Maja

“Ich lebe mein Leben in wachsenden Ringen,
die sich über die Dinge ziehn.
Ich werde den letzten vielleicht nicht vollbringen,
aber versuchen will ich ihn.

Ich kreise um Gott, um den uralten Turm,
und ich kreise jahrtausendelang;
und ich weiß noch nicht: bin ich ein Falke, ein Sturm
oder ein großer Gesang.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Gedichte

“Hass und Gewalt nicht allein zu verurteilen, sondern in ihrer Funktionsweise zu betrachten, heißt immer auch zu zeigen, wo etwas anderes möglich gewesen wäre, wo jemand sich hätte anders entscheiden können, wo jemand hätte einschreiten, wo jemand hätte aussteigen können. Den Hass und die Gewalt nicht einfach nur abzulehnen, sondern zu beobachten, mit welchen rhetorischen Strategien, mit welchen Metaphern oder Bildern der Hass generiert und kanalisiert wird, birgt immer auch die Überzeugung, jene Stellen in den Mustern der Erzählung zu markieren, an denen sie unterbrochen oder unterwandert werden können.”
― Carolin Emcke, Gegen den Hass

“I want queer authors to write anything and everything they need to write. I have no interest in gatekeeping; I want the full spectrum. I want the coming out books. I want the books about queer suffering. I want on-page catharsis and exploration of trauma. I want the happy books, too: queer joy books, cute romantic comedies, first crush books, fantasies about queer royals and revolutionaries and spaceship captains. (...) We need all types of queer stories because all types of queer people exist. I want the market to be so saturated with queer books that anyone who needs to see themselves in a story—anyone who hasn’t yet seen themselves, hasn’t yet gotten to be the hero—can walk into any bookstore and find a book (or six) about someone who experiences the world like they do. I want every queer author to get the chance to tell their story. To tell people, We exist everywhere. We suffer, we survive, we love. We can be magic, too.”
― Nina Varela

“The Turtle

breaks from the blue-black
skin of the water, dragging her shell
with its mossy scutes
across the shallows and through the rushes
and over the mudflats, to the uprise,
to the yellow sand,
to dig with her ungainly feet
a nest, and hunker there spewing
her white eggs down
into the darkness, and you think

of her patience, her fortitude,
her determination to complete
what she was born to do—
and then you realize a greater thing—
she doesn't consider
what she was born to do.
She's only filled
with an old blind wish.
It isn't even hers but came to her
in the rain or the soft wind,
which is a gate through which her life keeps walking.

She can't see
herself apart from the rest of the world
or the world from what she must do
every spring.
Crawling up the high hill,
luminous under the sand that has packed against her skin.
she doesn't dream
she knows

she is a part of the pond she lives in,
the tall tress are her children,
the birds that swim above her
are tied to her by an unbreakable string.”
― Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume One