“You only see your life clearly once, when all protective walls have crumbled. You stand there, naked and cold, seeing yourself just the way you are. Once only.”

— Summer Interlude (1954), directed by Ingmar Bergman

i love those blinking red lights they put on top of radio towers and windmills and skyscrapers etc, theyre like electronic flowers or something to me

“My life is unmanageable and I’d like to share it with you.”

— David Foster Wallace

Because here’s something else that’s true. In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

David Foster Wallace, This is Water

is love so addictive because it feels like joy?

'The Pink Peach Tree' (1888) by Vincent van Gogh & A blooming cherry tree in my garden in May 🌺

home of gretchen andersen, owner of lacquer chest (london uk)

Sarah Perry, The Essence of Peopling

Life is really just outgrowing people until we meet likeminded souls who want to go on this journey with us.

We taste and feel and see the truth. We do not reason ourselves into it.

— William Butler Yeats, "Four Years" (CreateSpace Independent Publishing, September 6, 2014) (via Thoughts)

you think you are done hurting. that you have felt it all. you will be hurt again. it will be just as fresh

I shall not let anything bind me to this stupid vale of pain. not my career, not hope and definitely not family. amen

Fujoshi wife fills her house with chintz knowingly

tactics to remain intact ❔

keep a part of yourself reserved for yourself alone and build a relationship with the silence at the heart of your solitude. who you are before that silence is the closest thing you can get to an unobstructed view of yourself. the noisier it is in your head, the further away you are from the middle. take medication if it helps keep the volume down. remain in your body and listen to it. whatever the day disintegrates within you, make some attempt to reintegrate it each night. whatever emotion is shaking you like a rabbit in the jaws of a dog, go limp and wait for the dog to finish before you take action or speak rashly. keep all promises to yourself. eat and sleep and drink as well as you can. figure out what makes the integity of your self worse and quit doing it. show up every day to the job of taking care of yourself. forge close personal bonds with your peers, if you can locate some peers. dance.