boost: flash fiction; pondering selling out; beauty without artists
Mary When You Follow Her
https://www.vqronline.org/fiction/2018/06/mary-when-you-follow-her
Holy wow can Carmen Maria Machado carmenmmachado write!
This 1200-word story was written, oulipian-style, to a restraint. It’s so successful you won’t even notice. Can’t summarize; it does contain: Dominicans, teenagers, runaways, night, summer, love, kidnap, danger, neighborhood, work, poverty, harassment.
Abstract Art without Artists
Visual delights abound at the Reddit community devoted to unstirred paint — that is, what you see after you pry the lid off house paint.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unstirredpaint/
Shape similar to limp head of cabbage unfolding in blue-grey-green-white-swirls
jessamyn is an internet elder, former MetaFilter mod, activist librarian, and originator of the warrant canary. She communicates a lot in this short essay examining selling out and/or compromising principles:
Compromising your Principles
This list could also easily be titled “Five ways to console yourself when you’re a sell-out.” I see it both ways at the same time. My ideals need to be made real through an existing imperfect system if I’m going to get anything done at all.
Sometimes you can’t just be there, you have to get there. That takes time and possibly doing things that feel less important along the way. Be okay with that time. It’s necessary.
- Everyone’s hardest struggle is their hardest struggle.
- Be tactical. Realize you’re playing the long game.
- Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.
- Everyone, everywhere, is in some sort of compromise position with their values.
- Sometimes there are problems that money can solve. Know which ones those are.