The Soul's Prison

Description:

When a study for this work was exhibited in 1889, a quotation attributed to St. Augustine of Hippo was attached to it "illuminate, oh illuminated my blind soul that sitteth in darkness and the Shadow of Death". The Soul sits in its prison (the body) awaiting its release into the light beyond the prison window - the release of death. This echoes the painter's Spiritualist belief, that the body is merely an earthly shell, an encumbrance, which the spirit longs to cast off in death, to move into the sun of the spirit-spheres.

by the way guys, this deployment of ice to minnesota is largest ever. more agents than chicago. we are a much less dense state. we are being inundated.

It is the largest Department of Homeland Security operation in history. And yet Minnesota’s Somali population (this operation’s primary target) is upwards of 90% naturalized American citizens. It’s even more of a manufactured crisis than most DHS operations. Genuinely living in Minnesota now feels like we’re a small country on the brink of invasion.

I saw two ICE trucks yesterday on my way to give my friends back their house keys from when I was looking after their cats. I got home today and I heard whistles and honking from people chasing ICE, but by the time I got Matilda in the house they were gone so I couldn't join in the chase. I know there was a major attempt to steal my neighbors from just a few blocks away this morning while I was at work.

It doesn't feel like we're on the brink of invasion. It feels like we're being newly occupied by an invading force. Except that the invading force doesn't just want our total submission; they also want to rip half our neighbors out of our arms. They came for Hmong Minnesotans next, and they are also more than 90% citizens. We have a lot of minority populations who settled here because Minnesota prides itself on welcoming refugees; both populations have been here for more than thirty years.

Fuck this shit. It is terrorism.

Not just feels like, is. Feels like because is.

And for all the rest of us US occupants not in Minnesota, it's coming to us, too. Ohio is getting door-to-door ICE today, for instance, and I've seen multiple friends in other states posting photos of big ol' trucks, beds packed with ICE vehicles, rolling in to town.

We're still not quite two weeks into 2026. Get ready to plant your feet.

You guys know this reads like Anne Frank's fucking diary right? How the FUCK are you guys not in full blown rebellion already is beyond my comprehension.

— dearly, someone outside of US of hell.

We are in full blown rebellion, you ass. The goal here from the administration is to provoke us into violence so they can use the full weight of the military to make examples of us, probably by attempting to raze the city to the ground. We are civilians trying to resist using the laws that still exist to protect ourselves and save as many people as we can.

What the fuck else do you want us to do? Play right into Trump's hands? Fuck the hell off with your judgement if you aren't on the ground here. Go put some pressure on your own foreign dignitaries to pressure our government if you're feeling horrified, that might actually be of some use.

imagine looking at Minnesota, where a woman was shot less than a week ago and still people are coming out every time they see ICE, organizing neighborhood Signal groups, protesting every single day, where there are more ICE agents than cops, where the cops are not on our side either; Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed 5 years ago, where a city council member who lost an eye to less lethal munitions in 2020 showed up to the site of the shooting last week to demand accountability, where the local immigrant rights groups have had to tell people to STOP calling in ICE sightings because they're overwhelmed, where ICE agents in SUVs are ramming cars in busy intersections, and saying "why aren't you doing more?"

we know this reads like Anne Frank's fucking diary. we know our neighbors are getting kidnapped and killed.

do you think a shooting war would be BETTER?

Hate it when TikTok farm cosplayers and cottagecore types say stuff like "I'm not going to use modern equipment because my grandmothers could make do without it." Ma'am, your great grandma had eleven children. She would have killed for a slow cooker and a stick blender.

I’ve noticed a sort of implicit belief that people used to do things the hard way in the past because they were tougher or something. In reality, labor-saving devices have historically been adopted by the populace as soon as they were economically feasible. No one stood in front of a smoky fire or a boiling pot of lye soap for hours because they were virtuous, they did it because it was the only way to survive.

Taking these screenshots from Facebook because they make you log in and won't let you copy and paste:

Ghost in Black

In a newspaper interview that had clearly eluded studio monitors, Valentino vented his personal feelings about love between a man and woman who were practicing matrimony without a license. In his romantic view, lovemaking between unmarried lovers wasn't to be written off as sinful. The heart mattered far more than any piece of paper. "What man-made contract is justly sufficient to hold two people apart that love one another?" he asked, using words charged with private meaning. "If they have been unfortunate in selection and later in life really love one another — there is no power that should be strong enough to keep them apart. It seems to me a greater sin to mock love, to live with a person you have no regard for, than it is to throw down man-made laws and go to the person you love." — Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino by Emily W. Leider

Picture-Play Magazine, December 1926

amethyst sage agate

please do me a favor and look up "dovekie" on your nearest image searching tool at your earliest convenience. for me. thankyou.

Waddashape............

Very Important

their wingss. are so littl

My new pet peeve is people completely misunderstanding the term Male Gaze and making the term female gaze based entirely on that misunderstanding

the white boy of the month pushing his hair back and reading poetry for the camera is not the equivalent of the dehumanization of women in visual media by way of presenting them primarily as vessels for sexual gratification

Gentle

I think Guillermo del Toro's fatal flaw with Frankenstein is that he wrote a very simple script that simplifies the characters and hammers it's themes into your head so hard that even the adult children who watch Bluey can comprehend it but he also includes numerous gruesome animal deaths in this film, which the adult children who watch Bluey cannot tolerate.

a lot of people are upset this wasn't a faithful adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel. del Toro is not interested faithfulness to the source material he is turning it into a mexican telenovela. on purpose. for better or for worse.

Gato con Quetzalcóatl en Xochicalco 🐱🐉 bit.ly/LeyendaDeQuetzalcoatl

Apartment Dwellers on New Year's Eve (1948) John Falter

Wishing you a year filled with strength, courage, and fulfillment.

I just want to let you guys know Cornell's entire library is open access (no permissions required) and there are (shocker) many books...

Two boys practicing their swordplay, Harlem, 1939–1940.

Photo: Aaron Siskind via Smithsonian American Art Museum