boost: flash fiction; pondering selling out; beauty without artists

[jesse_the_k]

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.

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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

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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.

1. Everyone’s hardest struggle is their hardest struggle.
2. Be tactical. Realize you’re playing the long game.
3. Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others.
4. Everyone, everywhere, is in some sort of compromise position with their values.
5. Sometimes there are problems that money can solve. Know which ones those are.

https://medium.com/message/on-compromise-4fe1a41ecc7d

Comments

[cathexys]

greats reads, thank you!

(though I had to do Latin-style sentence organization to find the verb for the Machado story :)

[jesse_the_k]

Glad you had the tools you needed!

[sovay]

Shape similar to limp head of cabbage unfolding in blue-grey-green-white-swirls

It looks oceanic, piscine to me.

[jesse_the_k]

The original poster labelled it "flounder," tho' I can't see it.

[sovay]

The original poster labelled it "flounder," tho' I can't see it.

I can if I think of it as gyotaku, but it looks like much more abstract ocean to me.

[jesse_the_k]

Today I learned about gyotaku, which is fabulous! (Something to add to my "next time we're Up North list."

[sovay]

Today I learned about gyotaku, which is fabulous!

Yay!

We did it once in my elementary school and the only thing about I didn't love was that we couldn't eat the fish afterward.

[sonia]

Thanks for the links!

I've thought a lot about compromises, especially about money. I notice defensiveness about calling it selling out, although I suppose people can call it whatever they want. I think accepting the system we live in is a step in working to change it. Trying to stand outside it just results in being tangled in double binds. It's all dirty money, and yes we all have white supremacy inside us, etc. There are still distinctions, and we all have to decide what we are and aren't willing to do. Anyway. Great article, thanks!

Thanks for thinking out loud!

[jesse_the_k]

I'm a child of huge privilege, so "paying off my parents' selling out" was a life goal for many decades. Then things got complicated because I could no longer simply fling myself at a task. The good news is I can fling money at some things, instead.

Re: Thanks for thinking out loud!

[sonia]

*Nods*. "Paying off your parents' selling out" sounds like it has a lot of layers to it, even before not being able to fling yourself at tasks. I'm glad flinging money works. Wishing you peace with what sounds like a complex topic.

[tarasacon]

I haven’t read the reads yet, but the paint is pretty. Thank you!

[jesse_the_k]

<3

[brainwane]

I just read the West piece and really appreciated it; thank you.