Tilly, 19. Literature, Art, Feminism, Magpies.
“ We stand on the brink of a precipice. We peer into the abyss - we grow sick and dizzy. Our first impulse is to shrink from the danger. Unaccountably we remain. By slow degrees our sickness and dizziness and horror become merged in a cloud of unnameable feeling. By graduations, still more imperceptible, this cloud assumes shape, as did the vapor from the bottle out of which arose the genius in the Arabian Nights. But out of this our cloud upon the precipice’s edge, there grows into palpability, a shape, far more terrible than any genius or any demon of a tale, and yet it is but a thought, although a fearful one, and one which chills the very marrow of our bones with the fierceness of the delight of its horror. It is merely the idea of what would be our sensations during the sweeping precipitancy of a fall from such a height. And this fall - this rushing annihilation - for the very reason that it involves one of the most ghastly and loathsome images of death and suffering which have ever presented themselves to our imagination - for this very cause do we now the most vividly desire it. And because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore we do most impetuously approach it. There is no passion in nature so demoniacally impatient, as that of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus mediates a plunge. To indulge, for a moment, in any attempt at thought, is to be inevitably lost; for reflection but urges us to forbear, and therefore it is, I say, that we cannot. If there be no friendly arm to check us, or if we fail in a sudden effort to prostrate ourselves backward from the abyss, we plunge, and are destroyed.
—
Edgar Allen Poe, The Imp of the Perverse.
—
Edgar Allen Poe, The Imp of the Perverse.
I’m going to an obnoxious number of places this summer. Rome, Venice, Florence, Milan, Naples and Calabria for my ancient and Renaissance kicks, and then New York for my modern ones.
OH, MY BANK ACCOUNT.
BUT OH, THE EXCITEMENT.
A twenty-strong group of Japanese tourists all just stopped across the road and took DSLR photos of my house. How surreal.
Small Things, Sophie Mackintosh
There’s emptiness here that rings in your bones
like a tuning fork, so you need really
to concentrate on small things; blades of grass
edging through the concrete.
The wind picking out
the shivers along your skin.
You should walk. Let your footsteps charm up
an echo, the company
of ghost feet
and keep thinking of small things. Like the way
you ring doorbells and then run your lungs raw, the way
you write messages in the dust
filming the windows
though there’s nobody to read them.
“ The clinging to easy stereotypes is a reflexive response to a traumatic event. But to be governed by such preconceived notions and monochromatic generalizations leads to xenophobia and a distorted reality. Inter-marriages between Muslims, Christians, and Jews are commonplace in the Muslim world, and there are sizeable Christian populations throughout the Middle East that have lived in harmony with their Muslim neighbors for generations. But we hear and see only the violent images, and this misperception shapes our worldview. Consider another example. Over the past 25 years, Muslim majorities have elected five women as heads of state in the Muslim world (Tansu Ciller in Turkey, Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, Hasina Wajed and Khaleda Zia in Bangladesh, and Megawati Sukarnoputri in Indonesia). Notwithstanding our verbiage of female empowerment and liberation, we have yet to elect a single woman as president in the US. The Quran is the only sacred text that devotes an entire chapter to the rights of women. In fact, women in Europe could not inherit property independent of their husbands up until the 18th century. Islam over 1,400 years ago gave women the rights of inheritance, work, and hold public office. But the misperception of a Muslim woman that is veiled and oppressed guides our thinking.
—
—
Reflections on Good and Evil by Ali M. Nizamuddin at the ISPU (via hermionejg)
- I’m watching the debate on Thursday’s Question Time concerning the role of race in the Rochdale sex arrests, and this is so pertinent.
“ But she was in a mood when it is almost physically disagreeable to interrupt the stride of one’s thought. She liked getting hold of some book, and keeping it to herself, and gnawing its contents in privacy, and pondering the meaning without sharing her thoughts with anyone.
—Night And Day by Virginia Woolf (via hermionejg)
—Night And Day by Virginia Woolf (via hermionejg)
(Source: fuckyeahvirginiawoolf, via hermionejg)
POEM TIME
Summer in the City
This afternoon postcards with the Queen’s head on them
have been quietly disappearing from the soggy racks, as dozens
of us have scrawled I MISS YOU IT’S AWFUL on the back
not knowing where to send them. Or so I like to think.
Though perhaps there are others whose knees buckle on buses
crashing through Catford, sometimes, when Crazy Bus Lady, a local
celebrity, throws back her head to howl Amazing Grace
at us, the rattling cattle. There must be others who notice
rain-beaten cafe tables and secluded spots in parks
where someone is missing, who pass through a square remembering
its Legoland equivalent. By the way, the woman we saw
in her black and white silks and painted misery
is still there, sobbing on the street corner as if all her bones
are breaking to pieces, the hat by her feet glinting toothily
with pound coins. Everywhere I go I hear brass bands.
Annie Katchinska
