Manuel Palacio, artist, bring the light dance in the shadows
Ella
“I do not care so much what I am to others as I care what I am to myself.” ― Michel de Montaigne
Ella
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” ― Simone de Beauvoir
Ella
“No black woman writer in this culture can write "too much". Indeed, no woman writer can write "too much"...No woman has ever written enough.” ― Bell Hooks
Ella
“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.” ― Bell Hooks,
Ella
“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.” ― Isabel Allende
Ella bronze sculpture
“We are Black women born into a society of entrenched loathing and contempt for whatever is Black and female. We are strong and enduring. We are also deeply scarred.”
Ella, my female bronze sculpture. Oddly, El Bembóm male bronze sculpture is all dressed up with no place to go. So where is he to go? Cognitively, (Huh, weird, I know.) back to his childhood to seek control, to redirect insecurities, the not so safe moments of his life. Hoping for different outcomes where he’ll feel love and acceptance. He goes to Ella, (her). Ella, the object of his irrational desires the cause for anxieties. The women: his mother, aunts, and grandmothers his reason for being; his obligation stronger than self-respect the source of his guilt, to defend and protect, or to die for.
Ella (Spanish for her) Ella is nurturing, full breasted with a phat-ass. Her soft body ready for hugs, her vagina a sheath for securing all manhood. Her tender heart protected with iron from life’s disappointments searching for fathers in stranger’s arms; mother’s love and reassurance in her chastise; desires that will soothe her insecurities, her fears. She gives births to Lovers, nursed with milk through guilt nipple.
…come to my woman’s breast, and take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers…
… I have given suck, and know how tender ‘tie to love the babe that milks me…
Lady Macbeth
“The prostitute is not, as feminists claim, the victim of men, but rather their conqueror, an outlaw, who controls the sexual channels between nature and culture”
― Camille Paglia
“If any female feels she need anything beyond herself to legitimate and validate her existence, she is already giving away her power to be self-defining, her agency.”
― Bell Hooks,
“No other group in America has so had their identity socialized out of existence as have black women… When black people are talked about the focus tends to be on black men; and when women are talked about the focus tends to be on white women.”
― Bell Hooks
“A sister can be seen as someone who is both ourselves and very much not ourselves – a special kind of double.”
― Toni Morrison
“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”
― Leo Tolstoy,
or Xuela could not decide which sensation she wanted to dominate over the other: one breast into Phillip’s mouth or the sensation of the saliva evaporating on the one that just left his mouth.
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
― Simone de Beauvoir
“Well-behaved women seldom make history.”
― Laurel Thatcher Ulrich
“You are your best thing”
― Toni Morrison
“Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they are.”
― Markus Zusak
“Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.”
― Camille Paglia
“For women, the best aphrodisiacs are words. The G-spot is in the ears. He who looks for it below there is wasting his time.”
― Isabel Allende
“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
― Anne Frank
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi
“Healthy emotions come in all sizes. Healthy minds come in all sizes. And healthy bodies come in all sizes.”
― Cheri K. Erdman
“I am too intelligent, too demanding, and too resourceful for anyone to be able to take charge of me entirely. No one knows me or loves me completely. I have only myself”
― Simone de Beauvoir
“To lose confidence in one’s body is to lose confidence in oneself.”
― Simone de Beauvoir
“In the end the World will end….”
― jerril Thomas
“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
