at the start of the year, my friends and i buddy-read #ikigai and it was an interesting bonding experience.
from the discipline we mustered up to be on calls every weekend to us owning our shortcomings as seen through the pages of the book. we were frenzied and set to conquer the year.
well, are we conquering yet?
maybe, maybe not!😁
while the experience was a thrill, just like every other self help book, i felt dumped on with its fleeting urgency to immediately be who i have read in the pages of the book. it wasn’t long the enthusiasm wore off.😒
It works best for me to read, pause, think, think again, think against and decide.
based on this, i decided to make it a consultation manual. one I can go to from time to time to slow read, ruminate, ask questions, disagree and agree.
so, on one of the consultation days, I found this quote which to me is instructional and pragmatic-
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way..”
have you read Ikigai?
what was your experience?
📸- pinterest
#reading #selfhelp #ikigai #poetry #poet #readersofinstagram #bookstagram #bookphotography
Such organized chaos that evokes imageries of migrants on the Mediterranean Sea, scampering on the stern of a tiny boat.
They are ruffled up and below by numerous desperate hands reaching for survival, and by the instability of a wavering boat in the storm.
Some hold on to its bow, some tiredly reach out to hands now disappearing in the sea, others, without a chance for help are gulped in the watery grave.
Such fear, anxiety, resilience, and tiny glimpse of hope are the very emotions that punctuate this art. This piece not only keeps my hairs up and bulges my eyes, it reminds me of emotions I have since left untouched. And I have come to love and appreciate every bit of it.
A very talented and brilliant beauty created by Yoann Bourgeois.🤎
#yoannbourgeois #art #theatre #poetry #poet #writingcommunity #writing #beauty
Phew!
From political fiction to historical nonfiction to classical poetry and existentialist fiction(Poof!! Of the existentialist fiction I read, Fyodor Dostoyevsky was the heaviest of them all🤯), my 2021 read had me swell with questions, doubts, rage, mixed emotions and unexplainable longing.
It was a year of heavy genre perhaps the more reason I talked little about my readings in the course of the year.
I wouldn’t do a review of any for now but trust that I would form conversations around each, highlighting their theme and style.
Have you read any of those that made the list?
Is existentialist literature one you are willing to explore?
#bookstagram #writersofinstagram #poetry #books #read #existentialism #queertheory #queer #writerscomunity #writing
.
Of many voices that disturbed the peace of America’s racial inequalities in the 1900s, James Baldwin’s remained the most assertive, compelling and timeless rendering.
To white supremacists, he had in it, an inescapable guilt passed on in the most direct and unnerving words, punching every institution, program and strategy designed to keep the black man in perpetual dumpster.
He would have been 97 today, but the light he beamed through his works immortalized him in our hearts such that when we read him, watch him, or even
think of what he represented, we feel him close.
Happy posthumous birthday, Baldwin.
Fun fact- my digital library is named Baldwin.😊
@jamesbaldwinarchive
#jamesbaldwin #thefirenexttime #writters #authors #blackcommunity #august2 #jamesbaldwinsbirthday #poetrycommunity #writterscommunity #poetry
Ovid
Ars Amatoria - You need gifts of mind
#ovid #poems #poetsofinstagram #classicalpoetry #classic #love #art #mind #writerscommunity #writersofinstagram #metamorphosis
Ovid
Amores- His Addiction
Background art- Venus and Cupid by Werner van den Valckert
#ovid #poetry #poems #classicalpoetry #art #writersofinstagram #writerscommunity #love #lovequotes
