Read, reblog, and resonate!
Lit - Blog Posts
Raja’a Alem, The Dove’s Necklace (طوق الحمام) tran. Katharine Halls and Adam Talib (Preface)
« To quote the tomb of leftist Jewish Egyptian activist Shehata Haroun, the father of Magda Haroun, the current president of the few remnants of the Jewish community who remain in Cairo: ‘Every human being has multiple identities, I am a human being, I am Egyptian when Egyptians are oppressed, I am Black when Blacks are oppressed, I am Jewish when Jews are oppressed, and I am Palestinian when Palestinians are oppressed.’ »
— Massoud Hayoun, When We Were Arabs: A Jewish Family’s Forgotten History
Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
STRFKR
Live from The National in Richmond, VA, 5/14/16
Today is World Mental Health Day! Let's focus on peaceful things. 🕊️🕊️🕊️✨✨✨
🍂Autumn Self Care🍂
Drink your favorite tea, cocoa or coffee ☕
Get cozy & relax with a good book 📖
Bring nature indoors 🌱
Put on warm comfortable clothes 💖
Bake something you love 🥧
Get some exercise, take a walk through nature 🍁
Go apple or pumpkin picking 🍏
Carve pumpkins with family or friends 🎃
Watch your favorite Fall movie ☀️
Take a nap to recharge 💤
Positive Affirmations✨
You deserve happiness, respect, peace & love 💕
You will overcome challenges & obstacles 💫
You are talented, you are strong, you are brave 🌈
Your voice deserves to be heard, you matter 🗣️
You are loved 💛
You are enough 🌟
GENTLE REMINDERS 🤗💡❤️
Drink lots of water, stay hydrated, take breaks 💦
Circumstances you can't control aren't your fault 🍂
It's okay to say "no" ❌
Treat yourself with kindness ☺️
It's okay to reward yourself 🍧
It's okay if you're not where you want to be yet 🛣️
Your illness doesn't define you ☀️
It's okay to take a day of rest & do nothing 🆗
• • •
60 Resources & Hotlines 🌍
https://socialworklicensemap.com/social-work-resources/mental-health-resources-list/
🍂Take care of yourself 🍂
For every bad person you meet there's a good one, whenever you start to lose faith in humanity, remember that.
~ Personal Thoughts
Dive into the idea that my albums are all chapters of book and relisten or listen for the first time if you never have before!
https://open.spotify.com/artist/3G4VmiC9pH8GNLp3DdM4tZ?si=PVD1AVlkTgubOVU7I_Eh5g
DMT saved my life. If you're going through turmoil of any nature and you're thinking about trying DMT or ayahuasca this is just my endorsement for whatever it's worth. I'd be dead or in prison if it wasn't for trying DMT. I'm making this post and I will continue to make a similar post at least once a year just in case it helps anyone. I had a lot of issues but one of the biggest ones was that I was addicted to heroin. I literally couldn't go a day without it for years....one day I couldn't get it and someone gave me DMT saying it would help. It was 3:33 in the morning when I took that inhale alone in my bedroom later that night. I was desperate and honestly didn't think it was going to do much. That was 5 years ago, now. My whole life changed. I stopped using hard drugs literally instantly. It felt like my brain had been reprogrammed and improved. Keep in mind I haven't mentioned anything about the experience. I won't because it's just too much but ill say this: it lasted a matter of minutes, it was the most intense experience of my life, and afterwards I thought about it and personally prayed for 2 hours straight in awe of how much I had learned and experienced in such a short yet unmeasurable amount of time. If you're afraid of the experience, all I can say is it's worth it.
This is your reminder...
Guilt is temporary but shame lasts as long as you hold on to it. Be strong, grow, and gently let go.
A reminder from me to you in this pivotal stage of human development and evolution ...
The Alchemist
Quotes that I really liked and felt the need to underline:
"When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person to realize his dream."
"It's not what enters men's mouth that's evil, it's what comes out of their mouth that is."
"Wherever your heart is, that's where you will find your treasure."
"I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you."
"Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself."
"All people who are happy have God within them, and that happiness could be found in a grain of sand from the desert. Because a grain of sand is a moment of creation, and the universe has taken millions of years tı create it."
"Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested."
"Why don't people's hearts tell them to continue to follow their dreams?" The boy asked the alchemist.
"Because that's what makes a heart suffer most, and hearts don't like to suffer."
Fr.
I'm just so damn tired of everything.
Sylvia Plath, aged 29, after discovering her husband's affair, in a letter to Ruth Tiffany Barnhouse Beuscher, her former psychiatrist (dated Friday, 20 July 1962)
Mahmoud Darwish, from The Butterfly's Burden; "Maybe, Because Winter Is Late,"
Feeble though sweet
light pours
over the immense meadow
expanding in my eyes,
unmoved by the night sky
thundering upon it.
The moon is to follow its own instincts
navigating the ocean of endlessness
not hiding in itself,
but with a open-heart
bleeding and scarred
and cold.
It is not a bringer of sadness.
It is a reflection of reality.
Not the one we’re living in,
yet both our senses
and mind
are touched by it,
as if it were no more a caress
than it is a warning.
Lonely moon,
and lonely woman,
not to be found in rationality
but in the inexistence of both
the self and the ego.
Bonds are burdensome.
They are what makes life worth living,
albeit the feeling of burdening someone else with your own emotions or lack thereof obliges you to take a step back or running away on a 180 degree path in comparison to the one you’re on at that moment.
You begin craving that loneliness that picked at your heart every night,the one that made you cry your own blood since tears did not hurt enough.
I want to turn back in time,or keep being the myself i knew before giving out pieces of it to others.
Opening up is not much of a good decision sometimes,or easy to accomplish either.
Everything just hurts.
It’s overwhelming.
It’s flooding my well.
Oh wait—
how long has it been since my well last had a shape?
What is happening around me?
What am I?
Like a candle
set aside in wait;
Etiolated,
no more than ornamental.
Its life comes to a stand still.
No purpose,
yet—
hopeful.
The true flames
erase time.
They engulf the deepest of feelings
one can conceive.
Defying common laws,
negativity
turns into bright flames.
Scorching hot...
...happiness?
Blinded by reason
follow the heat
slowly abating in corners of your body.
There,
lies truth.
There,
lie your answers.
Happiness is not far away.
In a world
it all came to a halt.
Unbreathing,
disrupted time,
it can no longer flow.
In this world
we are alone,
grasping,
pushing,
climbing—
falling—
Or are we?
Thus we wonder
“what is life?”
In my world
I begin clutching at my chest,
sheltering my heart,
wishing to live
one more day.
Here I hide,
running from what,
you say?
All.
All that breathes
while I cannot.
All that feels,
while I bear its weight.
All that smiles,
for I do not know how.
03/25/2021+03/26/2021
The unconscious act of clinging to one’s tangible emotions removes all possibility of these coming into existence.
The backwards law plays a paramount role in these cases.
Trying to draw out something,which not even the owner can feel on command is foolish.
It’s like stomping on the ground and then start fishing,meanwhile believing to go home with a handful of goods.
To actually be able to accomplish what you set out to do,you have to immerse yourself in the environment and follow where the current brings you.
Then,and only then,the reward will come to you.
The focus should not be one’s own emotions,and therefore not even themselves as a person.
Shifting it on a purpose beside that which has been the constant object of such attention,would prove benefiting for the primary objective itself.
For one to receive love,they must first know how it would feel before being able to open the doors to it.
By bestowing close ones with your own small acts of love,each in their different shape,will open the one-sided path of love.
Do not covet from others what you have never given to them.
Short Fiction- Untitled
In the backyard sat a camper van, spacious enough to fit a family of eight, a trampoline, and a large above-ground pool. Their house was one of those rich, suburban houses, with a white mother and father and their three children- two boys and a girl. Seven bedrooms, three bathrooms, a decked-out kitchen perfect for hosting holidays, and a special living room for hosting Bible Study on Wednesday nights. Toys piled up and the latest video games were always around. It was a house my family dreamed of living in, and we did live in it. Downstairs sat an uninhabited basement, fully finished with a small kitchen and living space, and three of the house’s bedrooms. This was where my family of seven moved. The best part about the house wasn’t the pool and it certainly wasn’t the trampoline; it was that we were not homeless for the five months that family allowed our stay.
