lekhaporaa

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go off king GO THE FUCK OFFFFFFFF

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i bring you more essays

nature, climate

A Flowered Planet — Olivia Laing

Gardening as Resistance: Notes on Building Paradise — Maria Popova

The Trouble with Wilderness — William Cronon

Natural Philosophy redux — Nicholas Maxwell

Ideas of Nature — Raymond Williams (in Culture and Materialism)

The Antarctica Paradox — Alejandro Mancilla

writing, literature

Contemporary Fiction vs. the Challenge of Imagining the Timescale of Climate Change — Mahlu Mertens, Stef Craps

Conrad's Darkness — V. S. Naipaul

Women and Impossible Decisions in Crime Fiction — Emila Naymark

Last Words — Joan Didion

Drive, He Wrote — Louis Menand

Mrs Dalloway: Secularism and Its Enchantments — Jared Marcel Pollen

The Art of Fiction No. 154: Naipaul

The Art of Fiction No. 207: Jonathan Franzen

history

The Climate of History: Four Theses — Dipesh Chakrabarty

What is global history now? — Jeremy Adelman

Are there laws of history? — Amanda Rees

The Lie of Silence — Blake Smith

The Women of the Raj — Maya Jasanoff

Catherine was Great. But was she a Girl Boss? — Alexis Soloski

A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative — William Cronon

and a few miscellaneous ones

Feeling Overwhelmed — Olivia Laing

Group think: Why Art Loves a Crowd — Olivia Laing

Reclaiming Friendship — Maria Popova

Taylor Swift's 'All Too Well' and the Weaponisation of Memory — Lindsay Zoladz

Women in Philosophy — Elly Vintiadis

The Secret Syndicate Behind Nancy Drew — Cara Strickland

Truck Literature — Dinesh Kafle

Imagine There’s no Svarga — Kushal Mehra

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Does anyone have a link to a back-to-basics article about good fanfic practices, like standards of content and chapter length and such (speaking as an old fart who only wrote a couple of shitty one-shots back when lemons were a thing)

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Vincent van Gogh, Wheat Fields after the Rain, 1890, oil on canvas Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA

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fuck all of u bitches with bad taste welcome to night vale did not have THE MAIN CHARACTER, THE NARRATOR, say hes in gay love at first sight with another man in goddamn 2012 when the best you could get was, like, glee, for you to say its only legacy is that some ppl r being cringe abt horror. fuck you.

people's standards have dropped so fucking low n some of u have never had that experience of listening to the pilot for the first time and hear cecil wax poetic about how handsome and mysterious carlos is and have it be completely normal and expected! do you know how unprecedented that was? do you know how healing it was to hear gay love being talked about with such candor and without shame, without restraint?

wtnv was incrediblyy ahead of the curve in a lot of ways and it continues to be almost a decade later and i REFUSE to let yall slander it like this. it isnt even a horror podcast it's a comedy with horror elements but it was never meant to be scary. the way that wtnv also does satire so well n the scathing critiques of contemporary society (esp the surveillance state)..... just say u never understood what it was (is & continues to be) abt and go lol no need to embarrass urself

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Some warm poetry, for cold evenings:

Molly Fisk, “Winter Sun” (We can make do with so little / just the hint of warmth, the slanted light.)

Pat Schneider, “The Patience of Ordinary Things” (It is a kind of love, is it not? / how the cup holds the tea.)

Barbara Ras, “Bite Every Sorrow” (You can speak a foreign language, sometimes / and it can mean something.)

Jack Gilbert, “Failing and Flying” (Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.)

Lisel Mueller, “Things” (Even what was beyond us / was recast in our image; / we gave the country a heart, / the storm an eye)

Rabindranath Tagore, “On the Seashore” (The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach / On the seashore of endless worlds children meet)

John O’Donohue, “Matins” (May I live this day / Compassionate of heart / Gentle in word / Courageous in thought)

Wallace Stevens, “The House Was Quiet and The World Was Calm” (The summer night is like a perfection of thought. / The house was quiet because it had to be)

Brian Patten, “Inessential Things” (Cats remember what is essential of days)

Emily Dickinson, “Simplicity” (How happy is the little stone / that rambles in the road, alone)

Yi Lu, “Valley’s Green” (flowers like tiny saucers — little bowls — little cups / filled to the brim with their own colors)

Jacques Prévert, “How to Paint a Bird’s Portrait” (When the bird comes / if it comes / observe the most profound silence)

Archibald MacLeish, “Eleven” (Happy as though he had no name, as though
 / He had been no one: like a leaf, a stem,
 / Like a root growing…)

Denise Levertov, “A Woman Alone” (Then / self-pity dries up, a joy / untainted by guilt lifts her. / She has fears, but not about loneliness)

Richard Brautigan, “Your Catfish Friend” (I’d love you and be your catfish / friend and drive such lonely / thoughts from your mind)

Linda Gregg, “The Letter” (I’m not feeling strong yet, but I am taking
 / good care of myself)

Andrew Lang, “Ballade of True Wisdom” (And I’d leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray, / For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers)

Ada Limón, “The Raincoat” (my whole life I’ve been under her / raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel / that I never got wet.)

Jorge Luis Borges, “The Just” (These people, unaware, are saving the world)

Wendell Berry, “The Peace of Wild Things” (I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.)

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“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence…”

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

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“I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterious under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.”

― Richard Siken

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Giveaway: We’re giving away 15 vintage classics by Virginia Woolf, Truman Capote, T.S. Eliot, Willa Cather, J.D. Salinger, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and others! Won’t they look lovely on your shelf? =) Enter to win these classics by: 1) following macrolit on Tumblr (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblogging this post. We will choose a random winner on 26 February, at which time we’ll start a new giveaway. Good luck! Follow our IG account to be eligible for our IG giveaways. For full rules to all of our giveaways, click here.

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the way ivan aivazovsky looks at the sea…i think…i think that’s what love looks like.

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intro to lit theory

Authorship: Barthes, Death of the Author; Foucault, What is an Author?

Formalism: Eichenbaum, The Theory of the “Formal Method”;  Brooks, from The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry

Structuralism: Saussure, Course in General Linguistics ; Barthes, from Mythologies

Psychoanalysis: Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams; Lacan, The Mirror Stage & The Significance of the Phallus

Ideology: Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses; Foucault, Truth and Power

Feminism & Queer: Sedgwick, from Between Men; Cixous, The Laugh of the Medusa; Wittig, One Is Not Born a Woman; Butler, Gender Trouble

Deconstruction: Derrida, from Of Grammatology;

Postcolonial: Fanon, from The Wretched of the Earth; Spivak, Can the Subaltern Speak?

Cultural Materialism: Adorno & Horkheimer, The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception; Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory  

these are about 2/3 of the readings for my intro to lit theory course, if you’ve ever wondered what one studies on such courses, the links lead to free pdfs  

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Special IG Giveaway: We’re giving away twelve vintage Penguin Classics by Homer, Emile Zola, Geoffrey Chaucer, Henrik Ibsen, and others. This is a special giveaway for macrolit followers who are following on both Tumblr and Instagram. Won’t these books look lovely on your shelf? =) Enter to win these classics by: 1) following macrolit on Tumblr and on Instagram (yes, we will check. :P), and 2) reblogging this post and adding your Instagram profile as a tag. We will choose a random winner on 27 February, so reblog now!  For full rules to this giveaway, click here. Good luck!

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being an English major is: *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *buys gay book* *doesn’t actually read gay books just hordes them*

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wow idk why i stopped using this blog for its intended purpose but maybe i should get back to it... anyway just for the record just changed my bio from bachelors student to masters student :') time flies when you're having fun choosing continued academic stress to avoid real world stress ~

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sometimes it puzzles me when people see some clear distinction between the purpose of art and science. you see, to me, they both are just ways to see and understand the world. we are all so tiny, and the world is so huge. the universe is even bigger. it’s impossible for an individual to see all of it on their own. so we rely on each other, exchange notes, see what we can see in our little corners of the universe and we tell each other about it, so that we may know more, understand more. 

think about it - so much of science is collaborative. the reason humanity has been able to advance so far is that we not only figure things out but we also pass it on to the next generation. we build upon each others’ knowledge so that we may see a clearer picture, and have a wider perspective. sometimes, that knowledge is in the form of equations, calculations and hypothesis; other times it’s in the form of philosophy, ideologies, or poetry.

it bothers me when literature or art is considered as an indulgent or frivolous pursuit because it serves the exact same purpose as any other form of learning does!! figuring things out and referring to others for their input! it’s dangerously arrogant to believe you can see and perfectly interpret the entire world around you and the galaxies beyond. there’s too much to know, see and understand. but luckily, there are also many of us here. and many before us who have been committed to the same cause. and they have created art, poetry, literature, songs and various other forms of expression to pass it on to us. it’d be foolish to ignore that. to leave them unstudied and unheard.

so please, try to know and see the world through as many different perspectives as you can. know the structure of an atom, and know the pathos of war. know how the muscles of your heart contract and know why it aches when you listen to ‘adiago for strings’. know what stars are, but also know what van gogh found in them. know the world around you in every way you can. understand it. and then, when you’re ready, pass it on.

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October 11, 2017 I have my coffee, hair up in a bun and some good tunes. ☕️🎧🖊 Let’s do this!

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05.03.19 // catching up on some lectures in starbucks