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Audre Lord - Indigenous and Cultural Rights Activist and Author

(via darlenesunshine)

That there are such devices as firearms, as easy to operate as cigarette lighters and as cheap as toasters, capable at anybody’s whim of killing Father or Fats or Abraham Lincoln or John Lennon or Martin Luther King, Jr., or a woman pushing a baby carriage, should be proof enough for anybody that, to quote the old science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, ‘being alive is a crock of shit.’

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.

What attracts me is the link between the world and myself, this double reflection that enables my heart to intervene and control my happiness up to the exact point where the world can either destroy it or bring it to fruition.

I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.

GUY DEBORD ON YOUTH AND LOVE

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

My love for you is full of regret and apology, sometimes leadening my steps. I am the stubborn rock in the wild, beaten by the harsh winds and rains, and so cold that others do not dare to touch me. But my love is strong, sharp and it will pass through any obstacle, even if I were to be pulverised, I will still embrace you in ashes.

Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretense of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.

As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.