but the white raspberries are ripe

something i have always found really weird is when english texts italicize words from other languages.

i remember reading a book as a kid and the author continually italicizing the word tamales

official linguistics post

[ID: A tag that says "#i think youd love the poem Kupu rere kē #this post reminded me of that" followed by the poem "Kupu rere kē", posted by About Alice Te Punga Somerville. It reads:

The entire poem is in italics but for the word "Aotearoa". End ID]

I've seen this before, but it's been years and it just came across my Twitter in its dying days. The words are from a favorite author of mine, Maggie Stiefvater, and they are the words I most need to hear when it comes to dealing with chronic pain and illness. I didn't need this the first time I saw it, six years ago. I need it now. Maybe you do, too.

[Text ID: a very wise woman gave me a piece of advice. She told me to start a journal. In the morning, she said, write down the percentage that I felt I was that day. 20% Maggie. 90% Maggie. Then I should write down what I accomplished that day. I thought at that point she was going to tell me to admire how much I'd gotten done each day despite M a being ill. I didn't want that, I didn't need a pep talk. I needed my brain.

But that wasn't what she said. She told me: write down what you've managed to do on a 20% day, what you've managed to do on a 40% day. Eventually you'll have a guide so when you wake up and you're a 20%, you won't try to do the things you do on a 40% day. You'll know you can just go watch a movie or sit with your goats or whatever and not feel guilt, because you were never going to write words you could keep or be able to exercise or whatever.

And that was the right way.

It meant I no longer labored for 12 hours each day, doing nothing but trying to smash my way through a draft. Instead I slowly began to write bits and bobs in on my good days. A funny thing happened then: once I was not spending every second forcing myself to do things I couldn't, I found I had enough energy to actually start to work on myself. To look for patterns in my good and bad days. To research healthcare providers and new studies on what was wrong with me still. Slowly I found I was able to chain more of the 60% days together, then 80% days. Slowly I began to relaize that although it was taking months, I was improving overall. /end ID]

file -> phrases that are going to shift something in me forever

[ID:

A tweet by @/ihcarama that reads: putting on my gorgeous chocolate brown wool coat & my good loafers just to go to cvs because everyday is all there is

/end ID]

ID: close up of two cartons of bright red strawberries /end ID

Fresh mint and flowering thyme tea

[ID: a glass teapot with fresh herbs and water inside, a blue and white mug on a saucer, a ceramic lamp, an orange bowl, and a little glass jar with a lid sit on a table, illuminated by the lamplight. End ID]

[image text:

[Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape]

Rainer Maria Rilke 1875-1926

Again and again, even though we know love’s landscape

and the little churchyard with its lamenting names

and the terrible reticent gorge in which the others

end: again and again the two of us walk out together

under the ancient trees, lay ourselves down again and again

among the flowers, and look up into the sky.

/end ID]

[ID: Art of Sayaka, facing the viewer. She is wearing full-body plate armor with a white cape fastened over it, and holds a sword in her left hand. Her face and neck are exposed; her hair is short and blue, and she looks intently at the camera. The background of the image behind her is made up of recurring geometric patterns in green and black (beneath her cape) and multicolored red/pink/white (above it). The entire image is covered with circular and oval drips, as if the artwork itself is melting. Most notably, Sayaka's head is split partially in half, and color drips down the center of the image, across her armor, as one half of the head falls away from the other. The art is bordered with a red lined border studded with small hearts and bloody daggers. End ID.]

by Alice White

[ID: a poem titled, "answering her question." it reads: "my sister taught me a parenting trick for when kids ask a difficult question like "is santa claus real?" or "what is sex?" simply ask, in earnest, "What do you think?" and listen. at the least, it buys you time. my daughter, three, in the car one evening, is silent. then asks, "mama, will i die?" i just drive. try to keep the car tethered to the earth. somehow the trick surfaces within me and i ask, "what do you think?" in the rearview mirror i see her smile looking out at the purple sky. she says "i think i will never die." i tell her "that's what i think, too." and i do, i do. end ID.]

transcript:

THINGS TO DO IN THE BELLY OF THE WALE

Measure the walls. Count the ribs. Notch the long days. Look up for blue sky through the spout. Make small fires with the broken hulls of fishing boats. Practice smoke signals. Call old friends, and listen for echoes of distant voices. Organize your calendar. Dream of the beach. Look each way for the dim glow of light. Work on your reports. Review each of your life’s ten million choices. Endure moments of self-loathing. Find the evidence of those before you. Destroy it. Try to be very quiet, and listen for the sound of gears and moving water. Listen for the sound of your heart. Be thankful that you are here, swallowed with all hope,where you can rest and wait. Be nostalgic. Think of all the things you did and could have done. Remember treading water in the center of the still night sea, your toespointing again and again down, down into the black depths.

oh emily wilson translation of the iliad we’re really in it now

[ID: text excerpt with all text highlighted in yellow except for the last sentence, reading:

You already know the story. You will die. Everyone you love with also die. You will lose them forever. You will be sad and angry. You will weep. You will bargain. You will make demands. You will beg. You will pray. It will make no difference. Nothing you can do will bring them back. You know this. Your knowing changes nothing. This poem will make you understand this unfathomable truth again and again, as if for the very first time.

/end ID.]

Peachtober day 5: Fawn

[image description: a black and white watercolor painting with pen outlines, of several fawns with glowing blank white eyes. there are enough of them to fill the page, all looking forward at the viewer, and their legs and bodies fade into the black background. /end i.d.]

LUCILLE CLIFTON

[Image ID: A poem titled "poem on my fortieth birthday to my mother who died young." The poem reads:

"well i have almost come to the place where you fell

tripping over a wire at the forty-fourth lap

and i have decided to keep running,

head up, body attentive, fingers

aimed like darts at first prize, so

i might not even watch out for the thin thing

grabbing towards my ankles but

i'm trying for the long one mama,

running like hell and if i fall

i fall." End ID.]

— Hildegard von Bingen, from ‘Selected Writings’ (via wraith-lace)

i was a blur flinching at the word “lesbian” spat from my mothers mouth, 

10 years and a gender affirming surgery later i found my womanhood on your lips

[ ID: Digital sketched, pencilled colored lightly warm toned art. Two women in a room. One sits on a blue bed. She is tall, thin, light skinned, lightly curling long blonde haired, has stubble. Wears a choker, a necklace with interlocked Venus symbols, black bra with white ribbon, shorts. The other is short, lighter tan, very short cropped light strawberry blonde hair. Much of body is not shown in drawing, unclear what she wears or not.

Tall woman sits on a blue bed, one finger touching with the others hand reached out. In other hand she holds a syringe. Her face is partly covered by her hair, she bends down and smiles. The other is on the ground with one hand on knee and the other hand with a finger out touching the tall woman’s hand. She looks up and smiles at her.

Background is yellow. A poster or window is seen in the back. To the front a shelf top holds what looks like a medicine bottle- a 200mg vial of estradiol cypionate   and some kind of basket. 

They are both backlighted by yellow, maybe sunlight. end ID] 

Kiki Smith, Constellation, 1996

[IDs: three photos - two close ups and one wide shot - of an art installation that comprises of glass sculptures of animals and many pointed starbursts on sheets of dark blue fabric cut and arranged into a large circle over a wooden floor. The first image shows a detail shot of a glass scorpion and two glass bears resting on the dark blue fabric with stars strewn around them. They are also surrounded by little dark dots. In the second image sits a rabbit and what might be a small sheep, with some stars to their right, as well as clumps of the dark dots. The glass of these creatures is highlighted white with light, and shaded in the curves of the smooth glass with the blue background of the fabric. The third photo is from far back, showing the entire scene of various animals and stars arranged on the blue circle. /end IDs.]

the audre lorde questionnaire to oneself, intended as a creative writing exercise by Divya Victor, who asks to be credited

[ID: piece titled "The Audre Lorde Questionnaire to Oneself" which reads

"1. What are the words you do not have yet? [Or, "for what do you not have words, yet?"]

2. What do you need to say? [List as many words as necessary.]

3. "What are the tyrannies you swallow day by day and attempt to make your own, until you will sicken and die of them, still in silence?" [List as many as necessary today. Then write a new list tomorrow. And the day after.]

4. If we have been "socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language, and definition", ask yourself: "What's the worst that could happen to me if I tell this truth?" [So, answer this today. And every day.]

Adapted from "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action," collected in The Cancer Journals."

/end ID]

from lineage, with one question by silas denver melvin, published in issue 2 of The Garlic Press

[ID: poem as credited above with opening lines reading

"where did you come from?

can i say leaving? can i tell you there was a pinhole of ink eating the light before i was even born? i come from the already dead, the stupid-drunk, from a hereditary crazy that needs to be walked like a great dane. can i say that?"

/end ID]