A million miles away , come back and stay

BELLE 竜とそばかすの姫
(2021, Mamoru Hosoda)

ALT

Anne Sexton, from “Doors, Doors, Doors,” in The Complete Poems [ID in alt text]

“The erotic has often been misnamed by men and used against women. It has been made into the confused, the trivial, the psychotic, the plasticized sensation. For this reason, we have often turned away from the exploration and consideration of the erotic as a source of power and information, confusing it with its opposite, the pornographic. But pornography is a direct denial of the power of the erotic, for it represents the suppression of true feeling. Pornography emphasizes sensation without feeling. The erotic is a measure between the beginnings of our sense of self and the chaos of our strongest feelings. It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which, once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire.”

— Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

tattooed stone reproductions by fabio viale

“So many things, to me, are beside the point. We live in a world that constantly seeks to diminish us while, at the same time, extolling our possibility to be unlimited. When AI chatbot software is released at the same time as enrollment in the humanities is declining, then, yes, it’s just a weird universe in which to be alive. But all of these developments seem to forget something so simple: the idea that, well, some things — like thinking, or watching a beam of light stroll down the avenue, or thinking about a question for a long time, chewing on the end of a pencil as the cars swish away toward wherever they’re going — are good for their own sake.”

— Devin Kelly, from his essay “D. Nurkse’s “First Grade Homework” | Thoughts on turning toward the light.”, published March 5, 2023

Monica Bellucci for Vogue Italia (1994) Photography: Isabel Snyder

dragons are for girls