A phonograph that “reads” and transforms a rock’s rough surface into music | source
rock music
This is by artist Leonel Vasquez, and here is his website:
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.”
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.
A very similar approach is also the main focus of Kate Bernstein’s Hello, Cruel World. Besides the free “lite” version she put out (linked there), the whole book is available to borrow on archive.org.
Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new. - Ursula K. Le Guin
physical collage made from vintage national geographics
Clarence A. Porter aka Clarence Porter aka C. A. Porter (Canadian, based Hamilton, Ontario, Canada) - The Reaching No. 1-7, Pastel on Paper
Moon and Sun
Oil on wood, both 11x14"
Ida Floreak 2023
I'll be participating in a sweet little show at Longue Vue House about Dandelions. These two pieces will be featured. Opening March 9 at 4:30 in New Orleans.
cockroach gossiping
[ID: Painting of a cockroach climbing on the side of a pink flip phone, looking towards the screen, which displays another cockroach’s face framed by a heart. End ID]
Cows/kor in Edsåsdalen, Jämtland, Sweden (September 10, 2018).
sometimes i wish i could grab my childhood self and shake them by the shoulders and say YOU'RE GOOD. YOU'RE WORTH LOVING. THERE ARE PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES ARE MADE BETTER BECAUSE OF YOU. YOU ARE NOT A BURDEN. YOU ARE NOT DAMNED. SOMEDAY YOU WILL CRY OVER SUNSETS AND POETRY MORE THAN YOUR OWN PAIN. I NEED YOU TO REMEMBER THAT YOU'RE GOOD. YOU'RE WORTH LOVING. but i can't go back in time, so i say it to myself now. because i believe there's a future version of me looking back on this moment feeling the exact same way.
The Eugene Guard, Oregon, July 8, 1958
wizard-beehive
I’ve only seen this exactly 1 time (literally right now) but this is so important I am crying.
Tom Hennen, "Love for Other Things", Darkness Sticks to Everything
weeping over this inscription i found in my secondhand copy of Maurice:
"Harry, I'm glad I met you in 1973. Nathaniel"
