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"I asked him if I could board a flight elsewhere—to Amman, or Cairo, even Paris. I wanted to go somewhere, at least, even if I couldn’t see my sister. “No,” he said. “You have to go back from where you came.” I said that this was unacceptable, and that I wanted the choice to go elsewhere. This time, he shouted it. “No. You must go back from where you came.” “Are you from The Lord of the Rings?” I said. He narrowed his eyes at me, and snapped, “Come with me.” He made me stand in a hallway for twenty minutes, as punishment. I made fun of his long eyelashes. I asked him if he was related to Snuffalupagus. He ignored me."
Guernica | Imagining Myself in Palestine, by Randa Jarrar (via longreads)
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"That’s how adolescence works. It’s a place of tremendous pain and recklessness, a place where you have to pretend not to care about anyone or anything too much because to do so would release the chaos of your actual self into the world. It’s a place where tyranny resides as much in circumstance as in character, a place where our shadow selves emerge: ugly, ferocious, lit up by shame.
I remember every single cruelty I endured and inflicted, teasing a disabled teacher behind her back, grappling with a classmate and ripping open the stitches on his head, weeping in fear and confusion at the kids who bullied me in metal shop. Adolescence scrawls its crimes on the heart."The Rumpus | THE WEEK IN GREED #6: To Behave Like The Fallen World
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Recently I wrote about two gentlemen with widely-noted yet dubious powers.
The first is Tommy Wiseau. You know him. He made The Room. I talked to him for Creative Loafing.
The second is Doc Anderson. You probably don’t know him. He was a psychic in my hometown years before I was born, who wound up dying in a weird flash-flood incident. He was also a semi-pro bullfighter. He predicted such things as lunar buggies and legal gay marriage in Wyoming. I wrote about him for The Paris Review Daily blog’s Out of Print feature.
It’s funny to be so taken in by a person and that to which they have dedicated their life, so compelled to engage with them on that level, on their own terms, but also wracked by the feeling—the knowledge?—that they are an absolute hack. What do you do with that? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. I’ve reached no conclusions.
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"O’Connor later wrote of herself that she not only had a “tin leg,” but also a “tin ear.” She was sent to piano lessons and tried her hand at the accordion and the bass violin, but it was never quite her bag. The only time her mother ever recalled spanking O’Connor was to make her wear hose to her first piano recital."
The Paris Review Daily | Flannery O’Connor and the Habit of Art
(Oh, looks like this is an excerpt from a whole book about O’Connor’s cartoon work; the full thing is coming out this summer! Exciting.)
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"If this baby is a girl, I am hopeful that things will be different when it’s her turn. That she will read this essay in thirty years and laugh and say, “Mom, you were so crazy.” Because she will feel so in control of her life, her choices, her body, that she won’t be able to imagine a time when any small modicum of control had to be flexed, hoarded, treasured."
The Rumpus | On Pregnancy And Privacy And Fear (via @krcoyle)
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From Ounce, Dice, Trice by Alastair Reid (via BrainPickings, h/t magdalina)
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"I used to cringe at pictures of myself because I didn’t look like the woman I wanted to be. Now I realize that the woman I wanted to be was someone who didn’t cringe at her own pictures of herself."
For the nine hundredth time, Internet, let me push this amazing chronicle of life as a young/modern homesteader (graphic designer, and writer) upon you. Jenna is the best, so honest and funny and smart. Also, BABY SHEEPS.
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"No matter how much we learn, the vision science offers — of ourselves and of the universe — will always be incomplete and consequently imperfect. Stories of gods, angels and rainbow horses will persist in the gaps."
New York Times | My Son Went to Heaven, and All I Got Was a No. 1 Best Seller
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