Mário Macilau (Mozambican, b. 1984)
Ear, 2021
perpetually wanting to return to the clearest form of internal stillness; to a place of balance. thank you for helping me with that, barcelona. it’s been a good month and a half
leyla-a reblogged
Anne Boyer, What Resembles the Grave But Isn’t
[“For many women, life – and sex – are a complex tussle between the need to harden, fortify, and push away on the one hand, and the need to receive, dissolve, and allow on the other. Women especially know the vulnerability which reigns over their lives – they are made to know this, painfully, forcefully, too often, whether in the form of actual violation and invasion, or in the constant reminders of it.
It is immensely appealing to fantasize oneself to be inviolable, utterly autonomous, and in possession of firm boundaries – and therefore able to ward off invasion. When you feel vulnerable, it’s tempting to brace yourself against vulnerability – the fantasy of hardening yourself so that nothing can hurt you. The collateral, however, is that nothing can reach you, either. How to protect oneself without denying vulnerability, with all its fruitfulness? ‘How’, asks Lorde, ‘to feel love, how to neither discount fear nor be overwhelmed by it, how to enjoy feeling deeply?’
When it comes to sex, there is pleasure to be had in vulnerability. It can be what makes sex joyful – the giddy rewards of stepping haltingly into the water, the gasp on contact, the relief in the finding of ecstasy. We need to be vulnerable – to take risks, to be open to the unknown – if we are to experience joy and transformation. That’s the bind: pleasure involves risk, and that can never be foreclosed or avoided. It is not by hardening ourselves against vulnerability that we – any of us – will find sexual fulfillment. It is in acknowledging, and opening ourselves to, our universal vulnerability.
Receptivity may also be a crucial part of pleasure. It is an exquisitely ambiguous trait; it’s welcoming, it’s open, and inviting – and, by that token, it’s also a risk. Letting things in, being porous – being susceptible to the other’s needs and desires – is what makes one tender to the feelings of others, and what puts one at their mercy.
When I invite someone in – when I want them to enter – I can never be sure that they will enter in the way that I want them to. Nor do I always know in advance how I want them to enter. That’s why the invitation to sex is daunting, and why it can be so moving. To be met in one’s desire, and to be surprised in one’s desire, is an exercise in mutual trust and negotiation of fear. When it works, it can feel miraculous; a magical collision, safe and risky in just the right degrees, comfortable and challenging in just the right proportions. It’s rare, the strange alchemy of bodies and minds that can effect this melding of familiarity and unfamiliarity, of ease and surprise. Because it’s rare, it should be treasured.”]
katherine angel, from tomorrow the sex will be good again: women and desire in the age of consent, 2021
leyla-a reblogged
east sussex, england, july 2022
some things:
1. i’m constantly reminded that the smallest joys will always fill my closest heart
2. time to make our lifelong dream of running away to the coast come true, girls. i’m not sure how much of this is rooted in wanting to run from myself (i don’t think so; not this time anyway), let’s find out in the next episode
3. lianne says ‘don’t tell me you need me, i am estranged’
leyla-a reblogged
“Heartbreak begins the moment we are asked to let go but cannot, in other words, it colors and inhabits and magnifies each and every day; heartbreak is not a visitation, but a path that human beings follow through […]. Heartbreak is an indication of our sincerity: in a love relationship, in a life’s work, in trying to learn a musical instrument, in the attempt to shape a better more generous self. Heartbreak is the beautifully helpless side of love and affection and is [an] essence and emblem of care… [W]e use the word heartbreak as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong: an unrequited love, a shattered dream… But heartbreak may be the very essence of being human, of being on the journey from here to there, and of coming to care deeply for what we find along the way.”
— David Whyte, Consolations (via exhaled-spirals)
leyla-a reblogged
“I have come to realise it doesn’t make much sense to ponder the meaning of life; that it is a question induced by melancholy; that an answer is not really what we are looking for. Does it not disappear the minute we find joy again? Who, when finally seized by a great desire to love, to dance, to work, still wonders: what is the meaning of life?”
— Belinda Cannone, Petit éloge de l'embrassement (via exhaled-spirals)
some things:
1. read woodson’s ‘red at the bone’ (set in brooklyn) while in brooklyn. it was surreal. paused every so often to look through / imagine life in the brownstones. iris could be any one of those girls in there.
2. nearly cried everyday when black people passing on the street would compliment / show me love. so so tender.
3. there’s something bittersweet, and raw, about being in a city that feels like home.
your blog isn’t fully developed until youre 25
leyla-a reblogged
“you are trying to hold on to god. the qur'an gathers dust on the shelf and yet here you are: offering tears as prayers.”
— leyla ahmed, prayer
leyla-a reblogged
Couple à la moto, 1960, photographed by Mory Bamba
madeira, portugal, dec 21
leyla-a reblogged
Jennifer Willough, from “The Sun Is Still A Part Of Me”, Beautiful Zero: Poems
Bambara women dance at the conclusion of Ramadan, West Africa, August 1975
some things:
1. i’ve spent the year focusing on watching tanzanian films and going to concerts. both bring me back to myself
2. moved into my own place in south east london and read caleb’s ‘open water’ (set in my exact area) at the same time. what a moment
3. listening to all of the podcasts ever to drown out the inner monologue. not naming the places that hurt means they’re not real. right?
4. dangarembga titles her book ‘this mournable body’ & nao says ‘if we stay, we might make it home’
5. making peace with the idea that i’ll continue to float indefinitely