The Eiffel Tower, Winter Of 1948 - Paris, France. (Dmitri Kessel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty

Li Huayi, ink and color on paper

Prasanna Choudhary's Vizify Bio

Black motorcycle clubs emerged throughout Cali in the 50s & 60s, and fought against racism and stereotypes of the day for their right to live the outlaw biker lifestyle — like the East Bay Dragons, Fresco Rattlers, Outlaw Vagabonds, Defiant Ones; down South in LA were the Choppers, Soul Brothers & of course, the Chosen Few.

via: the selvedge yard

*

The immense hope, and forbearance Trailing out of night, to sidewalks of the day  Like air breathed into a paper city, exhaled  As night returns bringing doubts  That swarm around the sleeper’s head  But are fended off with clubs and knives, so that morning  Installs again in cold hope  The air that was yesterday, is what you are,  In so many phases the head slips form the hand.  The tears ride freely, laughs or sobs:  What do they matter? There is free giving and taking;  The giant body relaxed as though beside a stream  Wakens to the force of it and has to recognize  The secret sweetness before it turns into life—  Sucked out of many exchanges, torn from the womb,  Disinterred before completely dead—and heaves  Its mountain-broad chest. “They were long in coming,  Those others, and mattered so little that it slowed them  To almost nothing. They were presumed dead,  Their names honorably grafted on the landscape  To be a memory to me. Until today  We have been living in their shell.  Now we break forth like a river breaking through a dam,  Pausing over the puzzled, frightened plain,  And our further progress shall be terrible,  Turning fresh knives in the wounds  In the gulf of recreation, that bare canvas  As matter-of-fact as the traffic and that day’s noise.”  The mountain stopped shaking; its body  Arched into its own contradiction, its enjoyment,  As far from us lights were put out, memories of boys and girls  Who walked here before the great change,  Before the air mirrored us,  Taking the opposite shape of our effort,  Its inseparable comment and corollary  But casting us further and further out.  Wha—what happened? You are with  The orange tree, so that its summer produce  Can go back to where we got it wrong, then drip gently  Into history, if it wants to. A page turned; we were  Just now floundering in the wind of its colossal death.  And whether it is Thursday, or the day is stormy,  With thunder and rain, or the birds attack each other,  We have rolled into another dream.  No use charging the barriers of that other:  It no longer exists. But you,  Gracious and growing thing, with those leaves like stars,  We shall soon give all out attention to you.

—John Ashbery, “Spring Day” Art Credit Lottie Hedley

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYa3_Ph7nHc)

Tiger Bay, Cardiff, 1950, Bert Hardy

A time to engage

A time to engage

A week is truly a long time in politics. On Saturday, March 11, when the assembly election results of five states were declared, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s legions of supporters were awash in euphoria. Journalists and commentators ran out of superlatives to describe the party’s victory in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand: stupendous, stunning, spectacular, magnificent, monumental, and, of course,…

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REVISITING NATIONALISM - 3

REVISITING NATIONALISM – 3

REVISITING NATIONALISM  – 3

Prasanna K Choudhary

NATIONALISM CHALLENGED

The ideology of nationalism had to face serious challenges from the very beginning itself. Needless to say that there was always a radical opposition in Europe’s bourgeois movement,…

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Lacey Roop - “For Billy” (WoWPS 2014)

"Crack the glowsticks in your halo. Burn so beautiful that if the sun ever looked at you he’d go blind." Performing during prelims at the 2014 Women of the World Poetry Slam.