gillyweed

“Dehumanization and “desacralization” are one and the same.

“Desacralization” was the slogan of the twentieth century; it’s the slogan of ignoramuses, of mediocrity and incompetence. It’s a free pass doled out by one dimwit to another bonehead while trying to convince the third nincompoop that everything should be meaningless and base (allegedly democratic, allegedly accessible), and that everyone has the right to judge everyone else; or no one does—that authority can’t exist in principle, that a hierarchy of values is obscene (since everyone’s equal), and that art’s worth is determined solely by cost and demand. Novelties and fashionable scandals are surprisingly not that novel and not that scandalous: fans of the Square keep presenting various bodily fluids and objects created from them as evidence of art’s accomplishments. It’s as if Adam and Eve—one suffering from amnesia, the other from Alzheimer’s—were attempting to convince each other and their children that they are clay, only clay, and nothing but clay.”
― Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds: Stories

“Give the dirt a little room.”
― Inger Christensen, Butterfly Valley: A Requiem

“I, a literary terrorist, am going to force life to dissolve its resistance toward me.”
― Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi, Call Me Zebra: A Coming-of-Age Journey Across the Mediterranean

“New art” derides the very idea of consolation, of enlightenment, of rising above—it derides it while taking pride in that derision, as it dances and celebrates.”
― Tatyana Tolstaya, Aetherial Worlds: Stories