Category Archives: Viva!

“Woody Allen is a genius. Woody Allen is a predator”: Why Mariel Hemingway’s new revelation matters – Salon.com

She nails Allen and the delusion many have lived with!

Woody Allen is a genius. Woody Allen is a predator. He put those two sides of himself together, hand in hand, and dared us to applaud. And we did — over and over. We all have our blind spots, but after a while, we also have to admit what we have deliberately refused to see.

via “Woody Allen is a genius. Woody Allen is a predator”: Why Mariel Hemingway’s new revelation matters – Salon.com.

IRIN Africa | Cameroon soldiers defy Boko Haram in polio battle | Cameroon | Nigeria | Children | Education | Health & Nutrition | Refugees/IDPs

How do you vaccinate women and children against polio in remote areas prone to attack from Boko Haram militants? Arm the soldiers with vaccine.

This is exactly what has happened with great success in northern Cameroon.

Following a series of abductions last year by Boko Haram groups, military escorts have been joining vaccination drives in Cameroon’s Far North Region to protect both local and international humanitarian workers.

In addition to acting as a security presence, officers, who normally patrol the frontlines and at-risk border communities, are also trained to administer polio vaccines – a tactic UNICEF says has been key to the successful campaign.

via IRIN Africa | Cameroon soldiers defy Boko Haram in polio battle | Cameroon | Nigeria | Children | Education | Health & Nutrition | Refugees/IDPs.

Creative Hell-Raising Pledge — May My Work Be So Damn Real. | Rebelle Society

“May my work be so damn real that they cannot un-see it;

So sense-numbingly beautiful that they cannot unfeel it;

So achingly naked that they’ll never, no matter how they try, be able to return to the world unchanged.

via Creative Hell-Raising Pledge — May My Work Be So Damn Real. | Rebelle Society.

Inside Manhattan’s Adorable New Pencil Shop: Gothamist

“There aren’t very many pencil factories left, but most of them still maintain the quality and heritage of yesteryear. Some harder to find pencils have to be tracked down via a third party (friends in other countries) or collected while traveling,” Weaver says of her inventory, “The old pencils are bit trickier, but most of mine come from collectors who have an excess of a certain pencil or from auctions.”

The most interesting pencil Weaver has seen comes from long ago, “There are a lot of pencils from the 1920s to 1950s with really odd and elaborately shaped erasers attached to them. There’s one that I have called the Dixon Inline which has really fine orange and white stripes on the barrel and a big, flat, square eraser on the end which is held by an elaborate gold ferrule. It’s a really lovely and strange pencil.”

There is an online store, but we highly recommend dropping by the shop. It’s located at 100a Forsyth Street in Manhattan, and is open Tuesday-Saturday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m, and Sunday 12 to 7 p.m.

via Inside Manhattan’s Adorable New Pencil Shop: Gothamist.

Leave The Pages Bloody. | Rebelle Society

Leave the pages bloody…

Leave them ripe with summer sweat, hard work, no work, lust, love, pain, grief, messy sex, no sex, lovemaking, mouth to mouth, warm hugs, spiritual enlightenment, rebirth, rain, fire, ice, ashes, matches, gasoline and lastly, most integral, life. Leave the pages of your mind drenched with the ink of the breath of every solitary subconscious thought.

via Leave The Pages Bloody. | Rebelle Society.

The Tiger by Ellen Wiles, including an interview with Win Tin – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics

I was tortured a lot at the beginning of my time in jail. I was interrogated and refused to answer questions and then I was beaten. They put their foot on my head so I could not see who was beating me. I lost all my teeth in the upper jaw right at the start, and without any teeth I had to eat prison rice—which was so hard and old—for eight years. Eight years with no dentures. Such beatings could happen any time, simply because they don’t like your manners or if they feel you are not very obliging to them.

I was kept in solitary all the time I was in prison. I never lived with other people, and I was locked up alone all day. I was never permitted to meet anyone else.

We only got prison meals twice a day. In the morning we got rice and beans or vegetable soup, and a little fish paste, and in the evening we got the same thing. Once a week we got some egg or meat as well—one portion only, which was two ounces. We were not allowed to get any meals from outside. Only at the family visits could we get things like fried fish and fried chicken.

via The Tiger by Ellen Wiles, including an interview with Win Tin – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics.

Quotations from Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)

Forgetting about preferences

Tao is obscured when men understand only one pair of opposites,

or concentrate only on a partial aspect of being.

Then clear expression also becomes muddled by mere wordplay,

affirming this one aspect and denying all the rest.

The pivot of Tao passes through the center where all affirmations and denials converge.

He who grasps the pivot is at the still-point

from which all movements and oppositions can be seen in their right relationship…

Abandoning all thought of imposing a limit or taking sides, he rests in direct intuition.

(2:3, p. 59, p.61)

When we look at things in the light of Tao, nothing is best, nothing is worst.

Each thing, seen in its own light stands out in its own way.

It can seem to be “better” than what is compared with it on its own terms.

But seen in terms of the whole, no one thing stands out as “better” …

All creatures have gifts of their own…

All things have varying capacities.

Consequently he who wants to have right without wrong, order without disorder,

does not understand the principles of heaven and earth.

He does not know how things hang together.

Can a man cling only to heaven and know nothing of earth?

They are correlative: to know one is to know the other.

To refuse one is to refuse both.

(17:4,5,8, pp. 131-133)

When the shoe fits, the foot is forgotten.

When the belt fits, the belly is forgotten.

When the heart is right, “for” and “against” are forgotten.

No drives, no compulsions, no needs, no attractions:

Then your affairs are under control.

You are a free man.

(19:12, pp. 166-167)

via Quotations from Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, Terebess Asia Online (TAO).

Quotations from Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, Terebess Asia Online (TAO)

Being humble

If a man is crossing a river and an empty boat collides with his own skiff,

even though he be a bad-tempered man he will not become very angry.

But if he sees a man in the boat, he will shout at him to steer clear.

If the shout is not heard, he will shout again, and yet again, and begin cursing.

And all because there is somebody in the boat.

Yet if the boat were empty, he would not be shouting, and not angry.

If you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world,

no one will oppose you, no one will seek to harm you….

Who can free himself from achievement, and from fame, descend and be lost amid the masses of men?

He will flow like Tao, unseen, he will go about like Life itself with no name and no home.

Simple is he, without distinction. To all appearances he is a fool.

His steps leave no trace. He has no power. He achieves nothing, has no reputation.

Since he judges no one, no one judges him.

Such is the perfect man:

His boat is empty.

(20:2, 4, pp. 168-171)

via Quotations from Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton, Terebess Asia Online (TAO).

In Four Loops, Marathon Conveys Palestinian Constraints – NYTimes.com

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — The runners looped four times through this city, following a route that took them from the Church of the Nativity, traditionally considered Christ’s birthplace, down Bethlehem’s main avenue and alongside Israel’s looming separation barrier, scrawled with graffiti and blackened from hurled projectiles.

The Palestine Marathon, held last week, is a hemmed-in affair, much like the city where it is run. “In Bethlehem, there’s not a continuous 42 kilometers,” huffed Marwa Younis, 32, as she ran. “You have to run back and forth.”

But that is exactly why the organizers of the Right to Movement: Palestine Marathon chose to stage it here. What better way to draw attention to the constraints Palestinians say they face in their daily lives?

Continue reading the main story

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“We want to send a message that we don’t have the right to movement — we are occupied and have the apartheid wall,” said an organizer, Diala Isid, referring to Israel’s 26-foot-high separation barrier, which surrounds the city on three sides. “So we thought, ‘Let’s make an international marathon.’ ”

via In Four Loops, Marathon Conveys Palestinian Constraints – NYTimes.com.