#arabelle sicardi

[uaravsh]

"What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in the world this year? But most importantly: what have you found to be unkillable?"

- Arabelle Sicardi, The Year In Ugliness

[sameoldloneliness]

"like a wild animal gnawing off a leg to escape the jaws of a trap, i force myself to find new places to call home. inescapable choices to deal with inescapable tragedies. i just worry that i only have so many legs to stand on, and one day i'll fall and hit the basement of loneliness."

what is the nature of sacrifice?

fake out - fall out boy // atonement (2007) // the year in ugliness by arabelle sicardi // 14 lines from love letters or suicide notes by doc luben // crazy rich asians (2018) // the perks of being a wallflower (2012) // symphony no. 2 in c minor, or the resurrection symphony - gustav mahler // myself

[apollos-first-song]

The Year in Ugliness

By:Arabelle Sicardi

If beauty is in acts of ordinary devotion I think ugliness must be in the acts of everyday neglect, small gestures that chip and chip and eventually rip shards of what it means to be human, to be loved and loving, out of you. It is easy to pretend nothing is happening. It is easy to walk quickly past something that makes you uncomfortable. It is easy to freeze and stay frozen until your chance is gone. It is easy to save yourself first. It is easy to turn and keep walking. It’s instinctual. That does not mean it is forgivable. Fixing everything in the world is impossible. But it is also impossible to know how much a little thing can count for. Not knowing and not daring to find out—that is ugliness, too.

Claudia Rankine wrote that loneliness is what we can’t do for each other.

I think a definition of ugliness is what we’re too afraid to do. What we don’t want to do.

*

What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in the world this year? But most importantly: what have you found to be unkillable?

[agirlbetweentwoseas]

Arabelle Sicardi 'The Year in Ugliness'

[kiki-de-la-petite-flaque]

— Arabelle Sicardi, from “The Year in Ugliness.”

[ofnightsandmusic]

The Year in Ugliness

by Arabelle Sicardi

The Poetry Project

If beauty is in acts of ordinary devotion I think ugliness must be in the acts of everyday neglect, small gestures that chip and chip and eventually rip shards of what it means to be human, to be loved and loving, out of you. It is easy to pretend nothing is happening. It is easy to walk quickly past something that makes you uncomfortable. It is easy to freeze and stay frozen until your chance is gone. It is easy to save yourself first. It is easy to turn and keep walking. It’s instinctual. That does not mean it is forgivable. Fixing everything in the world is impossible. But it is also impossible to know how much a little thing can count for. Not knowing and not daring to find out—that is ugliness, too.

Claudia Rankine wrote that loneliness is what we can’t do for each other.

I think a definition of ugliness is what we’re too afraid to do. What we don’t want to do.

*

What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in the world this year? But most importantly: what have you found to be unkillable?

[feminerds]

Page 1:

25 March 2023

First quarter of the year is about to draw to a close.

Same old bad brain, well if it isn't me breaking my own heaart. I wish I just didn't feel or process things, I do [sic] the way I do.

Always thinking 'About Adam'

"Hey Bird! I know the true name of god."

Without really thinking about it, I have started yelling this at wild animals that look at me. I think I say it because it's what I hear or feel when animals look at me. I'm curious if this is something I've seen in a film or picked up from somewhere, if feels affected, but I honestly cannot place it, or at least I cannot place it, to a place outside of me?

Mangawhai, Aotearoa

Do you suppose birds know about negative space and gaps and silences in the text? (This is kind of a joke about the QLD English syllabus in 2004)

Page 2:

21 March 2023

Solving <Laceration Gravity?

Solving Wobbly Stars

Gravity vs Yearning

An icon for the growing plurality of voices and perspectives? in STEM? In the world?

Lens and Light

This is kind of the main ideaa I've been noodling with for a[nother] zine I want to eventually make about the star as symbol. Like it's definitely cool and interesting that stars are one of the constants in all representational art. Like celestial bodies are one of the first things we record, as culture, as people, we see them and we want to draw them! Currently there is a trend or movement or feature of a lot of indie art in the late 2010/early 2020s to include twinkles or sparkling ornamentation in illustrations. Ornamentation, of course, is hardly new, and neither are stars in art (the seven sisters babyyyyyyy), but the twinkle style is kind of evolving at the moment. With what I recognise as a recent spike in representing the star/twinkle as irregular or wobbly. This is also an evolving aesthetic in many areas of contemporary life, I see it especially clearly in jewelry design right now. Previously stars were represented as point lights, and then regular radial point lights, not exclusively but predominantly. I think that the transition from point lights to regular radial point lights is related to increased access to lenses and viewing apparatus. The anime style four point twinkle, made enormously famous by shows like Sailor Moon, rose to its huge cultural status in lockstep with the deluge of space images from the Hubble Space Telescope (and other contemporary terrestrial telescopes which also featured photographic artifacts or diffraction patterns derived from the four struts used to support the primary mirror), which of course impacted contemporary artists. We are already beginning to see the impact of the James Webb Space Telescope in contemporary art/fashion/popular aesthetic. However I place the emergence of the "wobbly star"TM not solely on the shoulders of JWST, but on the subsequent realisation that the change in the star pattern from HST to JWST, broke the spell of the four point star as a given, the four point diffraction pattern for the first time since We started receiving space photographs was recognised as an artifact not a natural aspect of stars. Astronomers and Physicists stayed knowing this, of course, but we needed the images to change to know this - maybe that's true for them too?

Any way, this change in the image then supposes a new series of questions for us.

Where is the image constructed?

The Star itself? The collisions that create the photons? The distance the light traverses? The atmosphere it then travels through? The increasing molecular density that filters it? The lens that refocuses it? And then the lens that refocuses that? The housing of that lens, its shape, form and material? The sensor/s that captures the light? The codex used to record the data? Or the codex that in turn decodes this data into an image? The screen that projects it? The printer that produces it? The eye that captures that reflection? Or the mind that understands it?

How many lens known and unknown does light pass through before we recognise it as an image?

The wobbly or irregular star, in some ways implicates the 'suture lines' of the optical nerve, that to each person create a unique diffraction pattern, in each eye separately. It implicates the messiness of receiving an image, the unusually unique circumstances of receiving an image. I like to think of it as a sign or symbol of the beginning of understanding the necessity and value of diversity in STEM (maybe, at least I hope it is) and maybestars more broadly just in people. I think the wobbly star comes very specifically out of this moment, from modernity and identity politics and anime and space telescopes and instagram and printers and physicists, and that's all very exciting. I like when society sublimates a thing happening in many places into an aesthetic and a symbol. That stars can be so many things to so many people, points, like a star in many directions. To our diversity, but also to our sameness. That we all look up.

[wovi]

*

maggie smith / arabelle sicardi / @holly-warbs / joyce liao

[aropride]

"A few weeks ago, I came across the knowledge that gauze - the word and the cloth itself - comes from Gaza. Gauze, that lightweight open-weave cotton fabric, breathable, forgiving, found in any well-stocked First Aid Kit and certainly any medical establishment - it’s from Gaza. It was originally made of silk and used in clothing, and now it is made of silk, cotton, and other kinds of fabrics. But the origins lie in Gaza, a place now being utterly decimated, where the hospitals are bombed, where surgeons are having to perform on children, often their own, with no anesthesia, no medications, no sterilized environment and often no…gauze. To have given the world something synonymous with care, with healing, and to be deprived of it so utterly - is that not the saddest, most haunting thing?"

The History of Gauze is Haunting Me, Arabelle Sicardi

[89rooms]

Fragrance has always been next to holiness to me, in different ways — my casual visits to Churches and my hours in temples. I thought my nose was broken everywhere else: I couldn’t smell food, it held no memory, but I could divine the smell of Gods. They smelled to me like incense and still water.

Arabelle Sicardi - 'Perfume, Power, and God'

[frameacloud]

Arabelle Sicardi (September 8, 2015). "How I Survived Mental Abuse in My Relationship — and What You Can Learn From It: It's called gaslighting, and it's a serious issue." Teen Vogue.

[ombre-ame]

Fragrance has always been next to holiness to me, in different ways — my casual visits to Churches and my hours in temples. I thought my nose was broken everywhere else: I couldn’t smell food, it held no memory, but I could divine the smell of Gods. They smelled to me like incense and still water.

Arabelle Sicardi, Perfume, Power, and God

[thedarkacademiastuff]

What part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in the world this year? But most importantly: what have you found to be unkillable?

- Arabelle Sicardi

[moribundr]

𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝘎𝘈𝘉𝘙𝘐𝘌𝘓 𝘙𝘌𝘠𝘌𝘚

𝗶. 𝐁𝐑𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐑 𝐑𝐔𝐍 𝐅𝐀𝐒𝐓 - KALEO /

i've got my heart bleeding for a change i've stood by and closed my eyes in shame you'll see them someday, you'll find them again as the good Lord will give, the good Lord will take

𝗶𝗶. 𝐘𝐎𝐔 𝐀𝐈𝐍'𝐓 𝐂𝐎𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐁𝐀𝐂𝐊 - Zeal & Ardor / these are the eyes that saw them die these are the hands that dug their graves so don't let anybody tell you that you're safe so don't let anybody tell you that you're safe 𝗶𝗶𝗶. 𝐁𝐎𝐓𝐇 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐓 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐆𝐑𝐀𝐕𝐄 - MF Graves /

i’ve done a lot of bad things nightmares never any dreams cold sweat kind of screams some people just can’t be saved 𝗶𝘃. 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐁𝐘 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐄𝐑 - Mitchel Dae / cause my weight started shifting from all the decisions that lead me up to this moment right now and my will's growing weaker as I'm sinkin' deeper in a place that I just want to get out 𝘃. 𝐋𝐔𝐌𝐏 - The Man Who / don't want to feel what I've become so I'll sit here getting numb there's a lump that won't go, that won't go there's a lump in my throat

𝐅𝐈𝐕𝐄 𝐐𝐔𝐎𝐓𝐄𝐒 𝐅𝐎𝐑 𝘎𝘈𝘉𝘙𝘐𝘌𝘓 𝘙𝘌𝘠𝘌𝘚

𝗶. who hasn't wondered: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person? / clarice lispector, a hora da estrela.

𝗶𝗶. what part of yourself did you have to destroy in order to survive in the world this year? but most importantly: what have you found to be unkillable? / arabelle sicardi, the year in ugliness.

𝗶𝗶𝗶. sure, i am the monster. sure, i'm the one eating my own heart. / dispatch, cameron awkward-rich.

𝗶𝘃. some nights i wake and everything hurts a little. it is amazing how long a ruined thing will burn. / paul guest, 1987.

𝘃. i've had so many knives stuck into me, when they hand me a flower i can't quite make out what it is. it takes time. / charles bukowski, screams from the balcony.

tagging: @femtaile , @strikecommanded , @biolightflower

[olreid]

1 + 15 🕺

What are 2-5 already published fiction books you think you want to read in 2023?

lote by shola von reinhold, hell followed with us by andrew joseph white, mickey 7 by ashton edward, the book of goose by yiyun li, and of course assassin's apprentice by robin hobb due to your impact : )

15. Any other reading you'll do in 2023 that you want to recommend to folks? Newspapers, substack, favorite blog, etc?

lol i dont really read substacks except for ave's and anne boyer's and arabelle sicardi's #rookienation.... i subscribe to the transgender studies quarterly and try to keep up with that, its usually also at least partially available online for free... i have been following the launch of parapraxis mag online; even though psychoanalysis really does nothing for me there are a lot of scholars i respect associated with the outlet so i am trying to be open minded and i have liked what ive read so far. i read the chicago review of books intermittently! and i of course follow many excellent blogs but i always get shy about tagging them so i will plead the fifth

[changingmymajortojoan]

this perfume smells so good i literally want to drink it... i got a sample as part of arabelle sicardi's recent perfume pages but the full bottle is like $155 rest in peace