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So You Want to Talk About Race

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Ijeoma Oluo

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“Letter To An Immortal They're not going to understand the lightning in your veins. They'll expect you to apologize for the wildflowers you've planted in your bones. You planted them there because even bones should grow flowers. They will question the mountain ranges around your heart, say that they should be let in, say that you're not allowed to have borders. They are going to want apologies for the rivers and brooks flowing through your veins and for the way you call to eagles, for how you swim with elephants. They'll expect you to make yourself understood, as if you owe them that. Everyone thinks that forces of nature don't come in human form; they'll want you to explain yourself. You won't have to, you don't have to. The first time it rained; it is they who learnt to build houses and to take cover; it is not the rain which stopped to study their patterns. The first time flowers grew out of cave walls, it is they who marvelled; no flower has said, that it must have grown in the wrong place at the wrong time! It is they who have died atop mountain ranges, no mountain has fallen for anyone! The very first time lightning hit a tree, they were given the gift of fire. The first time a man drowned in a river, they learnt of its currents and depths, but also, they chartered maps to new worlds beyond their own horizons. You are your own territory, not born on account of them but born as the planets are born, born as nature itself is born. Your dreams are the blueprints, the stories you are woven from. Let them learn, let them move according to the lands and the skies you inhabit.”

Self RealizationImmortalitySelf KnowledgeKnow ThyselfImmortalsImmortality QuotesHigher Self QuotesKnow Thyself QuotesImmortality And MortalitySelf Actualizaton
Author:C. JoyBell C.
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“For two months I bottled oranges and apricots, peaches and pears, raspberries and nectarines, plums and figs in a rich sugar syrup laced with lemon zest. I pickled olives and cucumbers in brine, and packed mushrooms, pepperoni, artichokes, and asparagus in jars with olive oil. I made jams and preserves of berries and fruits, which then lined the shelves on the walls in the cellar, each one labeled in my own hand and bearing the date of my agony.”

Rosa FiorePreserving
Book:La Cucina
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“What my aunt wanted to try was to create the Night Library. Through all of her studies of art, she'd discovered the importance of preserving this thing known as the past. "You know, it's presumptuous to think that the present is more advanced than the past," she said. "Putting aside industry, science, and chemistry, there hasn't been any progress in the arts, or literature." She told me this while she stood in front of the statue David in the Accademia Gallery. "Probably we can't produce magnificent things like this nowadays. Apart from reproductions and such." "Hmm." "Which is why I'd like to take the past and seal it in.”

PastLibraryPreservingSealing
Book:Dinner at the Night Library
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“TESLA’S CAT [Nikola Tesla’s favorite childhood companion] was the family’s black cat, Macak. Macak followed young Nikola everywhere, and they spent many happy hours rolling on the grass. It was Macak the cat who introduced Tesla to electricity on a dry winter evening. “As I stroked Macak’s back,” he recalled, “I saw a miracle that made me speechless with amazement. Macak’s back was a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks loud enough to be heard all over the house.” Curious, he asked his father what caused the sparks. Puzzled at first, [his father] finally answered, “Well, this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see through the trees in a storm.” His father’s answer, equating the sparks with lightning, fascinated the young boy. As Tesla continued to stroke Macak, he began to wonder, “Is nature a gigantic cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God,” he concluded.”

CatsTeslaStatic ElectricityMacak
Book:Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age
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