Read More Angela Davis

I have a thing to get to but had to get this out real quick

EDIT:

okay back from the thing

-it doesn't actually have to be a negative emotion, I have trouble-causing maladaptive responses to positive ones too

-maladaptive responses usually served the purpose of keeping you safe in a tough situation, or were the only response modeled for you, or both, so they're not Inherently Bad they're just not useful in the context of a healthy relationship

-this is a useful thing to keep in mind if you have a bad track record with relationships and therefore come up against a lot of thoughts like "no one likes the real me/my real feelings" and "I am unloveable". it's not your self or your natural feelings that are the issue, it's the way you've learned to behave in response to them (again, because you had to or you don't know any other way!). which sucks, but the good news is you can unlearn those things and practice new behaviors.

-I can't find it but someone in the tags mentioned that sometimes the maladaptive response comes first. good point they can both cause each other and create a vicious cycle. the chicken and the egg but bad and painful.

This (a quote from my book The Anthropocene Reviewed) was my overall attitude to the world until I was about 24. But it is no longer the way I look at the world.

It turns out that there is pleasure in simply giving what you have, even if--as is generally the case--what you have proves insufficient.

All my books have so many shortcomings. I am constantly running up against the limits of my talents. In other ways, they are good. Whatever is good in them comes from my willingness to go deep and be honest even when it is hard.

When I think of my work, it is hard to think of anything but its insufficiency. And yet, it's valuable to give as much as I can, whenever I can--not to "fulfill my potential" or whatever, but because we are only here for a little while, and there is more meaning in possibly cringe but earnest effort than there is in the cold pleasure of ironic disdain.

Important for spoonies with cats! Creams with Flurbiprofen are fatal to cats. Brands that use this chemical (Not a complete list): Myoflex Traumeel Capzasin If you have cats, check your pain relieving cream for this, and keep them from ingesting it, please!

http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/mobileart.asp?articlekey=694

Oh no! Boosting for all cat owners.

All NSAIDs are toxic to cats - this includes ibuprofen (Advil/Motrin), Aleve (naproxen), Voltaren – which also comes in a gel form – (diclofenac), Mobic (meloxicam), aspirin… If you’re unsure, ask your pharmacist or check drugs.com.

Signed, your friendly local former pharmacist

i think when i go off on my 'i dont like the idea of soulmates' rant i never land with the people im seeking when i say i dont like soulmates its not 'there is no wonder or joy in our existence this is all purely chance' its 'no human being was made to complete or fix another but by the marvel of sheer existence we are given the ability to choose each other, to be here and exist at the same time, we are not born lacking another but is it not - in some way - a miracle that we should be able to find each other and choose to become something new together? are the odds of our joint existence - is the chance itself - not at least a bit magical?'

not 'we were put here at the same time for a reason so if its over thats it thats all for us' but 'we're here at the same time! thank goodness! thank goodness ive got this time to spend with you'

YOU get me

Saying this as an Irish person since the new Hozier album just came out and there are lyrics in Irish; it’s Irish or Gaeilge (pronounced “gwhale-ga” or “gale-ga” depending on region), not Gaelic or Celtic or any other name people come up with.

It’s just a normal language that people speak in their everyday life. We learn it in school in the republic. People like myself are bilingual in Irish and English. It’s not a “fairy aesthetic cottage core leprechaun” language.

Please respect it. Our language is a touchy subject seen as how England tried to erase it by forcing English on us and severely punishing those who spoke Irish.

At the same time that does NOT mean it is a dead language. Our (in the republic) road and safety signs are in both Irish and English, same with legal documents. Our politicians speak it, and we are trying to preserve the language!

Anyways enjoy the album!

the whole point of life is being deeply moved by art. and bread

I know I told this story before but last year I was having complications with a surgery and I just broke down in a public place and I was trying to gather myself, sitting and leaning on a wall when this girl in cowboy boots approached me and sat down and she asked what was wrong and I told her it was medical issues and she said “I understand, I have to have my foot amputated next week” and it shocked me out of crying and I was like “wow that sucks!” And she said “yeah.” And then she just touched my arm so tenderly and told me “I promise you that this problem will have its place, and everything is going to work out.” And the way she said it just made me really believe her. She said. “We’re just gonna have to cowgirl up.” And then she stood up and walked away and I’d call that a genuine encounter with an angel but the truth is there is a lot of goodness right here on earth in humanity and it’s shining and pure.

Okay but “this problem will have its place” is genuinely inspiring

THAT REALLY STRUCK ME because I’ve always hated the tired rhetoric of “this happened for a reason” and this feels like a more genuine, comforting take on that. Not “it happened for a reason,” but “this will find its spot in your life and your future that it fits into in a way that will eventually work out even though it sucks that it happened.” Love that.

*girl whos scared out of her mind* i think what matters is love and being kind and thats it

One thing that's vitally important to remember is that feeling ''weirded out'' is not a form of harm. It is a completely normal part of socializing. It is the feeling of encountering something unfamiliar. In order to be a kind person, you must learn to how to distinguish between "harmful" and "weird." And then you must accept the weird.

hey don’t cry. spiro the bald eagle failing at catching a crab, okay?

"All emotions are valid" means "your feelings are real, they are yours, and you are not wrong for having them."

"All emotions are valid" means "your emotional response to something does not need to be a source of guilt or shame."

"All emotions are valid" does NOT mean "your feelings are Correct in all ways forever."

You can feel however you need or want to feel about a thing, and I can feel a completely different way, and both of us can have wholly valid emotional responses to that thing. The minute either of us starts trying to impose our response on others is where we go from the world of valid emotions to invalid actions.

Do you see the difference?

For example: the way many people enunciate the letter "P" grates on my nerves. It annoys me. It rankles. This may be me being neurospicy, it may be me being picky, it doesn't matter. I don't like it. My feelings about this are valid.

If I start telling people to never pronounce the letter P around me, or launch a campaign to forcibly replace P with Þ in all cases, I'm no longer operating in the realm of valid emotions. I'm being an asshole.

when w. h. auden said “evil is unspectacular and always human” and ursula k. leguin said “this is the great treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain”

when toni morrison said “i just think goodness is more interesting. evil is constant. you can think of different ways to murder people, but you can do that at age five. but you have to be an adult to consciously, deliberately be good – and that’s complicated.”

when simone weil said “imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

fyi things like insulin, hearing aids, wheelchairs, glasses costing money at all is a form of structural ableism

disabled people should not have to pay to live their lives like everyone else. and in the case of insulin, disabled people should not have to pay to Not Fucking Die

Neil Hilborn, “For Henry, Who Has Just Died”, The Future

[image descriptions: text that reads:

“For Henry, Who Has Just Gone

Henry was my pet rat, and he died last night in my hands. He was three years old, which is way longer than

an albino rat is supposed to live. To be honest, he wasn’t a very smart animal, but he was so sweet that now I wonder

if intelligence has anything to do with leading a good life. He had been sick for a few months, and every twelve hours

I had to apply antiseptic and lotion to both his back feet. By the end they didn’t really work anymore,

so he would just drag his feet behind him in a way so cute and sad that I started calling him my little sea lion. When he died it was, somehow,

a surprise: you would think that when your rat is older than older than dirt and has been sick for months you’d be sort of prepared: after I had laid out the towel

and mixed the solution, I picked him up and noticed his breathing was s slow. I lay down with him

on the towel, the towel where we’d spent the last few months, where I think we finally, really, completely loved each other,

not like humans do: humans always want something from you and he and I would rather just be together than apart,

and I pulled him toward me, and he chittered in that way that always meant he was wind coming in after a rain, his head fell forward, and there was so much less

light in the room. The lamp was so far away, like the light of a house to which there is no road. I know, he was just a rat. So many

just like him, all white, red eyes, die every day and only one or two people in white coats are even there to see it.

He was all in white, he was always there to see me. When I would wake from a nightmare, so many nightmares, I would turn on the light

and there he was, holding on, a constant companion to a prisoner, the prison being the apartment, the world being inside his cage. Once I was crying

in bed because of who knows why, and he sat beside my face and licked my tears away. I had a rat once, named Henry. Named Buddy. Named Mr. Big

Mouse. Named proof that something could need me and still love me. Named please can I have some of your apple? Or I know

you’re sad but I’m hungry. Don’t go; if you go I won’t survive: a child reaches for her father; a couple, buried in ash, dies holding each other;

a man and a woman in an office, crying slightly, sign sheets of paper; sparrows fall out of the sky together. Some day I’m going to have a child. She’s going to have

eyes like mine and such small hands. Just like she’ll need me alive then, she needs me alive now; I can’t say goodbye before I’ve had a chance

to say hello. I don’t stare off bridges anymore. I don’t count out little blue exit signs and even today, with Henry buried under a tree, a tree somewhere so far away

it feels like someone else buried him using my body, today I came home and only wanted to sleep for twenty minutes instead of always. Something needed

me once, and I know something will need me again. One day I’m going to have a daughter. She’s going to sleep through the night

sometimes. She is a light on a rock at the edge of a lonely see. You see that light out there? That’s where I’m headed. That’s home.”

/end id]