Laura Gilpin.  Tying A Chongo, 1954.

Botanical Study N° 4 |  Fawn DeViney  

Forough Farrokhzad - To my sister

Sister, rise up after your freedom, why are you quiet? rise up because henceforth you have to imbibe the blood of tyrannical men.

Seek your rights, Sister, from those who keep you weak, from those whose myriad tricks and schemes keep you seated in a corner of the house.

How long will you be the object of pleasure In the harem of men’s lust? how long will you bow your proud head at his feet like a benighted servant?

How long for the sake of a morsel of bread, will you keep becoming an aged haji’s temporary wife, seeing second and third rival wives. oppression and cruelty, my sister, for how long?

This angry moan of yours must surely become a clamorous scream. you must tear apart this heavy bond so that your life might be free.

Rise up and uproot the roots of oppression. give comfort to your bleeding heart. for the sake of your freedom, strive to change the law, rise up.

Glass bottle shaped like a date, Greek and Roman Art

Edward C. Moore Collection, Bequest of Edward C. Moore, 1891 Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Medium: Glass

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/245683

Shadow, Osaka, Photo by Daido Moniyama, 1995

Hieronymus Bosch - Scenes from the Passion of Christ, Reverse of Painting “Saint John the Evangelist”. 1489

Black Girl (1966)

Passion / باب المقام / Bab al-Makam (2005) dir. Mohammad Malas

Cinematography by Tarek Ben Abdallah

Girls in the garden at “Orphan City,” an enormous orphan refugee camp of more than 30,000 children managed by Near East Relief in Alexandropol (modern Gyumri, formerly Leninakan), Armenia, circa 1920.

EVA FERRI: You insist on the centrality of the writing, you called it a chain that pulls up water from the bottom of a well. What are the features of your approach to writing?

ELENA FERRANTE: I work well when I can start from a flat, dry tone, that of a strong, lucid, educated woman, like the middle-class women who are our contemporaries. At the beginning I need curtness, terse, clear formulas that are free of affectations and demonstrations of beautiful form. Only when the story begins to emerge with assurance, thanks to that initial tone, do I begin to wait with trepidation for the moment when I will be able to replace the series of well oiled, noiseless links with a rusty, rasping series of links and a pace that is disjointed, agitated, increasing the risk of absolute collapse. The moment I change register for the first time is both exciting and anguished. I very much enjoy breaking through my character’s armor of good education and good manners, upsetting the image she has of herself, undermining her determination, and revealing another, rougher soul; I make her raucous, perhaps crude. I work hard to make the fracture between the two tonalities surprising and also to make the re-entry into the tranquil narration happen naturally. While the fracture comes easily—I wait for that moment, and slip inside it with satisfaction—I very much fear the moment when the narrative has to compose itself again. I’m afraid that the narrating “I” won’t be able to calm down. But above all, now the readers know her calm is false, that is won’t last, that the narrative orderliness will break up again.

— Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia, 2016 

Sculpting In Time (Introduction), Andrei Tarkovsky