Svabhu Kohli

Rebecca Lindenberg | Interview in The Believer | March 27 2012 

Ready Player One

“I vulgarize my feelings by speaking of them too readily to others.”

— Susan Sontag, 1966, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh Journals & Notebooks, 1964 - 1980  (via whyallcaps)

So, I’ve started this new thing of incorporating texts into my paintings and basically using them as an art journal, writing down my thoughts, ideas and such. I’m allowing the words to mix and merge with other patterns and elements of painting so they are not really legible. But in case you’re curious what it says on the image here is the text:

He wore black on black.

Black on black never as a fashion statement. Black on black but never a minimalist. Black on black but not emo.

Black on black but not as a shield, not for protection. Black on black as a source of personal power, as owning his messy, complex, raw self. Black on black as raw power focused and channeled into something constructive.

Black on black as there are no other options. Black on black as Lilith, dark side of the Moon and owning his rage. Black on black as self-mastery.

Black as black ink, incaustum nigrum. Black on black as being fiercely independent. Black on black as being to Hell and back several times and surviving. Black on black as being his own savior.

Wolf pup howling for the first time

Tagged "LBRYVXN", Hyde St. & Leavenworth St., San Francisco.

Blessing for the Longest Night

All throughout these months as the shadows have lengthened, this blessing has been gathering itself, making ready, preparing for this night.

It has practiced walking in the dark, traveling with its eyes closed, feeling its way by memory by touch by the pull of the moon even as it wanes.

So believe me when I tell you this blessing will reach you even if you have not light enough to read it; it will find you even though you cannot see it coming.

You will know the moment of its arriving by your release of the breath you have held so long; a loosening of the clenching in your hands, of the clutch around your heart; a thinning of the darkness that had drawn itself around you.

This blessing does not mean to take the night away but it knows its hidden roads, knows the resting spots along the path, knows what it means to travel in the company of a friend.

So when this blessing comes, take its hand. Get up. Set out on the road you cannot see.

This is the night when you can trust that any direction you go, you will be walking toward the dawn.

—Jan Richardson from The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief

Michelle E. Fillmore - Before It Strikes, 2019