Without Spite My Heart May Actually Stop

My My My.  Collage for Octavia Butler by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, @blackfeministbreathing

“Writing is difficult. You do it all alone without encouragement and without any certainty that you’ll ever be published or paid or even that you’ll be able to finish the particular work you’ve begun. It isn’t easy to persist amid all that. […] Sometimes when I’m interviewed, the interviewer either compliments me on my ‘talent’, my ‘gift’ or asks me how I discovered it. […] I used to struggle to answer this politely, to explain that I didn’t believe much in writing talent. People who want to write either do it or they don’t. At last I began to say that my most important talent - or habit - was persistence. Without it, I would have given up writing long before I finished my first novel. It’s amazing what we can do if we simply refuse to give up.”  Octavia E. Butler (via @merigreenleaf )

Holy crap.

Here it is: Best stuff first

Extremely handy if you follow a lot of people and hate missing anything good. 

Best Stuff First moves the best stuff on your dashboard—mhm!—right up to the top. 

It’s rolling out this week on iOS and Android, and comes with this Help Center article.  

Thanks! ✌️

In Poland’s ‘LGBT-free zones,’ existing is an act of defiance - CNN.com

cnn.com

In Poland’s ‘LGBT-free zones,’ existing is an act of defiance

Hundreds of regions across Poland have declared themselves “LGBT-free” — and those inside the zones fear for their safety.

I understand Karolina's feeling of not being able to come home. I live in a society where often I can take my safety more for granted. But this mirrors the culture I was raised in... and that of my family then and now.

Today I discovered this writer’s tactic to face her fear of rejection and failure, and it’s honestly very inspiring?! This kinda rewired my brain and I feel everyone should read and think about it.

Read her short article here

When the Baal Schem, the founder of Hasidism, had a difficult task before him, he would go to a certain place in the woods, light a fire and meditate in prayer; and what he had set out to perform was done.  When a generation later, the Maggid of Meseritz was faced with the same task, he would go to the same place in the woods, and say: “We can no longer light a fire, but we can pray.”  And everything happened according to his will.  When another generation had passed, Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov was faced with the same task, [and] he would go to the same place in the woods, and say: “We can no longer light a fire, nor do we know the secret meditations belonging to the prayers, but we know the place in the woods, and that can be sufficient.”  And sufficient it was.  But when another generation had passed and Rabbi Israel of Rishin was called upon to perform the task, he sat down in his golden chair, in his castle, and said: “We cannot light the fire, we cannot speak the prayers, we do not know the place, but we can tell the story of all this.”  And, once again, this was sufficient.

Gershom Scholem, from Giorgio Agamben’s book The Fire and the Tale

The Angel With The Flaming Sword - Edwin Howland Blashfield

A new print for Scotland MCM, where I’ll be at the end of this month!

“Each person is only given so many evenings, and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.”

— Charles Bukowski (via elshalarossa)