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asiyamiya.bsky.social
Asiya
@asiyamiya.bsky.social
1.3K followers 390 following 640 posts
"Where cruelty and injustice are concerned, hopelessness is submission, which I believe is immoral."

— Edward Said


Sumūd ✊🏻

Photograph by Man Ray
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asiyamiya.bsky.social
"At the meeting of our lips, peacocks went into hiding, elephants suffered memory loss, camels developed a maddening thirst, and dinosaurs long thought to be extinct turned up on the evening news."

—Tom Robbins

Frank Bernard Dicksee, Romeo and Juliet, 1884
Romeo and Juliette kissing on the balcony surrounded by plants under an archway. Romeo sits astride the balcony and Juliette holds him close with her arms around his neck.
April 27, 2025 at 2:23 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"[T]he fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together shall we say in one unspoken Union and also proves that the world is really transcendental . . . ."

— Jack Kerouac, Book of Dreams

Ed Ruscha, I'm Amazed from Fourteen Big Prints. 1971
Print of a cluster of green grey bugs resembling the cosmos
March 21, 2025 at 10:34 AM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"And I realise that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it's all in my mind. There's no need for solitude. So love life for what it is, and form no preconceptions whatever in your mind."

Jack Kerouac
Section of the Constellation Cygnus, 1885, by Paul Henry. Collection Metropolitan Museum. Public domain
March 19, 2025 at 9:25 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realise 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too..."

Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

Paul Henry, Section of Constellation Cygnus, 1885
Albumen silver print from glass negative of a Section of the Constellation Cygnus (August 13, 1885)
March 19, 2025 at 9:25 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream."

— Jack Kerouac, On the Road

🎶 The Chainsmokers & Coldplay, Something Just Like This

youtu.be/FM7MFYoylVs

Man Ray, Untitled (Stars). circa 1970's
Simple sketch of 5 stars by Man Ray
March 14, 2025 at 7:25 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing the lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain."

Jack Kerouac

Kerouac by Elliott Erwitt, New York City in 1953
Kerouac sitting on an old white wooden chair, dressed in dark wool suit with a tie and white shirt. His legs are crossed, whilst seated sideways on the chair and his right arm bends over the back of the chair as he looks to the right at the photographer.
March 12, 2025 at 1:34 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and to just stop the machine of 'thinking' and 'enjoying' what they call 'living,' I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds..."

Jack Kerouac

Kerouac by Jerry Yulsman, 1957
Side shot from the right of Jack Kerouac looking thoughfully ahead, his brow furrowed almost unaware of the photographer.
March 12, 2025 at 1:17 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"[T]he way I look at the things of the world... is not secular: to some extent I take things as miraculous. Every object is miraculous for me: my worldview—in an always amorphous way, let’s say—is not strictly in accordance with any religion, but is somehow religious."

Pier Paolo Pasolini
Black and white photograph of Pasolini in 1964 on the set of 'The Gospel According to St. Matthew'. Pasolini looks up in almost expectantly to the right, eyebrows somewhat raised and his right hand almost touching his right cheek.
March 9, 2025 at 11:20 AM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"I study treachery as a fatal phenomenon,
almost as if I were not its object

[...]

Passive as a bird that sees all, in flight,
and carries in its heart,
rising in the sky,
an unforgiving conscience."

Pasolini

📷 Sopralluoghi in Palestina (Pier Paolo Pasolini. 1963)
Photograph of a wired fence against a backdrop of an overcast sky. Above and parallel to the fence runs two lines of barbed wires. Two birds sit on the wire, one on the fence and the other on the first barbed wire just above.
March 8, 2025 at 12:51 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"They won't be able to lie forever.
They will have to answer,
sooner or later,
to reason with reason,
to ideas with ideas,
to feeling with feeling.
And then they will be silent:
their castle of blackmail,
of violence,
of lies
will collapse."

Pier Paolo Pasolini
Black and white photograph of Pasolini leaning back, sideways, in a chair. He stares thoughtfully to the right, his right hand in a fist on his right cheek. Left arm behind his chair back.
March 5, 2025 at 3:54 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"Yet there was still love, the placid love that only time can cultivate, a love preserved by habit and by memory. Their tree had little rising sap, perhaps, but it was held firm by deep and ancient roots. Old, lasting love."

— Jim Crace, Being Dead

Pentti Sammallahti, Helsinki, Finland. 2016
Tall tree in snow covered landscape with overcast white sky. Two birds sit on either side of the tree on the ground. Overhead a single bird flies to the left of the tree. In the distance on the right stands another tree.
March 2, 2025 at 1:28 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"There is no future and no past. There is no remedy for death — or birth — except to hug the spaces in between. Live loud. Live wide. Live tall."

— Jim Crace, Being Dead

Pentti Sammallahti, Princess Islands, Turkey (Seagulls). 2000
Black and white photograph of Seagulls flying over a wide ocean. Some birds appear distant on the left and a few a close in the centre right of the photo. In the distance, an island can be seen. Above the horizon stretches out to the sea with faint sunlight breaking through the dark overcast sky far away close to the island.
March 1, 2025 at 12:16 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"Nothing good ever comes of love. What comes of love is always something better."

Roberto Bolaño, Amulet

🎨 Max Ernst, "Je suis une femme, vous êtes un homme, sommes nous la république"
(I am a woman, you are a man, are we the republic). 1960
The composition is a painting in deep red and black tones. The landscape is a dark forest in a crepuscular cast. A central figure dominates the landscape. The character is the Loplop, a mythical bird and alter ego of the painter. Its beak and right eye (almost gold in the red tones) looks skyward. Another bird faces the Loplop, and appears to be it's partner... also looking toward the heavens. Above the wooded landscape, is an almost golden eclipse of a planet in the deep red-black sky.
February 21, 2025 at 4:08 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to capture the grand prize: the safety of the void."

Tom Robbins

📷 Man Ray, Apple and Screw, c. 1930 ©The Man Ray Trust / ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London
A black and white close-up photograph of an apple with a screw above instead of a stem. The apple is on a table, it's shadow in the forefront. The full form and texture of the apple lends weight to the symbolic nature of the object.
February 18, 2025 at 8:28 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need."

Tom Robbins

🎨 "I Am Half Sick of Shadows" Said the Lady of Shalott, showing Tennyson's Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse, 1915
A dark haired Lady of Shalott in a red gown sits before her loom. Her back slightly arched and her hands are stretched back behind her head. She looks ahead apparently resting although her poise suggests she is frustrated and claustrophobic. Before her lies stands a tapestry loom and strewn around her feet a few stray balls of colourful yarn. A circular mirror on her left (in front of the viewer's eye) reflects an idyllic outer world (another reality) beyond her room... a river, distant castle and two young lovers.
February 16, 2025 at 6:48 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"It took us that long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."

Kurt Vonnegut, Sirens of Titan

Pentti Sammallahti, Ristisaari, Finland (Frog) 1974
Black and white photograph of a calm lake and a solitary frog whose head appears above the water looking ahead. In the distance over a clear bank is a full moon or the sun in an overcast sky. The background is blur, serene with the frog appears standing out clearly as the focal point of the scene.
February 14, 2025 at 3:35 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"I cannot understand: I love."

Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, XCVII
(My love has talk'd with rocks and trees)

Pentti Sammallahti, Western Cape, South Africa (dog and bird) 2002
Dog sitting on a beach looking at a bird standing before it. The bird appears to be 'speaking' to the dog, standing close to the dog in its shadow with it's beak open as the dog calmly looks on.
February 13, 2025 at 9:29 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
Post a photograph or an image of your favourite icon, no longer here... whom you would have chosen as a Valentine ⚘️
Black and white photograph and self-portrait of Josef Sudek under a leaf strewn walkway of trees. His tripod stands beside him on the right at his height. Josef in his oversized black coat and beret looks thoughtfully to the left with his left hand cupping his chin. His right arm, which was maimed, unseen and almost replaced by the tripod on his right.
February 9, 2025 at 6:56 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"call me a poet
dear editor
they call this my alien language

i am a dealer in words
that mix cultures
and leave me rootless"

— Agha Shahid Ali, Dear Editor

📷 Sudek, Remembrances of Sonja and Angelo (second variation) 1968-69
In this gelatin silver print, Sudek captures a composition of objects or remembrances... envelopes of 2 letters and a poster with the words "The story of great music" repititively embossed on the upper half. There are glass vases and spheres the size of an egg before the poster. All this is viewed in a mirror image and the largest object, the poster, sits lopsided in an empty antique frame. The mirror in a silver frame leans against an off-white, slightly cracked wall. It is a chaotic scene which almost appears to be 'put together' as the reflection of the objects and light create a sense of nostalgia and romance.
February 9, 2025 at 10:50 AM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"The moon did not become the sun.
It just fell on the desert
in great sheets, reams
of silver handmade by you.
The night is your cottage industry now,
the day is your brisk emporium.
The world is full of paper.

Write to me."

— Agha Shahid Ali

Josef Sudek, Labyrinth in my Atelier. 1960
A black and white photograph of Josef Sudek's small study, with books and papers strewn across the desk and in shelves reaching the ceiling. On the desk, amongst books are some photographs, two unlit candles and some private items. Despite the untidiness, there is a sense of intimacy and safety with some light coming in from an unseen window on the right.
February 6, 2025 at 5:09 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"I see you everywhere, in the stars, in the river; to me you're everything that exists; the reality of everything. Life, I tell you, would be impossible without you. And now I want--"

— Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

🎨 Caspar David Friedrich, Woman before the Rising/ Setting Sun (1818)
The focal point of the painting is the silhouette of a young woman from behind as she looks out toward a faraway mountainous scene illuminated by a radiant sunset or sunrise. Her posture is intense with her hands outstreched as if pleading or embracing the entire landscape.
February 3, 2025 at 11:36 AM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"What is the phrase for the moon? And the phrase for love? By what name are we to call death? I do not know. I need a little language such as lovers use, words of one syllable such as children speak. . . I need a howl; a cry."

— Virginia Woolf, The Waves
Early 20th century silver gelatin print of the moon by an unknown photographer salvaged from a Chicago mansion in the 1940's.
February 1, 2025 at 8:00 AM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
🎶 Ishraq (Illumination) by Oud Artist, Naseer Shamma
youtu.be/n8i5Pad8jJc

🎨 Majd Kurdieh :
The full moon appeared to me. But I sought another, to which there was no pathway. (Al-Mutanabbi)
January 31, 2025 at 7:48 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
Who am I to say to you
what I say to you
at the door of the church
and I am but a throw of a dice
between a predator and a prey
I earned more awareness
not to be happy with my moonlit night
but to witness the massacre

– Mahmoud Darwish, The Dice Player

📷 Flour Massacre 29 Feb 2024
Photo by the IDF, 29 February 2024, when the IDF targeted hungry and desperate Palestinian civilians as they gathered around food aid trucks killing at least 118 Palestinians injuring and 760 (Flour Massacre)
January 30, 2025 at 3:19 PM
asiyamiya.bsky.social
"Optimism is an absolute necessity, even if it’s only optimism of the will, as Gramsci said, and pessimism of the intellect. What has kept me going has been the development of new modes of community.... It is in collectivities that we find reservoirs of hope and optimism."

Angela Davis
January 27, 2025 at 3:17 AM