lena

“Speak

Speak, your lips are free.
Speak, it is your own tongue.
Speak, it is your own body.
Speak, your life is still yours.

See how in the blacksmith's shop
The flame burns wild, the iron glows red;
The locks open their jaws,
And every chain begins to break.

Speak, this brief hour is long enough
Before the death of body and tongue:
Speak, 'cause the truth is not dead yet,
Speak, speak, whatever you must speak.”
― Faiz Ahmad Faiz

“After all these generations since Columbus, some of the wisest of Native elders still puzzle over the people who came to our shores.
They look at the toll on the land and say,
“The problem with these new people is that they don’t have both feet on the shore. One is still on the boat. They don’t seem to know whether they’re staying or not.” This same observation is heard from some contemporary scholars who see in the social pathologies and relentlessly materialist culture the fruit of homelessness, a rootless past.
America has been called the home of second chances. For the sake of the peoples and the land, the urgent work of the Second
Man may be to set aside the ways of the colonist and become indigenous to place. But can Americans, as a nation of immigrants,
learn to live here as if we were staying? With both feet on the shore?”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

“I was ashamed of myself when I realised life was a costume party and I attended with my real face”
― Franz Kafka

“The acceptance of our present condition is the only form of extremism which discredits us before our children.”
― Lorraine Hansberry