Requested! Mountain Goat + Books + Bisexual (plus Doll Skin)

In that great discourse with the living dead which we call reading, our role is not a passive one. […] We engage the presence, the voice of the book. We allow it entry, though not unguarded, into our inmost. A great poem, a classic novel, press in upon us; they assail and occupy the strong places of our consciousness. They exercise upon our imagination and desires, upon our ambitions and most cover dreams, a strange, bruising mastery. Men who burn books know what they are doing. The artist is the uncontrollable force; no western eye, since Van Gogh, looks on a cypress without observing in it the start of a flame. So, and in supreme measure, it is with literature. A man who has read Book XXIV of the Iliad - the night meeting of Priam and Achielles - or the chapter in which Alyosha Karamazov kneels to the stars, who has raid Montaigne’s chapter XX (Que philosopher c'est apprendre à mourir) and Hamlet’s use of it - and who is not altered, whose apprehension of his own life is unchanged, who does not, in some subtle yet radical manner, look on the room in which he moves, on those that knock at the door, differently - has read only with the blindness of physical sight. […] To read well is to take great risks. It is to make vulernable our identity, our self possession. In the early stages of epilepsy there occurs a characteristic dream (Dostoyevsky tells of it). One is somehow lifted free of one’s own body; looking backbone sees oneself and feels a sudden, maddening fear; another presence is entering one’s own person, and there is no avenue of return. Feeling this fear, the mind gropes to a sharp awakening. So it should be when we take in hand a major work of literature or philosophy, of imagination or doctrine. It may come to possess us so completely that we go, for a spell, in fear of ourselves and in imperfect recognition. He who has read Kafka’s Metamorphosis and can look into his mirror unflinching may technically be able to read print, but is illiterate in the only sense that matters.

George Steiner, “Humane Literacy” from Language and Silence (via mesogeios)

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the art of saying no was a numbing in our mouths. we learned how to form it gently, to swallow the punch, to let down with gentlest hands. we learned how to fake a smile, to force a chuckle, to take disgust and turn it into polite denial, to take fear and weigh our options and submit.  he said he needed sex because oh it hurt how we made him. he said we should have just smiled back at him. he said that we could have learned karate to fight them. he said that we couldn’t say no, he was our boyfriend. 

how many girls are raised to feel guilty for no. we feel it must come with a reason. our no has to have qualifications. if our no isn’t enough, we are expected to cave in. 

the battle of our inner strength and our outer bodies. how we calculate small injustice versus our personal safety. how we’d form no in small ways that made him feel like it was our fault. how we’d let him down in a way he wouldn’t follow us home. we’d say no without the words; lying about sudden appointments or phone calls, we’d invent husbands, we’d suddenly become best friends with the woman beside us. we always had someone waiting at home for us - usually big and angry - who would notice if we were missing. we enter in our phone numbers with the last two digits switched. we say we’re going to the bathroom we’ll be right back before we take off running. 

and our no, those two letters, was never good enough. we either rejected him too harshly or not clearly. if we said no, we weren’t in love. the no was too forceful, the no was too gentle. the no meant ask nicely, the no meant keep persisting. the no was because we’re all catty and cruel and hate nice men. the no was because we’re all paranoid bitches. the no was wait long enough and it’s a yes. the no was playing hard to get.

and our life was learning. it amazes me sometimes when men tell me, “but she never said no” and i hear her story. how he was her boss and she would lose her job and it was her everything. how he said no but men aren’t allowed to refuse these things. i was thirteen the first time i had to spend a two hour train ride gently turning down a middle-aged man and someone else told me i should have just screamed or hit him or done something. how the girls i told all nodded solemnly because they know what it’s like to be thirteen and scared and to be eighteen and scared and how to be twenty-three and scared. because we’ve all said no and had it blow up in our faces. we’ve watched men turn from flirty to aggressive. we’ve seen what happens to our friends.

but in the end it’s our fault. don’t you know a man can’t take rejection.

Credit: Ashley McMinn

by David G. Forés

I was on a walk when I saw Death at a street corner. I didn’t like him so I just power-walked right past him. He got flustered and hurried after me while trying to talk to me, but I kept ignoring him.

You say prisoner, and you think of her: the girl whose veil smelled of wildflowers snatched by bone-fingers she clutches the grass and the earth bears stitches in the shape of her fingernails she clutches the grass and the earth screams. You say prisoner and you think of her: the cursed girl she has known death without having died. You say prisoner and you think of her: you think of him, soaking up what last breath of wheat still remained in her; the shadow of her collarbones as the sunshine dies on her skin. But you do not know: she kissed him first. Her lips have tasted death and you know she liked it. She fed the pomegranate to herself; she devoured every last seed until juice ran down her chin. He gives her sunshine and she does not want it. She rules death with fingers still pumping with heartbeat and when she laughs the Underworld shakes, and Hades with it. You say prisoner, she says queen.

persephone, you were never doomed. (via aarontveiits)

I. Hera makes ambrosia tea from her keurig for the girls who leave her house each morning, to cleanse all defilement from their lovely flesh. She watches them all leave, like what they’ve done is something to hide, Hera knows anyway. She will wake Zeus later and make black coffee for the both of them, and pretend the young women are just fantasies of a withering god. II. Athena has twenty tabs open in her web browser, monitoring the political climate. Wars are no longer fought on fields of wildflowers, they are held behind screens and in lines of code. She learned the language of code quickly, protecting those who hack valiantly from phishing sites and from a Trojan horse of a whole new kind. Athena’s fingers are no longer calloused, but ice cold hovering above her keyboard. III. Aphrodite smells of expensive perfume and taste like vanilla lattes. She preaches self-love from her mall kiosk, selling bath bombs infused with rose and honey. She watches young girls skip meals and chase men who hurt them, and Aphrodite cries herself to sleep. When she can’t sleep, she takes to the streets– which is far worse. She sees her name abused, used on products of defilement and artificial beauty. IV. Persephone clings tighter to her husband in the cold nights of the winter and fall, knowing their days together are becoming fewer in number as the world’s climate changes. Spring comes too early and summer stays too late, and all she can see is her mother’s hollow smile. There can only be one queen in the warm months, and pomegranates aren’t in season during the summer. Persephone isn’t the only one affected by this arrangement; Hades quivers like a leaf under her first touch each fall.

The gods are dying, what of the goddesses (5/20/17)