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Quote by Henry David Thoreau

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things..”

Quote by Henry David Thoreau

Work

Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

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Henry David Thoreau

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“One shot- one shot straight through that golden eye. A plume of blood splattering the snow, a thud of a heavy body, a sigh of wind. No. It wasn't a wolf that hit the snow- no, it was a man, tall, and well formed. No- not a man. A High Fae, with those pointed ears. I blinked, and then- then my hands were warm and sticky with blood, then his body was red and skinless, steaming in the cold, and it was his skin- his skin- that I held in my hands, and-”

“I am memorializing the just-barely-adults (mostly boys, mostly less privileged) who have died fighting wars that for the most part were not their own... the families who have had to go on without them... those who gave their life to this country by standing for our freedoms in non-wars--struggles-- struggles about race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, contraception and abortion rights, the environment, eradication of global disease and world hunger, the right to collectively bargain and unionize... who paid the ultimate price through their civil disobedience, protest, collective action, or just by living in a way that was so challenging to others that they were executed for it... the ones from whom we stole this land and those whose lives we stole to build it... those who were just trying to go to school, pray, shop, watch a movie, be, when they were gunned down in a country that loves its guns far more than its people... those who were killed for driving while black, walking while black, talking while black, sleeping while black. On Decoration Day we are decorated with their blood and their memory”

“The memory of human blood manifests now as a kind of visceral reaction to seeing people's veins and their necks. The skin on a neck appears to me as different from the skin anywhere else on a body. It seems as thin and consumable as rice paper wrapped around a sweet. It is too blank compared with skin everywhere else, as though it is asking to have marks made on it, like very expensive calligraphy paper, or cold-pressed Fabriano. Often, I wonder whether the urge I have to make art is the same as the urge to consume and destroy the blankness of a human neck. While at art college, I read that the best paper used by artists in the seventeenth century was made from the skins of lamb fetuses. This skin was soft and absorbent, and had an even texture right across its surface. For a long time, the process of creating art has been linked to the killing of living things. My dad, even, used fine silk stretched across wooden frames in his own work as a painter. Once, when we still had some of his pieces, I looked at the odd geometric shapes he created on a huge sheet and thought about all the silkworms who had had their cocoons torn open before they were able to become moths.”

“The dawn divides all light from shadow, and all my sensuousness from desiring. O sweet stars, now’s come the hour of dying. A higher love from heaven lets you go. Burning eyes, O you—fated to fade away. Sad stars, snuff yourselves while you’ve pure light! Die, I must. I’ve no wish to see the day, for I do so love my dream and the night. Hold me, O Night, with motherly affection, While the wan earth wakes with a misty yawn. By my blood will be born the dawn and from my fleeting dream—the undying sun! (Trans. Michael Shindler)”