Entry tags:
Poetry
Why were you unsuccessful? What went wrong? Where are you now? What of the body? Where is the body? Where is your body, Ms. █████?
You wanna know what I did with the body? What is a body, anyway? Known only because someone called it so. Without my consent. Awarded me this trophy. Covered in fingerprints, dust & grime. The body should be on trial. Fuck, the body is a trial. My memory, a field of landmines. I blink and everything I have tried to forget blows up in my face. The shrapnel, that is where I exist. In the rations of everything that has happened to me. Not in a body. So, I tried to get rid of it. Use it against itself. If you look hard enough down the throat of a bottle. You’ll find it. Lying, almost lifeless, somewhere between death and freedom.
— Roya Marsh, from “in broad dayligGht suicidal black girls look guilty”
You wanna know what I did with the body? What is a body, anyway? Known only because someone called it so. Without my consent. Awarded me this trophy. Covered in fingerprints, dust & grime. The body should be on trial. Fuck, the body is a trial. My memory, a field of landmines. I blink and everything I have tried to forget blows up in my face. The shrapnel, that is where I exist. In the rations of everything that has happened to me. Not in a body. So, I tried to get rid of it. Use it against itself. If you look hard enough down the throat of a bottle. You’ll find it. Lying, almost lifeless, somewhere between death and freedom.
— Roya Marsh, from “in broad dayligGht suicidal black girls look guilty”
Entry tags:
Quote
"I did not know how to become anything; neither spiteful nor kind, neither a rascal nor an honest man, neither a hero nor an insect. Now, I am living out my life in my corner, taunting myself with the spiteful and useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot become anything seriously, and it is only the fool who becomes anything."
Fyodor Dostoevsky, from Notes from Underground, 1864
Fyodor Dostoevsky, from Notes from Underground, 1864
Entry tags:
poetry
"Only when a child slips and drops off a tree,
the tree suddenly learns that it is barren."
Sylt II by Valzhyna Mort
Sylt II by Valzhyna Mort
Entry tags:
poetry
"Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen."
tulips by slyvia plath
entire poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49013/tulips-56d22ab68fdd0
tulips by slyvia plath
entire poem: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49013/tulips-56d22ab68fdd0
poetry
Three poems by Iya Kiva (b. 1984)
This coffin’s for you, little boy, don’t be afraid, lie down,
A bullet called life clutched tight in your fist,
We didn’t believe in death, look – the crosses are tinfoil.
Do you hear – all the bell towers tore out their tongues?
We won’t forget you, believe it, believe it, be …
Belief bleeds down the seam inside your sleeve,
Chants, prayers, psalms swell up in a lump in your throat
In the middle of this damned winter all dressed in khaki,
And February, getting the ink, is sobbing.
And the candle drips on the table, burning and burning…
Translated from the Russian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, 2014
This coffin’s for you, little boy, don’t be afraid, lie down,
A bullet called life clutched tight in your fist,
We didn’t believe in death, look – the crosses are tinfoil.
Do you hear – all the bell towers tore out their tongues?
We won’t forget you, believe it, believe it, be …
Belief bleeds down the seam inside your sleeve,
Chants, prayers, psalms swell up in a lump in your throat
In the middle of this damned winter all dressed in khaki,
And February, getting the ink, is sobbing.
And the candle drips on the table, burning and burning…
Translated from the Russian by Amelia Glaser and Yuliya Ilchuk, 2014
books
Patrice deserved so much better than his mom and his sister. he was young and didn't know anything about anyone or even himself other than his own appearance. i understand that the book, being a part of "Gothic literature" didn't want to give it a happy ending, and it clearly wasn't because that wasn't the books point. but i don't like lit analysis, so i won't be doing that today, at least from the authors point. it's going to be my personal ramblings.
Isabelle-Marie at first seemed to have a lot more understanding of the world around her than her mother did, she was shown as a character who was most different from her mother, but it turns out that she was just like her mother just lacking the narcissism and appearance, she was just as cruel as her mother was, whatever intelligence or awareness she had had been replaced with bitter hate for herself and others. i say that she seemed different from her mother because she wasn't self centered or focused on her appearance, but she was; just in a different way. While her mother was focused on herself due to her beauty isabelle-marie was focused on herself because she was unattractive, she also had her narcissism like her mother, when she told her boyfriend she had violet eyes and blonde hair she lied because she wanted someone to herself rather than being honest and truthful that might've been better in the long run, had she been honest, would her boyfriend still choose her good self over her appearance? maybe or maybe not. after all he did say "i kill whatever i think should be killed" isabelle wasn't a better mother than her's either. she went on the kill herself in-front of anna, and always snapped at her no matter what anna said, she had no love for her daughter just like her own mother once did. she was in the sense of self, most similar to her mother.
Patrice on the other hand was undeniably the most innocent and guileless out of all of the characters (aside from the guy in his asylum).
He was innocent until his bitter end at the pond. When he was young he knew nothing, did nothing, perhaps you can even say he said nothing when he wasn't asked. If it wasn't for isabelle-marie to grow jealous of him simply because of their mother maybe he would be safe; his mother was the one that always spoke for him and thought for him, he never had a mind of his own. His mother being so obsessed with his appearance wasn't out of motherly love but out of narcissism because she saw him as an object that people praise rather than a actual son. It is repeatedly stated she saw him as a extension of herself; of her own appearance, she never saw him as a child but more like a thing that welcomes people to say "oh how beautiful he his!" and nothing more because his face comes from her's, he never had a mother only a illusion.
After this, when his sister committed that crime and in turn made him lose the thing his mother loved him for she completely abandoned him. He was in pain and begging for a mother who'd love him and a sister who took care of him. Nothing he ever did was meant to hurt others because he simply never had that awareness, maybe if he did things would be different, but that's not his fault is it?
I'm well aware that the author didn't intend to save any character, and to make it seem as if it were all deserved, patrice's guilelessness caused him to become unaware of how much his sister hated him, isabelle-marie, was well isabelle-marie, selfish and hateful to the bone, and their mother, the person who's most at fault.
However i can't just agree with that, i understand the book i just can't agree with that saying, the characters weren't completely hopeless, not even the mother. i'm sorry, just rambles.
Isabelle-Marie at first seemed to have a lot more understanding of the world around her than her mother did, she was shown as a character who was most different from her mother, but it turns out that she was just like her mother just lacking the narcissism and appearance, she was just as cruel as her mother was, whatever intelligence or awareness she had had been replaced with bitter hate for herself and others. i say that she seemed different from her mother because she wasn't self centered or focused on her appearance, but she was; just in a different way. While her mother was focused on herself due to her beauty isabelle-marie was focused on herself because she was unattractive, she also had her narcissism like her mother, when she told her boyfriend she had violet eyes and blonde hair she lied because she wanted someone to herself rather than being honest and truthful that might've been better in the long run, had she been honest, would her boyfriend still choose her good self over her appearance? maybe or maybe not. after all he did say "i kill whatever i think should be killed" isabelle wasn't a better mother than her's either. she went on the kill herself in-front of anna, and always snapped at her no matter what anna said, she had no love for her daughter just like her own mother once did. she was in the sense of self, most similar to her mother.
Patrice on the other hand was undeniably the most innocent and guileless out of all of the characters (aside from the guy in his asylum).
He was innocent until his bitter end at the pond. When he was young he knew nothing, did nothing, perhaps you can even say he said nothing when he wasn't asked. If it wasn't for isabelle-marie to grow jealous of him simply because of their mother maybe he would be safe; his mother was the one that always spoke for him and thought for him, he never had a mind of his own. His mother being so obsessed with his appearance wasn't out of motherly love but out of narcissism because she saw him as an object that people praise rather than a actual son. It is repeatedly stated she saw him as a extension of herself; of her own appearance, she never saw him as a child but more like a thing that welcomes people to say "oh how beautiful he his!" and nothing more because his face comes from her's, he never had a mother only a illusion.
After this, when his sister committed that crime and in turn made him lose the thing his mother loved him for she completely abandoned him. He was in pain and begging for a mother who'd love him and a sister who took care of him. Nothing he ever did was meant to hurt others because he simply never had that awareness, maybe if he did things would be different, but that's not his fault is it?
I'm well aware that the author didn't intend to save any character, and to make it seem as if it were all deserved, patrice's guilelessness caused him to become unaware of how much his sister hated him, isabelle-marie, was well isabelle-marie, selfish and hateful to the bone, and their mother, the person who's most at fault.
However i can't just agree with that, i understand the book i just can't agree with that saying, the characters weren't completely hopeless, not even the mother. i'm sorry, just rambles.