FIVE CHEESE ZITI AL FORNO

“so maybe this bridge was always meant to burn / maybe we were handing the matches back and forth back and forth / waiting for someone to strike out / waiting for someone to say / okay this is enough / I need to see some light / I need to see some flames / let’s set this ablaze and not call the police / let’s close our eyes and run opposite ways / I think I need to get away from you for awhile / I think I need to make sure I can never come home to you again.”

— where did the fire go / it never kept us warm– lily rain

One of my favorite stories about Artemis is that after she required Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia, she stole her away at the last moment and left a white deer in her place. After that, people disagree on what happened, but I like the story where Artemis transforms her into Hecate, because can you imagine them in the modern era?

Artemis, protector of young women and goddess of the hunt turned vigilante, hunting down the ones who attack girls in dark alleys, the ones with beer-hard hands and no sense of decency even if they’d been sober anyway.

But when Artemis finds the girls, she takes them to Hecate–Hecate, who was mortal once, led like a lamb to an altar by a man who was supposed to protect her. And sure, Artemis is the one who makes them pay, who delights in their screams and dances in the moonlight once she knows those men will be scared of the dark forever, spend their entire lives looking over their shoulders fearing her.

But Hecate… Hecate is good with herbs and potions and she understands the nightmares, the heart-pounding, sweaty hands panic that wakes them up screaming in the middle of the night, and she makes them herbal draughts to help them sleep, because unlike Artemis, Hecate understands. She isn’t vengeful, an angry older sister out for blood like Artemis. She’s the best friend, the mother, and the sister rolled all into one.

So Artemis avenges them and Hecate cares for them and the moon-goddess Selene shines her absolute brightest for them, fills every shadow with bright silver so they don’t need to be afraid of the dark anymore, and the three goddesses call these their Lost Girls, and at first Apollo was sort of skeptical but there’s no stopping Artemis when she sets her mind on something, and before Apollo quite realizes it, he’s running beside his sister, chasing a boy who couldn’t keep his hands to himself, and he’s never felt more right.

history | historical women | europe

there will never be another headline that comes close to comparing with this

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)

The gods have always been there. Apollo pops down to say hello and gloat and flirt with some random mortal. Athena comes down to chat and argue with the scholars and those too poor to get into school but still smart enough to rig running water to their houses. Persephone will make your garden overflow with crops and flowers if you leave a dog bone for Cerberus on your doorstep. Dionysus makes fun of the European Jesus and turns teenagers water to wine if you plant grape vines outside your window and leave water on the windowsill. Artemis will come down and hunt, looking for excuses to fight and grapple. If you leave out a peacock corsage for Hera the day before your wedding she’ll bless it and Hestia will provide your feast.

The gods have always been there, but they have not always been kind.

Women cut their hair jagged and run their eyeliner so that Zeus won’t find them attractive. People have to throw offerings into the sea before entering and women don’t wear revealing outfits for fear of attracting Poseidon’s attention. Hera will send Artemis to kill any man who she thinks is unsuited for his wife. Apollo can’t stand a one night fling. 

The gods have always been there, but they have not always been kind.

This is what I like about photographs. They’re proof that once, even if just for a heartbeat, everything was perfect.

Aubrey Plaza Explores ASMR with W Magazine

perhaps the goddesses of old still live

i. perhaps artemis can be found in the wild girls. perhaps she is in the woman who brings signs and banners to protests, the woman who guards the wildlife that is left. perhaps in the protected forests, perhaps in the girls who tie themselves to the thousand year old sycamores, perhaps in their chains. 

ii. perhaps hestia can be found in the woman who runs the homeless shelter for women. perhaps in her wrinkled hands which knead dough over and over again to feed those without. perhaps in her eyes, which age every time another girl comes in with a hijab torn off, or her skin bruised, or her home taken from her. 

iii. perhaps athena can be found in the women who invent a new world. in the way that their computers blink as they find ways to reshape the universe. perhaps in the stars, which they will be the first to fine. perhaps in the professor of science, the woman who taught her children to be smarter than her. perhaps in the books which she writes, or the podium which she carves for herself.

iv. perhaps demeter can be found in the gardens which the caretaker in the retired community tends to. perhaps in the soil and the seeds and the stems and the little green sprout. perhaps she can be found in the girls who tend to fields of daisies, or in the girls who tend to fields of corn. perhaps in the songs the earth sings, or in the girls who still know the language.