5. I am composing on the typewriter late at night, thinking of today. How well we all spoke. A language is a map of our failures. Frederick Douglass wrote an English purer than Milton’s. People suffer highly in poverty. There are methods but we do not use them. Joan, who could not read, spoke some peasant form of French. Some of the suffering are: it is hard to tell the truth; this is America; I cannot touch you now. In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger. The burning of a book arouses no sensation in me. I know it hurts to burn. There are flames of napalm in Catonsville, Maryland. I know it hurts to burn. The typewriter is overheated, my mouth is burning. I cannot touch you and this is the oppressor’s language.
— “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children,” Adrienne Rich (via whatiwanttosaytoyou)
“Here is a kiss to you and one for Diego and one for Donald. Please write to me when you have time about Diego’s eyes.”
Frida Kahlo
events happen, then are located further and further in the past
it is unbearably painful for the soul to love silently.
— Anna Akhmatova, The Complete Poems (via beryl-azure)
Roberto Jamora
things almost got completely out of hand and we were just having fun
silkscreen print on Stonehenge paper, edition of 8 with 2 APs, 21x30”, 2012
Dress
Mitsuyo Furukawa (35 at the time) was in her garden (1,600 meters from the hypocenter) watering the vegetables. Although she was badly burned on her chest and arms, she wandered around the scorched land for a week, looking for Mieko, her eldest daughter, who had been mobilized for fire preventing work at Tsurumi-cho. This is the dress she was wearing then.
Dear, my deer, I found you in the forest, a ghost carrying other ghosts (via Were I So Besotted: Dear my deer)
A kiss on the forehead—erases misery.
I kiss your forehead.
— Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine (via proustitute)
I got your Letter, and the Birds—
The Maples never knew that you were coming—
— Emily Dickinson, from “[1320]” (via proustitute)
