Week 47-22 - Curiosities
SHORT STORIES
"Tenth of December" by George Saunders
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/10/31/tenth-of-december
"He was a father. That’s what a father does. Eases the burdens of those he loves. Saves the ones he loves from painful last images that might endure for a lifetime.
“That feeling of being accepted back again and again, of someone’s affection for you always expanding to encompass whatever new flawed thing had just manifested in you, that was the deepest, dearest thing he’d ever—"
"The Nine Billion Names of God" by Arthur C. Clarke
https://ia800300.us.archive.org/19/items/ninebillionnames00clar/ninebillionnames00clar_bw.pdf
A lamasery hires a computer to find the name of God.
"All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury
POEMS
"Appalachian Elegy" by bell hooks
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/148751/appalachian-elegy-1-6
"Numbers" by Mary Cornish
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/40877/numbers-56d21ecff2141
"Again" by Ross Gay
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/92019/again-586e779b07cc8
When you set something free..
"Break, Break, Break" by Lord Alfred Tennyson
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45318/break-break-break
SONGS
"Worth Saving" by Jurdan Bryant
https://youtu.be/uFnuMtbHokc
"The Numbers" by Radiohead
https://youtu.be/Nun4Unnc8
"We call upon the people
People have this power
The numbers don't decide
Your system is a lie"
"Big Pun" by Nadia Naked
https://youtu.be/HXgARfhUr2c
ESSAYS
"A Room of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200791h.html
"All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point—a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved."
"And thus by degrees was lit, half-way down the spine, which is the seat of the soul, not that hard little electric light which we call brilliance, as it pops in and out upon our lips, but the more profound, subtle and subterranean glow which is the rich yellow flame of rational intercourse."
"He meant, perhaps, that the androgynous mind is resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided."
"I find myself saying briefly and prosaically that it is much more important to be oneself than anything else."
"Such, Such Were the Joys" by George Orwell
https://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/ejoys
"but partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them."
"t the time I could not see beyond the moral dilemma that is presented to the weak in a world governed by the strong: Break the rules, or perish. I did not see that in that case the weak have the right to make a different set of rules for themselves;"
ART
Michael Zansky, Three Studies for Marathon, 2006-2017. Oil and acrylic on carved plywood, 26 x 21 in. each. Courtesy of the artist.
Michael Zansky
https://michaelzanskypaintings.com/
"Playing Spades" Photography by Sam Vernon
https://www.samvernon.com/
https://magazine.art21.org/2012/10/03/an-emerging-artist-by-the-financial-numbers/
Mahsa Merci (b. Iran, Canada)
“I hope my works raises questions for people, and helps them to find their authentic selves, embrace the variety of human beings, and to have more freedom in all countries for the next generation.”
“Woman-life-freedom - زن-زندگی-آزادی”
https://www.instagram.com/mahsa.merci/
https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/mahsa-merci-spotlight-art-221122
NEWS
Violent white supremacy is a global problem
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/opinion/us-white-supremacy-violence.html