Platonic Hypnotic

My furry friends: Nancy the Cat and Eerie the Velveteen Rabbit. 

Nancy is named after the heroine in Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters.

So there is a coincidental connection between them. 

Eerie is named because of her weary ears. 

On the wall there’s a photo of the girl who stole my heart and never was seen again. My times with her are the happiest happiest times of my life. On the left is a drawing she made of a girl embracing a deer. 

So this is a bitter-sweet picture. But sweet none the less...

movie recs?

I was going to post a different list, but right now it is only films about Afghanistan and by Afghan filmmakers that matter.

by Afghan (& Iranian) filmmakers:

An Apple from Paradise (2010), dir. Homayun Morowat

Black Kite (2017), dir. Tarique Qayumi

The Black Tulip (2010), dir. Sonia Nassery Cole

Chand metre moka'ab eshgh/A Few Cubic Meters of Love (2014), dir. Jamshid Mahmoudi

Hava, Maryam, Ayesha (2019), dir. Sahraa Karimi

Kabuli Kid (2008), dir. Barmak Akram

Khakestar-o-khak/Earth and Ashes (2004), dir. Atiq Rahimi

Namai ba rahis gomhor/A Letter to the President (2017), dir. Roya Sadat

Opium War (2008), dir. Siddiq Barmak

Osama (2003), dir. Siddiq Barmak

Panj é asr/At Five in the Afternoon (2003), dir. Samira Makhmalbaf

Parwareshghah/The Orphanage (2019), dir. Shahrbanoo Sadat

Safar e Ghandehar/Kandahar (2001), dir. Mohsen Makhmalbaf

Syngué sabour, pierre de patience/The Patience Stone (2012), dir. Atiq Rahimi

Utopia (2015), dir. Hassan Nazer

Wolf and Sheep (2016), dir. Shahrbanoo Sadat

Zolykha's Secret (2006), dir. Horace Shansab

by Western directors:

In This World (2002), dir. Michael Winterbottom

Jirga (2018), dir. Benjamin Gilmour

The Kite Runner (2007), dir. Marc Forster

Mina Walking (2015), dir. Yosef Baraki

Documentaries:

16 Days in Afghanistan (2007), dir. Anwar Hajher

Angels Are Made Of Light (2018), dir. James Longley

Frame by Frame (2015), dir. Alexandria Bombach & Mo Scarpelli

Kabul, City in the Wind (2018), dir. Aboozar Amini

Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (If You're a Girl) (2019), dir. Carol Dysinger

No Burqas Behind Bars (2012), dir. Maryam Ebrahimi & Nima Sarvestani

The Silhouettes (2020), dir. Afsaneh Salari

Taxi to the Dark Side (2007), dir. Alex Gibney*

A Thousand Girls Like Me (2018), dir. Sahra Mani

What Tomorrow Brings (2015), dir. Beth Murphy

- Sahraa Karimi's account of escaping from Kabul

- The women’s film collective Women Make Movies (WMM) based out of New York is streaming nine films that touch upon the lives of Afghan women from their catalogue for free during the month of August.

*This is the only film that I will include that discusses Western intervention in Afghanistan as it is a powerful critique of the topic; and I have consciously excluded most other documentaries that almost exclusively focus on the experiences of Western military soldiers which do not matter in the slightest.

The whole point of being alive is that you are alive! And that you can make something with this. That we're a tangible… You know, we're literally the manifestation of some kind of underlying brilliance to how everything works. We are in physical form, and we're relating with the physical world around us. And at the same time we are consciously relating to the world around us. And consciousness in and of itself is just a physical manifestation… Right, it's neurons firing, it's chemical synapses-it's all of that. Right? So that's incredible! It's incredible, and you feel that it's incredible when you're dying. And that's the most difficult about it-is that you're laying there, and you're a little kid, and you wanna hold your mom's hand, and you wanna cry and you wanna hold on, because you feel how incredible it is to be alive. And not in a corny way, not in a stupid, fake inspirational bullshit way-in a genuine, "I don't wanna give this up" kind of way.

Claire Wineland, YouTube video

I’m never quite sure how to conduct myself

I want to live in there!

Ma Quan

The truth is: the whole point of dying is to be scared. Because that means that your life meant something to you. You should fear dying. You should be terrified of it. Even though it's natural, even though it's going to happen, even though you should come to terms with it in a certain way, and go through the feeling of it , and have a relationship with it. You also should acknowledge the fact that when it's gonna happen, no matter how much you prepare, you're gonna be terrified. Because life does mean something.

Claire Wineland, YouTube video

The whole world is exhausting. Constantly trying to deal with sensory input and confusing scenarios is energy consuming but the most tiring part is having to pretend that you aren’t finding any of it difficult.

It’s okay to need to show the fact that you are struggling. Autism, isn’t shameful and we should not have to hide it.

words of wisdom

emotionally manipulative things you should never say to people:

“i would kill myself without you”

“everyone leaves me, don’t leave me like they did”

basically anything that guilts the other person into staying in a relationship with you

“be softer with you. you are a breathing thing. a memory to someone. a home to a life.”

— Nayyirah Waheed (via wordsnquotes)