A Young Student's Selfie

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

Danez Smith, from "summer, somewhere"

unforced error by Meghan O’Rourke

— Nitya Prakash

Robert Frank Nude (Marie) with Cat, 1950

War on humanity in an ice cream franchise shop

Cloudy day, windy

Your boss' makin a loss

But I told you I'd never eaten this kind of ice cream before

And now I'm back for a second helping

First day it was sunny and I was in a good mood

Today I got no such excuse

The word "smile" is overused by corporate and music that's gentrification misspelled

So I'll commit the greatest rebellion of the industry:

You just looked at me.

Desperate claws in a sunny smile I've trained to be a good customer to the service

I ask you if I should take a cup or cone, your opinion

Well, it's my choice

But you can give me a little more in a cup.

I laugh too loud. Answer too loud. You're making money, I'm spending money.

'i hope to see you again, miss.'

That's not part of the script.

They don't say miss here.

Menci Clement Crnčić (Croatian, 1865–1930), "A View of Novi Vinodolski"

I bought a quarterly needlepoint magazine from 1991 today for $1 at an op shop, and there’s a four page spread about a woman who completely faithfully remakes samplers from the 1600s and the part that blows me away is that she was keeping women in history alive.

The original sampler maker was a teenaged girl called Loara she’s the only one known of seven siblings in that family. She was born approximately 1632 and had passed before her father had in 1656 which they know because it was mentioned in his will.

So in the 1630-40s a girl made a sampler, in 1991 a woman had put in years of research before recreating the sampler as Loara had 350 years earlier , and I’m reading about it in 2024.

Embroidery keeps women alive in history, and it’s part of why I love samplers so much.

Here’s a quote from samplers that I think about often: