banine

Fairy tales — the proper kind, those original Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen tales I recall from my Eastern European childhood, unsanitized by censorship and unsweetened by American retellings - affirm what children intuitively know to be true but are gradually taught to forget, then to dread: that the terrible and the terrific spring from the same source, and that what grants life its beauty and magic is not the absence of terror and tumult but the grace and elegance with which we navigate the gauntlet. Maria Popova, The Importance of Being Scared

One of the strongest feelings I remember from my childhood is, precisely, of being humiliated; of being knocked about by words, acts, or situations. Isn’t it a fact that children are always feeling deeply humiliated in their relations with grown-ups and each other? I have a feeling children spend a good deal of their time humiliating one another. Our whole education is just one long humiliation, and it was even more so when I was a child. One of the wounds I’ve found hardest to bear in my adult life has been the fear of humiliation, and the sense of being humiliated. Every time I read a review, for instance — whether laudatory or not — this feeling awakes. To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure.” Ingmar Bergman; Interviews with Ingmar Bergman by Stig Bjorkman

Virginia Woolf’s bedroom

the doukhobors’ land by natela grigalashvili

Indigenous children take part in the process of fishing and drying large Salmon catches, a Nivkh community in Kamchatka, Russia

Emily Green in Tokyo by Ko Tschuchiya

Fruit vendor in Tbilisi waiting for customers. 2005, Martin Roemers.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, How Emotions Are Made

Palestinian woman in Marka Refugee Camp, 1970.

Geometric shapes with plant roots by Diana Scherer

Girls in traditional costumes of the Avar village of Rugudzha, Dagestan, 2017

Mariya Yermakova for the play “Anamin kitabi”, 1926

Но у меня нет дома. Земля? Я думаю о ее больших, переполненных людьми, шумных городах, в которых потеряюсь, исчезну почти так же, как если бы совершил то, что хотел сделать на вторую или третью ночь — броситься в океан, тяжело волнующийся внизу. Я утону в людях. Буду молчаливым и внимательным, и за это меня будут ценить товарищи. У меня будет много знакомых, даже приятелей, и женщины, а может, и одна женщина. Некоторое время я должен буду делать усилие, чтобы улыбаться, раскланиваться, вставать, проделывать тысячи мелочей, из которых складывается земная жизнь. Потом все войдет в норму. Появятся новые интересы, новые занятия, но я не отдамся им весь. Ничему и никому никогда больше. Солярис, Станислав Лем

“Through Beaded Veils” by Marcin Górski