Karim Aïnouz

O Lord, the stars of Your sky have set, the eyes of Your creation have closed to rest, and kings have locked their gates, Yet, Your gate is always open to those who ask.

— Imam al-Sajjad (ع)

Sleep Spaces

"When I shut my eyes phosphorescent blooms appear and fade and come to life again like fireworks made of flesh. I pass through strange lands with creatures for company. No doubt you are there, my beautiful discreet spy. And the palpable soul of the vast reaches. And perfumes of the sky and the stars the song of a rooster from 2000 years ago and piercing screams in a flaming park and kisses. Sinister handshakes in a sickly light and axles grinding on paralyzing roads. No doubt there is you who I do not know, who on the contrary I do know. But who, here in my dreams, demands to be felt without ever appearing. You who remain out of reach in reality and in dream. You who belong to me through my will to possess your illusion but who brings your face near mine only if my eyes are closed in dream as well as in reality. You who in spite of an easy rhetoric where the waves die on the beach where crows fly into ruined factories, where the wood rots crackling under a lead sun." -Robert Desnos

City of the Broken Dolls, a photo book by Romaine scolombe, 1993-1996

biden removing cuba from the state sponsor of terrorism list NOW is so fucking stupid. trump last act as president put cuba on the terrorism list. biden last act as president take cuba off the list. cuban lives continue to be nothing more than western pawns. cuba has experienced crisis after crisis during the biden administration and he only moves to do this now because no part of him actually wants to see cuba free. it's been over 66 years and these old white men are still pissing themselves in fear of latin american leftism, their sick need for control leading them to arbitrarily point fingers and cry "terrorist." we all know who the real terrorists are.

So it turns out that we’re not the answer to the dreams of centuries. Lope of the hunter from field to forest. “We have adapted wheat to grow on clouds and grain to fall like rain.” Laughed, then died, and the living guess at the joke. Mark Weiss

“In terms of a writerly ontology, I don’t even believe “story” exists — except as a convenient way to talk about an effect of writing; whereas readers and writers who are comfortable in that discourse are content with a concept of “writing” that makes it one with a notion of “style,” which they see as a variable aspect, like color, of a solid, visible, and locatable entity called a story. Whereas for me, words are the solid and locatable elements in a text, and meaning, story, style, and tone are all shifting and flickering aspects to various combinations of words that are, all of them, equally evanescent and intangible, intricately interrelated and inextricable — analyzable yes, but never simple or exhaustible.”

— Samuel R. Delany, “Zelazny/Varley/Gibson — and Quality”

Secrecy

Secrecy flows through you, a different kind of blood. It’s as if you’ve eaten it like a bad candy, taken it into your mouth, let it melt sweetly on your tongue, then allowed it to slide down your throat like the reverse of uttering, a word dissolved into its glottals and sibilants, a slow intake of breath—

And now it’s in you, secrecy. Ancient and vicious, luscious as dark velvet. It blooms in you, a poppy made of ink.

You can think of nothing else. Once you have it, you want more. What power it gives you! Power of knowing without being known, power of the stone door, power of the iron veil, power of the crushed fingers, power of the drowned bones crying out from the bottom of the well. Margaret atwood

                   Anneè Olofsson (Swedish) ,  Unfamiliar 3, 2001 Olofsson’s an iconography that carnally and directly comments on the tension between detachment and affinity, time and aging, she works primarily with analog photography and video, occasionally even sculpture. Olofsson returns repeatedly to her own body as an unrestricted artistic tool.