choosing, and it’s definitely not about belief; no bullshit, we are the only us’s that will ever exist at this moment, with these lives. The only ones with this potential, this power, and this collective force that we all hold, delicately balanced and burdening us all.
Calculate the fucking odds of being born as we are, with all the experiences, all the history of our ancestors, all the stupid idiosyncrasies and neuroses that make us who we are, now. And now. And NOW! We can’t change our nature (yet), so all we can do is nurture. And love. And love and love and love because we don’t know what luck, or fate, or whatever you call it, will bring, whether it’s or a sunset drive with a milkshake buckled into the passenger seat, or a vicious, uproarious, brutal hell-scape. Or maybe something in between, like a milkshake hell-scape, which is either going to be the name of my band, or what we’re going to call our first album. (Or how our critics will describe us.)
Whatever comes, I propose that we are lucky to behold it.
My friends, and my friends who I have not yet met, if you’ve read this far, I would encourage you on this beautiful, corporate-sponsored day of love to welcome and cultivate fondness and kindness for your own being, and to subsequently share it with your immediate environs. Focus not on the shiny thing, be it tangible or ephemeral, that you do not currently own, but on the abundant glory that is all around you, starting with the blood in your veins, and ending with the infinite bounds of the universe. I don’t think we (certainly not I!) will ever fully grasp the true extent of how intensely, ludicrously blessed we are to be in the world as we are. But I will spend the rest of my life trying. And I hope to share as many moments as I can with you (and you!!! and YOU!!!) along the way.
with love,
kyra
p.s. tell amazon to let their workers unionize. sign here with me.