this week’s Thought (singular)
the calmness that comes with the act of applying nail polish
hi
will i need to keep all my identity proof documents with myself? will i need to go shopping for jeans alone, and will i (need to) get the last towel in the cupboard without fighting anybody?
we’ll know soon!
English Recitation Competition
Torn Map, Naomi Shihab Nye
Once, by mistake, she tore a map in half. She taped it back, but crookedly. Now all the roads ended in water. There were mountains right next to her hometown. Wouldn’t that be nice if it were true? I’d tear a map and be right next to you.
Farewell to Poetry, Théophile Gautier (translated from French by Norman R. Shapiro)
Poor child of heaven, but vainly would you sing: To them your tongue divine means not a thing! Their ear is closed to your sweet chords! But this I beg: O blue-eyed angel, first, before You leave, find my pale love, whom I adore, And give her brow one long, last farewell kiss.
If grief is love with nowhere to go, then Oh, I’ve loved so immensely. That summer, everything I touched Was green. All bruises will fade From green and blue to skin. Let me grow through this green And not drown in it. Let me be lawless and beloved, Ungovernable and unafraid. Let me be brave enough to live here. Let me be precise in my actions. Let me feel hurt. I know I can heal. Let me try again—again and again.
A Poll!
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Middle School Book Review
your regularly scheduled book recommendation has been temporarily halted. watch this space over the coming weeks so you don’t miss the next one!
find all shared books here.
A Picture!
The Good Side of the Internet
Much has been made of the nature, content, and valorization of contemporary youth culture. The transformations in our notions of childhood and the culture that surrounds it have been staggering and worth all the ink that has been spilled on the subject. To a culture fixated on youth, it is not out of place to once again call attention to the fact that the prominence bestowed upon children and the world they inhabit today would have been unimaginable—in ways both amusing and repugnant—to our forebears, not only in the West but in other parts of the world as well. But understanding youth culture is not only an exercise in analyzing its internal discourse, structure, and development; it is also a matter of understanding the transformations that have been linked to it. Perhaps the most important of these are changes in the meaning of adulthood. Indeed, the poignancy of change in contemporary youth culture in the late modern West becomes even clearer relative to the changing nature of adulthood.
The Pathologies of the Attention Economy
I am fated, it seems, to periodically return to the subject of attention. I will at least try to keep these periodic reconsiderations of attention a few months apart. In this case, I selectively trace the history of attention discourse back to the 19th century in order to observe a pattern we should take into consideration whenever we talk about the “problem of attention” and when we try to do something about it. And while this pattern emerges out of a consideration of attention, I think the pattern more generally characterizes our techno-economic milieu.
Everybody wants to be a LinkedInfluencer
And the biggest power users are turning to ghostwriters.
Gayle, and the Rise of Meta-Pop
The musicians in the latest micro-generation are more TikTok-savvy and self-promotional than their predecessors, but also more winking about this approach.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Colour Pink
A Defence of ‘Not Like Other Girls’ Girls.
this week’s Song
Is There Something In The Movies? - Full Band Version by Samia
find all shared songs here.
thank you for reading, and see you next week <3
this is such a great start to my year? this is the worst possible start to my year? this has zero impact on the start of my year? let me know!