155 posts
Latest Posts by kakieoan - Page 4
Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score
Pete Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
‘Children of Shatila’ (Lebanon, 1998) film by Mai Masri. In this scene the youth of the Palestinian refugee camp interview an elder with a video camera.
Yet I am in love with words. They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
“Be careful of words, even the miraculous ones. For the miraculous we do our best, sometimes they swarm like insects and leave not a sting but a kiss. They can be as good as fingers. They can be as trusty as the rock you stick your bottom on. But they can be both daisies and bruises. Yet I am in love with words. They are doves falling out of the ceiling. They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap. They are the trees, the legs of summer, and the sun, its passionate face…” — Anne Sexton, a fragment from “Words”, from the book “The Awful Rowing Toward God” (Houghton Mifflin Co; March 1, 1975) (via Alive on all Channels)
“I whet my lips to speak your name. To kiss your hands, curling into the posture of prayer, they could almost have been carved from stone. I swear: If idolatry was my only sin, then it’s because god wasn’t watching.”
— Torrin A. Greathouse, from “Ekphrasis on Nude Selfie as Portrait of San Sebastian,” Poetry (vol. 221, no. 2, November 2022)
ولأنه يعلم أنَّ عينيه تربكاني .. يُطيل النظر “
one of my “special interests” in the past couple of years has been exploring fast fashion vs. slow fashion. it has been a long journey trying to find clothes that actually 1) fit me 2) look good 3) are made from material that is not actively shoving plastic in the ecosystem 4) involve ethical labor, fair trade, fairly compensated, etc
before i did this research, i really had no clue about fabrics or fashion brands. i used to think i had zero interest in fashion, in fact.
i grew up wearing walmart and thrift store clothes, and when i went to college i bought clothes from target and asos. something started to shift a little bit when i found vintage resellers on etsy and ebay… those clothes were so unique. but a lot of the vintage clothes were polyester blends, stiff, and would fall apart as easily as my asos clothes. i would leave them hanging in my closet and never wear them. i would wear the same old t shirts and jeggings every day. i felt like it was impossible to ever wear comfortable clothes, or ever feel good in clothes, so why bother?
it started with linen. linen is very comfortable and pretty sustainable. i was amazed that i didn’t feel the urge to rip my clothes off when i wore linen. lightbulb number one.
a friend let me borrow a nooworks dress, and i went to the store and got some overalls. wow. overalls. lightbulb number two. holy shit, you can wear overalls. you know how people say “not binary or non-binary but a secret third thing.” that’s overalls.
i realized i loved the bonkers prints that nooworks had, and all of it was soft, and made ethically. it was a higher price point than i was used to, which gave me pause. but then you realize: we’re not supposed to be buying dumb clothes every other weekend. and isn’t a slightly higher price point for soft clothes that you won’t want to tear off your body worth it?
so i started my research. i made a spreadsheet. the prices can be all over the place across brands, so i made a column for prices. sizes can be all over the place too – people always ask me “where is the plus size slow fashion?” it’s there. just look at the size column. people say “isn’t it better to buy secondhand?” yeah, it is. i have many links to secondhand sources.
if you have any suggestions or additions please let me know, it is a living document.
my mom was murdered last week leaving me without permanent housing, work, and my personal items. please boost this fund to support me in completing her end of life services:
“They Do Not Exist” (1974) a Palestinian film by Mustafa Abu ali http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WZ_7Z6vbsg
From a documentary about Akha people (an indigenous tribe to mountain forests in Thailand). Like many other indigenous people in the world, they are blamed for environmental destruction (despite taking care of the land and maintaining biodiversity), and were forcefully relocated so loggers and industrial farmers could use the land and use impoverished Akha people as laborers.
“A capitalist society requires a culture based on images. It needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anesthetize the injuries of class, race, and sex. And it needs to gather unlimited amounts of information, the better to exploit natural resources, increase productivity, keep order, make war, give jobs to bureaucrats. The camera’s twin capacities, to subjectivize reality and to objectify it, ideally serve these needs and strengthen them. Cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society: as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by a change in images. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself. The narrowing of free political choice to free economic consumption requires the unlimited production and consumption of images.”
— Susan Sontag, On Photography
How many incarcerated people actually need to be rehabilitated, really? How many people just need a decent income, or better quality of life overall, or steady childcare, or to not be punished for made-up crimes?
hooks likes to talk about “seasons of life,” and help her students learn to make choices that are not absolute—I am a this or a that forever—but that go along with the season. So, what would bell hooks like to do with her next season, this season of balancing and appreciating the earth? “I would like to spend more time than I already am helping individuals resolve the difficulties in their lives through love,” she says. “I would like to bring the work of mindfulness and awareness to everyday struggles. The most important field of activism, particularly for black people, is mental health. Activism does not need to be some kind of organized ‘against’ protest. When my students say they want to change the world, I espouse an inward to outward movement. If you feel that you can’t do shit about your own reality, how can you really think you could change the world? And guess what? When you’re fucked-up and you lead the revolution, you are probably going to get a pretty fucked-up revolution.”
hooks loves houses. She likes to renovate them and make them beautiful, and when it comes to summing up what she’s about, that’s the image she chooses. “For a house to be truly beautiful it has to have a strong foundation,” she says. “For us, that means finding the ground of our being, the place where we discover ourselves. Our foundation of self-invention does not preclude community. In genuine community there is lots of difference. We all make our contribution from a place of difference, not sameness. It is difficult to find the place where difference can exist in a context of harmony, where it is not necessary to dominate, but that is our foundation, the ground of our being. It’s where we start.”
This dude said any time you put expectations on your life you reduce the compassion and appreciation you’ll have for the experiences you live and though this is something I already knew on an intuitive level, to hear someone else say it has me burrowing into its truth like a sinkhole
Zentyatze Echeverria shot by Enrique Leyva
Robby Carney and LZ Granderson by Emmanuel Sanchez Monsalve for Out Magazine , Feb 2020
Why do u like water so much
Showers 🚿 leave you feeling clean and refreshed 🧖 Pools of water are pretty to look at and touch✨ Waves are playful but sometimes dangerous 🌊 There is so much to admire in the elusive character of water 🧚 As with fire, earth and air!
