-NALEN+

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep

Today my mother forwarded an email to me warning of gang violence spreading from Oakland to Fremont. Gang violence is no laughing matter, but when I think of Fremont gangs the image that comes to mind is a bunch of Asian MSJ high school kids whacking each other on the head with graphing calculators in order to get to AP testing first.

It's not funny! Why am I laughing? I hope these professed Oakland gangsters don't come after me now.

I love this song (the girl is really pretty!) by Khalil Fong, where he sings about being a scrub (你想开宝马，我和我的Toyota) and being too skinny. "Please don't break my heart," he croons. I won't, Khalil, I won't! Um.

This excerpt from Seamus Heaney's Nobel Lecture has been one of my favorite passages to date, perfectly exemplifying the simultaneous beauty and ugliness of human nature. It's easy to forget both.

One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road. Then one of the masked executioners said to them, "Any Catholics among you, step out here." As it happened, this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions.

It was a terrible moment for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to step forward. Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision, and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it in a signal that said no, don't move, we'll not betray you, nobody need know what faith or party you belong to. All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was pushed away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA.

Love Naomi.

Labels: ♡L, articles, Bay Area, fashion photography, gangs, Khalil Fong, MSJ nerds, Naomi Campbell, Seamus Heaney, 方大同

posted by ♡ @ 8:18 PM