dark times

“america is not for black people” by greg howard:

The worst part of outfitting our police officers as soldiers has been psychological. Give a man access to drones, tanks, and body armor, and he’ll reasonably think that his job isn’t simply to maintain peace, but to eradicate danger. Instead of protecting and serving, police are searching and destroying.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they’re working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy. And because of correlations, rooted in historical injustice, between crime and income and income and race, the enemy population will consist largely of people of color, and especially of black men. Throughout the country, police officers are capturing, imprisoning, and killing black males at a ridiculous clip, waging a very literal war on people like Michael Brown.

nina s.

Simone with James Baldwin in the early sixties. Credit Courtesy New York Public Library.

great article on nina simone:

Giving a recital in the local library, at eleven, Eunice [Nina] saw her parents being removed from their front-row seats to make room for a white couple. She had been schooled by Miz Mazzy in proper deportment, but she nevertheless stood up and announced that if people wanted to hear her play they’d better let her parents sit back down in the front row. There were some laughs, but her parents were returned to their seats. The next day, she remembered, she felt “as if I had been flayed, and every slight, real or imagined, cut me raw. But, the skin grew back a little tougher, a little less innocent, and a little more black.”

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don’t mourn the life you didn’t get

deep advice from kim france:

But at 50, it no longer bothers me that my life doesn’t look the way I always assumed it would by that age. There are all sorts of reasons for this, but two stand out. I was fired from the fancy job a few years back, and surprised myself by immediately feeling nothing but relief and excitement over the prospect of starting over—albeit far more modestly. And I received some simple but—to me—powerful advice from somebody who’d gone through some rough years himself: “Don’t mourn the life you didn’t get,” he said, and rather magically, I stopped.

the introvert’s heart

(via fast company)

i’m not really a true introvert, more like a social introvert. or a very minimal extrovert. a minimalist extrovert. basically a social introvert. so i can relate to this map. however, i would add the “island of intimate dinners,” “4 friend mountains,” “thunderstorm cove,” “cozy coral reef,” something clever about movie theaters, etc.

PROJECTS

here are projects i am going to work on, if i can stay awake past 10pm:

1. getting simone to try the biscotti that hilary and i made and see if do your thing wants to sell them; is it legal to sell; how does that work; do we need to make any adjustments; etc.
2. making mini marfa courthouses
3. selling my “risk it” buttons
4. making t-shirts
5. making the denim dog bone squeaky toys
6. making candles

MORE STUFF

my spirit animal pants + leftover lake hair that i can’t get my brush through

recommended

new documentary about divine, i am divine, streaming on netflix

(image via booknoise)

INTERESTED

(via floral avenger)

things today

 (via floral avenger)

• am wearing new leopard print pants that hilary bought us yesterday from rue 21, a mission two years in the works, deep homage to beyonce
• made up our guest room to look like a bobo hotel san jose bed (very bobo, tho) (mattress on the floor)
• dems cacti sayin “allo mate”
• an employee’s kids are sitting in the other room listening to harry potter on audio book
• no interest in working
• only interested in joining kids in other room and listening to potter

i’m the kind of person who

adam phillips interview in the paris review (bolding my own):

PHILLIPS

It’s really showing you how much your wish to know yourself is a consequence of an anxiety state—and how it might be to live as yourself not knowing much about what’s going on.

INTERVIEWER

And how much perhaps you need to live that way, not knowing.

PHILLIPS

Or that there’s no other way to live. That’s what’s happening anyway, actually, but it’s concealed or covered up or assuaged partly by fantasies of knowing who we are. When people say, “I’m the kind of person who,” my heart always sinks. These are formulas, we’ve all got about ten formulas about who we are, what we like, the kind of people we like, all that stuff. The disparity between these phrases and how one experiences oneself minute by minute is ludicrous. It’s like the caption under a painting. You think, Well, yeah, I can see it’s called that. But you need to look at the picture.