Tag: war

juliana spahr

March 17, 2003

We slept soundly during the night, beloveds, and when I woke
yous were wrapped around me and I thought it was this that had
let me dream of windows and doors opening and light entering, a
relief from my recent dreams that have been so full of occupations.

But we wake up and all we hear in the birds’ songs is war.

When the birds sing outside our window they sing of the end of
negotiations with the UN, of the Dow soaring on confidence of a
short war, of how rebel forces in the Central African Republic have
dissolved parliament and suspended the constitution, of the
resumption of the trading in oil futures in London after protestors
broke into the building and fights broke out on the trading pit.

They sing of how someone makes Natalie Maines apologize for her
shame that the president of the United States is from Texas, of
seven people, killed in Palestine, of drug-resistant pneumonia that
continues to spread, and of the worldwide mourning for Rachel
Corrie.

The birds also sing of how celebrities in Los Angeles are getting
their manicures and their hair done as they always do.

psyche8eros:

Slaven Tolj et Maria Grazio “Food for
Survival” Performance (photo documentation) | Helsinki, 1993 
via racinenova.tumblr

At the time, Sarajevo, Slaven’s former city, was under siege, just as Dubrovnik had been a few short years earlier. During that time, aid would be dropped on those cities in the form of dehydrated food products that could be made into a soup by adding water; the packet read “food for survival.” The two artists mixed the soup and covered their bodies with it, eating it off of one another. The two combine an act of desperation (consuming to survive) with an act of love, and the stark contrast between the two highlights the struggle for survival that the food embodies or represents.