a place to be

1,043 notes

I’m interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
Toni Morrison (via ethiopienne)

(Source: observando, via ethiopienne)

29 notes

Week 7 Readings: 10/20 Idle No More and Indigenous Social Movements

tanacetum-vulgare:

igov382:

REQUIRED READING & VIEWING:

oh man, this class is so amazing. 

Filed under education resources i wish i could take this class i miss being in school especially lately but i'm going back in january time to finish that BA fuck mental illness

64,241 notes

misanthropicmutiny:

Living with mental illness means that on some days it will be even harder to cope and you might not be able to explain why. It could be because you havent slept enough, because a smell reminded you of feeling sad, or for no reason at all.

This is a reminder that we dont have to justify our feelings or abilities to anyone, just do whats needed to make it to the next day.

(via killmyblues)

Filed under like today what a miserable day

17,465 notes

thepeoplesrecord: The Malala you won’t hear aboutOctober 16, 2014 Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year-old Pakistani activist, has won a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, putting her and her amazing, tragic story back in the spotlight. Per usual, nevertheless, the corporate media has taken this positive development and exploited it in the service of U.S. imperialism. The corporate media loves talking about Malala’s remarkable bravery and strength in standing up for girls’ rights to education, and the brutality of the Taliban forces that tried to assassinate her on her school bus. Such coverage fuels its orientalist, neocolonialist narrative about “backward,” misogynist Muslims and their need for “white saviors,” thereby legitimizing Western imperialist interests in South and West Asia. Malala’s Nobel victory can be appropriated by the U.S. political establishment to “prove” that its invasion, occupation and destruction of Afghanistan has “helped” its people. (As for the hundreds of thousands killed and injured in the process, well, those inconvenient exceptions aren’t part of this narrative.) As Michael Parenti points out, while most people who win the Nobel “Peace” Prize do so for war-mongering and crimes against humanity (Henry Kissinger boasts one, for example, along with Barack Obomba himself), Malala actually deserves hers. This makes the exploitation even more grotesque. Malala has devoted her life to fighting for education for children—a most noble and important cause. When she implored at the United Nations, “Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen, can change the world. Education is the only solution,” the Western intelligentsia ate it up like a voracious canine gobbling up its kibbles (on second thought, perhaps a vulture would have been a more apt choice for this simile). Everyone can agree that education for children is a positive goal. By emphasizing that education is the only solution, the West can draw attention away from the very realmaterial concerns facing the vast majority of the world. This oversight is by no means the fault of Malala. In that same speech, just before the above excerpt, she spoke of “a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism.” Two of these three things are endlessly emphasized throughout the corporate press. You can guess which one is excluded. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The Malala Who Opposes Global Poverty Roughly half of the world still lives on less than $2.50 per day. Around one-quarter of people live in extreme poverty, less than $1.25 a day. UNICEF estimates that 24,000 children under the age of five die each and every day because of poverty, meaning that “every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually, it is a child under the age of 5.” And, in many countries, poverty is getting worse. Education certainly has a role in the fight against poverty, and it’s important that one learns, say, basic chemistry. (Malala was sitting in chemistry class when she was informed she had won the Nobel Prize.) But learning basic chemistry does not provide billions of impoverished people with food, clean water, and health care. That takes material, collective action. Malala understands how poverty creates and perpetuates the very social and political ills against which she is fighting. She continuously stresses the importance of not just spreading education, but of directly combating poverty. Yet these calls fall on the selectively deaf ears of the Western media. The press picks and chooses which of Malala’s messages are amplified—and which are silenced. It can hardly get enough of her insistence on the importance of “the philosophy of nonviolence I have learned from Gandhi, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa.” The Western intelligentsia positively salivates upon hearing such messages, despite the fact (or because of it?) that Gandhi was a virulent racist and Mother Teresa had ties to Central and South American dictators. Interestingly, many of the same people lauding the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her advocacy of nonviolence also happily cheered on the violence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The utter hypocrisy does not strike them. After all, it has always been much more useful to advocate a philosophy of nonviolence for individuals and oppressed groups than hegemons and states. As much as it highlights Malala’s words on education and nonviolence, the U.S. corporate media never mentions the side of Malala that it doesn’t like, the side of Malala that doesn’t serve but rather challenges Western imperialist interests, the side of Malala that overtly opposes not just U.S. drone strikes but capitalism itself. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The Malala Who Opposes Drones On October 11, 2013, Malala met with Barack Obama in the Oval Office. The press could hardly have lauded the president more for taking the time out of his busy schedule to meet the 16-year-old activist, and for bringing his family with him. What went much less reported was that at this meeting, Malala warned that U.S. “drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people.” The White House, which, given its supposed investment in fighting terrorism, would presumably not be interested in spreading it further, left these comments out of its official statement. Just a few weeks after this meeting, another Pakistani girl visited Washington to testify before Congress, and received much less media attention. Nabila Rehman was 8 years old when she was out in a field picking okra and her grandmother was eviscerated before her eyes by a U.S. drone strike. Seven children were also wounded, including family members. Nabila’s brother Zubair, a 13-year-old who was injured in the US drone attack, told the five congress-people decent enough to show up, “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies. Drones don’t fly when sky is grey.” The Rehman family’s story was so dreadful that the translator burst into tears while telling it to Congress. Given such a horrific report, you’d think the U.S. government would express interest in learning from it to make sure random civilians are not again slaughtered by bombs falling from microscopic dots in the sky. Yet only five (out of 435) House members attended the hearing. Al Jazeera writer Murtaza Hussein noted that, in a symbol of the “utter contempt in which the government holds the people it claims to be liberating, while the Rehmans recounted their plight, Barack Obama was spending the same time meeting with the CEO of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.” Clearly, stoking the military-industrial complex that creates the Predator drones that havemurdered and injured thousands of innocent civilians is a higher priority for the president of the United States than meeting the actual victims of what can only correctly be referred to as state terrorism. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -The Malala Who Opposes Capitalism Last year, I wrote a brief article titled Malala Yousafzai, Spivak, Abu-Lughod and the White Savior Complex. I noted that Gayatri Spivak, in her classic article "Can The Subaltern Speak?" explained that colonialist powers justify their draconian, parasitic rule with the belief that they are “white men are saving brown women from brown men.” In her well-known essay, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?" Lila Abu-Lughod situated Spivak’s thesis in a contemporary setting, explaining how the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was justified with the exact same argument—the Bush administration was a group of overwhelmingly white leaders who consistently workedagainst women’s rights in their own country but now acted desperate to “save” Afghan women from Afghan men. In his article Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex, journalist Assed Baig explored how this racist “white man’s burden” phenomenon is still alive and well, detailing the repugnant ways in which the West has exploited Malala Yousafzai’s amazing strength and bravery to support its interests. Absent from many of these discussions, however, is that Malala herself is well aware of this manipulation. In a statement released on October 13, 2013, she defiantly declared that she is "not a Western puppet." When discussing the way in which the neocolonialist West exploits and manipulates those working against oppression, one should be careful to establish that this is not done to them unwittingly. We are dealing with agents, individuals who understand the implications of their actions and change them accordingly. To forget this fact is, in a less overt way, to uphold the very paternalist, neocolonialist strictures we seek to destroy. As Spivak reminds us, the subaltern indeed speaks—and not only speaks but resists oppressors. Articulated a bit differently, Arundhati Roy insisted, “There’s really no such thing as ‘the voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” The attempt to deliberately silence Malala is not only evident in the way the U.S. corporate media ignores her criticism of U.S. drones; even more insidious is its complete disregard for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s politics. In March 2013, Malala sent this message to the congress of Pakistani Marxists: First of all, I’d like to thank The Struggle and the IMT [International Marxist Tendency] for giving me a chance to speak last year at their Summer Marxist School in Swat and also for introducing me to Marxism and Socialism. I just want to say that in terms of education, as well as other problems in Pakistan, it is high time that we did something to tackle them ourselves. It’s important to take the initiative. We cannot wait around for any one else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves? I would like to send my heartfelt greetings to the congress. I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation. This is the Malala the Western corporate media doesn’t like to quote. This is the Malala whose politics do not fit neatly into the neocolonialist, cookie-cutter frame of presentation. This is the Malala who recognizes that true liberation will take more than just education, that it will take the establishment of not just bourgeois political “democracy,” but ofeconomic democracy, of socialism. When the courageous activist speaks of the importance of education and nonviolence, the West shouts her words loudly from the media mountaintops. When that same activist criticizes predator drones and, that most sacrosanct entity of all, capitalism, the silence is deafening. Only the distinctive buzzing of U.S. killer drones can be heard, watching and bombing overhead, protecting empire and “freedom.” Source

thepeoplesrecord:

The Malala you won’t hear about
October 16, 2014

Malala Yousafzai, the 17-year-old Pakistani activist, has won a well-deserved Nobel Peace Prize, putting her and her amazing, tragic story back in the spotlight. Per usual, nevertheless, the corporate media has taken this positive development and exploited it in the service of U.S. imperialism.

The corporate media loves talking about Malala’s remarkable bravery and strength in standing up for girls’ rights to education, and the brutality of the Taliban forces that tried to assassinate her on her school bus. Such coverage fuels its orientalist, neocolonialist narrative about “backward,” misogynist Muslims and their need for “white saviors,” thereby legitimizing Western imperialist interests in South and West Asia.

Malala’s Nobel victory can be appropriated by the U.S. political establishment to “prove” that its invasion, occupation and destruction of Afghanistan has “helped” its people. (As for the hundreds of thousands killed and injured in the process, well, those inconvenient exceptions aren’t part of this narrative.)

As Michael Parenti points out, while most people who win the Nobel “Peace” Prize do so for war-mongering and crimes against humanity (Henry Kissinger boasts one, for example, along with Barack Obomba himself), Malala actually deserves hers. This makes the exploitation even more grotesque.

Malala has devoted her life to fighting for education for children—a most noble and important cause. When she implored at the United Nations, “Let us pick up our books and our pens, they are the most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen, can change the world. Education is the only solution,” the Western intelligentsia ate it up like a voracious canine gobbling up its kibbles (on second thought, perhaps a vulture would have been a more apt choice for this simile).

Everyone can agree that education for children is a positive goal. By emphasizing that education is the only solution, the West can draw attention away from the very realmaterial concerns facing the vast majority of the world.

This oversight is by no means the fault of Malala. In that same speech, just before the above excerpt, she spoke of “a glorious struggle against illiteracy, poverty and terrorism.” Two of these three things are endlessly emphasized throughout the corporate press. You can guess which one is excluded.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Malala Who Opposes Global Poverty

Roughly half of the world still lives on less than $2.50 per day. Around one-quarter of people live in extreme poverty, less than $1.25 a day. UNICEF estimates that 24,000 children under the age of five die each and every day because of poverty, meaning that “every 3.6 seconds one person dies of starvation. Usually, it is a child under the age of 5.” And, in many countries, poverty is getting worse.

Education certainly has a role in the fight against poverty, and it’s important that one learns, say, basic chemistry. (Malala was sitting in chemistry class when she was informed she had won the Nobel Prize.) But learning basic chemistry does not provide billions of impoverished people with food, clean water, and health care. That takes material, collective action.

Malala understands how poverty creates and perpetuates the very social and political ills against which she is fighting. She continuously stresses the importance of not just spreading education, but of directly combating poverty. Yet these calls fall on the selectively deaf ears of the Western media.

The press picks and chooses which of Malala’s messages are amplified—and which are silenced. It can hardly get enough of her insistence on the importance of “the philosophy of nonviolence I have learned from Gandhi, Bacha Khan and Mother Teresa.” The Western intelligentsia positively salivates upon hearing such messages, despite the fact (or because of it?) that Gandhi was a virulent racist and Mother Teresa had ties to Central and South American dictators.

Interestingly, many of the same people lauding the Nobel Peace Prize laureate for her advocacy of nonviolence also happily cheered on the violence of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The utter hypocrisy does not strike them. After all, it has always been much more useful to advocate a philosophy of nonviolence for individuals and oppressed groups than hegemons and states.

As much as it highlights Malala’s words on education and nonviolence, the U.S. corporate media never mentions the side of Malala that it doesn’t like, the side of Malala that doesn’t serve but rather challenges Western imperialist interests, the side of Malala that overtly opposes not just U.S. drone strikes but capitalism itself.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Malala Who Opposes Drones

On October 11, 2013, Malala met with Barack Obama in the Oval Office. The press could hardly have lauded the president more for taking the time out of his busy schedule to meet the 16-year-old activist, and for bringing his family with him.

What went much less reported was that at this meeting, Malala warned that U.S. “drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people.”

The White House, which, given its supposed investment in fighting terrorism, would presumably not be interested in spreading it further, left these comments out of its official statement.

Just a few weeks after this meeting, another Pakistani girl visited Washington to testify before Congress, and received much less media attention. Nabila Rehman was 8 years old when she was out in a field picking okra and her grandmother was eviscerated before her eyes by a U.S. drone strike. Seven children were also wounded, including family members.

Nabila’s brother Zubair, a 13-year-old who was injured in the US drone attack, told the five congress-people decent enough to show up, “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies. Drones don’t fly when sky is grey.” The Rehman family’s story was so dreadful that the translator burst into tears while telling it to Congress.

Given such a horrific report, you’d think the U.S. government would express interest in learning from it to make sure random civilians are not again slaughtered by bombs falling from microscopic dots in the sky. Yet only five (out of 435) House members attended the hearing.

Al Jazeera writer Murtaza Hussein noted that, in a symbol of the “utter contempt in which the government holds the people it claims to be liberating, while the Rehmans recounted their plight, Barack Obama was spending the same time meeting with the CEO of weapons manufacturer Lockheed Martin.”

Clearly, stoking the military-industrial complex that creates the Predator drones that havemurdered and injured thousands of innocent civilians is a higher priority for the president of the United States than meeting the actual victims of what can only correctly be referred to as state terrorism.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Malala Who Opposes Capitalism

Last year, I wrote a brief article titled Malala Yousafzai, Spivak, Abu-Lughod and the White Savior Complex. I noted that Gayatri Spivak, in her classic article "Can The Subaltern Speak?" explained that colonialist powers justify their draconian, parasitic rule with the belief that they are “white men are saving brown women from brown men.”

In her well-known essay, "Do Muslim Women Really Need Saving?" Lila Abu-Lughod situated Spivak’s thesis in a contemporary setting, explaining how the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan was justified with the exact same argument—the Bush administration was a group of overwhelmingly white leaders who consistently workedagainst women’s rights in their own country but now acted desperate to “save” Afghan women from Afghan men.

In his article Malala Yousafzai and the White Saviour Complex, journalist Assed Baig explored how this racist “white man’s burden” phenomenon is still alive and well, detailing the repugnant ways in which the West has exploited Malala Yousafzai’s amazing strength and bravery to support its interests.

Absent from many of these discussions, however, is that Malala herself is well aware of this manipulation. In a statement released on October 13, 2013, she defiantly declared that she is "not a Western puppet."

When discussing the way in which the neocolonialist West exploits and manipulates those working against oppression, one should be careful to establish that this is not done to them unwittingly. We are dealing with agents, individuals who understand the implications of their actions and change them accordingly. To forget this fact is, in a less overt way, to uphold the very paternalist, neocolonialist strictures we seek to destroy.

As Spivak reminds us, the subaltern indeed speaks—and not only speaks but resists oppressors. Articulated a bit differently, Arundhati Roy insisted, “There’s really no such thing as ‘the voiceless.’ There are only the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.”

The attempt to deliberately silence Malala is not only evident in the way the U.S. corporate media ignores her criticism of U.S. drones; even more insidious is its complete disregard for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s politics. In March 2013, Malala sent this message to the congress of Pakistani Marxists:

First of all, I’d like to thank The Struggle and the IMT [International Marxist Tendency] for giving me a chance to speak last year at their Summer Marxist School in Swat and also for introducing me to Marxism and Socialism. I just want to say that in terms of education, as well as other problems in Pakistan, it is high time that we did something to tackle them ourselves. It’s important to take the initiative. We cannot wait around for any one else to come and do it. Why are we waiting for someone else to come and fix things? Why aren’t we doing it ourselves?

I would like to send my heartfelt greetings to the congress. I am convinced Socialism is the only answer and I urge all comrades to take this struggle to a victorious conclusion. Only this will free us from the chains of bigotry and exploitation.

This is the Malala the Western corporate media doesn’t like to quote. This is the Malala whose politics do not fit neatly into the neocolonialist, cookie-cutter frame of presentation. This is the Malala who recognizes that true liberation will take more than just education, that it will take the establishment of not just bourgeois political “democracy,” but ofeconomic democracy, of socialism.

When the courageous activist speaks of the importance of education and nonviolence, the West shouts her words loudly from the media mountaintops. When that same activist criticizes predator drones and, that most sacrosanct entity of all, capitalism, the silence is deafening.

Only the distinctive buzzing of U.S. killer drones can be heard, watching and bombing overhead, protecting empire and “freedom.”

Source

(via pewpewlazernipples)

26,129 notes

Tupac died at 25. If Malcolm X died at 25 he would have been a street hustler named Detroit Red. If Martin Luther King died at 25 he would’ve been known as a local baptist preacher. And if I had died at 25 I would’ve been known as a struggling musician. Only a sliver of my life’s potential.

Quincy Jones (via sunflobrwn)

this is important

(via sugeknights)

(via saulteaux)

49 notes

tanacetum-vulgare:

mtol:

An insane amount of tar sands and fracking infrastructure is proposed for some of the most beautiful places on earth - unceded indigenous territories in so-called ‘BC.’ This article talks about the proposals (12+ pipelines, 18+ liquefaction and export facilities, tens of thousands of fracking wells, thousands of tankers), how tar sands and fracking projects are intertwined, and how indigenous communities are positioning themselves to thwart this development. 

“There is a barrage of oil and gas developments being proposed in this whole North West and if they were successful we would see a wasteland development. We wouldn’t see a build-up of community development,” argues Mel Bazil, a resident of Hazelton and long-term supporter of the Unist’ot’en Camp blockade. “It comes with forms of violence: domestic violence, a large influx of drugs, missing and murdered women, and pollution.”

Read now on VICE.com

Oh hey check it out my boy published a new article, and the lead picture is from that scouting trip we did on PTP’s right of way construction!

1,123 notes

therumpus: The Rumblr’s in-house astrologer, Madame Clairevoyant, presents her latest dispatch from the stars: Aries: It might be easy to get stuck inside yourself this week; it might be easy to get lost in your own weird swirling mind. Try to live in the world. Try to spend your days with other people. Try to stay open to all the best surprises. Let your thoughts move in the bright afternoon air. There will be colors in the distance, and at night the stars will shine so strange and far above you. There’s so much more than what you know. There’s so much room to breathe. Taurus: This week, things might get so strange inside your head. This week, your dreams might get tangled and your desires might get wild. Your days will be easier if you let this weirdness out your body, out of your brain, out into the world. Let your words get weird, let your voice get loud. Read books you’ve never read. Drive out to places you’ve never seen. Everything will make sense again, and for now it’s a week for turning up your music and telling your truths. Gemini: This week, when it’s hard to find north, when it’s hard to find the way home, when it’s hard to remember what you’re doing, try not to worry. Try not to talk yourself in circles. It’s a week for living in your body more than your head. It’s a week for trusting the instincts that live in your stomach, the feelings that live in your shoulders, the wisdom that lives in your skin. You know so much more than you think. You can believe your own self. Cancer: This week might feel like a river, this week might feel like the sea, this week might feel like nothing in the whole world is solid. This can be strange and it can be such a gift, if you’re ready for it. Think about motion. Think about waves. Think about all the water in the world and all the water in your body. Let yourself love other people the way they need to be loved. Let yourself bend, let yourself float. Think about how many ways there are to be free. Leo: This week, the world might feel chilly or prickly or strange. This week, the days might feel short. This week, you might need to search harder than you think for brightness and softness and love. You can find all the goodness you need, you can find enough warmth to fill your whole city, but you’ll have to work. Clean your kitchen. Eat the foods that make you strong. Let your friends know that you love them. Listen to the music that opens up your whole heart. Virgo: This week is for thoughtfulness, this week is for memory, this week is for finding solid ground to stand on. Even when the wind blows, even when the sun sets, you will have your own good thoughts, you will have your own good friends, you will have your own good heart. You don’t have to hide your truest self. You do not have to doubt your capacity for bright wild joy. Read your old diaries. Remember your old dreams. You can come back to yourself. Libra: Your whole body might fill up with some wild energy this week; your dreams might fill with such bright bendy colors. You can get unstuck, you can get inspired, you can get moving again. You might not recognize this energy right away, you might not know quite what to do with it. Just try to let it move you. Try to let it brighten your nights. Try to be open to new cities, new people, new roads. You can glow, you can shine, you can light your own way. Scorpio: Your language can do funny things, this week. Your language can go so wild. This week, you can talk yourself into anything, you can talk magic into being, you can speak whole worlds into life. Your voice can carry you, it can light up rooms, it can calm storms, it can move whole oceans. Try to be kind, this week when the world bends around you. Try to be generous. Listen to other people. Listen to songs with no words at all. Sagittarius: The world might feel unpredictable around you this week, and you might feel unpredictable inside it. You might feel your veins fill up with electricity, you might feel your skin flush with a wild heat. Do whatever you need to do, this week, because nothing in the world can contain you if you decide not to be contained. Nothing in the whole world can dim your bright light. Think of yourself as fire under a dark sky; think of yourself as warmth on a cold night. Capricorn: This week, you might feel so acutely, so tenderly, the way the world is spinning, the way it’s moving through the sky. This week, you might feel a new season begin. You might wake up feeling new, feeling bright, feeling strange in your own skin. Try to watch and wait, just for a little bit. You don’t have to rush and you don’t have to worry. Wear your warmest sweaters. Wear the clothes that make you feel strongest. Look at your face in the mirror until you recognize yourself again. Aquarius: The space around you might wobble this week; the air might shimmer and the ground might shake. It might feel hard to catch your balance. It might feel hard to see your true self. This wild moving world can be so exhausting, but you’re strong and strange enough to live here. Try not to be afraid. Try just to take such tender care of yourself. Put an extra blanket on your bed. Cook your favorite soup. Call someone who loves you, just to hear their voice. Pisces: Your days might be full of motion this week, and they might be full of surprises, and they might be full of wild desires that you hardly recognize, that you can hardly even name. If you search for courage you can find it, and if you search for kindness you can find it, and if you search for joy, your whole life can bloom. Let your life fill with music. Let your life fill with color. You don’t have to settle for anything less than what you need. Today’s image was made specially for Madame Clairevoyant by Jen May.

therumpus:

The Rumblr’s in-house astrologer, Madame Clairevoyant, presents her latest dispatch from the stars:

Aries: It might be easy to get stuck inside yourself this week; it might be easy to get lost in your own weird swirling mind. Try to live in the world. Try to spend your days with other people. Try to stay open to all the best surprises. Let your thoughts move in the bright afternoon air. There will be colors in the distance, and at night the stars will shine so strange and far above you. There’s so much more than what you know. There’s so much room to breathe.

Taurus: This week, things might get so strange inside your head. This week, your dreams might get tangled and your desires might get wild. Your days will be easier if you let this weirdness out your body, out of your brain, out into the world. Let your words get weird, let your voice get loud. Read books you’ve never read. Drive out to places you’ve never seen. Everything will make sense again, and for now it’s a week for turning up your music and telling your truths.

Gemini: This week, when it’s hard to find north, when it’s hard to find the way home, when it’s hard to remember what you’re doing, try not to worry. Try not to talk yourself in circles. It’s a week for living in your body more than your head. It’s a week for trusting the instincts that live in your stomach, the feelings that live in your shoulders, the wisdom that lives in your skin. You know so much more than you think. You can believe your own self.

Cancer: This week might feel like a river, this week might feel like the sea, this week might feel like nothing in the whole world is solid. This can be strange and it can be such a gift, if you’re ready for it. Think about motion. Think about waves. Think about all the water in the world and all the water in your body. Let yourself love other people the way they need to be loved. Let yourself bend, let yourself float. Think about how many ways there are to be free.

Leo: This week, the world might feel chilly or prickly or strange. This week, the days might feel short. This week, you might need to search harder than you think for brightness and softness and love. You can find all the goodness you need, you can find enough warmth to fill your whole city, but you’ll have to work. Clean your kitchen. Eat the foods that make you strong. Let your friends know that you love them. Listen to the music that opens up your whole heart.

Virgo: This week is for thoughtfulness, this week is for memory, this week is for finding solid ground to stand on. Even when the wind blows, even when the sun sets, you will have your own good thoughts, you will have your own good friends, you will have your own good heart. You don’t have to hide your truest self. You do not have to doubt your capacity for bright wild joy. Read your old diaries. Remember your old dreams. You can come back to yourself.

Libra: Your whole body might fill up with some wild energy this week; your dreams might fill with such bright bendy colors. You can get unstuck, you can get inspired, you can get moving again. You might not recognize this energy right away, you might not know quite what to do with it. Just try to let it move you. Try to let it brighten your nights. Try to be open to new cities, new people, new roads. You can glow, you can shine, you can light your own way.

Scorpio: Your language can do funny things, this week. Your language can go so wild. This week, you can talk yourself into anything, you can talk magic into being, you can speak whole worlds into life. Your voice can carry you, it can light up rooms, it can calm storms, it can move whole oceans. Try to be kind, this week when the world bends around you. Try to be generous. Listen to other people. Listen to songs with no words at all.

Sagittarius: The world might feel unpredictable around you this week, and you might feel unpredictable inside it. You might feel your veins fill up with electricity, you might feel your skin flush with a wild heat. Do whatever you need to do, this week, because nothing in the world can contain you if you decide not to be contained. Nothing in the whole world can dim your bright light. Think of yourself as fire under a dark sky; think of yourself as warmth on a cold night.

Capricorn: This week, you might feel so acutely, so tenderly, the way the world is spinning, the way it’s moving through the sky. This week, you might feel a new season begin. You might wake up feeling new, feeling bright, feeling strange in your own skin. Try to watch and wait, just for a little bit. You don’t have to rush and you don’t have to worry. Wear your warmest sweaters. Wear the clothes that make you feel strongest. Look at your face in the mirror until you recognize yourself again.

Aquarius: The space around you might wobble this week; the air might shimmer and the ground might shake. It might feel hard to catch your balance. It might feel hard to see your true self. This wild moving world can be so exhausting, but you’re strong and strange enough to live here. Try not to be afraid. Try just to take such tender care of yourself. Put an extra blanket on your bed. Cook your favorite soup. Call someone who loves you, just to hear their voice.

Pisces: Your days might be full of motion this week, and they might be full of surprises, and they might be full of wild desires that you hardly recognize, that you can hardly even name. If you search for courage you can find it, and if you search for kindness you can find it, and if you search for joy, your whole life can bloom. Let your life fill with music. Let your life fill with color. You don’t have to settle for anything less than what you need.

Today’s image was made specially for Madame Clairevoyant by Jen May.