The silver lining to being a woman

The silver lining to being an oppressed woman. – http://wp.me/p7vBmU-gF

Wonderfully written 🙂 I think more women should take this to heart, myself included.

Desire – One word prompt

Desire – http://wp.me/p23sd-13Hw

I wrap myself in garment

Paint my face according to the trend

I swing my hip

Try not to blend in 

The desire to be desired 

It threatens my fire 

I’ve been taught since age zero

What I can and can’t 

Desire shouldn’t be one of my strengths, they say.

But I feel and I want 

I claim and require 

I desire.

Not to be desired

But for you to see my fire

To see what I require 

The right to deference and strength

I do desire.

And it burns bright and hot and long

My fire.

Caution now, don’t burn yourself

When I turn around and we’re fave to face.

About not being trans

What Does Being „Cis“ Mean For A Woman? – http://wp.me/p2x34B-oC

Season’s sounds

Seasons do indeed have their own sounds. They even have their own unique silences. I know this, but … –

Season’s sounds, inspired by this writing prompt

Winter is the sound of someone calmly breathing.
It’s the earth sleeping. Sometimes it’s hollow but mostly it’s mellow, as if a huge white blanket of snow had covered all sound.
Winter is silent. It is also the slow dripping of melting ice and a silent song of falling snow.

Spring is the cracking of ice and chirping of birds. It’s an awakening, a yawn. It’s a joyful dance. It’s gentle and fast, a melody, a play.

Summer is the crashing of waves, footsteps on dry soil. It’s warm rain knocking on your window. A swarming flow.

Autumn is wild, it’s storm. It’s wind rushing through trees and rain running down streets. It’s a song colourful and hasty. It’s the cracking of fire. It’s a sound we make when we will soon tire.

Taught oppression

Separate but Equal. – http://wp.me/p3vBSR-13r

Sharing, cause I don’t seem to be able to reblog..

A follow up to my last reblog…
Please read!

I tried to write a little about what this post is about.. I’m failing completely.
It’s about us. Our past and our present. Our actions and our future.
It’s about separate but equal.

People have fought for a long time and things have changed. However certain things have not changed. Oppression hasn’t changed.

There is today at this very moment a person who suffers from something we have fought against for centuries and have partly stopped now because things have changed. But what has really changed other than the way of oppression?

There is oppression against people of different colour, gender, religion and thought.
There is human trafficking and genocide.

They still exist, right in front of our door. In America, in Europe. In Asia, in Africa. Everywhere.

Baltimore.

I feel the need to reblog this.
I am strictly against violence but this is so true…
I wonder about this every day actually. How can you stop a ruthless person? A ruthless and cruel system?
I have not yet found a satisfying answer because violence spurs only more violence, more hate and yet people have to protect themselves, right? Their loved ones.
There’s one thing though that I want to add. The more support (and I mean real support) people get, the less violent they will have to be. The more people try to change something, the easier it will be to bring change.

I hope people will come to open their eyes and understand that there is no such thing as classes or races, these things are a construct, and they need to be broken. Mankind is slowly but deliberately destroying itself and I really don’t quite understand why I feel that way, but it does make me a little sad.

I guess it’s because people can be truly wonderful too.

yesivebeenthere2

I’m not black, and I’ve never been persecuted for my skin color. But. I know what it’s like to endure years of unrelenting abuse at the hands of power.

If you’ve never experienced it, if your mind can’t grasp the scale, then maybe this personal story will help you understand.

My mother beat the shit out of me from 3 to 13. CRUNCH! There’s no suitable onomatopoeia for the sound of an adult’s hand belting a child across the face. There’s no word that describes what it’s like to feel your cartilage ring. She’d backhand me across the face for nothing, out of nowhere. She’d beat me with whatever was handy — spoon, belt, hand — and she’d always scream at me that it was my fault. I made her do it. There was always a reason, always a transgression. “You’re only hurting yourself!” CRACK!

By the time I was…

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35xxxv – ONE OK ROCK’s “change”

ONE OK ROCK, a japanese rock band that has during the past year successfully conquered Europe and the US has again surprised everyone with their new album, 35xxxv. As usual a lot of fans bought the album, listened to it and then vomited their thoughts out on social networks such as tumblr., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and yes, wordpress.
I do not wish to judge that action at all, as I myself am a fan, a OneOkRocker as we call ourselves and have luckily purchased an album. However I am shocked to see mostly negative reviews that contain even less feedback than this post has until now. A lot are horribly written, focus on all the bad changes of the band and loose focus entirely.

The band’s music has become “Americanized” they say, “they are just chasing popularity with their ‘charts-y’ and pop songs”, “what is Taka thinking, he’s losing it”,”What’s with the sound effects, I can’t even hear his voice, where’s the bass?”

My goodness, really, this is so wrong. I mean, so wrong.

First of all, yes, 35 is different from the other albums – just like every album before has been, ONE OK ROCK ‘s music changes for every album!
And yes, the usage of English has increased. But perhaps that is the case because Taka’s English has improved? Or because as Taka says it you can imagine more and different meanings to a word when it’s not your native tongue? (as a writer myself I can confirm that btw) Or maybe, just maybe Taka wants to enable more people to listen to ONE OK ROCK? Not for fame but because he truly thinks he can save people? (which I can also confirm)

Secondly, I have to agree to the high almost uncomfortable amount of sound effects, they don’t need this stuff. And I don’t like it too much myself. But ONE OK ROCK are artists, musicians, John Feldman and his equipment probably looked like a playground with new things in it, new things to try, new things to learn… it’s their music, ONE OK ROCK can do with it what they want, it won’t be any less ONE OK ROCK! It is not John Feldman who has made the last album, he helped and inspired. It is not Taka alone either. The whole band agreed, ONE OK ROCK made 35 and they haven’t lost any of their originality.

In 2012 Taka said something interesting: “We actually thought about this a lot. Whether we should play in a bigger venue (Yokohama Arena) the sound is better in the small venues. But we wanted our music to reach people, as many people as possible, so we decided to do it in the end” Taka isn’t running for fame, he’s trying to find himself, actually he explains himslef very well in the new album. If you gave the album a chance you would notice that the lyrics are fantastic. They are as always full of meaning and emotion but they are getting political, too! The messages are of course slightly hidden, we’re still talking about art and Japan after all, but they are there.

ONE OK ROCK is now 10 years old. The members started out 17 and are now 27. Who does not change during that time? They are finding and creating themselves, not merchandise but music. With each album ONE OK ROCK recreate themselves. If Taka would still write songs like Karasu and Nobody’s home, how sad would that be? ONE OK ROCK changed me and with every album they show me a different aspect of myself, making me move forward, making me think, and live. That is what ONE OK ROCK is for me and that hasn’t changed. Not at all. Not one bit.

If you don’t know ONE OK ROCK, please check them out! They do have the power to save people.

I apologise for this post, it’s not really well – written… I just had to get this off my mind, so here we go!

35 – Tracklist

1. 3xxxv5
2. Take me to the top
3. Cry out
4. Suddenly
5. Mighty long fall
6. Heartache
7. Memories
8. Decision
9. Paperplanes
10. Good Goodbye
11. One by one
12. Stuck in the middle
13. Fight the night

On the ‘dangers’ of female travel

Why indeed. A great article for all audiences! Superbly written 🙂

My answer to this problem?
We write the year 2015. I am a woman. And I will walk where I please.

Don’t tell women to stay inside. Teach the people around you to treat women like humans. That should do the trick.

Btw. Quite a lot incidents of women (and children ) being abused, raped, etc. do happen inside, at home, where it’s save.

Road Essays

This could just be a story about countries deemed dangerous for women to travel to. But it’s more than that. This is a story about our perception of danger and how we’re told time and time again that the unfamiliar and the foreign are more dangerous to us than what is on our own doorstep.

A couple of months back, British tabloid the Daily Mail ran a story in their travel section titled ‘Sex attacks, muggings, and harassment: World’s most dangerous holiday destinations for women (and some of them may surprise you)’. The top ten list declared India; Brazil; Turkey; Thailand; Egypt; Colombia; South Africa; Morocco; Mexico; and Kenya to be the most dangerous countries for female travellers.

We’ll get back to that shortly.  First I want to tell you about a strange encounter I had in Medellin, Colombia in 2001.

After a hard couple of days travelling…

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“Happiness” or “happy ever after” or just.. “thoughts on life”

“Happiness is not a destination. It is a way of life.”

We have a postcard saying that hanging on our wall and a few months ago we had visitors.
She was my mum’s friend and she brought her four children with her. We were eating when her oldest child, a girl – I think she is about 8 years old – asked:” What does destination mean?” and her mom tried to explain it..
She said something like: ” A destination is a place where we want to go.. like when we want to go to Berlin, Berlin is our destination.”
I think we all understood, that that wasn’t really it, not this time.
So.. a few days later my mind started to wander and I started wondering how you explained tat postcard’s meaning to a child.
I came up with a solution, that is not perfect, but I liked it. I was never able to tell that child what I thought because by the time I had found a way to describe it, the girl and her family had already left for home.

“Happiness is not the sweet you get after getting a good mark for your math test. It is the mark you get after enjoying the test.”

Yes, I know, even if we enjoy the test the mark might not be what we wanted it to be and we might be disappointed. But as long as we enjoy the test and give it our all, I think it is possible to firstly write a better test and secondly accept our abilities.
I don’t think that finding happiness will make every moment of our life a happy one. I think happiness is being able to see one’s life as it is. Being able to appreciate and enjoy the good moments and being able to fight, accept and let go the bad moments.
I think happiness is finding your true self through living your life to the fullest.

I usually don’t write things like this down..so this post was inspired by the last post I reblogged, I think..here’s a link:
http://aopinionatedman.com/2014/08/20/happy-ever-after/

I should do it more often, it feels nice, I like it. Since I don’t share thoughts like that anywhere else either.

Thank you for reading!

Happy Ever After?