#Lerner

[senka-mesecine]

How do you think Barnes would react to nurse who caught his eye already having a relationship with someone like Gator, Chris or maybe even bunny?

-

You know what war produces plenty of? Widows.

Abandoned significant others.

Potentially broken up families.

The person of interest doesn't even have to be a nurse; could be a civilian. Could be someone said soldier(s) meet on R&R, could be a spouse, hey, could even be a sweetheart from a picture tucked into someone's breast pocket or locket --- could be a pen pal they've never even met; Barnes wants what he wants and the individual on the receiving end of your affection might just also mysteriously find themselves on the receiving end of a whole lot of tasks given as a direct order by the Staff Sergeant and said tasks might just be high risk or downright dangerous, as a mother of all coincidences. Can't refuse a direct order. Not without a court martial looming over your head for disobedience --- so Barnes is here deliberately weeding out the opposition by doing what he simply does every day; dishing out authority, notwithstanding the fact that I envision the man as incredibly jaded, cynical and bitter. Someone else in love just makes him roll his eyes. Say, someone like Gator, Chris or Bunny's in a happy relationship? They make a show of it? Or worse yet, they're secretive about it to the degree Barnes notices the conspiratorial behavior? Unrealistic! Waste of time! A folly of the childish and deluded! It's almost like the man wants to punish them for having their heads ''in the clouds'' or being idealistic over anything at all. For having something distracting them from the business of war.

For making them soft, the way he'd see it.

-"Y'all focus on the here and now!"- He might announce openly, as a memo.

-"Crap from the World belongs back in the World, not out here where there's shootin'. Gettin' your balls blown clean off over a letter."-

(In present day jargon, put away the damn phones, kids and pay attention to the homework).

Worst is, Barnes entirely means those words. He believes in them.

Sees love as a distraction all while simultaneously coveting it.

And hating the fact he does.

The soldier Barnes has it in for might not necessarily die per se because he'd view that as a waste of troops and I doubt he exactly likes that (in fact, he was shown to not like that) but they'll certainly go through so much trauma and unease Barnes hopes to god it cures them of their need for anything from the outside world, including you. By the time he's done with them, and by the time this war's done with them, they'll break it off with you on their own or simply disappear from your life; in modern terminology, go ghost on you --- a feeling Barnes very well understands, having been in The 'Nam for how many years now? Irony of all ironies, Barnes conducts said series of punishment and hardass behavior by effectively breaking up the relationship all while hiding his efforts under the facade of military strictness. And once the targeted soldier is so jaded themselves they've no interest left in love? The task is complete. Barnes might not make a move on the abandoned significant other himself immediately, but the fact that the path to them is open? That whatever rival he had is gone? That he achieved this? He already sees them as his in so many ways, it's just that they, the soldier they've broken up with and nobody else knows it yet. Barnes is a general destroyer of happiness and creator of misery; messes up someone else's joy and then goes and claims said joy for himself all while putting up a general front how he's 'above that shit'. He isn't, in fact, above that shit. He'd outright kill for that shit and if push came to shove and disciplinary measures and burdening the particular private he's made a covert enemy of doesn't cut it, flat out fragging will.

[gsartecucina]

#Lerner: "Io oggi sono stato a portare la mia solidarietà ai ragazzi di Ultima generazione a Milano… " #Santanchè: "Io non sarei orgogliosa di un figlio che va a imbrattare le istituzioni con la vernice. Ma come può difenderli? " L’offesa fatta ai genitori dei ragazzi di #ultimagenerazione, rende l’idea di come questo governo non ha senso democratico. Non ascoltare i giovani è fascismo! Sopprimere la libertà di espressione è dittatura! Giudicare il popolo è autarchia alla sovranità del popolo. La massa! #cartabianca https://www.instagram.com/p/CnRJ1zcLpimKgQP44d2wIr7JG4oltIjsYE15DU0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[quotespile]

But there are no grown-ups, that’s what you must grow up to know fully; your parents were just two more bodies experiencing landscape and weather, trying to make sense by vibrating columns of air, redescribing contingency as necessity...

Ben Lerner, The Topeka School

[archerinventive]

A huge shoutout this Saturday to the amazing cast and crew of Camelot performing at the Village Theater in Issaquah this weekend.

I had the pleasure of attending with Rae last night and it was such a delight.

The bagpipes part just killed me. 🤣

Highly recommend catching a show if you can. They'll also be performing in Everett October 19th - Nov 10th.

[hadesoftheladies]

masculinity is 99.9% grooming boys to be the bestest toy soldiers ever. the violence it is characterized by, so that oligarchs can always have bodies to throw at the territory they want from their competitors. “you are savage” “a meat-eater” “such a strong little boy” “buy another shooting video game” you are being bred for a war that will never end because the greed of your overlords has no limits. war wouldn’t happen if men didn’t start them and hinge the global economy on them. they want men to identify with the role they want them to play. and it’s worked so brilliantly. they really think they’re heroes. male identity is so steeped in violence on a peer and societal level. and it’s been happening for ages.

[gacougnol]

Nathan Lerner ( Chicago, 1913 - 1997)

Untitled

New York, 20th century

[somerabbitholes]

my second ben lerner book — charming, self-affacing without being insincere, with traces of what eventually became the hatred of poetry, committed to poetry without being able to define it, drifting but not aimlessly, and so, so funny

[operaqueen]

Julie Andrews during costume fittings for the original Broadway production of Camelot. New York - 1960.

[gatheringbones]

[“While my own associations to the word “conservative” are not great ones, this word best describes my attitude toward personal change. Just as we strive for change, we also strive to conserve what is most valuable and familiar in our selves. And in a society where we are constantly being pressured to improve, actualize, and perfect our selves, it is probably wise to question why we should change at all and who is prescribing the changes. Often we wish to get rid of some part of our selves—as we would an inflamed appendix—without recognizing the positive aspects of a particular “negative” trait or behavior. Few things are “all good” or “all bad.”

I recall a meeting of my women’s group many years back when we had a little too much to drink and went around the circle sharing what we liked the very best and the very least about each other. Interestingly, what was labeled “the best” and “the worst” for each person turned out to be one and the same, or more accurately, different variations on the same theme. If least liked was one woman’s tendency to hog the group spotlight, what was most liked was her energetic and entertaining personality. If least liked was another woman’s failure to be straightforward, direct, and spontaneous, what was most liked was her kindness, tact, and respect for the feelings of others. If another’s sense of entitlement and “Me first!” attitude pushed the group’s buttons, it was her ability to identify her own goals and “go for it” that was most admired. And so it went.

That evening I began to have a renewed appreciation for the inseparable nature of our strengths and weaknesses. Far from being opposites, they are woven from the same strands. This experience also reinforced a direction I was moving in professionally. Early on in my career as a therapist, I deemed it my job to help my patients rid themselves of certain qualities—stubbornness, silence, demandingness, oppositionalism, or any other trait or behavior that seemed to make their life (or my work) especially difficult. Or perhaps I wanted them to be closer to their fathers, more independent from their mothers, or more (or less) ambitious, self-seeking, self-disclosing, or assertive. I discovered, however, that I could be far more helpful when I was able to identify and appreciate the positive aspects of what was seemingly most negative. Paradoxically, this appreciation was what left my clients freer to get on with the business of change.”]

harriet lerner, from the dance of intimacy: a woman’s guide to courageous acts of change in key relationships

[haggishlyhagging]

Isaac Newton, in his famous aphorism—which actually originated with Bernard of Chartres—"If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants," expressed the mode by which the thought of men was shaped into the major concepts of Western civilization. Men created written history and benefited from the transmittal of knowledge from one generation to the other, so that each great thinker could stand “on the shoulders of giants,” thereby advancing thought over that of previous generations with maximum efficiency. Women were denied knowledge of their history, and thus each woman had to argue as though no woman before her had ever thought or written. Women had to use their energy to reinvent the wheel, over and over again, generation after generation. Men argued with the giants that preceded them; women argued against the oppressive weight of millennia of patriarchal thought, which denied them authority, even humanity, and when they had to argue they argued with the "great men" of the past, deprived of the empowerment, strength and knowledge women of the past could have offered them. Since they could not ground their argument in the work of women before them, thinking women of each generation had to waste their time, energy and talent on constructing their argument anew. Yet, they never abandoned the effort. Generation after generation, in the face of recurrent discontinuities, women thought their way around and out from under patriarchal thought.

-Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Feminist Consciousness

[menheim]

Julian Lerner 🤍

via TikTok

[malestarssockedfeet]

[joeinct]

The Shopping Bag, Tokyo, Photo by Nathan Lerner, 1976

[quotespile]

Think about how often — before cell phones, before any kind of caller ID — you answered the landline as a child and had to have an exchange, however brief, with aunts or uncles or family friends. Even if it was that five-second check-in, How are you doing, how is school, is your mom around — it meant periodic real-time vocal contact with an extended community, which, through repetition, it reinforced.

Ben Lerner, The Topeka School

[susansontag]

I adore this essay about emily dickinson and her place in feminist history by gerda lerner... you can tell emily is so important to her. from the creation of feminist consciousness.

[pullman-lewis]

via grahampmartin’s ig story