yep

"Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads -- they are not there accidentally." - Soviet infantry manual, issued in the 1930's

yep.

"Real knowledge is to know the extent of one's ignorance." -Confucius

charity work isn't enough

Food banks allow us to believe that hunger is being solved.  Yet this is not so . . . continued food bank activity essentially depoliticizes the issue of hunger in society by legitimizing it as a matter for charitable concern rather than social justice. - Graham Riches

ego, confidence

self-love vs. raging ego.  I think they are often confused.   I want to love my art this much.

"If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that ... I believe in what I do, and I'll say it." -John Lennon

perspective

old, but not tired

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.  – T.S. Eliot

Boom. #2.

boom

“It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” – Harry Truman

more erotic. it happens.

We have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing.  But nothing is farther from the truth.  For the ascetic position is one of the highest fear, the greatest immobility.  The severe abstinence of the ascetic becomes the ruling obsession.  And it is not one of self-discipline but of self-abnegation.  - Audre Lorde

november

horror.

The principal horror of any system which defines the good in terms of profit rather than in terms of human need, or which defines human need to the exclusion of the psychic and emotional components of that need - the principal horror of such a system is that it robs our work of its erotic value, its erotic power, and life appeal and fulfillment.  Such a system reduces work to a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread or oblivion for ourselves and those we love.  But this is tantamount to blinding a painter and then telling her to improve her work, and to enjoy the act of painting.  It is not only next to impossible, it is also profoundly cruel.  - Audre Lorde

sexy...

She makes hungry where most she satisfies . . . - Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra

overdone. but still pretty good.

Not all who wander are lost. – Lord of the Rings

destiny

It is never easy to demand the most from ourselves, from our lives, from our work.  To encourage excellence is to go beyond the encouraged mediocrity of our society is to encourage excellence.  But giving in to the fear of feeling and working to capacity is a luxury only the unintentional can afford, and the unintentional are those who do not wish to guide their own destinies.  - Audre Lorde

rent party

"Activism is my rent for living on this planet."  Alice Walker

whoa

We have been raised to fear the yes within ourselves, our deepest cravings.  But, once recognized, those which do not enhance our future lose their power and can be altered.  The fear of our desires keep them suspect and indiscriminately powerful, for to suppress any truth is to give it strength beyond endurance.  The fear that we cannot grow beyond whatever distortions we may find within ourselves keeps us docile and loyal and obedient, externally defined, and leads us to accept many facets of our oppression as women.  - Audre Lorde

this is all too familiar

love, life, growth

Sometimes the most valuable thing you can offer is not an answer but your presence, your being there to share the feeling of loneliness, your being there while someone goes on breathing in and out, whether it matters or not. -Sally Casper

audre lorde is my hero

Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence, forcing us to evaluate those aspects honestly in terms of their relative meaning within our lives.  And this is a grave responsibility, projected from within each of us, not to settle for the convenient, the shoddy, the conventionally expected, nor the merely safe.  Audre Lorde

growing

Darkness was a presence.  I learned to see in it, I learned to see through it, and I learned to see the darkness of my own.  - Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping