“ This is the end, isn’t it? And you are here with me again, listening with me: the sea no longer torments me; the self I wished to be is the self I am. ”

Louise Glück, from Meadowlands

why do all the words sound heavier in my native language?

—  @metamorphesque, Yoojin Grace Wuertz (Mother Tongue), Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky (by Garth Greenwell), Jhumpa Lahiri (Translating Myself and Others), @lifeinpoetry

˗ˏˋ☕ˎˊ˗        

Jeanette Winterson, Written on the Body

Ruth Madievsky, All-Night Pharmacy // Suzanne Scanlon, Promising Young Women // Robin Roe, A List of Cages // Hayao Miyazaki, Kiki's Delivery Service // Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 // D. H. Lawrence, The Plumbed Serpent // Jennifer S. Cheng, "So We Must Meet Apart" // Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart // Alice Oseman, Radio Silence // Franz Kafka, Letters to Felice

Mieko Kawakami, Heaven // Langston Hughes, Good Morning, Revolution: Uncollected Social Protest Writings // Madeline Miller, Circe // Bob Ross // Cameron Awkward-Rich, "Meditations in an Emergency" // Mary Oliver, "For Example" // @catadromously // J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers // Maria Hornbascher, Waiting // @catadromously

on the beach at night alone (2017) dir. by hong sang-soo

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena // Alain de Botton, Essays in Love // Eden Robinson, "Writing Prompts for the Broken-Hearted" // Chloe Liese, Always Only You // Anne Carson and Euripides, An Oresteia // Two—Sleeping At Last // Studio Bones, SK8 the Infinity // Trista Mateer, "is it okay to say this?" // @moodylilac // D. H. Lawrence, "The Rainbow"

Mieko Kawakami, from 'Heaven'

"There may not be, you know, as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some. There's more than one would think. In any case, if you...if you break faith with what you know...that's a betrayal of many, many, many, many people. I may know six people, but that's enough. Love has never been a popular movement and no-one's ever wanted really to be free. The world is held together, really it is, held together, by the love and the passion of a very few people. Otherwise, of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you. Everyone you're looking at is also you. You could be that person, you could be that monster, you could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be."

(Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris (1970), dir. Terence Dixon)

Arundhati Roy, Power Politics (2001)

It’s weird to grow up in a family where you know you’re loved but you don’t feel loved. And then later in adulthood you understand how almost impossible it seems to cross that distance and let yourself experience closeness, how otherworldly love feels now and how love feels unbearable at times. You flinch when someone tries to wholeheartedly love you. And over and over you see so clearly how you cannot be loved unless it's from afar and love is mixed with that familiar sensation of distance and coldness.

This is the world, friend, where they have money for war but can’t feed the poor.

— Mosab Abu Toha, et al, from "Ceasefire Cento," published by Vox Populi

May Allah protect and honour our men. Ameen.

"There is no amount of Palestinian death that will light the Eiffel Tower with Palestinian colors. We recognize that our death is simply not compelling the way theirs is. Our strategy should go beyond this: it should be a lot more offensive. It should be more than look at my limbs, look at my blood, we should be letting people know their own complicity."

Mohammed El-Kurd, Nov 1, 2023 at But We Must Speak: On Palestine and the Mandates of Conscience (youtube link)

Mohammed El-Kurd, from Rifqa; “Elderly Woman Falls Asleep on My Shoulder”

[Text ID: “Under occupation, walking feels barefoot. / Here, walking feels like attempting to run / in water. / The soldier, blonde and sunburnt, asks her for her permit. / My permit: these wrinkles / older than your country’s existence. / My smile is a sun.”]

and let the history books name joe biden, rishi sunak, justin trudeau, emmanuel macron, ursula von der leyen and every other world leader who did not step in to prevent the genocide of palestine as cold-blooded murderers. may they face a shred of the immeasurable pain and suffering they allowed to be committed against 2.2. million innocent lives.