#tru

There is a strange emptiness to life without myths. I am African American — by which I mean, a descendant of slaves, rather than a descendant of immigrants who came here willingly and with lives more or less intact. My ancestors were the unwilling, unintact ones: children torn from parents, parents torn from elders, people torn from roots, stories torn from language. Past a certain point, my family’s history just… stops. As if there was nothing there. I could do what others have done, and attempt to reconstruct this lost past. I could research genealogy and genetics, search for the traces of myself in moldering old sale documents and scanned images on microfiche. I could also do what members of other cultures lacking myths have done: steal. A little BS about Atlantis here, some appropriation of other cultures’ intellectual property there, and bam! Instant historically-justified superiority. Worked great for the Nazis, new and old. Even today, white people in my neck of the woods call themselves “Caucasian”, most of them little realizing that the term and its history are as constructed as anything sold in the fantasy section of a bookstore. These are proven strategies, but I have no interest in them. They’ll tell me where I came from, but not what I really want to know: where I’m going. To figure that out, I make shit up. ↗

— N.K. Jemisin

#constructs #making-stuff-up #myth #personal-history #family

I think that looking forward it's easy to imagine more constructive help for Haiti. ↗

— Paul Farmer

#easy #forward #haiti #help #i

Be true to the game, because the game will be true to you. If you try to shortcut the game, then the game will shortcut you. If you put forth the effort, good things will be bestowed upon you. That's truly about the game, and in some ways that's about life too. ↗

— Michael Jordan

#be true #because #bestowed #effort #forth

My dreams for the future are simple: work, a happy, healthy family, a lovely long motorcycle ride, and continuing the struggle to awaken people to the need for serious human rights reform. ↗

— Mike Farrell

#continuing #dreams #family #future #happy

Grace is in garments, in movements, in manners; beauty in the nude, and in forms. This is true of bodies; but when we speak of feelings, beauty is in their spirituality, and grace in their moderation. ↗

— Joseph Joubert

#bodies #feelings #forms #garments #grace

Justice is the truth in action. ↗

— Joseph Joubert

#justice #truth

This led me to understand that trade unionism, the instrument of working-class liberation and of social change could, and indeed should, be also an instrument of industrial progress. ↗

— Leon Jouhaux

#change #could #indeed #industrial #instrument

I have been running since I was 7. I was trying to restructure the way my body was made instead of trying to master the way I ran. I would get so frustrated with my starts in practices that I would just cry. When I ran, I wouldn't even try to get out of the blocks, I would just run. ↗

— Florence Griffith Joyner

#blocks #body #cry #even #frustrated

Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience. ↗

— Jon Bon Jovi

#dying #emotional #evoking #experience #fact

Almost everything in 'A Day With Wilbur Robinson' has some basis in truth. And yes, my sister did pay me to feed her grapes while she talked to her boyfriend on the phone. ↗

— William Joyce

#basis #boyfriend #day #did #everything