／＞　　フ 　　　 　　| 　_　 _ l 　 　　 　／` ミ＿xノ 　　 　 /　　　 　 | 　　　 /　 ヽ　　 ﾉ 　 　 │　　|　|　| 　／￣|　　 |　|　| 　| (￣ヽ＿_ヽ_)__) 　二つ

Tokyo at Night by Mateusz Urbanowicz

Mateusz Urbanowicz, also known as Matto, is a Polish artist and illustrator currently based in Tokyo. He originally moved to Japan to study animation and comics and he landed himself a gig at Tokyo-based animation film studio CoMix Wave, where he did backgrounds for, among other things, the film “Your Name.”

In 2017 he left the studio and began working as a freelancer so he could focus on personal projects like Tokyo Storefronts. His latest project is Tokyo at Night, a series of 10 watercolors illustrating the backstreets of Tokyo at night. The 10 illustrations were created along a path from Kudanshita that goes through the neighborhood of Kagurazaka and ends at Waseda.

a bathhouse at the edo tokyo open air museum.

江戸東京たてもの園。

god made a mistake when he made me a person instead of a friendly little cat on a midwestern apple orchard

9/7/18

I looked back on 6+ years of my posts here on tumblr and it’s such an experience to be able to see all my past selves - my pain, my joys, my victories, my thoughts, my aesthetics, the politics I wanted to put out in the world, the ways in which I tried to live those politics.

I’ve changed and grown a lot. I think I believe in most of the same things, but time has refined my understanding of those beliefs and how to enact them and how to engage with other people about them. Every year that goes by brings me more of a capacity to hold nuance and contradiction. As things have come into focus, the mess and complexity of everything feels more tangible. So while I see more clearly, I’ve come to see that I understand much less than I thought.

I am the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. I have more autonomy and control, I am working towards attainable goals, I have time to show up for myself and for others, I have so much love and support, I don’t have to conform myself to be anything I’m not for the people in my life who care about me.

I am slowly coming to peace with the things inside of me that still ache. Every day they grow duller, and my confidence that I can survive anything grows stronger.

I feel so full of life and love today that the world feels vibrant. I know I won’t always feels this way, and that’s okay.

🐟| ig: bo_mang_co

“Audre Lorde argues throughout her work that we should not be protected from what hurts. We have to work and struggle not so much to feel hurt but to notice what causes hurt, which means unlearning what we have learned not to notice. We have to do this work if we are to produce critical understandings of how violence, as a relation of force and harm, is directed toward some bodies and not others.”

— Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness (via kitduckworth)

gaspard et lisa x hello kitty official art

https://www.instagram.com/p/BH37M5ABnTI/

We’re putting together an anthology of sci-fi writing! Submit by December 15th! The only requirements are that you identify as a qtpoc* and your submission is at least vaguely in the science fiction genre. Please share! * See our FAQ on our website (multiverseanthology.wordpres.com)

When I was younger and more abled, I was so fucking on board with the fantasy genre’s subversion of traditional femininity. We weren’t just fainting maidens locked up in towers; we could do anything men could do, be as strong or as physical or as violent. I got into western martial arts and learned to fight with a rapier, fell in love with the longsword.

But since I’ve gotten too disabled to fight anymore, I… find myself coming back to that maiden in a tower. It’s that funny thing, where subverting femininity is powerful for the people who have always been forced into it… but for the people who have always been excluded, the powerful thing can be embracing it.

As I’m disabled, as I say to groups of friends, “I can’t walk that far,” as I’m in too much pain to keep partying, I find myself worrying: I’m boring, too quiet, too stationary, irrelevant. The message sent to the disabled is: You’re out of the narrative, you’re secondary, you’re a burden.

The remarkable thing about the maiden in her tower is not her immobility; it’s common for disabled people to be abandoned, set adrift, waiting at bus stops or watching out the windows, forgotten in institutions or stranded in our houses. The remarkable thing is that she’s like a beacon, turning her tower into a lighthouse; people want to come to her, she’s important, she inspires through her appearance and words and craftwork.  In medieval romances she gives gifts, write letters, sends messengers, and summons lovers; she plays chess, commissions ballads, composes music, commands knights. She is her household’s moral centre in a castle under siege. She is a castle unto herself, and the integrity of her body matters.

That can be so revolutionary to those of us stuck in our towers who fall prey to thinking: Nobody would want to visit; nobody would want to listen; nobody would want to stay.