not now kitten daddy's in the pit of despair

it's always upsetting to me when people find settler colonialism some kind of leftist meme while they won't bother to even learn anything about the actual policies of settler colonial states. like the violence is not in an esoteric historical record that requires sophisticated interpretation, it is quite obvious. the dispossession was violently done, children were stolen, people were starved and murdered and as always, treaties were signed under the barrel of the gun and then broken anyway.

fuck disappearing under mysterious circumstances i want to start APPEARING under mysterious circumstances. walking through a deserted eerie forest? im there. exploring an abandoned 1930s mine that no human has set foot in for 55 years? there too. touching down on mars? guess whose annoying face you see poking out from behind a rover

does anyone else think about the task of carrying yourself to your own suffering. walking to a test you know you’ll fail. driving fifteen hours to watch a family member die. jesus walking to golgotha carrying the cross. you know.

“You move me, Gimli,” said Legolas.

If you see this you’re legally obligated to reblog and tag with the book you’re currently reading

I love subjects and topics

don’t talk to strangers on the internet because they’re great and hot and funny and live miles away and highlight the lack of people in your daily life that you can tolerate

tiniest lil’ wizard in the world. trying oh so hard to ponder a single electron

Do you ever forget that you have a gender to most people….. meaning that random people at the grocery store see me as a woman and not just a little internet guy

A crop of my submission for Ages of Arda Anthology. Eonwe letting Maedhros and Maglor go after they’ve stolen the Silmarils. 

whatever it is you need good luck for, i wish you good luck. tests, job, home life, social life, mental health, physical health, love life. you name it. this post is wishing you good luck on all of that.

The months since October 7 have aggravated the most extreme campus panic I have witnessed. To judge by the American mass media, the campus is the most urgent scene of political struggle in the world. What is happening “on campus” often seems of greater concern than what is happening in Gaza, where every single university campus has been razed by the IDF. When all the Palestinian dead have been counted, it seems likely that these months will be recorded as having inflamed a campus panic no less intense than the one that accompanied the Vietnam War. The correspondences between that moment and this one were unmistakable to those of us who watched, in person or through screens, as the NYPD hauled 108 Columbia University students off of their institution’s campus on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Like the campus panic of the 1960s–70s, this one is aroused by the spectacle of young people speaking out against the inhumane actions of the US and its imperial client states, as well as against the complacency and complicity of their own educational institutions. Now, as then, the act of protesting against injustice undergoes a curious transfiguration in the media, which refashions this action into the object of frantic scrutiny, surveillance, and suppression.

Harvard University professor Walter Johnson, in an essay about experience of working at Harvard since October 7 titled “Living Inside a Psyop”—the psyop being, precisely, “the campus”—calls this the “two-step maneuver” of campus panic: (1) Look over here, (2) Do not look over there. Overreact to this, overlook that.[1] Look at the US, not at Palestine. Look up at what is happening in the clouds over Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a plane trails a banner declaring, “HARVARD HATES JEWS”; do not look at what is happening on the ground in Gaza, do not look at the masses of the displaced, the bereaved, the starving, the wounded, the sick, the dying, and certainly do not look at the dead, murdered with artillery supplied by the US government and funded by American citizens’ taxes. When student protestors chant, “From the river to the sea,” hear a speculative antisemitic canard; do not hear a reference to an actual river, an actual sea, an actual and ongoing history of dispossession and occupation.

just came across this beautiful rendition of siúil a rúin by irish-palestinian artist roisin el cherif. this song has always been close to my heart, especially after it's use in the nightingale, a film that explores the (ongoing) colonial violence on the island that i call home.

i really love the way that she weaves the arabic language into this song, as well as the influences from both irish and palestinian styles of music.

all the proceeds of the release are being donated to the doctors without borders gaza emergency regional fund so if you love her rendition as much as i do i would really recommend purchasing it on band-camp (i've linked it above).

the smallest artist i listen to? probably the bird outside my window

This murmur we hear is not rain. It has not rained in a very long time. The fountains have dried and dust accumulates in streets and houses. This murmur we hear is not wind they have prohibited wind so it won’t rise the dust which is everywhere and the air won’t become -they say- unbreathable. This murmur we hear is not words. They have prohibited words so they won’t risk the air’s fragile immobility. This murmur we hear is not thoughts. They have been prohibited so that they won’t beget the need to speak and ensue, inevitably, the catastrophy.

And, still, the murmur persists.

This poem was written by the Catalan poet Miquel Martí i Pol (1929 – 2003). It was published in 1977 but it is still relevant.

My translation to English misses a lot of the beauty in the original poem, so here’s the original in Catalan:

Aquesta remor que se sent no és de pluja. Ja fa molt de temps que no plou. S’han eixugat les fonts i la pols s’acumula pels carrers i les cases. Aquesta remor que se sent no és de vent. Han prohibit el vent perquè no s’alci la pols que hi ha pertot i l’aire no esdevingui —diuen— irrespirable. Aquesta remor que se sent no és de paraules. Han prohibit les paraules perquè no posin en perill la fràgil immobilitat de l’aire. Aquesta remor que se sent no és de pensaments. Han estat prohibits perquè no engendrin la necessitat de parlar i sobrevingui, inevitable, la catàstrofe.

I, tanmateix, la remor persisteix.

qazaq caspian steppe (üstirt)