@intersustainability / intersustainability.tumblr.com
god is a verb, david a. cooper
[ID: black text on a white background. reads as follows:
There is a lovely Sufi story of a man who constantly cried out to God but received no response. After a while the Devil whispered in his ear; "How long will you wait for God to respond 'Here I am' to all of your entreaties?" This broke the man's spirit, and he stopped calling out to God. In a dream, however, he envisioned an image of the Divine, who asked him why he had stopped. The man said that God had never answered his call. The wise dream-image, representing God, then said, "Did you not realize that every calling of yours IS itself my response?"
The urge to call out to God is always answered simultaneously as it is spoken, for ultimately there is no difference between the caller and that to which it calls.
The Kotzker Rebbe, Menachem Mendel, a famous hasidic teacher in the nineteenth century who lived his last twenty years in voluntary seclusion, asked one of his students, “Where does God dwell?” As the student stumbled in his attempt to respond, the Kotzker Rebbe answered his own question: “God resides wherever we let God in!"
Mystics throughout time, in all traditions, have said the same thing. We do not have to search for God, because the presence of the Divine permeates all things. If there is a search at all, it is God searching for Itself, so to speak.
end ID]
rain, new year’s eve, maggie smith / for example, mary oliver / the thing is, ellen bass
[ID: three images containing excerpts from the poems listed in the caption. all use the same font of black text on a white background.
excerpt 1, rain, new year's eve by maggie smith:
Let me love the cold rain's plinking. / Let me love the world the way I love
my young son, not only when / he cups my face in his sticky hands,
but when, roughhousing, / he accidentally splits my lip.
Let me love the world like a mother. / Let me be tender when it lets me down.
Let me listen to the rain's one note / and hear a beginner's song.
excerpt 2, for example by mary oliver. note that the first line of this excerpt is highlighted in yellow:
I love this world, even in its hard places. / A bird, too, must love the world, / even in its hard places / So, even if effort may come to nothing, / you have to do something.
excerpt 3, the thing is by ellen bass:
Then you hold life like a face / between your palms, a plain face, / no charming smile, no violet eyes, / and you say, yes, I will take you / I will love you, again.
end ID.]
For M, Mikko Harvey
(i keep seeing only the last quote of this poem so i wanted to share the whole thing)
[text ID: a poem by Mikko Harvey. The poem is formatted so that after every two words there is a line break. It reads:
For M
I don’t want you to be nervous. Maybe thinking of a walrus would help. Have you seen the video of the penguin accidentally stepping on a sleeping walrus? It thought it was a rock. The walrus wakes up like what the fuck and the penguin scurries off like oh shit. Sometimes it’s funny watching a surprise happen, and not just funny but kind of amazing — like, you never really know what’s what when it comes to this planet. Then again, when it’s you getting surprised, that’s different. Especially for tender ones like us. What are we supposed to do? It’s bad for our hearts, you know. I hope you won’t need pills like I do. I think I get so scared because I’m greedy — I want to hold onto everything, the world wants to take it away. What the fuck. The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.
/end ID]
Rainbow Connection [ instagram ]
[ID:
a warm drawing of kermit riding a red bicycle. there is a white speech bubble to the right of him with a red heart in it. his bike has a brown basket with flowers in it. he is biking on grass in front of a light brown fence and there is a rainbow coming down behind it.
End ID]
cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other 🤠💘
[ID: a black and white relief print of two cowboys stylized like a vintage comic illustration. the cowboy on the left is lying on his stomach with his hands resting on his chin and looking up at the other cowboy, who is serenading him with an acoustic guitar. behind them in the night sky are stars and a crescent moon. printed text on the bottom reads “cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other.” End ID.]
The Good Place Appreciation Week Day 6: Favorite Lesson/s
ID: Seven gifs from The Good Place.
Gif 1: Chidi and Eleanor cuddling on a couch, covered with a blanket. Chidi is saying, “That’s what the Good Place really is. It’s not even a place, really. It’s just having enough time with the people you love.”
Gif 2: Michael talking to someone off camera, looking intense. He says, “People improve when they get external love and support. How can we hold it against them when they don’t?”
Gif 3: Chidi sitting at a table and talking to someone offs creen. He says, “What do you have to lose by treating people with kindness and respect?”
Gif 4: Tahani talking to Chidi. She says, “The confidence comes from failure. I’ve thrown my fair share of disastrous gatherings. Remind me to tell you about Timothee Chalamet’s bar mitzvah. But you love through the failure and you learn from it.”
Gif 5: Michael talking to Chidi. He says, “If soulmates do exist they’re not found, they’re made. People meet, they get a good feeling and then they get to work, building a relationship.”
Gif 6: Jason, in a sleeveless tuxedo and backwards baseball cap, talking to a mostly off screen Chidi. He says, “I mean, where I’m from, most things blow up eventually. So I learned that when something dope comes along, you gotta lock it down. If you’re always frozen in fear and taking too long to think about what to do, you’ll miss your opportunity and maybe get sucked into the propeller of a swamp boat.”
Gif 7: Michael talking to a mostly off screen Eleanor in Janet’s void. He says, “What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday.”
Roast duck elegy, K-Ming Chang
[text ID: flotation device. When crossing a sea, leave everything that sinks: jewelry, kitchen knives, children. Bring your tongue but not its language. Name the body. end ID]
Ilya Kaminsky, “A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck”, Deaf Republic
[Text ID: “At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?”]
( x )
[ id: a twitter thread by user @androgynosis that reads as follows:
speaking as someone w mild and variable cognitive impairment that affect my reading comprehension, online arguments abt accessibility when it comes to "social justice" related stuff online are still missing the mark almost completely.
on one hand, i most often see "omg type this in a way that normal ppl can read" or accusations of inaccessability leveraged against particularly marginalized groups like poc (esp black ppl) and transfems. i don't think that's a coincidence
white ppl and tme ppl (jic i'm tme+white) are not exempt from unfairly demanding poc & transfems to do the legwork for us in understanding racism & transmisogyny/acting entitled to that effort. our expectations of poc & transfems exist in the context of racism+transmisogyny
on top of that it's not inherently ableist for ppl to use complex language or academic jargon. it's ableist if say, a disabled person politely requests that smth be reworded in a way they can comprehend due to impairment, & they are met w mockery or accused of laziness
but what seems to happen most of the time is ppl act hostile/aggressive/entitled over the matter as if this is abt moral superiority & not abt allowing more of an audience for "social justice"-related concepts. try asking *politely* first instead of being smug & rude
however, i also see ppl imply that since illiterate / poor folks in the past still found ways to understand complex theory, then that means anyone who claims this stuff can be inaccessible 2 certain ppl are simply not trying hard enough. this is not always true
i see a lot of ppl say "i'm disabled & i understand this fine" but experiences w disability are not universal. some ppl are intellectually disabled. some ppl otherwise have cognitive issues that strongly impair reading comprehension no matter how much "effort" they put in
i'm not *significantly* impaired in that respect but, as an example, i can't read marx or butler & understand what they're saying. usually i understand the words on their own but together its difficult. it's like slamming ur head into a brick wall over & over. it doesn't work
so while the "jargon is inaccessible" side has a plethora of issues, esp privileged ppl demanding labor from those they hold leverage over, but i also want ppl on the other side 2 stop implying this viewpoint can only come out of "not trying hard enough." sound good?
additional note: just as someone has limitations that may make them unable to understand smth, someone can have limitations where they're not able to make their writing more accessible.
using myself as an example again, my neurodevelopmental stuff makes me tend to overexplain things to the point of confusing others. idk how successful i would be if someone asked me to simplify smth i wrote for them. i might just confuse them further
other factors that could play into that are stuff like not having the energy / spoons, or even just not having the time. communication and understanding is key here. pls be compassionate w one another
end id. ]
“Speak not of what men deserve. For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger. Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate? No man earns punishment, no man earns reward. Free your mind of the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.”
— Ursula K. LeGuin, The Dispossessed. (via outlawpoet)
voted time magazines most girly boy whos not a boy or girl or a man or woman just like person but in a boy girlfriend way of all time
Addressing some comments in the tags: It’s true that the database isn’t as vast as Goodreads’ - yet. The site is much, much newer than Goodreads. But you can actually help them expand!
When you search for a title, you may not find what you need. Then all you have to do is click the handy “Can’t find the book you’re looking for?” link, and you’ll be taken straight to this page, where you will be able to help them find books to add to their database! If you can’t find that non-English book you’re looking for, help them out!
I had no idea it was black-owned! So cool.
I’ve been using StoryGraph for a bit over a year now and I LOVE IT.
Also, to address the above comment- it has been about 7 months now since I’ve had to add a book to their database, and I’ve been reading a good mix of old/new/popular/lesser-known/etc. just in the last 3-4 months. The database has grown ENORMOUSLY since StoryGraph first launched and will simply continue to grow the more people use it!
[ID: first image is a screenshot of the front page of StoryGraph, showing a toolbar and 3 book entires. second image is a screenshot of the page on StoryGraph to add a book by filling out the title and author. end ID]
actually i hate the word queering. cringe
that like sucks for you. anyways wanna read my doctorate essay "on queering cringe: finding trans-transcendence and radical earnestness through a nonconformist gender politic"?
[ID: two screenshots from genius lyrics. the first reads: laying down on the lawn / i'm tired of trying to get in the house / i'm thinking out loud / i've been playing dead / my whole life. the second reads: the only reason why i continue at all / faith in reason, i wasted my life playing dumb. end ID]
ICU - phoebe bridgers // the only thing - sufjan stevens
between “twink isn’t a body type” and “camp is like having bad taste” and even “femme has never been used outside of lesbian bars (which didn’t allow bi women)” and “neopronouns were created 10 years ago” i’m starting to suspect some of you don’t actually know gay culture and are just half assedly speedrunning being a gay elder for clout
despite all my rage i am still just a rat pushing the pleasure button until i die
