kalon101-blog

[kalon101-blog]

Making Purple

By: Dan Chiasson

Nibble what nibbles you, play dead, play bored;                              

play sad, shell gaping, like the cockle used for bait;

like the melting purple eat the mud, be seen through          like the pebble purple, light and soft like the reef purple.

Imagine yourself suffusing a woman's gown or sheets

         your bloodstream running through a king's inkwell.

Those rich dyes once were your ideas, your love          of broccoli rabe. Half-killed cockles attract purples,

the reef is littered with open mouths waiting to snap.          I am trying to make my pain attractive, my yearning

pretty. A man caught me in a fine-ply lobster pot.          He scalded me until I nearly died, then threw me back.

I gape like this because of the ordeal. Did you foresee          this moment, where what you intended to devour

devours you? Did you know they'd haul us up          into the suffocating air, our bodies fused together?

He wrecked my body so that it looked like need.          You made your insatiable greed appear like love.

#poetry #dan chiasson

[kalon101-blog]

CBC Radio's IDEAS presents The Mandela Tapes. This program draws on 50 hours of recorded conversations with Mandela, held for many years in Johannesburg by archivists at the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory. IDEAS is the first radio program anywhere in the world to be given full access to these remarkable recordings.

"We stood on our feet. We fought back. We fought back to keep the idea of liberation alive." - Nelson Mandela

#nelson mandela #article #cbc radio #paul kennedy

[kalon101-blog]

#poetry #heather christle

[kalon101-blog]

"To people who were writing science fiction in the 50's, none of this was much of a surprise, though modern Luddite imaginations have yet to come up with any countercritter Bad and Big enough, even in the most irresponsible of fictions, to begin to compare with what would happen in a nuclear war. So, in the science fiction of the Atomic Age and the cold war, we see the Luddite impulse to deny the machine taking a different direction. The hardware angle got de-emphasized in favor of more humanistic concerns - exotic cultural evolutions and social scenarios, paradoxes and games with space/ time, wild philosophical questions - most of it sharing, as the critical literature has amply discussed, a definition of 'human' as particularly distinguished from 'machine.' Like their earlier counterparts, 20th-century Luddites looked back yearningly to another age - curiously, the same Age of Reason which had forced the first Luddites into nostalgia for the Age of Miracles."

#Thomas Pynchon #nyt #article

[kalon101-blog]

But, my dear lord, now that it’s in your hand, What are you going to do with it? The roots Of a windblown seed had groped sideways Into flagstone crannies, grappling for root-holds And root-room in a bent world. Its stem had come curving Outward and upward from that bleak hardscrabble Somehow poised, keeping its balance, to open A small mouth to the light.

And now you’ve wrenched it loose, the sandgrains And darker matter crumbling away from it, And you hold it up to your nose, musing, Then drop it into the gravel at your feet Where it can wither and wilt at its leisure While you continue your stroll, not understanding What the flower knows: it is a terrible thing To find yourself in the hands of the living god.

—David Wagoner, “God and Man and Flower” Photography Credit Aaron Huey.

#david wagoner #poetry

[kalon101-blog]

bloglikeanegyptian:

another installment of my comic, featuring Qahera the hijabi superhero! this time its mostly about sexual harassment - and the majority of the themes in this comic are based on real experiences with street harassment.

for enlarged version 

part 1 | part 2

#art

[kalon101-blog]

This is amazing. 

Whatzupwitu - Eddie Murphy ft. Michael Jackson

#youtube #music #Eddie Murphy #Michael Jackson

[kalon101-blog]

"In Mind" by Denise Levertov

#poetry #denise levertov

[kalon101-blog]

The Real Reason the Limits of Drone Use are Murky: We Can’t Decide What ‘Terrorists’ Or ‘Conflict’ Mean

"In the end, deciding whether drone strikes are 'acceptable' isn't really a legal question, but a question about what kind of world we want to live in, and what restraints we believe should be imposed on those with power. Do we want to live in a world in which the U.S. alone defines who can be targeted and killed in a battlefield with no borders?

Are we comfortable living in Humpty Dumpty's world?"

Read more. 

#article #the atlantic #politics

[kalon101-blog]

CHVRCHES - Falling (HAIM Cover - Live Lounge Late)

#CHVRCHES #Falling #haim #music

[kalon101-blog]

I love that the The Good Men Project exists. They've been posting excellent things for years on modern masculinity. 

#The Good Men Project #article

[kalon101-blog]

By Benjamin Y. Fong 

"I do not doubt that my body will be the beneficiary of the many new technologies that the Human Genome Project, the Brain Initiative, and other such cutting-edge ventures produce. My point is simply that the attempt to gain control over life itself has severely detracted from the work of figuring out how we talk to and work with one another in order to better ourselves and our world. To be clear, I do not believe that this communicative project is easier or more efficient than the instrumental approach – how we go about changing socioeconomic conditions is a problem we have not even begun to solve – but only that it is an important part of what it means to be a human being. And no matter how precisely we can manipulate the brain with drugs, electrodes, and other such contrivances, the emerging insights of neuroscience will never provide sufficient help with this work...neuroscientists unconsciously repress all that we know about the alienating, unequal, and dissatisfying world in which we live and the harmful effects it has on the psyche, thus unwittingly foreclosing the kind of communicative work that could alleviate mental disorder."

#nyt #article #the stone #psychology

[kalon101-blog]

Arctic Monkeys - Do I Wanna Know? 

Ever thought of calling when you've had a few? 'Cause I always do Maybe I'm too busy being yours to fall for somebody new

#Arctic Monkeys #music

[kalon101-blog]

When I introduce myself as a person with a trans history I am very deliberate in the language I use. I usually don’t use labels (e.g., trans man, transgender, FTM) and instead opt for a quick and direct explanation of my history. “I’m a man who was female assigned at birth and transitioned to live...

#article

[kalon101-blog]

Who are we? A word about our membership.

Since the world began, we have gone about our work quietly, resisting the urge to generalize, valuing the individual over the group, the actual over the conceptual, the inherent sweetness of the present moment over the theoretically peaceful future to be obtained via murder. Many of us have trouble sleeping and lie awake at night, worrying about something catastrophic befalling someone we love. We rise in the morning with no plans to convert anyone via beating, humiliation, or invasion. To tell the truth, we are tired. We work. We would just like some peace and quiet. When wrong, we think about it awhile, then apologize. We stand under awnings during urban thunderstorms, moved to thoughtfulness by the troubled, umbrella-tinged faces rushing by. In moments of crisis, we pat one another awkwardly on the back, mumbling shy truisms. Rushing to an appointment, remembering a friend who has passed away, our eyes well with tears and we think: Well, my God, he could be a pain, but still I'm lucky to have known him.

This is PRKA. To those who would oppose us, I would simply say: We are many. We are worldwide. We, in fact, outnumber you. Though you are louder, though you create a momentary ripple on the water of life, we will endure, and prevail.

#George Saunders #slate #article

[kalon101-blog]

AM Tracks. The only way to get out of bed.

#music #spotify

[kalon101-blog]

Rhye--"Open"

(The original release video with vocalist Mike Milosh serenading his wife.)

#Rhye #music #youtube