Five Star Friday's 181st Edition Is Brought to You By Quentin Crisp

This week's Five Star Friday is brought to you by a photograph of a mother and daughter, plumbing problems, finding a community, a suicide, bullying as affection, trauma, the death of a parent, weight prejudice, nostalgia, love, learning that you are enough, fat kinship in hot yoga, meeting an idol, and Quentin Crisp:

It is not the simple statement of facts that ushers in freedom; it is the constant repetition of them that has this liberating effect. Tolerance is the result not of enlightenment, but of boredom.

     — Quentin Crisp

Happy Friday!

"Meditations on Photographs: A woman sits for a final photograph with her dying mother" by Joerg Colberg at Conscientious Extended:

This photograph is all about the gaze - its presence and, something we rarely see, its absence. The daughter confronts the camera, her eyes meeting the viewer’s. Her mother’s… are elsewhere. Which other form of art could capture these expressions this forcefully, this realistically?

"Bad Days" from Dooce

"Pooey Chopsticks" from The Ideal Wife Giveaway

"Free Pass" from The Extraordinary Ordinary:

It's hard to carry all the doing expectations with you and then learn how to let them go. To accept the free pass and not trample on it, and to just keep going, truly believing that it's enough.

"It Takes a Village" from A Book for My Daughter

"You Didn’t Thank Me for Punching You In the Face" from Views From the Couch

"Day One Hundred and Seven: A Call Out of Comfort" from Treaty Walks:

The women stood, watching, as teacher and mother looked at pictures and shared stories. He was so handsome, so strong, so athletic. He was a joker and competitive, but kind and sentimental. He was a good big brother. As I sat in this circle of protection and love, I became consciously aware that I was in a holy place. In the days that followed, I attended the wake and funeral, and watched a community mourn. I remember weeping, sitting upright, the tears my only offering.

"Things I Wish I Had Known When My Mother Died: You Can Never Prepare Yourself" by Sharon DeVellis at Yummy Mummy Club

"Weighty Impressions" from Beauty and the Bypass

"On Love" from Journey Mama:

Marriage is a greenhouse for love. The greenhouse is wild and deep and grows remarkable things that can't be grown over night. Some flowers take ten years to grow. Some, sixty.

The greenhouse is interesting and funny and witty and wild.

This is love.

"Not Africa" from Irretrievably Broken

"Finding Peter Jefferies (a Long Story, With a Soundtrack to Guide You)" from Amanda Palmer

"An Open Letter to the Fat Girl I Saw at Hot Yoga in New York City" from Faster Than Kudzu:

Were you as happy to see me as I was to see you? I think you were. You kept PEEKING at me, under your armpit and between your thighs, when you should have had been looking at your Drishti, only to find I had abandoned MY Drishti and was misaligning my spine to peek at you.

We both tipped over out of tree because of it. But it was okay. We were a secret club of Fat Girls at Hot Yoga. We understood each other.

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Comments

[Hannah Joy Curious]

Thank you so much! This blog post earned me the unexpected gift of a huge plunger from the beloved so I no longer have to harm disposable chopsticks...

[Alexia]

Some great quality stuff here! Thank you for sharing!