round-up: 12/27

quotations, tweets, & my standard sillies

Dec 27, 2022

Happy Tuesday!

I hope you all enjoyed your holidays & are remaining healthy. And Covid-conscious, always! There’s such a huge surge right now—keep looking out for each other.

Here’s what I have for you today:

A resource
A prompt
What I’m reading
Quotations
Tweets

Resource:

In case you’re new here: I wrote a lil guidebook for writers who are just starting to submit their work and/or are looking to improve the rates at which they get accepted. It is available for free, for the time-being. It’s not comprehensive, by any means, but it does offer a very long list of paying journals & also some pro-tips about formatting, among other things.

download here

A prompt:

Within my own writing, I find that I have a strangely limited lexicon & find myself reusing the same diction again & again. At times when that feels particularly frustrating, it helps to read a book and jot down words I like that aren’t part of my everyday vocabulary—or aren’t historically part of my poems’ vocabulary.

With that in mind, here’s the prompt:

Read ten pages of a book of your choice, taking the time to underline words you enjoy or experience infrequently. Then, use ten of those words as your “word-bank,” including them all in a poem or flash work.

What I’ve read lately:

This Thin Memory A-Ha, Eric Elshtain (3/5 stars)
Reborn: Journals and Notebooks, 1947-1963, Susan Sontag 1

To read:

Quotations:

In writing my own story, I am struck, again and again, by how fragile the categories of both pain and pleasure really are.

-David Davis

Did ballet make me a masochist? Or was I simply well suited to the grueling discipline of the art form because of something intrinsic to my core personality, the nebulous you-ness that becomes solid and nameable by kindergarten? (Two things can be true at once, and my guts tell me that the answer to both of these questions is yes.)

-Leigh Cowart

And sure, maybe that anti-aging product does take the burden off of the individual buying it. Maybe it makes that one individual feel better about how they look. But it only compounds the original problem for the collective. Looking more youthful might “empower” the person who gets Botox/filler/face lifts — “empower” as in, grants them the literal power to prevail in a society where “beautiful” women statistically see more professional, personal, and financial success and beauty is defined, in part, as youth — but it does not empower people as a whole. It disempowers the collective by continuing to perpetuate unrealistic and unachievable standards.
So… what if we solved the original problem by upending the system instead of making it easier to live within the confines of the system?

-Jessica DeFino

While second and third wave feminists fought hard for women to be included in the workplace, many fifth wave feminists today embrace an anti-work framework, believing that people should not have to perform endless meaningless labor in order to be able to afford housing, food, education, health insurance, or other social and essential goods. Fifth wave feminists … do not believe any job, even one that is conceived as powerful or ‘empowering,’ can bring about liberation. Fifth wave feminism is also invested in several anticapitalist frameworks, such as defunding the police and prison abolition.

-Mary Retta

I did a lot of research on the anthropology of beauty standards and where this stuff all started and where it all stemmed from. From my research, I have identified beauty culture stemming from four main forces: patriarchy, white supremacy, colonialism and capitalism. Basically, any standard that you can point out stems from one or two or all of those, which is very similar to Western culture in general. A lot of our ideals across the political spectrum, the education system, the health care system, diet culture, they all stem from those four tenets. And then from there is where you see things like classism, colorism, ageism, sexism, ableism, the gender binary, those all stem from there, too. So beauty standards come from those forces. I like to describe them as not separate from classism or colorism or sexism, they are those things distilled into physical form. Beauty standards are how those things are dispersed throughout society. Beauty standards are how white supremacy is dispersed throughout society. It is how sexism is dispersed throughout society. So these things aren't separate. And sometimes I feel like, “ugh, am I making too big of a deal out of beauty standards by comparing it to white supremacy?” But the more I research, no, it's not wrong to conflate those two, because the two are the same thing. Beauty standards are just one way of communicating white supremacy.

-Jessica DeFino

I also have to use the example of tanning as a really easy visual to represent classism and beauty standards. So for a really long time, for much of history, it was desirable to have really white, pale skin because workers, the lower-class people and slaves were outside working, and they would get tanned by the sun. So having darker skin was a class marker. It basically showed you were of a lower caste, a lower class, you were outside laboring. And the wealthy people were indoors, protected from the sun and didn't have to do that type of labor. So pale skin became the ideal. And you can see that everywhere from the ancient Egyptians to Europe in the 17th century, women were powdering their faces with white powder to look as pale as possible. You see that shift after the Industrial Revolution, when that class dynamic really changed and workers were inside factories. And so the lower class people were inside. They weren't tan, they were pale. And the wealthy were now the leisure class, they had the money to go on vacation to leisure about outside, to be on boats — Coco Chanel was kind of the first person to make the “tan” very fashionable. Now, it's very chic to have tan skin and pale skin is almost not desirable anymore. And that's a class marker. And I think that's such a great example because we see the beauty standards shift over time. So it's a great example because these things are not ingrained and human. They're not biological, it's not just humans by default love a tan. It really shows how social structures influence what we find beautiful and why.

-Jessica DeFino

To us, it [Moody Gardens] was our world, a small world, yes; but if you are starving you don’t refuse a slice of bread, and we were starving.

-A woman from Lowell, Massachusetts, quoted in A Desired Past

I would give a year—two years of my life to hold her in my arms for half an hour.

-Elsa Gidlow on Margaret Chung

Wish I could run and jump on your lap and put my arms around you and kiss your dear cheeks—or pinch them hard for you—wish you could look into my eyes and see the mute gratitude there . . . I’m the luckiest person in the world, to have your friendship! I love you, for sure & for keeps.

-Margaret Chung in a letter to Sophie Tucker

How long can we / rewind the very thing / eating between the sting / of what comes next?

-Eric Elshtain

The sea dresses me in salt.

-Eric Elshtain

And what is it to be young in years and suddenly wakened to the anguish, the urgency of life?

-Susan Sontag, 1948

How I long to surrender!

-Susan Sontag, 1948

What cowards people are to involve themselves, rather, to passively let themselves be involved, by convention, in sterile relationships—what rotten, dreary, miserable lives they lead—

-Susan Sontag, 1948

It is useless for me to record only the satisfying parts of my existence—(There are too few of them anyway!) Let me note all the sickening waste of today, that I shall not be easy with myself and compromise my tomorrows.

-Susan Sontag, 1948

I must not think of the solar system—of innumerable galaxies spanned by countless light years—of infinities of space—I must not look up at the sky for longer than a moment—I must not think of death, of forever—I must not do all those things so that I will not know these horrible moments when my mind seems a tangible thing—more than my mind—my whole spirit—all that animates me and is the original and responsive desire that constitutes my “self”—all this takes on a definite shape and size—far too large to be contained by the structure I call my body—All this pulls and pushes—years and strains (I feel it now) until I must clench my fists—I rise—who can keep still—every muscle is on a rack—striving to build itself into an immensity—I want to scream—my stomach feels compressed—my legs, feet, toes stretching until they hurt.

-Susan Sontag, 1948

Can I never escape this interminable morning for myself?

-Susan Sontag, 1948

Emotionally, I wanted to stay. Intellectually, I wanted to leave. As always, I seemed to enjoy punishing myself.

-Susan Sontag, 1949

Nothing but humiliation and degradation at the thought of physical relations with a man—The first time I kissed him—a very long kiss—I thought quite distinctly: “Is this all?—it’s so silly”—I tried! I did try—but I know now it can never be—I want to hide—

-Susan Sontag, 1949

I am alive . . . I am beautiful . . . what else is there?

-Susan Sontag, 1949

God, living is enormous!

-Susan Sontag, 1949

(wretched, wracked I am—most wretched): my mind mastered by spasms of uncontrollable desire—

-Susan Sontag, 1949

Irene came very close to ruining me—congealing the incipient guilt I have always felt about my lesbianism—making me ugly to myself—
I know the truth now—I know how good and right it is to love—I have, in some part, been given permission to live—
Everything begins from now—I am reborn

-Susan Sontag, 1949

I am infinite—I must never forget it . . . I want sensuality and sensitivity, both . . . […] I want to err on the side of violence and excess, rather than to underfill my moments . . .

-Susan Sontag, 1949

A crowd awaited me, but still I dared carelessly to touch the side of my hand to hers . . .

-Susan Sontag, 1953

In marriage, every desire becomes a decision.

-Susan Sontag, 1956

Whoever invented marriage was an ingenious tormenter. It is an institution committed to the dulling of the feelings. The whole point of marriage is repetition. The best it aims for is the creation of strong, mutual dependencies.

-Susan Sontag, 1956

Marriage is based on the principle of inertia.
Unloving proximity.

-Susan Sontag, 1956

Love that incorporates, that devours the other person, that cuts off the tendons of the will. Love as immolation of the self.

-Susan Sontag, 1958

. . . kisses like bullets, soap-flavored kisses, kisses from lips that feel like wet calf’s-brains.

-Susan Sontag, 1956

On marriage: That’s all there is. There isn’t any more. The quarrels + the tenderness, endlessly reduplicated.

-Susan Sontag, 1957

I don’t care if it’s lousy. The only way to learn to write is to write.

-Susan Sontag, 1957

The world is cluttered with dead institutions.

-Susan Sontag, 1957

This little cone of warmth, my body—
-Susan Sontag, 1957

Moon a yellow smudge in the sky—a yellow fingerprint on the night.

-Susan Sontag, 1957

It’s corrupting to write with intent to moralize, to elevate people’s moral standards.

-Susan Sontag, 1957

How to make my sadness more than a lament for feeling? How to feel? How to burn? How to make my anguish metaphysical?

-Susan Sontag, 1958

A crucifixion, these last two weeks . . . Must deserve it. Love is ridiculous.

-Susan Sontag, 1958

I look at everything from the other end—instead of expecting all and being lowered into despair each time I get less, I expect nothing now and, occasionally, I get a little, and am more than a little happy.

-Susan Sontag, 1958

Lesson: not to surrender one’s heart where it’s not wanted.

-Susan Sontag, 1958

My desire to write is connected with my homosexuality. I need the identity as a weapon, to match the weapon that society has against me.

-Susan Sontag, 1959

Being queer makes me feel more vulnerable. It increases my wish to hide, to be invisible—which I’ve always felt anyway.

-Susan Sontag, 1959

Two things are meant by “being passive.” Being done to. Not responding. These are entirely different. In the first you can be “active.”

-Susan Sontag, 1960

Feeling hurt is passive; feeling angry is active.

-Susan Sontag, 1960

I must help I[rene] to write. And if I write, too, it will stop this uselessness of just sitting here and staring at her and begging her to love me again.

-Susan Sontag, 1960

I am sick of having opinions. I am sick of talking.

-Susan Sontag, 1960

It hurts to love. It’s like giving yourself to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

-Susan Sontag, 1960

The emotional life is a complex sewer system.
Have to shit every day or it gets blocked up.

-Susan Sontag, 1961

I write to define myself—an act of self-creation—part of [the] process of becoming—

-Susan Sontag, 1962

Any division of attention is disloyalty.

-Susan Sontag, 1962

My reading is hoarding, accumulating, storing up for the future, filling the hole of the present.

-Susan Sontag, 1962

Ask: Does this person bring out something good in me? Not: Is this person beautiful, good, valuable?

-Susan Sontag, 1963

This aching for I[rene] the last two days—what is it made of? Sense of loss; frustration; resentment? That? And if that, only that? I feel her impenetrability—I can’t grasp her. She eludes me, evades me—yet I can’t stop wanting from her. Her judgments of me are like a thorn, an arrow, a barbed hook. I writhe. I want to get away + I want her to draw me in, both at the same time.

-Susan Sontag, 1963