round-up: 9/17
Happy Sunday!
Here’s what I have for you today:
Housekeeping
What I’m reading
Quotations
Tweets
Housekeeping:
I made a fun little sweatshirt and you can buy it here.
What I’m reading:
Oddly satisfying: what’s behind our drive to collect useless items?
New Pompeii Discovery Sheds Light on Slavery in Ancient Rome
The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax
Is Art Criticism Today Too Affirmative? That’s the Wrong Question to Be Asking
Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis wrote support letters for Danny Masterson at rape sentencing
How a Queer Military General Changed the Cultural Face of Vienna
Quotations:
Books are my favorite form, though they are incredibly unlucrative.
Much irony can be found in this undeniable institutional failure. The irony of the British Museum falling victim to insider theft when it has long faced criticism for holding, and refusing to return, looted cultural objects. The irony of George Osborne, current chair of the British Museum, blaming the thefts on documentation issues, when they are a direct result of his six years of extensive budget cuts as a chancellor of the Exchequer in the name of “austerity,” which left the British culture sector scrambling for funding.
For me storytelling is inextricable with orality. I read all of my work aloud until I get a rhythm, I think about that almost as a musical composition.
I believe it was Cynthia Nixon who got into a lot of trouble for saying that being a lesbian was a choice for her. I’ve gotten into trouble for saying that as well. And I understand why. The bible-thumpy closet homos get all in a lather about gayness being a choice and with the right amount of prayer and support, one can simply change their mind and no longer be gay. So, if you have people out there saying, “Oh yes, lesbianism is a choice for me,” then yer gonna feel a bit betrayed. But the thing is, that’s kind of, in a way, the whole crux of sexuality. It exists on an ever-changing continuum, which is something bible-thumpy closet homos can inherently, never embrace.
That really is the bottom line throughout our culture: we attack/demonize the victim. Without the victim opening their mouth, there would be no problem. This applies to whistleblowers, environmentalists/animal rights activists, labor unions, incarcerated prison right activists, un-closeted breastfeeding mothers and pretty much everyone else who bucks the system of total control.
This morning I went for a walk in my neighborhood and the clouds were smudged pink across the pale blue sky and flowers were blooming and the air was warm and suffused with a lovely smell I couldn’t place. My legs carried me. The whole world is alive.
The lesbians, for their part, are silent—just as all women are as women at all levels.
-Monique Wittig
It is our fiction that validates us.
-Monique Wittig
m/y very beautiful one m/y very strong one m/y very indomitable one m/y very learned one m/y very ferocious one m/y very gentle one m/y best beloved
-Monique Wittig
At this point I invoke our help m/y incomparable Sappho, give m/e by thousands the fingers that allay the wounds, give m/e the lips the tongue the saliva which draw one into the slow sweet poisoned country from which one cannot return.
-Monique Wittig
I am seized with a great disturbance.
-Monique Wittig
I am seized with desire for you.
-Monique Wittig
I call you, you unnameable unnamed.
-Monique Wittig
We descend directly legs together thighs together arms entwined m/y hands touching your shoulders m/y shoulders held by your hands breast against breast open mouth against open mouth
-Monique Wittig
Whoever has dared lay hands on you, let her show herself, let her curse the day she was born.
-Monique Wittig
Tweets:
Have a great week—
-Despy Boutris
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