godrevy

[godrevy]

feeling vindicated by seeing something with the same central preoccupation as my old work recently published as an article. common recognition of central concerns of the text they both focus on (which hadn't previously received critical attention). pleased that i think my argument took the analysis to a slightly sharper point, even if it now looks unwieldly and not as tightly conceived. pleased that i never tried to publish it as i think the reworking the ideas have got in my work since then have given it more historical texture and a better focus. but nice to see the starting point for all of this validated/vindicated by being in common with others indepdent and very excellent thinking and writing as i feel sometimes my arguments and convictions fall apart like ashes under my own later gaze

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[godrevy]

12. The ethics of incomprehensibility, Giovanni Stanghellini. in One Century of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology

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[godrevy]

as a teenager i used to sleep as much as i could. i wanted to dream, to have access to events and spaces that i lacked in real life (love, freedom; an erotic life). it was partly a space of wish fulfilment, as sometimes i could direct them towards what i hoped to see. but the fulfilment of my wishes was ultimately elusive as i found the person i most often hoped to dream of was the one person i couldn't summon in lucid or directed dreaming, no matter how hard i tried. often, i was chasing her in my dreams, going over and over the places where i might see her and coming away empty handed in dreaming and in life. and when she did come into my dreams, the dream relation was often hostile or a rejection. but dreaming, and she in my dreams, were touchstones or totems i searched for repeatedly for many years. the tension between the pursuit of satisfaction in dreams which could never be repeated in life, the belief in dreams as conveyers of meanings otherwise lost to me, and the powers of the unconscious to subvert, surprise, and overtake conscious desires.

in the last few days i have found myself sleeping much later than i normally do. when i wake up, i keep shutting my eyes and hoping to dream. this morning i got up to feed the cats and came back to bed. i am stressed and tired, having missed a (soft) deadline. i am feeling bad about the quality and value my work and my capacity to perform and complete it. many of the dreams have been erotic (but necessarily sexual) - charged three-way relations between my partner, myself, and an older woman as we all are on holiday in corfu or greece in a hotel that is narrow like a corridor and leads in a straight line directly out on to the shore and to the sea. there were other dreams too - large and well-populated dreams with bright colours and rich landscapes. a war memorial on a hill as a repeated location to return to in one dream, a locus of a trip repeatedly taken

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[godrevy]

Marsha P. Johnson, co-founder of Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries, at a gay rights demonstration in Albany, New York, March 14, 1971. Photo by Diana Davies.

#marsha p johnson #star #street transvestite action revolutionaries

[godrevy]

trying to be and am grateful as i go back to work and face recurrent work demons. i am so happy when im not working, like a different person. a beam of sunshine my sister said. find purpose in joining demonstrations and being with people, not working makes me more helpful and kind to my partner. i have more patience and time for my cats. i could stop the phd now and be done with it. i think i would be happier without it and im not sure if i finished how i would keep working well if i was lucky enough to find a job. id like to teach. but my work turns to ashes in front of me when i turn to it, and i barely can turn to it directly. i love art and humanity and history and life and i feel my senses undeadenjng the more i can find my way back to these. but my work, that is such an expression of these things, feels too hard to do. someone wrote recently that wanting to find out how time regained ended was the reason they decided not to kill themselves. it was comforting to hear that this person i admire a lot had been in such a low moment. im coming back to life and reawakening or awakening for the first time sensually but i can’t square work with this. i sit down and i can’t look at it. today was a wipe out despite spending 7 hours ‘at work’. but i was happy outside of work. but we might have bedbugs which i can’t think about.

it feels odd to come back to tumblr but its the only space that feels anonymous enough to do a semi-journal. but happy for now.

[godrevy]

“Military occupations have always seemed irreversible, until in fact they are reversed, but it always takes the effort of the colonized to roll back what the colonizers have done. Occupations never ended voluntarily, or just because the more powerful nation wanted it, and have certainly never been the result of a one-sided negotiated settlement initiated and controlled by the dominant power.”

— Edward Said, “Bitter Truths About Gaza”, Peace and Its Discontents (1996)

#edward said #gaza

[godrevy]

For the vertical transcendence of the absolute–of the Truth, of the Idea, of the Other–is in a way substituted a respect toward the horizontal transcendence of the other which calls for a different discourse, a different logic, a different relation to perfection. The mastery of the universe is transformed into the elaboration of a shared universe.

Luce Irigaray, The Way of Love, (London and New York, 2002), p. 9

#remember

[godrevy]

Etel Adnan’s 1977 covers for Palestinian Affairs magazine, issues 192 and 193

#etel adnan

[godrevy]

-Mahmoud Darwish

(Almond Blossoms and Beyond)

#mahmoud darwish #من النهر إلى البحر

[godrevy]

Bat: What news do you have

of the sun? I’ve been flying in

the dark my whole life. 

I can’t find the sun.

Does the sun even exist?

#just read this beautiful book #peter sis #the conference of the birds #farid ud-din attar

[godrevy]

There is neither a first word nor a last word and there are no limits to the dialogical context (it extends into the boundless past and into the boundless future). Even past meanings, that is, those born in the dialogue of past centuries, can never be stable (finalized, ended once and for all). . . . Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival. The problem of great time” (Bakhtin, 1986, 170)

#bakhtin #diaspora #dialogism #semiotics #nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival #via kobena mercer

[godrevy]

Alasdair Wallace

#alasdair wallace #conference of birds

[godrevy]

“perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening …”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from “You who never arrived”, trans. Stephen Mitchell (International Journal of Research, July 7, 2020 (via litverve)

#rilke #poetry #longing

[godrevy]

Cola dell'Amatrice, “Mary feeding with Her milk the suffering Souls in Purgatory”, 1508 ca.

Municipio, Chieti

#cola dell'amatrice #madonna #renaissance #cinquecento #breast feeding

[godrevy]

“As a culture we are obsessed with the notion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states of extreme anxiety and dread. Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other.”

-bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions (2001)

#bell hooks #all about love #safety #fear #collectivity #relationality #thinking also about what audre lorde says abt fear

[godrevy]

““Hell is other people” is only one side of the coin. The other side, which no one seems to mention, is also “Heaven is each other”. Hell is separateness, uncommunicability, self-centeredness, lust for power, for riches, for fame. Heaven on the other hand is very simple, and very hard: caring about your fellow beings. And that’s possible on a sustained basis only in collectivity.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre; in “Talking with Sartre” (p. 130) [edited] (via insearchofwisdom)

#sartre #relationality #collectivity

[godrevy]

THIS FLAMENCO SINGER GETS IT

#anthony bourdain #life