Old Babes in the Wood - Margaret Atwood

 

A gift from Aral on my birthday. Started (around about) 21st of April.

First Aid (p.5):

How much waiting we used to do, she thinks. Waiting without knowing. So many blanks we couldn't fill in, so many mysteries. So little information. Now it's the first decade of the twenty first-century, space-time is denser, it's crowded, you can barely move because the air is so packed with this and that. You can't get away from people, they're in touch, they're touching, they're only a touch away. Is that better or worse?

Two Scorched Men (p.18)

We resist the notion that we'll become mere handfuls of dust, so we wish to become words instead. Breath in the mouths of others.

My Evil Mother (p.51-p.77)

Impatient Griselds (p.95-p.101)

Finished 20th of May

Birthday Stories - Murakami

 

A birthday gift from Madara. Started 11th April.

Favourite stories:

- RUSSEL BANKS - The Moor.

- DANIEL LYONS - The Birthday Cake.

- ETHAN CANIN - Angel of Mercy, Angel of Wrath.

-ANDREA LEE - The Birthday Present.

... Ariel says glibly. Glibly (adverb as in cleverly): Thoughtlessly or superficially, with pat answers or insincere talk.

- RAYMOND CARVER - The Bath.

Experiments In Imagining Otherwise - Lola Olufemi

 

Borrowed from Alexandra. Started 13 April 2024.

(p.7) The future is no one's property; no need to shackle it.

(p.11) decide to become illegible, no universal, no binding struggle that means one thing only at any given time- only pockets of continuous action, non-action, faceless contribution, thankless labour, all in the spirit of quite simply, we will not tolerate suffering. repetition.

(p.17) 13. I want to spend my life in service to others. This is not a "human instinct"- it is a choice. I promise, above all, engagement with rigour, with integrity, to take you in, all of you, without pre-empting how we will fail one another.

(p.43) The way we talk about this life and living, the language we use, builds a kind of structure that turns the horizon (that point where potentiality meets the substance of our reality) into a mirage.

(p.51) "It's important we know how to defend ourselves when we are under attack. They are sending firing squads to kill us and calling it order."

(p.67) What good is it to talk about rights if we do not have means? I want to ask, how do "rights" fail us and what would happen if instead, we supported each other's claims to a liveable life? What does a "claim" do that a right cannot? What could a pact do?

(p.73) The general strike says: instead of working for the man, let's work for love, let's work for each other, let's work so nobody ever has to work again, let's work for song and for dance, let's work in service of pleasure. Let's work and work and work so finally we can talk about something other than work.

(p.77) repeat after me: the matter of how we should live will never be finished. i am going to be vulnerable here and say we have to be prepared to LOSE and lose and lose and lose.

(p.87) We make the mistake of believing that then is not also now. Time will come back around again, I promise. They'll say the same thing about us.

(p.119) WHAT WOULD IT MEAN TO APPROACH LOVING THE EARTH?

To look at the soil and see more than dirt.

(p.133) She remained firm in the belief that freedom is not the ability to go anywhere one pleases, but rather the elimination of the need to escape.

Finished 20th of April. An absolutely amazing book, could not put it down. Kept picking it up.

Historia De Las Civilizaciones I - Stuart Piggot

 Empezado: martes, 23 de enero 2024

Libro del 1961, tomado prestado de la biblioteca personal de mi abuelo.

... umbrales de la civilización... Paso primero y principal o entrada de cualquier cosa

(p.33) ... la prueba material dará resultados materiales. Partiendo de la prueba arqueológica no podemos obtener información acerca de las ideas, creencias, temores o aspiraciones del hombre.No podemos comprender lo que sus obras de arte o de artesanía significaron para él.

Quizá lo único que podemos percibir en realidad sea la historia de la tecnología...

Nunca lo acabé. Me aburrió un poco. Era muy extenso.

Braiding Sweetgrass - Robin Wall Kimmerer

 Started; 8th February 2024

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.

Preface. ... the sweet smelling hair of Mother Earth. Breathe it in and you remember things you didn't know you'd forgotten.

But it is not mine to give or yours to take. Wiingaashk belongs to herself.

(p.7) (talking about Eve) In order to eat, she was instructed to subdue the wilderness into which she was cast.

(On the contrast between the story of Eve versus Skywoman) Same species, same earth, different stories. Like Creation stories everywhere, cosmologies are a source of identity and orientation to the world. They tell us who we are. We are inevitably shaped by them no matter how distant they may be from our consciousness. One story leads to the generous embrace of the living world, the other to banishment. 

(p.8) (On belonging) It is good to remember that the original woman was herself an immigrant.

Some of my ancestors are Skywoman's people, and I belong to them. Some of my ancestors were the newer kind of immigrants, too; a French fur trader, an Irish carpenter, a Welsh farmer. And here we all are, on Turtle Island, trying to make a home. Their stories, of arrivals with empty pockets and nothing but hope, resonate with Skywoman's.

(p.9)  ... becoming indigenous to a place means living as if your children's future mattered, to take care of the land as if our lives, both material and spiritual, depend on it.

(p.22) "The Gift of Strawberries" My strawberries are mulberries and figs, lettuce and sweetcorn, the nectar from that orange flower...

(p.27) The fundamental nature of gifts; they move, and their value increases with their passage. ... The more something is shared, the greater its value becomes.

(p.28) ... gifts are not free. The essence of the gift is that it creates a set of relationships. The currency of a gift economy is, at its root, reciprocity..

(p.345) The very facts of the world are a poem. Light is turned to sugar. Salamanders find their way to ancestral ponds following magnetic lines radiating from the earth. The saliva of grazing buffalo causes the grass to grow taller. Tobacco seeds germinate when they smell smoke. Microbes in industrial waste can destroy mercury. Aren't these stories we all should know?

 Finished; 6th April 2024

 

Gagudju Man - Bill Neidjie

 Started Tuesday, 30th of January

In this book, Bill relives the past in order to give some meaningful structure to the future. It is an attempt to help Non-Aboriginal people understand the bond between Aboriginal people and their traditionally inherited land. It is for Bill's descendants as well as ours. He knows that every human being has the responsability of caring for the land. He also knows that in the days to come, many other people will be making decisions for the land he now speaks for. (Kakadu National Park Northern Territory Australia)

Those first people was too quick, 

wasn't Aboriginie fault. 

Still Aboriginie all around 1929,

1952, 1953 few people left but...

1970 to 1979 ... gone.

Only me, Robin Gaden and Felix Holmes.

Land. (p.30)

We come from earth, bones.

We go to earth, ashes.

... White European want to know

asking "What this story?"

This not easy story.

No-one else can tell it

Because this story for Aboriginal culture.

I speak English for you,

So you can listen,

So you can know ...

I feel it with my body, 

with my blood.

Feeling all these trees,

All this country.

When this wind blow you can feel it.

Same for country,

You feel it.

You can look.

But feeling...

That make you.

If you feel sore,

Headache, sore body,

that mean somebody killing tree or grass

Cròniques De La Veritat Oculta - Pere Calders

Començat: Dilluns, 8 de gener 2024

Fins ara la meva història preferida és el Principi de la Saviesa. Ja me la sabia de la ESO però, l'he valorada més ara llegint-la uns anys més tard.

La Clara Consciència - "Passa sovint (i això t'ho dic de passada perqué ho tinguis ben present) que la gent més feliç i més ben tractada per la vida és la que menys tem la mort. (p.87)

"Sovint les persones que es van a morir es diuen que cal arreglar llurs coses...

"Mentre m'afaitava, aquell matí, se'm va ocorrer una cosa molt notable: Em vaig dir: "Tots els passos que he de fer avui, el destí els ha previstos per endevant. Cada gest que em menarà a col·locar-me a prop de la bomba, a hores d'ara ja està determinat. Doncs bé, ¿no és possible que em rebel·li contra la normalitat que permet a aquest destí prendre les seves mesures?" (p.88)

Acabat 4 febrer 2024