Thoughts - Blog Posts
you said i spoke like a poet,
and yet when i try to write,
your name is what spills out of my lips.
we are the next prometheus. will we end up like our own creator?
Does he love the stars?
Maybe he'll love you like he loves the stars. Maybe he tells the stars about you like how he tells you about the stars. Maybe he'll remember every scar and freckle like he remembers the names of those supernovas thousands of light years away.
But minds aren't a cage of thoughts really, they mean to free us from our burdened mortality.
Don't kiss me yet,
Let our minds wander first, together,
Let our souls touch,
And then perhaps,
I will love you too.
why can’t i be normal about literally anything.
Hope it will be true for me, too.
{Çınar}
Signs You Are Silently Working On Yourself | Youtube
The truth is in the openening of the 3rd eye while closing the others 2
“The answer is dreams. Dreaming on and on. Entering the world of dreams and never coming out. Living in dreams for the rest of time.”
— Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart
🌞🌻🌞
“Recovery is a process. It takes time. It takes patience. It takes everything you’ve got.”
— Unknown
Truth
“But the most beautiful things in life are just not things. They’re people and places, memories and pictures. They’re feeling and moments and smiles and laughter.”
— Unknown
Yes? No? ... yes
💞💔💞
“I’ll always remember you. I’ll always miss you. And you’re always a part of me. I’m always a part of you.”
— Unknown
Don't be sad when I go .. don't pretend you didn't know, Berry that pain deep inside just like me it had to go
“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
— Unknown
Ironically 🖤🌈
“It’s kind ironic how our hearts can still get hurt by something we already saw coming.”
— Unknown
Something like that
“I’m almost never serious, and I’m always too serious. Too deep, too shallow. Too sensitive, too cold hearted. I’m like a collection of paradoxes.”
— Ferdinand de Saussure
Unmmmmm for you maybe , pfffft I'm a broken ass gay bitch .. I need an want what I want k 😩 shhhhhh 🖤
“You don’t need people who don’t need you.”
— Unknown
Strong beliefs in this one 🌜🌞
Let the pain out ,the light in
The love part the best parts ,let it live on in our hearts Xx
keeper of hearts 💞
“Do whatever you need to do, but never put someone out of your heart.”
— Ram Dass
“And in that moment, you were everything.”
-Only you
I told my friend what hurt the most.
I want you to tell me, to trust me, to want me.
“It’s okay if I’m not your favorite chapter you have written, but I hope you sometimes smile when you flip back to the pages I was still apart of.”
— Unknown
I finally got it
I finally understand what everybody meant
when they would tell me that one day
I would fall in love
and I would understand what it was like
to be blatantly lost in someone.
I think it comes out of nowhere.
We don’t expect it,
it’s just there, one day
we realize that one person
can change our happiness
whether it be for the better
or for the worse
and we trust that they won’t hurt us
we just put blind trust
even though we never really know
but we don’t really care.
I think we do it for the momentary happiness
that might last a while,
maybe even forever
but we’re always slightly afraid that it will end
and we’ll go back to how we were before..
Strangers
but in the end we’re not really strangers
anymore...
MSI
<Please Don’t Break Me>
And then there are days when I can't even recognise myself.
— where shadows live, on days I feel lost
Ok y’all… I have some thoughts…
People on Twitter getting mad at Sand 🤨
Why exactly is he expected to have his feelings sorted out from the get go, when we had to deal with like half of the whole series with Ray trying to sort out his feelings for Mew?
I think some people forget that others are allowed to have complicated feelings, especially when it was someone they used to deeply care for. It’s seems to me that people are just irritated that Boeing is getting in the way of their insanely idealized vision of SandRay…
Anyway…
Also my greatest fear
One of my greatest fears is I will die without finding a single soul who knows what to do with all this fire behind my eyes.
Cindy Cherie
What and how we research
I know it's constantly stated that science is objective. I constantly emphasise that researchers are human beings and that their backgrounds, experiences and lives influence not only what they research, but also how they do it. That's why diversity in science is important. Yes, science is based on good scientific practice, transparency and reproducibility, but the what and how have degrees of freedom and are shaped by those who do the research.
’[...] But most of the research I do is more focused on sapphics, which would make sense, considering I am one.’ Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever had an openly queer teacher before. ‘That’s so cool,’ I say [...]. ‘Do a lot of professors end up researching things that, uh, also apply to them?’ ‘It depends,’ Fineman says. ‘In some fields, yes; a lot of my colleagues have a personal connection to their work. But not always. In any case, we’re very passionate about what we do.’
Zhao, A. (2024). Dear Wendy. Macmillan USA.
I don't know if I would do research on queer perspectives in library and information science if I wasn't queer myself. I don't know if I would choose a transformative research design if I didn't see inequalities and a need for change. Who we are shapes what we do and how we do it, whether it's in research or anywhere else.
Queering Libraries
While libraries have always been queer, libraries have not always been openly queer. And they still aren’t, although we’ve made some small strides.
What do you think it is that makes libraries (openly) queer?
[...] the white cishetallopatriarchy that continues to be the accepted norm in libraries, despite the harm it causes.
What are your thoughts on how we can change this?
Smith-Cruz, S., & Howard, S. A. (Hrsg.). (2024). Grabbing Tea: Queer Conversations on Identity and Libraries. Volume One. Library Juice Press.
My thoughts
What is it that makes libraries (openly) queer?
It's the diversity of collections, the tags and classifications used to make collections accessible, the way collections are presented, the way libraries present themselves, the way libraries and librarians engage in reflection on societal norms as well as their own, and the way they speak out to support and care for the most vulnerable communities they serve. The line between being queer and being openly queer seems to be blurred. For some it's already being open to actively use queer tags. For others, it starts with reflection and open engagement. I certainly lean towards the latter. It's about self-reflection, engagement and using their institutional voices.
How can we change this?
Firstly, you cannot do it alone. Not as a single library, not as a single person. You need a community. You need communities. Not just to make change happen, but to understand what needs to change and how. Secondly, you need to listen to those who raise their voices on issues and aspects where your first reflex is to say that cannot be considered at the moment, or not until other issues or aspects have been addressed. It's not about doing everything at once, it's about adjusting plans, taking into account multi-faceted and multi-layered perspectives, planning ahead together and giving everyone a say. Third, don't let differences of opinion divide your community. Don't let differences of opinion divide your communities. Look at the bigger picture together. Care for all vulnerable communities. We are all human beings.
Research and Simplifications
Simplifying gender and sex into binaries can make research easier. However, scientific research is not the pursuit of what is easy.
This quote came to mind after someone I was talking to told me that they were now including women in their research designs. They were obviously expecting a reward or a pat on the back. Then they remembered who they were talking to and added that this made things complicated enough and dismissed anyone outside the binary. I can hardly put into words the inner fury I felt as I stood there and listened to their justifications.
Orthia, L. A., & Roberson, T. (Hrsg.). (2023). Queering Science Communication: Representations, Theory, and Practice. Bristol University Press. https://doi.org/10.56687/9781529224436
Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World
This book has so many great quotes that made me think, reflect, scream and cry. Here are some of them in the order I read them, rather than in an organised way alongside my thoughts.
Sáenz, B. A. (2021). Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World. Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers.
They want us to read, but they do not want us to write.
This applies to so many different areas and aspects that it is almost universal. It is even more relevant in the current political climate in far too many countries. It's frightening and it all starts with banning books, restricting access to information and preventing people from gaining knowledge.
I don’t want you to live in the prison of my thoughts. I’m the only one who should be living there.
Ouch. That one hurt.
Happiness. What the hell did that mean? It had to be more than the absence of sadness.
I'd argue that happiness can't exist without sadness being around as well.
A lot of things happened outside the world of words.
Communicating without words is as much an art as communicating with words.
But here we are, we’re in it, this world that does not want us, a world that will never love us, a world that would choose to destroy us rather than make a space for us even though there is more than enough room.
Some people want queer people to disappear, but we're born this way, so there will always be queer people because people are born every day. You cannot make us disappear.
I wonder if people like me ever get to know what peace is like.
Not long ago I was full of hope that we could. I'm not as hopeful anymore.
[...] we will always live between exile and belonging.
Rarely have I read a better depiction of the range of emotions described by many members of the LGBTQIA+ community. The sense of exclusion versus the sense of belonging to a community. And the state of floating between the two.
Sometimes we have to be able to speak for those who can’t. That takes a lot of courage.
I always felt that it was much easier for me to stand up and speak for others than for myself. But it takes courage to do both.
We were both learning words and their meanings, and we were learning that the word 'friendship' wasn’t completely separate from the word 'love.'
Of course it isn't. Platonic love is just as strong and important and meaningful as romantic love.
It’s a beautiful thing to let the people you love see your pain.
It's just so damn hard.
How can we make them change if we’re not allowed to talk?
It's not just about banning books, restricting access to information and preventing people from gaining knowledge. It's also about banning people from expressing themselves, preventing them from telling their stories, and preventing people from passing on empathy and knowledge, because love and empathy are contageous.
Maybe we think that the value of our own freedom is worth less if everybody else has it. And we’re afraid. We’re afraid that, if someone wants what we have, they’re taking something away that belongs to us — and only to us.
Some people certainly think so.
But not everything we need to learn can be found in a book. Or rather, I’ve learned that people are books too.
Have you ever heard of living libraries? This is an amazing description of the idea behind them.
We were in this world, and we were going to fight to stay in it. Because it was ours. And one day the word “exile” would be no more.
Hope.
Hate is an emotional pandemic we have never found a cure for.
Hopelessness.
The slow professor
Academic work is by its nature never done; while flexibility of hours is one of the privileges of our work, it can easily translate into working all the time or feeling that one should.
This is just too true.
We need to take the time to read things that we don’t "have to" read. Just because reading cannot be easily quantified does not undermine its worth. In response to "what did you work on today?" many of us adopt an apologetic tone when we reply, "just some reading."
That pretty much sums up why I've started reading again, what I find personally interesting, and not just what is related to a paper I need to write or a lecture I need to prepare. That's why I'm sharing such a wide range of quotes and literature here.
We do need time to think. We do need time to digest.
Some of the things you read take time to sink in, to become relevant at some point in the future. Or not.
Connected to the imposition of neoliberal ideology on research culture is a dramatic decrease in collegial culture [...]. As academics become more isolated from each other, we are also becoming more compliant as resistance to the corporatization of the academy seems futile.
Both loneliness and belonging are contagious.
Resistance is not futile.
Berg, M., & Seeber, B. K. (2016). The slow professor: Challenging the culture of speed in the academy. University of Toronto Press.