“She sees herself as a tool for social activism and what she does with this tool is to shape into images of self-affirmation.”
Esther Oladapo: Art, Fashion, Image-Making and the Language of the Body
The Legendary Iranian Poet Who Gives Me Hope
“Read Forugh’s poems and you’ll find the very forces that shape our moment: misogyny, censorship, nativism, consumerism, the annihilating violence of war. Read her poems and you’ll find that they, like all the best poems, don’t merely offer a reprieve from the abuses and terrors of the world, but a repudiation of the forces that make those abuses and terrors possible: ignorance and political regimes for which ignorance has been and will always be their life’s blood.”
Lee Godie: Beauty in My Mind
“I always try to paint beauty, but some people say my paintings aren’t beautiful. Well I have beauty in my mind …”
Fiction: The Valley
“For the most part the armies marched through the valley, so that they might do battle elsewhere, but some, like the soldiers of the crocked cross and the soldiers of the blood red banner, had stayed and fought and died, and in so doing they watered the rich, rocky soil with their blood, and their sacrifice gave nourishment to the legends of the nationalist and internationalist alike.”
Darkness at Noon by Arthur Koestler
“In a prose style that is accessible and credible, it dissects with scalpel-like precision all the hypocrisy of the totalitarian mindset and sounds a clear and timeless warning to us all about the dangers of placing ideology before humanity.”
The Smoking Fish (El pez que fuma, 1977)
“Frequently claimed by critics as the best Venezuelan film ever made, El pez que fuma, (1977) was produced in the midst of the Oil Boom era and has since become a potent metaphor for the decadence at the height of Venezuela’s economic splendor.”
Ignorance and Want
his boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom …
Luna
Beautiful essay and paintings from Robert Beck.
Miep Gies: What Any Decent Person Would Have Done
“I am not a hero. I am not a special person, because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others. I did what any decent person would have done.”
In the Weeds
They’re not meant to last very long, these votives, these penny candles.
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