Tino Villanueva, "You, If No One Else"

has anyone figured out how to be a real person yet

Hemingway × Aresti ꩜ Straps against darkness (feat. @chrstnmny)

mesmerized

Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile

An intermediate-range ballistic missile fell on my house yesterday

It interrupted my eating breakfast

And – for God's sake! – broke my favourite mug

Spilling the tea all over the floor

In the other room my sister was sound asleep

Dreaming about that dog our mother promised to get her for Christmas

She was going to name it Caramel

But she never woke up

She never woke up

And I didn't wake up either

Only the tea dried up

Among my favourite mug's shards

It did happen

Not to me, maybe

Nor to my sister I have never had

Nor to my house that stands still

But to someone

In one or another part of the globe

It did happen

Just yesterday

Arial B.

January 31, 2025

Lucien Hervé (László Elkán, dit) Unité d'habitation, Nantes-Rezé (Architecte : Le Corbusier)

The total solar eclipse seen from Casper, Wyoming (US), by a team of ESA astronomers.

So I've just started reading the third part of Neal Shusterman's series Arc of a Scythe – The Toll, and I believe this is the first time I came across a non-binary/genderfluid character in a book, additionally that beautifully portrayed.

The character's name is Jerico. Jerico is a captain of a great ship. Through the first few paragraphs of that chapter there are no gendered expressions used to describe Jerico (and note that I'm not reading it in English, but in my native, heavily-gendered language), until that moment when one sailor refers to Jerico as "sir", and then quickly corrects himself to "madam", adding, "it was cloudy a moment ago".

I won't explain here the whole setting of that story, but for what you need to know, it is happening in the future when there are some places in the world that function differently from the rest. It is explained that in Madagascar, where Jerico comes from, the concept of gender is not imposed on children. Once they are grown up, they are free to choose whether they feel like men or women, or not to choose at all. Jerico chose the fluidity.

And here's my favourite part. Jerico's gender depends on the weather. When there is sun or stars in the sky, she is a woman. When there are clouds, he is a man. For someone whose everyday life depends so strongly on atmospheric conditions as for a sailor, a captain, I think it's beautiful. I don't know yet what happens to Jerico later in that book, but anyways. Huge respect to the author.

The way I see it, Art has two functions: escapism and confrontation. It serves as both a sanctuary and a mirror. Through escapism, Art creates landscapes where burdens dissolve, where the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary. It reminds us of the boundless beauty that is preserved in the world and the immense potential that we harbor. It paints a picture of what could be.

But Art also confronts. It grips us by the shoulders, demanding that we open our eyes to the raw, unadorned reality of existence. It challenges the lies we tell ourselves and the illusions we construct, and forces us to reckon with the depths of our humanity. In confrontation, Art becomes the wound that refuses to heal until we take care of it. With its blood and pus, Art paints a picture of what is.

Though it might seem so, these functions are not opposites — they are intertwined; a good piece of art achieves not just a balance but a fusion, where escapism and confrontation become two edges of the same sword. This dual-edged nature is what gives Art its power. The escapist edge whispers of what the world should be; the confrontational edge reveals what the world truly is.

A sword with one dull edge is incomplete, blunt and purposeless, and, certainly, a useless weapon against any enemy, leaving its wielder defenseless and vulnerable in the face of danger. In the same way, Art that leans too heavily on either escapism or confrontation becomes unbalanced. Pure escapism is shallow and hollow; it risks becoming an empty distraction. Pure confrontation, on the other hand, risks alienating and overwhelming the audience without offering hope.

it is winter everywhere inside you

Claude Monet, Jennifer Chang, Sara Lefsyk, Joseph Fasano, Kaveh Akbar, Mahmoud Darwish