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Mona Sa’udi, from Women of the Fertile Crescent: An Anthology of Modern Poetry by Arab Women (ed. & trans. Kamal Boullata)

[Text ID: “I shatter in all my dimensions I multiply I take on shapes like water.”]

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Hi, I was wondering if you have any recommendations for poems or books that explore the idea of the garden or nature as a character itself, or in which it has a magical or positive force? Something similar to its presence in The Secret Garden or Wuthering Heights? Thank you so much xx

Absolutely I do! It usually requires an adjustment for me, cognitively, to understand that the presence that lingers in a book is not human nor articulate, yet have a life of their own. In any case, I’d recommend you check out these, with some of them depicting nature in a soothing light and other using it as an ominous symbol (poetry and prose) : 

Rebecca, Daphné du MaurierThe Wild Iris, Louise GlückAnne of Green Gables, L. M. MontgomeryThe Waves, Virginia WoolfThe Selfish Giant’s Garden, Oscar WildeA Thousand Mornings, Mary OliverThe Blind Assassin, Margaret AtwoodThe Erl-King, Angela CarterThe Bees, Carol Ann DuffyAbsalom Absalom!, William FaulknerLe Roman de la Rose, Guillaume de LorrisNorwegian Wood, Haruki MurakamiThe Little Friend, Donna TarttLud In the Mist, Hope MirleesTess of the d’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

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this is how we danced: alone in sleeping bodies.

Ocean Vuong, excerpt of “Homewrecker”, in Night Sky with Exit Wounds (via antigonick)

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In our language there is a word with enormous power to create shame and guilt. This violent word, which we commonly use to evaluate ourselves, is so deeply ingrained in our consciousness that many of us would have trouble imagining how to live without it. It is the word should, as in “I should have known better” or “I shouldn’t have done that.” Most of the time when we use this word with ourselves, we resist learning, because should implies that there is no choice. Human beings, when hearing any kind of demand, tend to resist because it threatens our autonomy—our strong need for choice. We have this reaction to tyranny even when it’s internal tyranny in the form of a should.

Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication (via oaluz)

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“The worst pain in the world is shame. I spend a lot of time trying to not do anything bad to anyone, but you can’t live your life and not hurt people. Pretty recently, I did something that I’m really not proud of, and it shocked me. I thought, “I’m a really fucking bad person.” But I realized that something good came out of it because now I have to be a lot less judgmental of others. Everything can make you a more compassionate person if you use it that way.”

— Fiona Apple for Pitchfork, JUNE 4 2012

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Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

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“Maybe love is breathing. Maybe love comes quietly. Maybe love has steady hands, doesn’t talk much, finds solace, sleeps well. Maybe love is not hungry. Between every inhale, that pause, that falling chest. Maybe love is warm, and a little tired, and doesn’t want to go out in the cold today, even if the mail has arrived. Maybe love is abundant. Maybe love is unconcerned with proving its points. Maybe love has no chorus, maybe love encompasses. Maybe love is 70% water and idly wonders how it will die, all the while feeling that it won’t die, not really. Maybe love feels it has time. Maybe love moves like warm things move in their beds, safe and not entirely awake, adoring its own softness. Maybe love intends to be soft. Maybe love reaches for another blanket. Maybe love likes snow days. Maybe love stretches and feels its bones crack and sighs, rubbing itself, taking care. Maybe love is grateful. Maybe love radiates. Maybe love hums. Maybe love wears thick socks. Maybe love is a yellow light in a familiar room. Maybe love tells itself, knows itself by heart. Maybe love remembers you.”

— Benjamin Clime, Winter Letters. 

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“James Baldwin writes about suffering in the healing process, stating: “I do not mean to be sentimental about suffering—but people who cannot suffer can never grow up, can never discover who they are.” Growing up is, at heart, the process of learning to take responsibility for whatever happens in your life. To choose growth is to embrace a love that heals.”

— Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

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“There’s a great Yiddish expression that says, “If I knew God, I’d be God.” In fact, I think that claiming that you “know God’s will” is an act of incredible hubris. Instead, what we say about God has much more to say about us than about God. There are, in fact, a whole range of different theologies within Judaism (you can find some of them in the terrific books “Finding God“ and “The God Upgrade,” both of which describe a whole range of differing, and sometimes even conflicting, theologies.) And while I can only speak personally here, to me, “God” isn’t really a noun at all — it’s a verb. Here’s why. The most common name that God gives Godself in the Torah is “YHVH,” a name that is sometimes thought to be so holy that no one was allowed to pronounce it. But that’s not exactly right — it’s not that “YHVH” was not allowed to be pronounced, it’s that it is literally unpronounceable, since it consists of four Hebrew vowels (yod, hay, vav and hay). By the way, that’s also why some people incorrectly call this name “Yahweh,” since (as Rabbi Lawrence Kushner once said), if you tried to pronounce a name that was all vowels, you’d risk serious respiratory injury. But even more importantly, the name YHVH is actually a conflation of all the tenses of the Hebrew verb “to be.” God’s name could be seen as “was-is-will be,” so God isn’t something you can’t capture or name — God is only something you can experience. And indeed, when Moses is at the burning bush, having just been told by God that he will be leading the Israelites out of Egypt, he says, “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?” God responds that God’s name is “Ehyeh asher ehyeh,” which is often translated as “I am what I am.” But it could also be translated as, “I am what I will be.” So God is whatever God will be — we simply have no idea. Indeed, for my own theology, I believe that God is found in the “becoming,” transforming “what will be” into “what is.””

— Rabbi Geoffrey A. Mitelman,

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Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen

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— view on Instagram https://ift.tt/2ACpgoy

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David Graeber was right when he said “The history of capitalism moves from attacks on collective, festive consumption to the promulgation of highly personal, private, even furtive forms (after all, once they had all those people dedicating all their time to producing stuff instead of partying, they did have to figure out a way to sell it all); a process of the privitization of desire.” And y’all should think about that when the question of hedonism being bad comes up, cuz fact of the matter is if you renounce real communal/social pleasures you’ll still be buying the eternally frustrated idea of isolated pleasure that’s sold to you in commodities.

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“There is a mistaken notion that trauma is primarily about memory—the story of what has happened…It’s a too-simplistic view in my opinion. Your whole mind, brain and sense of self is changed in response to trauma. In the long term the largest problem of being traumatized is that it’s hard to feel that anything that’s going on around you really matters. It is difficult to love and take care of people and get involved in pleasure and engagements because your brain has been re-organized to deal with danger. It is only partly an issue of consciousness. Much has to do with unconscious parts of the brain that keep interpreting the world as being dangerous and frightening and feeling helpless. You know you shouldn’t feel that way, but you do, and that makes you feel defective and ashamed.”

— Bessel Van der Kolk (via neurodiversitysci)

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“I conceive of God, in fact, as a means of liberation and not a means to control others.”

—  James Baldwin, Nobody Knows My Name

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“Here is an essential principal of education: to teach details is to bring confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to bring knowledge.”

— Maria Montessori, from From Childhood to Adolescence

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“I’m 24 years old and play this game with myself: buy myself something delicious for the weekend, blueberry muffins or flaky croissants, and forget it by Friday. Saturday morning comes and I am lucky to know me. I wasn’t born knowing how to love me, but I’m learning now; catching up for lost time between us. I keep the windows open. I play oldies throughout every corner of my apartment. I tell the dog how good it feels, at least for today, at least for right now, to be alive.”

— Schuyler Peck, Can’t Get Enough Of My Love (via schuylerpeck)

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“The hole in my heart is so big, room enough for the sky to pass through holding Jupiter’s hand. I can fill it with a mountain. I can fill it with a name.”

— Aracelis Girmay, from “The Piano”