Wolf Mansion

"The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among..."

Sun, 12 May 2013 16:01:10 -0500

““The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is the phenomena of the library.””

- Michel Foucault (via wordpainting)

"Here’s the thing. Men in our culture have been socialized to believe that their opinions on women’s..."

Sat, 11 May 2013 16:01:11 -0500

“Here’s the thing. Men in our culture have been socialized to believe that their opinions on women’s appearance matter a lot. Not all men buy into this, of course, but many do. Some seem incapable of entertaining the notion that not everything women do with their appearance is for men to look at. This is why men’s response to women discussing stifling beauty norms is so often something like “But I actually like small boobs!” and “But I actually like my women on the heavier side, if you know what I mean!” They don’t realize that their individual opinion on women’s appearance doesn’t matter in this context, and that while it might be reassuring for some women to know that there are indeed men who find them fuckable, that’s not the point of the discussion.

Women, too, have been socialized to believe that the ultimate arbiters of their appearance are men, that anything they do with their appearance is or should be “for men.” That’s why women’s magazines trip over themselves to offer up advice on “what he wants to see you wearing” and “what men think of these current fashion trends” and “wow him with these new hairstyles.” While women can and do judge each other’s appearance harshly, many of us grew up being told by mothers, sisters, and female strangers that we’ll never “get a man” or “keep a man” unless we do X or lose some fat from Y, unless we moisturize/ trim/ shave/ push up/ hide/ show/ ”flatter”/ paint/ dye/ exfoliate/ pierce/ surgically alter this or that.

That’s also why when a woman wears revealing clothes, it’s okay, in our society, to assume that she’s “looking for attention” or that she’s a slut and wants to sleep with a bunch of guys. Because why else would a woman wear revealing clothes if not for the benefit of men and to communicate her sexual availability to them, right? It can’t possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s hot out or it’s more comfortable or she likes how she looks in it or everything else is in the laundry or she wants to get a tan or maybe she likes women and wants attention from them, not from men?

The result of all this is that many men, even kind and well-meaning men, believe, however subconsciously, that women’s bodies are for them. They are for them to look at, for them to pass judgment on, for them to bless with a compliment if they deign to do so. They are not for women to enjoy, take pride in, love, accept, explore, show off, or hide as they please. They are for men and their pleasure.”

- Why You Shouldn’t Tell That Random Girl On The Street That She’s Hot » Brute Reason (via brute-reason)

"A child’s reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 16:01:18 -0500

““A child’s reading is guided by pleasure, but his pleasure is undifferentiated; he cannot distinguish, for example, between aesthetic pleasure and the pleasures of learning or daydreaming. In adolescence we realize that there are different kinds of pleasure, some of which cannot be enjoyed simultaneously, but we need help from others in defining them. Whether it be a matter of taste in food or taste in literature, the adolescent looks for a mentor in whose authority he can believe. He eats or reads what his mentor recommends and, inevitably, there are occasions when he has to deceive himself a little; he has to pretend that he enjoys olives or War and Peace a little more than he actually does. Between the ages of twenty and forty we are engaged in the process of discovering who we are, which involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity. Few of us can learn this without making mistakes, without trying to become a little more of a universal man than we are permitted to be. It is during this period that a writer can most easily be led astray by another writer or by some ideology. When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, ‘I know what I like,’he is really saying ‘I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu’, because, between twenty and forty, the surest sign that a man has a genuine taste of his own is that he is uncertain of it. After forty, if we have not lost our authentic selves altogether, pleasure can again become what it was when we were children, the proper guide to what we should read.””

- W.H. Auden; The Dyer’s Hand (via wordpainting)

nevver: You taste like pork

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:01:23 -0500

nevver:

You taste like pork

maya-cat: palid: words become so much prettier when they have...

Wed, 08 May 2013 16:01:29 -0500

maya-cat:

palid:

words become so much prettier when they have a good meaning like this

This is just simply beautiful.

"Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library...."

Tue, 07 May 2013 16:00:59 -0500

““Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.””

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 (via endlessnocturnes)

Philip James Bailey

Mon, 06 May 2013 16:01:07 -0500

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs.He most lives

Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

— Philip James Bailey (source)

Howard Thurman, on what the world needs

Sun, 05 May 2013 16:01:11 -0500

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

- Theologian Howard Thurman

C. S. Lewis, on comfort versus truth

Sat, 04 May 2013 16:00:56 -0500

If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair.

C. S. Lewis

On Giving Voice to Those Who Need It

Fri, 03 May 2013 16:01:09 -0500

Thus we end up with a staged conversation in which the goal of political representation must live side by side with the awareness that we are performing an act of ventriloquism. This amounts to giving up the ambition of speaking on behalf of the Other in any literal sense, the ambition to be ‘a tribute for the unheard, a representer of the unseen, a kenner of the misconstrued’ (Geertz, 1988)… We do the most harm when we impose our interpretations on what we claim are ‘authentic voices from the field’. If rendering these voices to a wide audience is our goal, the way to go about it is to silence our own voices and to engage in the political activity of creating speaking platforms for those who are not heard.

—- Barbara Czarniawska

High-Rise by J. G. Ballard

Mon, 13 Aug 2012 15:56:25 -0500

Even their insistence on educating their children, the last reflex of any exploited group before it sank into submission, marked the end of their resistance.

— High-Rise by J. G. Ballard

High-Rise by J. G. Ballard

Sun, 12 Aug 2012 15:59:32 -0500

scatteredpalace:

In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape. Royal would have given anything for one vulgar mantelpiece ornament, one less than snow-white lavatory bowl, one hint of hope.

— High-Rise by J. G. Ballard

"I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scar, failure,..."

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 15:45:02 -0500

“I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scar, failure, disorder, distortion.”

- Yohji Yamamoto

The Pale King by David Foster Wallace

Sun, 05 Aug 2012 15:58:40 -0500

“I learned it at just twenty-one or twenty-two, at the IRS’s Regional Examination Center in Peoria, where I spent two summers as a cart boy. This, according to the fellows who saw me as fit for a Service career, put me ahead of the curve, to understand this truth at an age when most guys are starting only to suspect the basics of adulthood—that life owes you nothing; that suffering takes many form

s; that no one will ever care you as your mother did; that the human heart is a chump.

I learned that the world of men as it exists today is a bureaucracy. This is an obvious truth, of course, though it is also one the ignorance of which causes great suffering.

But moreover, I discovered, in the only way that a man ever really learns anything important, the real skill that is required to succeed in a bureaucracy. I mean really succeed: do good, make a difference, serve. I discovered the key. This key is not efficiency, or probity, or insight, or wisdom. It is not political cunning, interpersonal skills, raw IQ, loyalty, vision, or any of the qualities that the bureaucratic world calls virtues, and tests for. The key is a certain capacity that underlies all these qualities, rather the way that an ability to breathe and pump blood underlies all thought and action.

The underlying bureaucratic key is the ability to deal with boredom. To function effectively in an environment that precludes everything vital and human. To breathe, so to speak, without air.

The key is the ability, whether innate or conditioned, to find the other side of the rote, the picayune, the meaningless, the repetitive, the pointlessly complex. To be, in a word, unborable. I met, in the years 1984 and ‘85, two such men.

It is the key to modern life. If you are immune to boredom, there is literally nothing you cannot accomplish.” — David Foster Wallace, The Pale King

(via Derek Austin Johnson)

Photo

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 15:53:02 -0500

Photo

Fri, 13 Jul 2012 15:59:56 -0500

nevver: Your brain has two functions

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:00:07 -0500

nevver:

Your brain has two functions

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become..."

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 16:01:21 -0500

“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”

- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Photo

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 15:57:40 -0500

"The best way to dehumanize someone while claiming you’re not is to believe you are just the same...."

Fri, 06 Jul 2012 15:51:20 -0500

“The best way to dehumanize someone while claiming you’re not is to believe you are just the same. You erase their experiences and perspective, their struggles and obstacles, their unique way of having to deal with those things in a world that also erases them. With the words, ‘but humans are humans’ or the bullshit dramatics of ‘we all bleed red’ normal people can simply pretend that if we all did things the way they did, then everything would work out okay. But, yes, we all bleed red but you don’t treat a papercut the same way you treat a gash, you don’t treat an infected wound the same way you treat one that isn’t, you don’t treat a wound to the leg the same way you treat a wound to the gut. You are not acknowledging someone’s personhood when you ignore the very things that make their lives different than yours, and when you refuse to understand that their circumstances have given them their own perspective that is just as valid as yours. More valid in fact – their perspective about their experiences that you haven’t been through is far more valid than anything you could ever think about it.”

- The danger of worldviews (Speaking when the world sleeps)