1 week ago - 
24
24
"Darling, I'm a poet," she said.
A litany of adjectives that do not define me; and comma, comma, comma. A stranger lost in the strangeness of a strange land. I love you. I love the planet. I love the world. I love love. That's all you need to know.
So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.
~Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (via mentalalchemy)
(via knowledgeappliedispower)
(Source: abscidium, via modernhepburn)
(Source: gifnation.net, via lifeasadaydream)
(via theseviolentdelights)
How To Have A Good Tumblr Experience #101
I’ve been around Tumblr a while and gone through many phases; I’ve done the Tumblr Famous Muslimah stint (I know, right? I thought that was funny too), I’ve done the Tumblr Agony Aunt stint, I’ve also done the Woe-Is-Me-Cry-Me-A-River-My-Life-Is-So-Difficult stint.
I’m in a really good place right now (thank/praise be to the higher power) and damn, I’ve worked hard for it. This is what I’ve learned thus far:
1. My follower/someone-I-follow does not share the same religion/sect as me. What do I do?
Nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. Guess what? It really doesn’t fucking matter. The person next to you can be worshipping a fucking GOAT for all you care - as long as they’re not thieving YOUR goddamn goat to fucking worship - who the fuck cares? Moral of the story: If it doesn’t impinge on anyone’s basic/civil/human rights - it really is none of your fucking business. (No goats were harmed in the production of this post.)
2. I feel the need to enforce my opinion on someone else because why would anyone do anything any other way but mine? Look at how awesome my life is that I need to spend 20 hours on a blogging website telling people how to live their lives. What do I do?
I think that answers itself, don’t you think? Opinions are good, opinions give alternative perceptions - dialogue is encouraged, sure. But for the love of God and goats and all that is holy: Chill the fuck down, mate! Look, it’s 26 degrees in London, we haven’t seen the sun in months - here I am, writing a Tumblr post instead of being out and tanning (ignoring the fact I have an hour left of work and not much to do so I shall be excused) - see what trying to ruin someone else’s day by cyber bullying does to you? You end up missing sunny days yourself.
3. My Tumblr girlfriend/boyfriend has fangirls/fanboys and it’s making me insecure and fucking up my Tumblr relationship. What do I do?
First of all, there are many, MANY things I can say about this but as this is my personal opinion and the status of your Tumblr relationship is none of my business, I will implement No. 2. Here’s some advice though: If your Tumblr relationship is causing you more grief than the shits-and-giggles it’s meant to be? Step away from the computer. When you start living your life like playing The Sims? There’s a problem. Trust me. Log off Tumblr, turn off your computer (at this point your eyes will be a bit sore trying to adjust to natural light and your posterior has probably seen better days), step outside of your house and just fucking breathe. Smell that? That’s what freedom smells like.
4. Some imbecile is engaging in armchair politics with me and this Tumblr war has been going on for days with no side relenting. What do I do?
Here’s the thing - of course you have your own beliefs and your own moral/ethic code you live your life by and when you see someone doing/inciting/perpetuating a wrong/negative agenda you’re going to get your panties in a twist. Obviously. But here’s the other, and in my opinion far more important, thing - I’m all for educating the ignorant masses and raising awareness but unless you or this imbecile you’re arguing with is willing to lay down your life and I mean this in a very literal sense, it doesn’t matter. If you’re not on the front lines, involved in a hunger strike, rallying on a square like This Shit Means Something To You Personally, getting in an online rant is not going to achieve anything, trust me, I learnt this the hard way. The hours you spend procrastinating on Tumblr banging digital heads together will only result in the rise of your blood pressure and the fall of your studies/degree/work, ERGO not worth it. If you really want to ‘make a difference’ - there are a thousand youth centres, old people’s homes, under-funded schools that will be ecstatic to have you on board.
(In case you were wondering what I do aside from make the occasional holier-than-thou Tumblr posts: I work 9-5.30 Mon-Fri, I go gym four times a week, I play rugby once a week, I go to book club meetings every month, I clean the house every Sunday, I can’t remember the last Saturday I had to myself, I ensure I don’t go too long without hanging out with my boyfriend, I’m training with Barnardo’s to do voluntary work with children on Saturdays and in between I manage to roll my eyes at the posts appearing in abundance on my dashboard.)
5. Tumblr is taking over my life. What do I do?
Stop caring about online strangers’ opinions from the other side of the world who you have no chance of ever meeting. Read, read, read. Take a book with you to a park on a sunny day and strike up a conversation with someone sharing your bench. Get on a random bus, don’t check the number, end up wherever (best ways to explore London btw). Call your best friend and spend hours on the phone talking about absolute shit. Work on being a better, happier, wiser person. Your happiness is not dependant on anyone else outside of you. Trust me. God’s not gonna make you happy, your boyfriend/girlfriend, your family, your friends, Gossip Girl, James Franco - NONE of it is going to make you happy. Sure, they can be a distraction, a respite from the daily grind but true happiness - pure, unadulterated bliss comes from within.
Go find yourself.
1 week ago - 4
4 
(Source: o-u-t-l-a-w-z, via beboxedout)
gq:
Amen! D’Angelo Is Back!!
Sh-t. Damn. Motherf—ker! If you love D’Angelo like we do, this one’s gonna give you chills. As far as we’re concerned (and OK, yeah, maybe we’re biased) this is the music story of the year. GQ presents the neo-soul legend’s first extended interview and his first photo shoot in more than a decade. Here’s a brief bit of GQ correspondent Amy Wallace’s spellbinding profile, and click here to read the whole thing.
Shame, guilt, repentance—D’Angelo knows them well. To say that he was raised religious doesn’t begin to capture it. He’s the son and the grandson of Pentecostal preachers. To D’Angelo, good and evil are not abstract concepts but tangible forces he reckons with every day. In his life and in his music, he has always felt the tension between the sacred and the profane, the darkness and the light.
“You know what they say about Lucifer, right, before he was cast out?” D’Angelo asks me now. “Every angel has their specialty, and his was praise. They say that he could play every instrument with one finger and that the music was just awesome. And he was exceptionally beautiful, Lucifer—as an angel, he was.”
But after he descended into hell, Lucifer was fearsome, he tells me. “There’s forces that are going on that I don’t think a lot of motherfuckers that make music today are aware of,” he says. “It’s deep. I’ve felt it. I’ve felt other forces pulling at me.” He stubs out his cigarette and leans toward me, taking my hand. “This is a very powerful medium that we are involved in,” he says gravely. “I learned at an early age that what we were doing in the choir was just as important as the preacher. It was a ministry in itself. We could stir the pot, you know? The stage is our pulpit, and you can use all of that energy and that music and the lights and the colors and the sound. But you know, you’ve got to be careful.”
(via beboxedout)
(Source: buddhainteriors, via shootmethenleave)
| 2Pac: | And since we all came from a woman, got our name from a woman and our game from a woman, I wonder why we take from our women. Why we rape our women, do we hate our women? I think it's time to kill for our women, time to heal our women, be real to our women. And if we don't we'll have a race of babies that will hate the ladies that make the babies. And since a man can't make one, he has no right to tell a woman when and where to create one. |
|---|---|
| Jay-Z: | Silly rappers, because we got a couple Porsches, MTV stopped by to film our fortresses. We forget the unfortunate. Sure I ponied up a mill, but I didn't give my time. So in reality I didn't give a dime, or a damn. I just put my monies in the hands of the same people that left my people stranded. Nothin' but a bandit, left them folks abandoned. Damn, that money that we gave was just a band-aid, can't say we better off than we was before. |
| Kanye West: | Is it genocide? 'Cause I can still hear his momma cry, know the family traumatized. Shots left holes in his face, 'bout piranha-size. The old pastor closed the cold casket, and said the church ain’t got enough room for all the tombs. It’s a war going on outside we ain’t safe from, I feel the pain in my city wherever I go. 314 soldiers died in Iraq, 509 died in Chicago. |
| Mos Def: | When the average minimum wage is $5.15, you best believe you gotta find a new grind to get cream. The white unemployment rate, is nearly more than triple for black so frontliners got they gun in your back. Bubblin crack, jewel theft and robbery to combat poverty and end up in the global jail economy. Stiffer stipulations attached to each sentence. Budget cutbacks but increased police presence. And even if you get out of prison still livin join the other five million under state supervision. This is business, no faces just lines and statistics from your phone, your zip code, to S-S-I digits. The system break man child and women into figures. Two columns for who is, and who ain't niggaz. Numbers is hardly real and they never have feelings but you push too hard, even numbers got limits. Why did one straw break the camel's back? Here's the secret: the million other straws underneath it - it's all mathematics |
| Lupe Fiasco: | I really think the war on terror is a bunch of bullshit. Just a poor excuse for you to use up all your bullets. How much money does it take to really make a full clip. 9/11 building 7 did they really pull it. And a bunch of other cover ups. Your childs future was the first to go with budget cuts. If you think that hurts then, wait here comes the uppercut. The school was garbage in the first place, thats on the up and up. Keep you at the bottom but tease you with the uppercrust. You get it then they move you so you never keeping up enough. If you turn on TV all you see’s a bunch of “what the fucks”. Dude is dating so and so blabbering bout such and such. And that aint Jersey Shore, homie thats the news. And these the same people that supposed to be telling us the truth. Limbaugh is a racist, Glenn Beck is a racist. Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say shit. Thats why I aint vote for him, next one either. I’ma part of the problem, my problem is I’m peaceful. And I believe in the people. |
id lov to hear these words spoken in my ear.
I’ve always loved this. It’s a great expression of love and for the degeneration of language as cultures evolve because we are becoming morons with limited thought processes.
#optimismforhumanity
“Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn’t have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents. Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves. When someone was so poor that he couldn’t afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift. We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn’t know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth. We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another. We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don’t know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society.” — John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota, 1903-1976.
(Source: girlinboyclothes, via eclecticchaos)
Racism, sexism, heterosexism, and class exploitation as systems of oppression all draw upon varying dimensions of this logic of segregation. Segregate people into boxes of ghettos, barrios, closets, and prisons, rank the boxes as being fundamentally separate and unequal, and keep the entire system intact by forbidding individuals to get to know one another as fully human beings.
Patricia Hill Collins (via humanformat)
(Source: wretchedoftheearth, via thesubversivesound)
Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness – all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading. Neither can I be angry with my brother or fall foul of him; for he and I were born to work together, like a man’s two hands, feet or eyelids, or the upper and lower rows of his teeth. To obstruct each other is against Nature’s law – and what is irritation or aversion but a form of obstruction.
Marcus Aurelius (via tomasomeachair)
(via moslike)
1 week ago - 7
7
The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character. So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love born out of concern for all beings.
Buddha (via covert-complicity)
(Source: hospitablemedium, via moslike)
