Hilo there. How are you this fine morning? I hope this missive finds you well wherever it is that you may dwell. What is it that you truly desire to tell? C’mon along now, we do not dwell.
How the lion realizes his dream.
(for the twins who read, write and listen)
The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos. Algos means ‘suffering.’ So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.Milan Kundera (via tattoolit)
(via deeperthangravity)
“Orange you glad?” (An ongoing project.)
By way of synecdoche and mexistentialist.
I sympathize, I mispronounce every other word. Navid can vouch for me.
Incessant and perhaps even obsessive independent reading was a primary source of my education growing up and always provided me with a very large vocabulary that I was never quite sure how to pronounce properly, because I was discovering all of these new words entirely on my own as mute and static text on a page.
It still happens today, and I’ve had people in my life (recently, actually) who have tried correcting my pronunciation of certain words, perhaps even just jokingly, and I’ve quietly always felt really sorry for them because they’re drawing attention to what’s really one of the least important or useful aspects of these words and treating it as something critical and necessary. I’ve never understood it; it’s always sort of struck me as some form of insecure shaming or something.
Agreed.
(Source: gruntledandhinged, via hidrees)
I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down.Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Song: “Ageless Beauty” by Stars
Fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the “it” that you want, it’s the fantasy of “it.” So, desire supports crazy fantasies. This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill. Or be careful what you wish for. Not because you’ll get it, but because you’re doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is, living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.+The Life of David Gale via W.A.
It’s the little indignities that slowly devastate your soul. The ones where your guard is down, and you just expect to dress up, look pretty, and enjoy an evening as a newlywed, or at the Oscars, but instead end up humiliated and snubbed. The ubiquitous racist slap in the face is thinly veiled just beneath the carefully crafted façade. This filthy, highly infectious plague is transforming our nation into one of unwarranted suspicion and anguish inflicted on disenfranchised, voiceless people of color. And now, it is no longer my job to enlighten you. To quote what you so often tell ethnic communities, “It’s time for you to step up to the plate, take responsibility, and stop taking what I have earned,” my integrity, my dignity.+Seema Jilani, My Racist Encounter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner
In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.+Oscar Wilde
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.+Theodore Roosevelt
A wild dedication of yourselves/+William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale
To undiscovered waters, undreamed shores.
I feel a power within me … a fire that I may not quench, but I must keep ablaze.+Van Gogh
Staying on track. Weekend heroics.
After learning my flight was detained 4 hours,
I heard the announcement:
If anyone in the vicinity of gate 4-A understands any Arabic,
Please come to the gate immediately.Well—one pauses these days. Gate 4-A was my own gate. I went there.
An older woman in full traditional Palestinian dress,
Just like my grandma wore, was crumpled to the floor, wailing loudly.
Help, said the flight service person. Talk to her. What is her
Problem? we told her the flight was going to be four hours late and she
Did this.I put my arm around her and spoke to her haltingly.
Shu dow-a, shu- biduck habibti, stani stani schway, min fadlick,
Sho bit se-wee?The minute she heard any words she knew—however poorly used—
She stopped crying.She thought our flight had been canceled entirely.
She needed to be in El Paso for some major medical treatment the
Following day. I said no, no, we’re fine, you’ll get there, just late,Who is picking you up? Let’s call him and tell him.
We called her son and I spoke with him in English.
I told him I would stay with his mother till we got on the plane and
Would ride next to her—Southwest.She talked to him. Then we called her other sons just for the fun of it.
Then we called my dad and he and she spoke for a while in Arabic and
Found out of course they had ten shared friends.Then I thought just for the heck of it why not call some Palestinian
Poets I know and let them chat with her. This all took up about 2 hours.She was laughing a lot by then. Telling about her life. Answering
Questions.She had pulled a sack of homemade mamool cookies—little powdered
Sugar crumbly mounds stuffed with dates and nuts—out of her bag—
And was offering them to all the women at the gate.To my amazement, not a single woman declined one. It was like a
Sacrament. The traveler from Argentina, the traveler from California,
The lovely woman from Laredo—we were all covered with the same
Powdered sugar. And smiling. There are no better cookies.And then the airline broke out the free beverages from huge coolers—
Non-alcoholic—and the two little girls for our flight, one African
American, one Mexican American—ran around serving us all apple juice
And lemonade and they were covered with powdered sugar too.And I noticed my new best friend—by now we were holding hands—
Had a potted plant poking out of her bag, some medicinal thing,With green furry leaves. Such an old country traveling tradition. Always
Carry a plant. Always stay rooted to somewhere.And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and thought,
This is the world I want to live in. The shared world.Not a single person in this gate—once the crying of confusion stopped
—has seemed apprehensive about any other person.They took the cookies. I wanted to hug all those other women too.
This can still happen anywhere.Not everything is lost.
Naomi Shihab Nye (b. 1952), “Wandering Around an Albuquerque Airport Terminal.” I think this poem may be making the rounds, this week, but that’s as it should be. (via oliviacirce)
Beautiful.
