You go for walks at night. Your neighborhood is safe enough. There are streetlights, plenty of them, and even in the darkness, you know the lawns are meticulously-tended, each with the requisite two decorative trees lining the sidewalk, each splayed before a sprawling home, one of precisely three floorplan variations available in half a dozen colors. It’s a Good neighborhood, everyone says so, and even though you married a Good man with a Good job and paid your way in like everyone else, you haven't yet shaken the feeling of strangeness. Maybe you don’t belong. Maybe you’ve fooled everyone, and maybe that includes yourself. Maybe you are not Good.

Nevertheless, you are here, and you walk at night. A while ago, when things were really hard, sometimes you’d cry while you walked, listening to sad songs or nothing at all, fairly certain the darkness would conceal your tears from any neighbors peeking through the blinds. It was nice, on occasion, to have a change of location from your closet, where you usually went to cry. (Did any of the other women living here cry in their closets, away from their children and husbands? Was any other woman gazing outside her blinds and into the night, able to face the darkness but not her own family?) It’s been a while since you’ve been that sad. You suspect it’s still there, packed away like a cardboard box in the basement, waiting to be rediscovered and finally dealt with.

The requisite two decorative trees in each yard are not enough to conceal the fact that a decade ago, hundreds of acres of forest were felled for these oversized, unimaginative homes. Their construction demanded the destruction of everything else. Isn’t that how it goes, though? Perfection leaves nothing alone. The trees that grow now are far too domesticated to threaten the supremacy of asphalt, tidy lawns, pruned shrubs, seasonally-wreathed doors, concrete driveways and golf carts. You are outside, but you are hardly in nature.

Still, sometimes the world reminds you it still exists. In the springtime, dozens of frogs warm themselves on the concrete sidewalks after sunset, so many that you fear you’ll accidentally step on one if you don’t pay attention. You’ve seen a few snakes over the years, and once, a fox. Rabbits, mostly from the back as their tails bob away. A black cat sometimes follows you near the end of your route, before you double back and head home. If you stop, it will rub itself against your shins. (It’s not Good to let your cat wander outside, the neighbors say on Facebook.) The sky delivers its own occasional surprises: shooting stars, heat lightning in the summertime, and the moon, which sometimes hangs so low and large that you try to take a picture, but it cannot make the transition from sky to phone screen. What you get is a pathetic echo. You can’t capture it.

Tonight there is none of that, or nothing you’ve noticed. You walk fast enough to breathe more deeply without getting winded. The uniform orderliness of the sprawling houses and neat lawns is nearly invisible. You’re lost in your own thoughts, the music in your headphones. You are fine, maybe not Good but still okay. Suddenly, something swoops low overhead, something large and fast, and something happens, and then it’s gone. You see the flap of wings, light-colored in the darkness. A hawk. It’s enough to stop you in your tracks, peering into the direction it vanished.

Then, something closer to you, slower. Floating, almost. You reach out your hand, and catch a feather. Small, perhaps four inches long, tan and striped with darker brown. Later, you’ll look it up and identify it as a secondary wing feather, and you’ll also learn that it’s against the law to keep it. Still, you do, feeling somehow like it was a gift. You don’t believe in magic or miracles, but you do believe in meaning: self-created anchors to things, events, people, feelings. For a moment, you were seen and acknowledged by the wildness everyone works so hard to keep at bay. It could have fallen anywhere, but it fell right into your hand.

It’s not Good, but you keep it. You tuck it away in a blank journal. It never touched the ground.

the funniest meltdown ive ever had was in college when i got so overstimulated that i could Not speak, including over text. one of my friends was trying to talk me through it but i was solely using emojis because they were easier than trying to come up with words so he started using primarily emojis as well just to make things feel balanced. this was not the Most effective strategy... until. he tried to ask me "you okay?" but the way he chose to do that was by sending "👉🏼👌🏼❓" and i was so shocked by suddenly being asked if i was dtf that i was like WHAT???? WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY TO ME?????????? and thus was verbal again

Please stop seeing politics as an identity and start seeing it as a collective means for change

I just think that 'animals are living intelligent creatures that have feelings and deserve to be respected' and 'when done properly farming is beneficial to both people and animals and there's nothing wrong with raising and killing animals for food, clothing, and other products' are concepts that very much can and should coexist

this is problematic of me (joke) but i really enjoy the splashing of french into english speech or writing. just adds a pizzazz

learning that self deprecation isnt cool and just makes the people around you uncomfortable unironically improved my mental health a lot. like if you just stop saying negative shit about yourself you will genuinely like yourself more and other people wont be repulsed by your attitude and you will have more friends. it's true.

I have had it with this likescolding. “Tumblr doesn’t have an algorithm so likes don’t actually do anything” motherfucker I am not clicking that heart to give some post better ~algorithmic visibility~ I am clicking that heart to help my internet friend microdose on serotonin as god fucking intended

okay we NEED to put “camp” up on a shelf where people can’t reach it too because i just saw someone call the mario movie camp like girl what in the fresh hell are you talking about 😭

public libraries in the usa offering free digital library cards to people not in their areas (as of october 2023):

brooklyn (13-21yo us residents)

seattle (13-26yo us residents)

boston (13-26yo us residents, EDIT: just commonly banned books)

los angeles (13-18yo california residents)

san diego (12-26yo us residents, not the whole collection just commonly banned books)

these books unbanned cards (unless otherwise stated) get you access to each library's complete libby/cloud library collection, no hoopla/kanopy/physical copies included.

ebook collections are expensive to maintain (many american libraries have annual fees for non-residents because of this) but because of an uptick in book banning (particularly brutal in mississippi last summer) larger libraries have opened their doors more, which is very kind of them!

i've used my seattle card for the last several months and their libby collection has about three times the books that my local library does, which is wonderful for accessing more niche titles or skipping a waiting list. would love to hear of similar ebook initiatives internationally!

i use library extension (firefox/chrome/edge compatible) to check all my collections (+ the internet archive) at once, works for several different countries highly recommend it.

spotify seems to be offering 15hrs/month of audiobook listening to premium subscribers and while that does seem useful if you're already paying and are after a new release with a long library waitlist, libraries are better for everything else.

the question, you see, is not ‘is it too ooc for this character to cry’ but rather ‘what circumstances would push this character to cry’

this is the whump wisdom, go forth and make that character cry

calling my lover "mine" but not in the way that my toothbrush or notebook are mine, mine in the way my neighborhood is mine, and also everybody else's, "mine" like mine to tend to, mine to care for, mine to love. "mine" not like possession but devotion.

pjo tv show episode 5 alignment:

i think that sometimes the best thing that you can do is remind yourself that there are beaches. lakes, rivers, and ponds. there are forests. little woods and meadows. there are canyons. gullies and mountain cliffs. there are rainy days. dry spells and scorching blue skies. that the world turns. changes as much as it repeats. that feeling slow today won't stop tomorrow's high tide. won't make july's blackberries any less ripe

Sex positivity is also about not calling Ace people prude and using virgin as an insult 👍 hope that helps

Do you think of me?