dig

… habit of indirection; … to delight in a margin; … not something to do, but something to be experienced, and something to go through (ZS)

“The belief that goodness is built on a constructed absence, not-doing.”
“Grace, that dictionary. A place where every thing was attached to a meaning.”
“Fear made me work hard, get better. It’s a dirty fuel, but it works.”
“… read an Odyssey in a gasp, a Shahnehmeh in a sigh”
“I did know real, deep joy. […] my lifetime’s allotment”

–Kaveh Akbar

That’s when she found the tree,

the dark, crabbed branches

bearing up such speechless bounty,

she knew without being told

this was forbidden. It wasn’t

a question of ownership—

who could lay claim to

such maddening perfection?

[…]

I Have Been a Stranger in a Strange Land, Rita Dove

Surrealism and Us: Caribbean and African Diasporic Artists since 1940 organized by Curator María Elena Ortiz, at Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, March 10, 2024 – July 28, 2024.

Centered on the intersection of Caribbean aesthetics, Afrosurrealism, and Afrofuturism, Surrealism and Us explores how Caribbean and Black artists interpreted a modernist movement. Artworks, framed within a pre-existing history of Black resistance and creativity, illustrate how Caribbean and Black artists reinterpreted the European avant-garde for their own purposes.