I wish I knew how it would feel to be free

With the disappointingly predictable grand jury decisions concerning the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, these past two weeks have been trying, to say the least - there have been a lot of tears and a lot of outrage, but mostly, a lot of questions. It is undeniably maddening to live in a country - hell, a world - where not only your life but the lives of your mother, your father, your brothers, your sisters, and anyone who shares your skin color or looks like they are related to someone who does have so little value. How best to carry on? If I have children, they will be black. How can I bring them into a world that people and the institutions they serve are determined to remove them from? I’m ever grateful to my parents for teaching me how to dodge the figurative bullets of a white supremacist society - the inferiority complex that arises when constantly treated as though you are inherently less than, being bullied into silence or complacency, and buying into the belief that “white is right,” to name a few - but how to teach a child how to dodge literal bullets? As Ijeoma Oluo outlined in a devastating string of tweets, it seems as though there’s not much one can do as a black person to avoid it. What can we do? I haven’t figured this out quite yet. With the recent news of yet another unarmed black man killed by a police officer, we need to work on solutions to this problem urgently. This section from James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son,” which I posted on Facebook last week following the Ferguson grand jury decision, bears reposting because it’s a good place for us to start:

"It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength."

"The moon is feminist art"

Only built for internet linx

1. Something I've been trying to unlearn for years is feeling foolish or unserious when discussing fashion. As my educational focus tilts and shifts, this article returns to my mind. A question looms, however - "do women need fashion to feel empowered?" - posed by Visuology in their review of the "Women Fashion Power: Not a Multiple Choice" exhibit at the Design Museum in London, designed by the brilliant Zaha Hadid.
2. "'Yelp reviewers tend to offer unimaginative, useless notes like “The location is great, service is superb, and food is epic.'"
3. I spend 40% of my free time wandering around grocery stores so I will automatically read any article about the supermarket and/or how spaces are designed to encourage consumption and/or shopping as a way to construct/reaffirm an identity (shout out to Steven Miles). Of course, issues of class are erased here - there are, after all, people who are not going into the grocery store and accidentally spending an extra $150 - I still thought this Bon Appetit piece was interesting in that it showcases how much effort is put forth to make those who can, do.
4. SMGDH at you and these Ferragamo rip offs, Kate Spade.
5. "In these future cities, those who own the operating system will be those who own the property, the money, and the means of production. By owning your Sim data, they will own you. It is towards these relations of power and data — the power to engineer life itself — that we should turn our attention...We should ask not what our ideal city on SimCity, LivingPlanIT, or some other Urban OS would look like, but what our ideal urban simulator would be. Given this or that operating system, who does the city work for and who works for the city? No longer is the goal to design an urban imaginary: you must now code the game."
6. Geneva is the city with the most expensive hotel club sandwiches for some reason.
7. The tone of this Daily Mail article about Aretha Franklin is so maddening - how can one be so flippant about abuse? JK I know why.
8. "...jalapeno cheeseburgers, chicken enchiladas, barbecue, cinnamon rolls and pies. But no chocolate-chip cookies."
9. I know I'm late to the Stevie Wonder truthers party but this made me laugh out loud several times while in a crowded subway car, so.
10. On Susan Sontag's digital archives.

A partial grocery list

The view from here

I’m eating barbecue in my underwear and watching Peep Show and feeling really good about life

The look

Passionate politics

Jenn Witte drew bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody and Skylight Books sold it and I bought it

The case for reparations

Had to get the hard copy.

Jackie Collins drinks champagne served by topless dudes in beauty supply stores and discovers American Apparel and it's great

It's basically summer, part ii

It's basically summer

It's going to be 80+ degrees all week so I had to buy a bottle

It's raining and I'm watching How to Make a Book with Steidl.

12-5204 TPX

Last night my roommate and I gave Willow Smith (not present) a tarot reading and afterward I went to Spago for a Paramount/Oscars thing and drank cocktails that tasted like orange Fanta and then later, while at the bar, it started to rain. It all felt like part of a turning point - this month has been difficult, to say the least, but there was change in the air last night.