Oliver > Recent Status Updates

“…Mole, Mr. Rat’s particular friend…”

Gay

“our dear old hole on the river”

No way Rat and Mole aren’t gay

“I was raised among parades celebrating combat veterans. Not teachers. Not scientists. Not caregivers. Not poets.”

This, along with the fact that you can buy firearms at Walmart, says a lot about our culture.

So whimsical

I didn’t realize sexism was such a problem among the Black Panthers

How did I not make the connection that rich white europeans pitted poor white settlers against indigenous people the same way plantation owners pitted poor whites against black people

I hate being surprised by something evil the government did when I should have predicted it. Of course they hired organizers to suppress them and absorbed them into bureaucratic roles before fucking everyone over (even more) with little resistance

“The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House”

I liked this essay a lot more than the first two. At the end, she discusses the idea that the need of women to educate men on women’s issues and of women of color to educate white women on their issues is a tool to keep the oppressed occupied rather than taking action to dismantle the systems that oppress

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.”

“survival is not an academic skill” is such an important concept. People who only understand oppression through an academic lens don’t understand oppression

“Uses of the Erotic”

Yeah this is too philosophical for me to enjoy

She differentiates between the pornographic (sensation) and the erotic (feeling)

“Poetry Is Not a Luxury” didn’t do much for me. Not loving her writing style

She defines poetry as “the revelation or distillation of experience”

“nature is populated by grand, ancient, gorgeous wonders, whereas our language is populated by small, finite, relatively new collections of sounds and letters. We don’t require words to appreciate grand wonders. Wonders older than the language with which we converse are not limited by our names for them.”

“I have heard some say that this is the way things must be or we wouldn’t be motivated to do anything…Where is the motivation if the penalty for being too poor wasn’t dying on the street?”

I love the discussion of morels as valuable because of the search, not the possession. It reminds me of the idea that sacred herbs lose their sacredness when they’re bought rather than gathered. Commodification taints the connection and community that give them value

“why should we think of language as the lifeblood of knowledge or the currency of legitimate existence?”

The idea of a passenger plane in the 40s is terrifying, but I looked up pictures and they really weren’t that different than modern planes

She said gay rights and used racial slurs in the same conversation. This character is giving me whiplash

“Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear”

Foreshadowing?

She talks about how horrible it is to live in a cage but also about how miserable it is to be free.

There’s something interesting about her gifting him the birdcage

The n-word used in a way I’ve never even seen it used. This author loves his racism

She’s either unknowingly delivering messages for the mafia or pretending she doesn’t know. Not sure if that’s important to the plot

I was surprised she basically said everyone’s a little gay considering how old this book is

Just learned what victory mail was. I’ve always hated microfilm, but I guess it has its uses

Three pages in, and the author has already used a slur

“in childhood we have used up too much strength, too much grown-people’s strength”

It seems like this poor guy had the worst case of writer’s block and looked in all the wrong places for inspiration

Now that I’m reading some context, some small pieces are falling into place. Rilke glazed Rodin’s art because Rodin was his mentor. I’m assuming that he’d appreciate a work of art more when he knew personally what the artist put into it.