in-subdued-ecstasy

like… agh it’s just so cool to see that be so accepted as part of the given conversation from all sides.

surely to someone so pathetically sensitive to any strong sensation, (garlic = smell, sun = heat and UV light, Catholicism = rich religious and historical ideas.) he wouldn’t even be able to stand comprehending concepts such as raised voices, let alone technology or progressive ideologies.

imagine trying to have intimate relations. a serious of clammy smatterings of apologetically decaying flesh. just sort of schlicking over you like a senile cat’s weak tongue searching for purchase. you might mistake the lidded eyes and whispered murmuring as attractive until you realise he’s just half asleep and his vocal chords are drying up.

society and human nature and the cats cradle.

Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.

Power, like a desolating pestilence,

Pollutes what it touches; and obedience,

Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,

Makes slaves of men, and, of the human frame,

A mechanised automaton.

lying in that chapel in Verona,

miserable and spotty, at odds with everything,

what if he’d had a revelation from which

Juliet was absent?

What if, just before darkness settled

the arguments between most things,

through a gap in the walls he’d seen

a garden exploding,

and the pink shadow of blossom

shivering on stones?

What if,

unromantic as it seems,

her mouth, eyes, cheeks and breasts suddenly became

ornaments on a frame

common as any girl’s?

Could he still have drunk the potion had he known

without her the world still glowed

and love was not confined

in one shape alone?

From the prison the weary imagine

all living things inhabit

how could either

not have wished to escape?

Poor Romeo, poor Juliet, poor human race!”

“To bring arguments from facts or statistics against Mr. Bax’s variegated rhetoric would indeed be to crush with the Nasmyth hammer the gay fluttering wings of a peacock butterfly.”

I am currently OBSESSED with this article written by Annie Besant, a prominent orator and writer of feminist, socialist and educationist theory in the late 19th century. The woman herself is an inspiration, she fought for the independence of India and Ireland, she was an early advocate of birth control, etc. Generally Awesome.

But this is one of her lesser acknowledged pieces of writing, probably because it is so specific.

She writes in response to a very misogynistic article published in a previous issue of the same paper.

Her argument is highly articulate, and intellectual, and brilliantly entertaining.

Still very relevant in all points and references really.

- Oscar Wilde