maybuds

[maybuds]

Ruth Awad, “All the Oranges of Tripoli”

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Li Po, trans David Hinton

[maybuds]

Wildly Constant

by Anne Carson

Sky before dawn is blackish green. Perhaps a sign. I should learn more about signs.

Turning a corner to the harbour the wind hits me a punch in the face.

I always walk in the morning, I don’t know why anymore. Life is short.

My shadow goes before me. With its hood up it looks like a foghorn.

Ice on the road. Ice on the sidewalk. Nowhere to step.

It’s better to step where the little black stones are. Not so slippery.

I guess the little black stones could be lava. Or do I exoticise.

A man hurries past with a small dog. No one says Hello.

A pink schoolgirl passes. Looks in my face. No one says Hello.

Who would expect to see a walking foghorn out so early.

Wind pushes more. I push back. Almost home.

Why did I come here. New wind every day. Life is for pushing back.

Now it is dawn. A gold eyelid opens over the harbour.

People who live here learn not to complain about the wind.

I go inside and make tea. Eat bran flakes. Read three pages of Proust.

Proust is complaining (it is 1914) about the verb savoir as used by journalists.

He says they use it not as a sign of the future but as a sign of their desires –

sign of what they want the future to be. What’s wrong with that? I think. I should learn more about signs.

The first thing I saw the first morning I went out for a walk in Stykkishólmur was a crow

as big as a chair. What’s that chair doing on top of that house? I thought then it flapped away.

A crow that big is called a raven. Corvus corax in Linnaeus’s binomial system. Each one makes a sound

like a whole townful of ravens in the country I come from. Three adjectives that recur

in the literature on ravens are omnivorous. Pernicious.

Monogamous. I’m interested in monogamous. I got married last May

and had my honeymoon in Stykkishólmur. This year I returned to Stykkishólmur to live with my husband

for three months in one small room. This extreme monogamy proved almost too much for us.

Rather than murder each other we rented a second place (Greta’s house)

near the pool. Now we are happily duogamous.

There are ravens on the roof of both places. Perhaps they are the same ravens.

I can’t tell. If Roni Horn were here she’d say ravens

are like water, they are wildly constant. They are a sign of Iceland.

I should learn more about signs. I came to Stykkishólmur to live in a library.

The library contains not books but glaciers. The glaciers are upright.

Silent. As perfectly ordered as books would be. But they are melted.

What would it be like to live in a library of melted books.

With sentences streaming over the floor and all the punctuation settled to the bottom as a residue.

It would be confusing. Unforgivable. A great adventure.

Roni Horn once told me that one of the Antarctic explorers said To be having an adventure

is a sign of incompetence. When I am feeling at my most incompetent

as I do in Stykkishólmur many a dark morning walking into the wind,

I try to conjure in mind something that is the opposite of incompetence. For example the egg.

This perfect form. Perfect content. Perfect food.

In your dreams said a more recent explorer (Anna Freud) you can have your eggs cooked as perfectly as you want

but you cannot eat them. Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep

because of the wind I go and stand in the library of glaciers.

I stand in another world. Not the past not the future. Not paradise not reality not

a dream. An other competence, Wild and constant.

Who knows why it exists. I stand amid glaciers. Listen to the wind outside

falling towards me from the outer edges of night and space. I have no theory of why we are here

or what any of us is a sign of. But a room of melted glaciers rocking in the nightwind of Stykkishólmur

is a good place to ponder it. Each glacier is lit from underneath as memory is.

Proust says memory is of two kinds. There is the daily struggle to recall where we put our reading glasses

and there is a deeper gust of longing that comes up from the bottom of the heart

involuntarily. At sudden times. For surprise reasons.

Here is an excerpt from a letter Proust wrote in 1913: We think we no longer love our dead

but that is because we do not remember them: suddenly we catch sight of an old glove

and burst into tears. Before leaving the library I turn off the lights.

The glaciers go dark. Then I return to Greta’s house. Wake up my husband.

Ask him to make us some eggs.

[maybuds]

The Want of Peace

by Wendell Berry

All goes back to the earth, and so I do not desire pride of excess or power, but the contentments made by men who have had little: the fisherman’s silence receiving the river’s grace, the gardener’s musing on rows. I lack the peace of simple things. I am never wholly in place. I find no peace or grace. We sell the world to buy fire, our way lighted by burning men, and that has bent my mind and made me think of darkness and wish for the dumb life of roots.

[maybuds]

rip mythbusters you would've loved destroying cybertrucks

[maybuds]

from the sea to the sea

2021

oil on linen

28 x 35 cm

[maybuds]

Amal (@/amalashuor) & her husband started off their week being woken up after the tide rose high enough to flood their tent, dragging out not just most of their belongings, and themselves into the cold sea, but their little 2yo girl Maryam too

Luckily all 3 of them are okay, but their tent is gone, their few belongings necessary for survival too (i.e., blankets, clothes). It's cold and its just gonna get colder, so please pitch in what you can to help. No donation is too small or meaningless in any way, especially right now. It'll go a long way in helping them get emergency supplies to survive the coming winter & keep their daughter warm & fed.

Amal's a fucking incredible, lovely person who's been put through a lot and survived, but right now she really needs our help

Please help out however you can 🙏

DONATE HERE // (vetted here, #175)

sorry about this, tagging for reach but if you'd like off leave a reply (& thanks for any rb's)

@postanagramgenerator @teethburied @jezior0 @skunkes @girlinafairytale

@littlegermanboy @fleshdyk3 @dykesbat @heydreamchild @neptunerings

@degenderates @they-bite @paandaan @ncutii-gatwa @buttercuparry

@roadimusprime @celadonwanderer @zigcarnivorous @tiredguyswag @ramshackledtrickster

@deathlonging @lugosis @necronatural @opencommunion @copepods

@rhubarbspring @czl @veri-berri @1hoverman0k @simcardiac-arrested

@basyacriptid @cookie-nom-nom @ryoki-ph @kyorru @wolvierinez

@talesfromthecrypts @crowlore @dudeiwannasleep @sprolden @schrodingers-slut

@rabdoidal @psychotrenny @richardgrimes @leepacey @glumby

@spooksier @eggpuffs @lisa-cuddys @bubmyg @anthonysperkins

[maybuds]

DEAN YOUNG

[maybuds]

Donate!!!!!! Boost!!!!!

[maybuds]

[maybuds]

Head of Dionysus uncovered in an archaeological dig in the ancient city of Aizanoi, Turkey.

[maybuds]

this Thanksgiving consider donating to Indigenous Women Rising a native run org that helps native/indigenous women in the US access abortion and reproductive care

[maybuds]

I’M GOING BACK TO MINNESOTA WHERE SADNESS MAKES SENSE

by Danez Smith

O California, don’t you know the sun is only a god if you learn to starve for him? I’m bored with the ocean I stood at the lip of it, dressed in down, praying for snow I know, I’m strange, too much light makes me nervous at least in this land where the trees always bear green. I know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful. Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California? The sun above you, the snow & stalled sea — a field of mirror all demanding to be the sun too, everything around you is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you & it’s so sad, you know? You’re the only warm thing for miles & the only thing that can’t shine.

[maybuds]

sometimes, when the light by Lisel Mueller

[maybuds]

the real challenge of adulthood that no one tells you about in advance is how many goddamn pieces of paper you have to keep up with that are never important until they are suddenly VERY important

[maybuds]

kin chan coedel

[maybuds]

Save my life 🙏🍉

Hi, my name is Saeed, I am 19 years old, I live in an unjust reality, the war on Gaza.

This war destroyed my ambitions to study engineering and robbed me of everything beautiful in my life that I lived with my family that embraced me, my father, mother, brothers, sisters and nephews. We had a beautiful house with its simplicity, where we lived a simple and beautiful life, but in this war our house was completely destroyed, our memories that we preserved and our unknown future, our present is more difficult than you can imagine. We have become living for the purpose of living only and escaping death, we die every moment to provide the necessities and requirements of life, we have felt the taste of death repeatedly, when you hear the sounds of bombs and explosions and see the remains and children and the panic that we live.

So we decided to travel from this place and move to a safe place, where we find the future and the present to build memories. But the cost of travel is very high and we cannot afford it. We need an amount of 5 thousand dollars for each person and my family consists of 9 people, as well as the cost after the travel until we find a safe haven. For the sake of humanity, for the sake of love, for the sake of humanity. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading the words I wrote about my suffering. Help me by donating and sharing.

Vetted by:

@90-ghost

Thank you all 🙏❤️❤️

Please help here 👇👇