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Valarie
https://www.goodreads.com/valkyriejmu
Listening to music—attending to what works and doesn’t work in a song, feeling its rhythms and melodies as if they were as much a part of your body as your fingers and hips—is an indispensable component of what music is.
“The paradise is here. Paradise is right in front of us. In capitalism what is engineered is longing, engineered longing and desire in us for what can be in the future. It’s always about the next product, the next big thing. You look at clothes and you always see some hot, sexy, fabulous couple wearing those jeans—the jeans, i.e., the love. Everything’s all hooked into the seduction. And when you wake up you don’t actually look like that, but the reality is delicious in its own messy, human way. I think we’re always comparing the messy, human to that, and to celebrity culture, so whatever this is doesn’t come up right. Come on. What if we actually were content with our lives? What if we actually knew this was paradise? It would be very hard to control us.”
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
“Oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.”
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“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change. Racism and homophobia are real conditions of all our lives in this place and time. I urge each one of us here to reach down into that deep place of knowledge inside herself and touch that terror and loathing of any difference that lives here. See whose face it wears. Then the personal as the political can begin to illuminate all our choices.”
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“If you let people into your life a little bit, they can be pretty damn amazing.”
― The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
― The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
One Book Per Week: 2013
— 111 members
— last activity Jun 16, 2017 03:12PM
Daily reading, whether a newspaper, essay, or novel, provides intellectual sustenance and strengthens our critical thinking, debate, and reasoning ski ...more
DC Public Library
— 618 members
— last activity Oct 05, 2016 06:59AM
A book group hosted by the DC Public Library. Join us to discuss and discover great books!
Valarie’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Valarie’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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