Journey to Italy (1954)
Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary
Edith Wharton, The Ghost Stories // Ursula K. Le Guin, Tehanu // Emil Ferris, My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 1 // Oscar Wilde, A woman of no importance // Rebecca Solnit, Men Explain Things to Me // Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
Illustrations by Elliana Esquivel
(via thegirlthatcriesacademia)
Kate Clayborn, Love Lettering
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
V. E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Neil Gaiman
Anne Sexton, The Sermon of Twelve Acknowledgements
by Ilya Kaminsky
And when they bombed other people’s houses, we
protested
but not enough, we opposed them but not
enough. I was
in my bed, around my bed America
was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house–
I took a chair outside and watched the sun.
In the sixth month
of a disastrous reign in the house of money
in the street of money in the city of money in the country of money,
our great country of money, we (forgive us)
lived happily during the war.
“In the deep fall don’t you imagine the leaves think how comfortable it will be to touch the earth instead of the nothingness of air and the endless freshets of wind? And don’t you think the trees themselves, especially those with mossy, warm caves, begin to think of the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep inside their bodies? And don’t you hear the goldenrod whispering goodbye, the everlasting being crowned with the first tuffets of snow? The pond vanishes, and the white field over which the fox runs so quickly brings out its blue shadows. And the wind pumps its bellows. And at evening especially, the piled firewood shifts a little, longing to be on its way.”— Mary Oliver, Song for Autumn, Devotions
“Autumn: between your cold hands the world flames.”— Octavio Paz, from “Autumn”, The Poems of Octavio Paz
Dear BBE/MBE/BARBRI,
1) First of all, let’s talk about your stupid list of what I can bring into the bar exam. Oh my god, no sharpeners. NO SHARPENERS. Well yes, I’m sure sharpeners pose a grave security threat. I might lose my shit at seeing a Secured Transactions essay on the bar exam and threaten to sharpen someone’s pencil or something. Oh god, the sharpening! NOT THE SHARPENING.
Also, I fully understand why I have to keep my water bottle UNDER the desk when I am not drinking from it, and why it can’t be more than one liter. Imagine what would happen if I had a 2-liter water bottle that was on my desk, just randomly chilling! MAYHEM.
(Also, Taliban, thanks for telling me that revealing clothing is not allowed when it’s a hundred fucking degrees in this bitch.)
2) Mnemonics, bitches. You give us FAR too many. The POINT of a mnemonic, last time I checked, was to aid the retention of information. When you give us five thousand different ones (that are completely counter-intuitive), I forget them ALL. On the bar exam, I know I’m going to be sitting there staring at an essay question, and then write down something like
CATS-ACLA? in shrubbery Orville popcorn
mm popcornWITNESWHATSUP WASSUPWOSSSSSSup x MAD FIFI HAD AN AFFAIR WITH THE VICTORIAN GARDENER (in the shrubbery? PING)…some Backstreet Boys song I HAVE A PMSI I HAVE PMS I CAN’T CATS in the shrubbery H!H!HHHow is this going to help anyone?! This is not going to help me, Paula. I can never eat penne a la vodka without thinking of you EVER again.
3) The bar exam hypotheticals. Oh man, those hypotheticals. I could write a separate letter just on the horribleness of your hypotheticals. It’s bad enough that they’re long as SHIT. What is this, Downton Abbey? Are you all failed screenplay writers? I don’t give a shit that Douchebro Defendant is an ex-MMA fighter. The point is he punched a dude in self-defense, okay? If it doesn’t change the answer, I DON’T WANT TO HEAR IT.
I also hate that the limp dicks in your hypotheticals never EVER:
a) Record shit. Hey moron, if you’re buying shit from a dude you KNOW doesn’t have title, you probably want to record that shit. Or just don’t buy it, whatever. Who the fuck buys from a dude named Devious Dealer anyway? HIS NAME IS DEVIOUS DEALER. Fuck you.
b) Rescue properly. Listen mate, it’s real nice that you have a hard-on for superhero movies. But here’s a thought, don’t do shit like jumping into oceans to rescue people when you can’t fucking swim and you’re going to freak out and climb onto the rescuee’s body to save yourself. Same goes for when you see someone banged up on the road. If you’re going to randomly break their legs on the way to the hospital, SAVE IT. Call an ambulance instead.
c) Murder people in the good old-fashioned way. Hey, what’s wrong with just shooting someone? Why do you gotta pour Ex-Lax + arsenic into some poor camper’s soup to sabotage their chances in the tree-climbing competition tomorrow? Oh, you knew there was a small chance it wouldn’t kill them? TOO FUCKING BAD. I don’t care about Murder II, okay? Just own it and take them out execution-style, imbecile.
d) Leave Blackacre to anyone in fee simple. Don’t even fucking talk to me about leaving your shit to Jimmy’s grandchildren on the fucking condition that Paula’s husband opens a stupid oyster restaurant in 30 years. Wanker. Nobody wants Blackacre. It’s shitty. AND full of mortgages. AND easements. So fuck you.
e) Deal in anything other than widgets. What the fucking fuck is a widget? I’ve Googled that shit and I don’t understand it. Fuck you for delivering 20 red widgets and 20 blue ones two days late after writing a letter to repudiate first. NO-ONE WRITES LETTERS TO REPUDIATE. Get a phone, jackass. I’m not reading your stupid letter. I don’t give a shit that there was a storm that delayed production of your widgets. Here’s a thought: why don’t you handcuff yourself to your precious widgets and go jump off a cliff, Seller. You don’t even have a last name. No one will miss you.
f) Go into someone’s house and leave without starting some shit. What the ever-loving hell is this about? Okay, you’re up at 2 AM and you want to do some power-drilling RIGHT NOW. I get it. Your lousy neighbor promised you could use his power-drill to do some amateur carpentry and you need it RIGHT NOW. So you do the casual break-in and then randomly decide to jack off or swipe a Rolex or start some fires. NO. What the fuck is wrong with you, you pyromaniac? GET OUT. It’s 10-1 the neighbor’s going to see you and drop dead of fear anyway.
g) Get your subcontractor estimates right. If I don’t make it as a lawyer, I want to be a subcontractor. How incompetent are you dudes? If there’s EVER a subcontractor on any question, I know y’all going to fuck up your figures bad. Like, REAL bad. You’re going to be off by about a few hundred thousand dollars. What are you DOING when you’re running the numbers, smoking crack in your car? Don’t bother. The police are going to find it anyway. And then you won’t exercise your right to a lawyer. Fuck you.
4) Why do you talk so slowly, bar exam lecturers? I’m really sorry that you look like a dried up raisin of a man who’s going to die in the middle of telling us what to put in the blank spaces, but AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR YOUR POP CULTURE BROMIDES. It’s really cool that your son started a restaurant that I will never go to, but I have rage blackouts because you’re making the lecture ten times longer. Also, don’t even THINK about telling me what the old law was. It’s sweet that you think I’ll impress the examiners by putting in
“Well, in 1984, Massachusetts courts accepted holographic wills as long as they were signed with a giant pink My Little Pony pen. But in 1999, the law changed and only lavender My Little Pony pens were allowed.”
NO. I will not have the time or gift of recall to put that in. While you’re telling me that useless fact, I could be doing something like ripping out the perforated handouts from my book (WHY ARE THEY SO HARD TO RIP OUT? Who do you think is writing the bar, the Incredible Hulk?) MOVE ON DOT COM.
5) WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS COMMERCIAL PAPER BULLSHIT? I’m sorry but I thought it was as simple as ‘If you forge a signature, you’re liable for the $$$.’ But oh no, apparently not. Look, I’m never going to know this shit. Ask the Bank of America teller, okay? NO-ONE GETS COMMERCIAL PAPER. If you put commercial paper on your exam, I’m going to break all my pencils and then attempt to stab myself in the eye with the water bottle that’s underneath my desk because IT CAN’T BE ON TOP, OH NO. And to add insult to injury, you gave us Paula again. INDORSE MY ASS, PAULA.
6) There’s nothing I hate – well, aside from that horrible time I had to do BARBRI Amps and got 0%- more than looking up answers and seeing ‘C is technically correct, but D is a better answer.’ WHY. Would it be THAT hard for you to have three wrong answer choices? What makes D better? Does it volunteer at a soup kitchen on weekends? I DON’T CARE. I should get credit for picking C if it’s correct. End of. FIX IT. You’re negligently causing me emotional distress. Actually, intentionally. THIS EXCEEDS THE BOUNDS OF WHAT WOULD BE ALLOWED IN A CIVILIZED SOCIETY. You’re lucky I even picked anything. There are those times I start crossing off answers and I get rid of A, B, C, AND D and cry quietly.
7) [UGH I HAD SIXTEEN MORE POINTS TO WRITE HERE BUT I CAN’T EVEN BECAUSE I HAVE TO GET BACK TO MY STUPID INTERACTIVE PACED PROGRAM. WHAT’S INTERACTIVE ABOUT IT, BARBRI? IF IT WAS REALLY INTERACTIVE IT WOULD HAND ME A DRINK EVERYTIME I GOT LESS THAN 60% ON A PRACTICE TEST. FUCK YOUR PACED PROGRAM. AND FUCK THE BAR WITH THE FIRE OF A THOUSAND SUNS. FUCK IT.]
Thank you so much for your time! I will expect your response soon – not by letter in case it gets lost in the mail.
Yours very sincerely,
PAE.
Source- 20, July, 2013
The Origin of Others combines Toni Morrison’s accustomed eloquence with meaning for our times as citizens of the world. But the breadth of her humanist imagination emerges most gloriously from her magnificent fiction, in which women play leading roles, in which social and racial identities influence but never determine individual character; her novels guide our understanding of how both race and gender inflect experience without diminishing psychological uniqueness. Although her lectures and the race-centered tradition of James Baldwin and Ta-Nehisi Coates are crucial to understanding her thought, they cannot contain her extraordinary vision of human Othering and belonging.
— T. S. Eliot, from “The Dry Salvages” in The Four Quartets (Mariner Books, 1968)