will you please be quiet, please? (1976)
chelsea | a levels | stem
will you please be quiet, please? (1976)
ultimately i think kindness is the most radical thing you can do with your pain and your anger. it’s like, you take everything awful that’s ever been done to you, and you throw it back in the world’s teeth, and you say no, fuck you, i’m not going to take this. you say this is unacceptable. you say that shit stops with me.
humans are fucking terrible and this awful world we live in will fucking kill you but if you are kind, if you are brave and clever and try really hard, you can defy it. you can impose on this bleak and monstrous structure something beautiful. even if it’s temporary. even if it doesn’t heal anything inside you that’s been hurt.
i’m gonna sleep and i’m gonna wake up and i swear by everything in this deadly horrible universe i’m gonna make someone happy.
i’ve seen a number of comments and tags where people feel that they must swallow or repress their anger in order to engage in kindness. that is not at all what i am recommending here. radical kindness is an expression of anger. it is not passive. it is not repressive. it does not require you, in any way, to forgive those that have fucked you up. it does not require you to be quiet.
it just requires that you be kind. viciously. vengefully. you fight back. you plant flowers. give to charity. play games. pet someone’s dog. scream into the dark. paint and write and dance, tell jokes, sing songs, bake cookies. you have been hurt and you don’t have to deny that hurt. you just have to recognize it in other people, and take their hand, and say: no more. enough. fuck this. no more.
have a cookie.
i will say this again: we are all going to die. the universe is enormous and almost entirely empty. to be kind to each other is the most incredible act of defiance against the dark that i can imagine.
(via lavandula-study)
“The air of October is sweet and cold as the wine of apples,”— Edgar Lee Masters, from Songs & Satires (1916); “Johnny Appleseed,” (via violentwavesofemotion)
(via kafkasdiariies)
(via goodteastudies)
October 6, 2019
but how glorious to release them in a single burst! to sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! these are powerful mysteries. the bellowing of bulls. springs of honey bubbling up from the ground. if we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away that veil and look at that naked, terrible beauty right in the face. let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. then spit us out reborn.