"For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives--most natives in the world--cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go--so when the native see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself."

"She fills her time. In schools, playgrounds, other people's beds. In pursuit of knowledge, grubs, and, she thinks, life. Her loss remains hidden--over time a fine thick moss covers her skin. She does not speak of it. She does not speak of it. She does not gather branches to braid into a nest. She moves. Emigrated, lone travel, the zoologist would have recorded. Time passes. The longing for tribe surfaces--unmistakable. To create if not to find. She cannot shake it off. She remembers the jungle. The contours of wildness. The skills are deep within her. Buried so long, she fears they may have atrophied. Distant treks with her dark-pelted mother. With a solid urgency they may emerge but she must also give herself to the struggle. She belongs in these hills. And she knows this choice is irrevocable and she will never be the same.
She is the the woman who has reclaimed her grandmother's land.
She is white. Black. Female. Lover. Beloved. Daughter. Traveler. Friend. scholar. Terrorist. Farmer."

"To see that all in the school memorized the 'Daffodils' poem of William Wordsworth, 'spoken with as little accent as possible; here as elsewhere, the use of pidgin is to be severely discouraged.' The manual also contained a pullout drawing of a daffodil, which the pupils were 'encouraged to examine' as they recited the verse. . . . Probably there were a million children who could recite 'Daffodils,' and a million who had never actually seen the flower, only the drawing, and so did not know why the poet had been stunned."

sometimes you start a new blog and then move, and don't have internet at your new place.
let's try picking this back up in january.

"In Egypt Ray and Theodora live together publicly as male companions, while indulging secretly in a passionate sexual relationship. Their idyll is brought to a violent end when the two visit an all-male entertainment featuring an erotic dancer, 'a youth of about seventeen' whose 'supple and exquisitely symmetrical form' creates in the audience an 'excitement delirious, intoxicated' (237-8). Inflamed by the performance, Ray kisses Theodora on the lips and her true sex is discovered. The two are threatened with death, but buy their lives by agreeing that Theodora will be passed over to a group of Egyptians for seven days, to be used by them as they wish. She returns from the ordeal broken in spirit, and with her beauty hideously disfigured. Despite Ray's assurances of his continuing devotion, and his attempts to nurse her back to health, she finally kills herself."
- Gail Cunningham's summary of Victoria Cross's 1903 novel, Six Chapters of a Man's Life, as published in her introduction to Anna Lombard.

i gotta read this book. can you imagine how shocking that would've been to read in 1903?

"But I am free! I'm soaring, soaring. It's like dancing, like singing, this flight. Through and through the clouds until even they dry up and burn away with the heat of my passing. I fly even faster, to make more heat. I will have no more dampness about me, no more water, no more salt tears or piss or blood; no more flesh. The dry warmth that gathers about me is all I will have from now on. I soar on, fleeing the world I have failed."

"Ainsi, ces oiseaux n'ont pas peur d'être invisibles ni d'être visibles. Même s'ils sont nés dans des ruines ou ont grandi dans des poubelles, ils n'ont pas honte d'eux-mêmes. Ils ne méprisent jamais leur sort. Ils n'ont pas le temps de mépriser quoi que ce soit, parce que leur vie est courte. Ils plongent dans des lumières déroutantes. Ils ont le courage de s'exposer au soleil. Ils se croient beaux comme toutes les autres créatures. Et ils font confiance à bien des choses, y compris la sagesse des humains. Ils s'envolent vers un avenir inconnu, les ailes chargées des poussières du temps et la tête pleine de chansons éternelles."