Reputation3ra - All Our Yesterdays

Vladimir Mayakovsky, Volodya: Selected Works; from ‘I love’, tr. George Reavey

November mood

good essays i’ve read this year

“the siren song” by nina maclaughlin

“out there: on not finishing” by devin kelly

“illuminating kirinyaga: meaing and knowing in mount kenya’s forests” by tristan mcconnell

“on the igbo art of storytelling” by ikechukwu ogbu

“poetry fills tehran streets as iranians adapt nowruz rituals to corona restrictions” by alex shams

“writing emails to my late father” by krista stevens

“panic is worse than pain: how fiction failed me after trauma” by jenn ashworth

she's my girlfriend, she's my nemesis, i want to make out with her, i have to fight her, i must make art nouveau fanart of her

description under the cut

digital illustration of siobhan from sucession. she's a white woman with a short stylized orange bob, minimal makeup and a bemused expression. she is turned 3/4 to the right, her face fully in profile, wearing a navy turtleneck with an open back and holding a glass with a gold liquid splashing inside. the background is a gold with graphic shapes in a dusty turquoise and dark grey, with leaf designs around her head. her face, back and hands are way more rendered in a painterly style then the dress, hair and background, which are less textured solid colors.

“The role of the artist is exactly the same role, I think, as the role of the lover. If you love somebody, you honor at least two necessities at once. One of them is to recognize something very dangerous, or very difficult. Many people cannot recognize it at all, that you may also be loved; love is like a mirror. In any case, if you do love somebody, you honor the necessity endlessly, and being at the mercy of that love, you try to correct the person whom you love. Now, that’s a two-way street. You’ve also got to be corrected. As I said, the people produce the artist, and it’s true. The artist also produces the people. And that’s a very violent and terrifying act of love. The role of the artist and the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see. Insofar as that is true, in that effort, I become conscious of the things that I don’t see. And I will not see without you, and vice versa, you will not see without me. No one wants to see more than he sees. You have to be driven to see what you see. The only way you can get through it is to accept that two-way street which I call love. You can call it a poem, you can call it whatever you like. That’s how people grow up. An artist is here not to give you answers but to ask you questions.”

— James Baldwin, “The Black Scholar Interviews James Baldwin,” Conversations with James Baldwin (edited by Fred L. Standley and Louis H. Pratt)

The Farewell (2019)

The Untrustworthy Speaker

Don’t listen to me; my heart’s been broken.

I don’t see anything objectively.

I know myself; I’ve learned to hear like a psychiatrist.

When I speak passionately,

that’s when I’m least to be trusted.

It’s very sad, really: all my life, I’ve been praised

for my intelligence, my powers of language, of insight.

In the end, they’re wasted—

I never see myself,

standing on the front steps, holding my sister’s hand.

That’s why I can’t account

for the bruises on her arm, where the sleeve ends.

In my own mind, I’m invisible: that’s why I’m dangerous.

People like me, who seem selfless,

we’re the cripples, the liars;

we’re the ones who should be factored out

in the interest of truth.

When I’m quiet, that’s when the truth emerges.

A clear sky, the clouds like white fibers.

Underneath, a little gray house, the azaleas

red and bright pink.

If you want the truth, you have to close yourself

to the older daughter, block her out:

when a living thing is hurt like that,

in its deepest workings,

all function is altered.

That’s why I’m not to be trusted.

Because a wound to the heart

is also a wound to the mind.

By Louise Glück

A heart-shaped meadow, created by a farmer as a tribute to his late wife, can be seen from the air near Wickwar, South Gloucestershire. The point of the heart points towards Wotton Hill, where his wife was born.

Megan talking about the reaction to W.A.P in her documentary