Notes for Radical Living by Tilda Swinton

Notes for Radical Living by Tilda Swinton

Make friends with chaos
Hold a calm mind
Let things shake
Forgive human frailty
Champion second chances
Defy kindness
Reverence fellowship
Listen to the quiet
Respect the young
Seek growth
Trust in change
Treasure learning
Inspire faith in evolution
Reach beyond the binary
Be wary of the doubtless
Honor the bright headed
Grow plants
Attend to the weather
Be electric
Cherish language
Celebrate silence
Dance daily
Bless the handmade
Sing into pain
Challenge assumptions
Follow the wind
Look upwards
Swoon under clouds
Feel your courage
Face forward
Read history
Open your ears
Drop your shoulders
Bend your knees
Raise the roof
Keep breathing
Be trustworthy
Take care of yourself
Believe in goodness
Head for the light

--from Tilda Swinton’s 2025 book “Ongoing”

https://www.rizzoliusa.com/book/9780847860517/

"Vaster Than Empires" by Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, and Caetano Veloso

"Vaster Than Empires" from the soundtrack to Luca Guadagnino's extraordinary film "Queer" with Daniel Craig reaches into me, walks on my soul, effortlessly slays me. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross created the soundtrack, and this song featuring legendary Brazilian Tropicalismo singer Caetano Veloso played over the closing credits.

How can a man who sees and feels
be other than sad?
How can a man who sees and feels (A sad feeling can be seen)
be other than sad? (As a test upon which love)

How can a man who sees and feels (A sad feeling can be seen)
be other than sad? (As a test upon which love)
How can a man who sees and feels (A sad feeling can be seen)
be other than sad? (Did it even happen?)

How can a man who sees and feels (What is an experience if it is not shared?)
be other than sad? (Did it even happen?)

(What is an experience if it is not shared?)
How can a man who sees and feels (A sad feeling can be seen)
be other than sad? (Did it even happen?)

Our love will grow vaster than empires and more slow
Our love will grow vaster than empires and more slow
The price of immortality, immortality
Our love will grow vaster than empires and more slow
The price of immortality, immortality
Our love will grow vaster than empires and more slow

How can a man who sees and feels (A centipede can be seen)
(Did it even happen?)

(You should have thought of these things)
Be other than sad? (As a test upon which love)

(You should have not only...)
Our love will grow vaster than empires and more slow

(You should have thought of these things)

(You should have not only thought of these things)
Did it even happen?
What is an experience if it is not shared?
Did it even happen?

https://www.nin.com/

Just finished reading...

"Giving Up Is Unforgivable: A Manual for Keeping a Democracy" by Joyce Vance (a Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Law at The University of Alabama, and former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama from 2009 to 2017 appointed by Obama).

A friend of mine gave me her copy of this uplifting book to read, saying that she found it to be a helpful antidote to the fear and disappointment many of us in the former United States of America are living with. And she was right, it was wonderful to be reminded that the government is not broken, the principles are not broken, Congress is not broken, the Supreme Court is not broken, the office of the President is not broken, the concept of Democracy itself is not broken...these things remain whole, innocent, waiting to be used in an ethical, moral way. It is some of the people within these positions and institutions that are broken. The bedrock is intact. But we the people have the power and obligation to remove and replace the broken ones with those who believe in the Constitution, Democracy, and the ideals of what we can continue to achieve as a Nation.

The book's blurb says:

We’re in this together.

For the past several years, Joyce Vance has signed off posts on her chart-topping Substack, "Civil Discourse", with these four words. In that time, she has guided readers through a continued erosion of democratic norms, the unprecedented felony conviction of an ex-president, and the constitutionally calamitous beginning to the second Trump administration. Here, Vance offers a blueprint for avoiding burnout and despair, and for strengthening our democratic muscle.

Giving Up Is Unforgivable is a clarion call to action, putting our current crisis in historical context and sketching out a vision for where we go next. Vance’s message is hopeful at its heart, even as it acknowledges the daunting challenges that lie ahead. She is the constitutional law professor you never knew you needed, explaining the legal context and the political history— and why the rule of the law still matters. At the same time, she empowers the reader to do something, both as individuals and collectively.

Consider this the birth of a countermovement to Project 2025, a rallying cry for citizen engagement to combat the second Trump administration and save American democracy.

Recommend? Yes, it is a wonderful, easy read: six succinct chapters allow her to make her case and outline a paradigm. If you could use some fortification against the daily onslaught of vicious cruelty and ineptitude, buy a copy and read carefully!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/801635/giving-up-is-unforgivable-by-joyce-vance/
https://joycevance.substack.com/

To Evolve

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
--Aldous Huxley

“That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. “Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?”
--Mary Oliver, from “Long Life: Essays and Other Writings”

“I don’t believe in perfection. I believe in evolution.”
--Dominique Crenn, from "Rebel Chef"

January Night Prayer by Ursula K. Le Guin

On this last night of January, here is the powerful Ursula K. Le Guin poem, "January Night Prayer."

January Night Prayer
by Ursula K. Le Guin

Bellchimes jangle, freakish wind
Whistles icy out of desert lands
over the mountains. Janus, Lord
of winter and beginnings, riven
and shaken, with two faces,
watcher at the gates of winds and cities,
god of the wakeful:
keep me from coldhanded envy,
and petty anger. Open
my soul to the vast
dark places. Say to me, say again
nothing is taken, only given.

https://www.ursulakleguin.com/

Corporations Are Not Human Beings

"The limitless destructiveness of this economy comes about precisely because a corporation is not a person. A corporation, essentially, is a pile of money to which a number of persons have sold their moral allegiance. As such, unlike a person, a corporation does not age. It does not arrive, as most persons finally do, at a realization of the shortness and smallness of human lives; it does not come to see the future as the lifetime of the children and grandchildren of anybody in particular. It can experience no personal hope or remorse, no change of heart. It cannot humble itself. It goes about its business as if it were immortal, with the single purpose of becoming a bigger pile of money."
--Wendell Berry, from his essay “The Idea of a Local Economy”

Brian Eno on What Art Does

https://www.brian-eno.net/

Sanctuary/Compassion

“We must remind ourselves that in uncertain times our own steadiness can become a sanctuary for others.”
--Jack Kornfield

Painting by Truls Espedal

"Compassion asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else."
--Karen Armstrong

It's Time For A Perspective Shift

“Time is tricky. You have whole months, even years, when nothing changes a speck, when you don’t go anywhere or do anything or think one new thought. And then you can get hit with a day, or an hour, or a half a second when so much happens it’s almost like you got born all over again into some brand-new person you for damn sure never expected to meet.”
--E.R. Frank, Life Is Funny

“You see the beauty inside everything. It doesn’t last long—it’s either gone in a minute, you just caught it, or else maybe it’s something so big that you normally can’t get your head around it. Like the fog in your head clears out. The world stops being a puppet show and you see the real thing. It’s probably like that all the time, but you just can’t see it, except for those little glimpses.”
--Janet Fitch, Paint It Black

“I’m grateful for anything that reminds me of what’s possible in this life. Books can do that. Films can do that. Music can do that. School can do that. It’s so easy to allow one day to simply follow into the next, but every once in a while we encounter something that shows us that anything is possible, that dramatic change is possible, that something new can be made, that laughter can be shared.”
--Jonathan Safran Foer

"We can disagree and still love each other, unless..."

This seems like a good time to repost this:

VOTE 2024!

"American history is a record of small groups of people who keep remaking this country over and over, and who reveal to us all that the perpetual remaking is the greatest statement of fidelity to our creed and our national purpose, which is not to be like Russia, white and stagnant and oligarchic, or like China, monoethnic and authoritarian and centralized, but to be more like America, hybrid and dynamic and democratic and free to be remade."
--Author and activist Eric Liu

And please, for the love of democracy and our country itself,
VOTE DEMOCRAT!

LGBT History Month 2024: Willem Arondéus

Willem Arondéus
Photo courtesy of Marco Entrop,
Het Verzetsmuseum Amsterdam (Dutch Resistance Museum)

Future hero Willem Arondéus was born in 1894 in North Holland, Netherlands. After a career as an illustrator, he began writing poetry and novels, illustrating many of his books himself. But everything changed with the coming of the Nazis and WWII.

Wikipedia recounts his work with the resistance: In 1942, Arondéus started an underground periodical called the Brandarisbrief. In 1943, the Brandarisbrief merged with another publication called De Vrije Kunstenaar. Through the merger, Arondéus met Gerrit van der Veen, the editor of De Vrije Kunstenaar. In the resistance, van der Veen specialized in forging identity cards. As a result, Arondéus also became involved in creating forged documents, along with lesbian resistant Frieda Belinfante. A major detriment to the success of these forgeries was the Municipal Office for Population Registration as its existence made the forgeries less useful, since their legitimacy could be checked against the registration lists and determined to be fakes. Arondéus and van der Veen, along with a number of associates, developed a plan to destroy the registration office.

Their attack, which took place on 27 March 1943, was partially successful, and they managed to destroy 800,000 identity cards (15% of the records), and retrieve 600 blank cards and 50,000 guilders. The building was blown up and no one was caught on the night of the attack. However, due to an unknown betrayer, Arondéus was arrested on 1 April 1943. Arondéus refused to give up the rest of his team but his notebook was found, and as a result, a majority of the group were also arrested. Belinfante was the sole person from the group to have survived, forcing her to take on a man's identity and go undercover.

On 18 June 1943, Arondéus was tried and sentenced to death by firing squad, along with 13 other men who participated. Two of the group received clemency, but the others were executed on 1 July 1943. Arondéus pleaded guilty and took the full blame, which may be why two young doctors were spared from execution and given custodial sentences instead. Before his execution, Arondéus made a point of ensuring the public would be aware that he and two other men in the group, Bakker and Brouwer, were gay, asking either a friend or his lawyer (accounts vary) to "Tell people that homosexuals are not cowards." (In Dutch: "Zeg de mensen dat homoseksuelen niet per definitie zwakkelingen zijn.")

In 1945, after the liberation of the Netherlands, Arondéus's family was awarded a posthumous medal by the Dutch government in his honour. In 1984, he was awarded the Resistance Memorial Cross. On 19 June 1986, Yad Vashem recognized Arondéus as Righteous Among the Nations.

December, page from a calendar illustrated by Willem Arondéus,
at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

November, page from a calendar illustrated by Willem Arondéus,
at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

October, page from a calendar illustrated by Willem Arondéus,
at the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Illustration by Willem Arondéus

Illustration by Willem Arondéus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_Arondeus

Memory and Understanding

“Most of our childhood is stored not in photos, but in certain biscuits, lights of day, smells, textures of carpet.”
--Alain de Botton

"3:42 p.m., 2010" | Photo by Alexander Harding

“The path isn't a straight line; it’s a spiral. You continually come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.”
--Barry H. Gillespie

I Refuse To Be Hardened

Who Are You And What Will You Do?

"Life is so short you can’t waste even a day subscribing to what someone thinks you can do versus knowing what you can do."
--Virgil Abloh

"You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you."
--James Baldwin

"Your life’s a nanosecond; if you have a contribution to make, then make it. Don’t bitch about it, just do it."
--Richard Serra

VOTE 2022!

"American history is a record of small groups of people who keep remaking this country over and over, and who reveal to us all that the perpetual remaking is the greatest statement of fidelity to our creed and our national purpose, which is not to be like Russia, white and stagnant and oligarchic, or like China, monoethnic and authoritarian and centralized, but to be more like America, hybrid and dynamic and democratic and free to be remade."
--Author and activist Eric Liu

And please, for the love of democracy and our country itself,
VOTE DEMOCRAT!

What It's Like To Get Old

“Inside, we are ageless and when we talk to ourselves, it’s the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It’s the body that is changing around that ageless center.”
--David Lynch

“I love getting older. My understanding deepens. I can see what connects, I can weave stories of experience and apply them. I can integrate the lessons. Things simply become more and more fascinating. Beauty reveals itself in thousands of forms.”
--Victoria Erickson

https://www.davidlynchfoundation.org/
https://www.victoriaerickson.com/

Doing Nothing

https://www.instagram.com/douglascoupland/

Truth, Again

"I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organised; nor should any organisation be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organise a belief. A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organise it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallised; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others."
--Jiddu Krishnamurti

"The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear."

--Jiddu Krishnamurti

https://jkrishnamurti.org/

And now a word on recent events...

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the carrier of the plague. You have unbarred the gates of Rome to him."

--author Taylor Caldwell in her 1965 novel A PILLAR OF IRON