saewol:

“The machinery of control has rendered our very existence illegal. We’ve endured the criminalization and crucifixion of our bodies, our sex, our unruly genders. Raids, witch-hunts, burnings at the stake. We’ve occupied the space of deviants, of whores, of perverts, and abominations. This culture has rendered us criminal, and of course, in turn, we’ve committed our lives to crime. In the criminalization of our pleasures, we’ve found the pleasure to be had in crime! In being outlawed for who we are, we’ve discovered that we are indeed fucking outlaws! Many blame queers for the decline of this society—we take pride in this. Some believe that we intend to shred-to-bits this civilization and it’s moral fabric—they couldn’t be more accurate. We’re often described as depraved, decadent and revolting—but oh, they ain’t seen nothing yet.”

— a gang of criminal queers, “Criminal Intimacy”

whentherewerebicycles:

“Most of us believe emptiness is nothing, and we fear having nothing. Emptiness, however, is filled with possibility, filled with space. I have learned to enjoy watching my empty mind. Unlike the minds of many of my friends, my mind is often completely blank; I know it is there, but there is nothing in particular in it. My memory, for that reason, is sometimes described—by those who know me—as poor. My retrieval system slow and faulty. Having this empty mind, though, has many benefits. I may not be able to recall something said twenty years or minutes ago, but I can watch the gentle arrival of something entirely new. A poem, the plot of a novel, the ending of a short story. I can ‘know’ something in a flash, as if it simply appeared on my mind’s blank slate.

It is because I cherish my empty mind that I am careful what I put into it. I limit television especially, even though i think the medium of television is astonishing. I limit other things too, like movies and public events and other people’s conversations. If my mind is crowded with ideas or thoughts or plans or other people’s creations there is less room for my own. And it is my own mind and journey that I wish to experience, because it is from this vantage point that I can most truly engage others.”

—Alice Walker, We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For

dearhummingbird:

I don’t really like the term “mutuals” because it sounds exclusive and isolating and I like everyone I’m following! even if they don’t know it. Anyhoo, there are so many of you now and really there’s something inexplicably lovely about having “mutuals” here and I think it goes beyond knowing you’re surrounded by like-minded people.. it’s different from other platforms because you’re not sharing a moment really(or at least not primarily) that’s arguably porous with time but it collates a patchwork of interests that, individually, express so much, I think by virtue of more allowance for content and is immediate and present yet somehow eternal.. something about tumblr is just so very developmental and pliable 

ardora:

“I want to say at least something about the pain existing in the world
today. Consumerist ideology, which has become the most powerful and
invasive on the planet, sets out to persuade us that pain is an
accident, something that we can insure against. This is the logical
basis for the ideology’s pitilessness.

Everyone knows, of course, that pain is endemic to life, and wants to
forget this or relativise it. All the variants of the myth of a Fall
from the Golden Age, before pain existed, are an attempt to relativise
the pain suffered on earth. So too is the invention of Hell, the
adjacent kingdom of pain-as-punishment. Likewise the discovery of
Sacrifice. And later, much later, the principle of Forgiveness. One
could argue that philosophy began with the question: why pain?

Yet, when all this has been said, the present pain of living in the
world is perhaps in some ways unprecedented.

I write in the night, although it is daytime.”

— John Berger, “Written in the night: The pain of living in the present world”