August

August arrives on a knife’s edge: In languid heatwaves and broken curfews In stolen glances from the passenger’s seat In the final breath of summer: the lovers’ last stand.

Hungry for warmth, it devours each balmy day – Savors the heat that burns its mouth in bloody sunsets – And kindles an autumn flame that scatters My summer love across the war-torn sky.

Like August, we are all of us starving: The walking wounded, half-crazed by longing, We will eat anything. How could we remember? Even rotten fruit is sweet on spoiled tongues.

Neither summer nor love remains at the end of August. The harvest moon whispers of lovers in past summer days, But to me, August evenings are for the heartbreakers: Beautiful, and bittersweet, and altogether unbearable.

Felt pretentious, might delete later. 

This is highkey in response to that one quote about August from @slavicafire but honestly, there’s something about the stillness of August that makes me feel decidedly uneasy and also so, so alive. It’s the fleeting transitory period, the unknown of the in-between, where summer has left but autumn has not yet arrived, and we know that the world is only holding its last breath before things start dying. I love it. I was just thinking of how it mirrored the way our desires inevitably destroy us every time. How love is both ruin and reconstruction. How we dive into it anyway. It’s anyone’s guess as to whether the happiness is worth the grief later on.

What is love?

socioeconomic compatibility

biological instinct

mutual self-interest

chemicals and coincidence

a human-made explanation of the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion

fate, destiny; an act of providence

none of the above

Current relationship status: looking for a partner in the 36 Questions experiment by Arthur Aron

Ruyi's ending gets me every single time. Her patience, her faith, her determination to see it out to the end. I don't doubt that she wanted vengeance, but I do think she also wanted peace and justice for those who had gone before. And that last exchange with Qianlong just breaks my heart. She knows she's dying. She wouldn't take him back even if she were healthy. She's realized that what they once had is gone. Here is a woman who was good, who wanted nothing but peace and the chance to live her life with the ones she loved, and yet was never allowed that. But she chose over and over to be kind and to keep on loving, and what I really love is that she never lost her self-respect and dignity. Her insistence on ending it on her own terms was bittersweet and tragic, to be sure, but there is some sort of closure in choosing and accepting your own end, I think.

Flowers bloom and flowers fall. All in their own time.

They really do.

“One day, if I reach one day, I’ll tell people what life was like back then, and they’ll ask why on earth I didn’t tell anyone. And I won’t have an answer for them. I don’t have one now. I have no reasons for these secrets. No one cares… No one looks at me hard enough… But really, I think I’ve just forgotten how to care. I don’t even know if I want rescuing anymore. And making excuses is exhausting.”

— broken thoughts

Kind of a fucked up thing to realize that if you didn't consistently remind people you were alive they'd go ahead and forget you exist

I ate a tsp of condensed milk and now I'm ready to fight god

everyone is WRONG for hating on untoasted bread and this is the hill I will die on

life is never as tragically meaningful and beautifully terrible as when you're playing the game of the living dead at 2am and the world is quiet and loneliness is the only thing you've ever known

No, I don't want to talk to you. Yes, I want to be sitting next to you as we're both engrossed in our favorite hobby. But not talking. Just the two of us doing our own thing, taking comfort in each other's presence. What do you not understand about that

I'm not saying I want my future partner to propose to me by sending me on a scavenger hunt of all our most significant memories that finally leads me to the exact place where we first met where our closest friends & family are waiting and Love Story by Taylor Swift is playing and they come out at exactly 2:57 and we slowly walk towards each other and meet in the middle and then they get down on one knee right at 3:14 and sing along to the rest of the song until the very last word and wait for me to say yes before breaking into the most breathtaking adorable smile I'd ever be lucky enough to love, but I am

Most days I acknowledge that I don't know much, but I can still take comfort in what I know and hold to be true. Other days: I am all-seeing, omniscient, deeply experienced in the highs and lows, the joys and pains of life. Aaaaaaaaaannnnnddd other days I watch a 20-something year old man wiggle his ass to Elvis Presley's "Hound Dog" in front of a group of highly excitable, mentally unstable female children and I question every single one of my past life choices

I can't decide which one is sadder: having love and realizing too late; having love but never doing anything about it because you were afraid; or having love and then watching as it slowly crumbles and decays into indifference and resentment, never to heal

If I get pregnant and my partner doesn't have the sense of humor to announce that our collab will be dropping in nine months (but also that they're ripping me off because I'm doing all the work) then what's the point

I'm sending positive vibes and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it

Spent the day working on a new project. Productivity is good while it lasts. Isn't it so rewarding to transform incoherent ideas into fully realized action plans? I just love the feeling of working on something you're truly passionate about. Riding that creative wave.

Me: an elite athlete, possessed of unparalleled grace and strength, capable of physical feats that the layman can only dream of doing

Also me: falls off the bed while rolling over, holds the railing with both hands when going down the stairs, regularly drops my phone right on my toes, blows the soup right off my fucking spoon, can't catch/throw anything to save my life