the ache of nostalgia

Georges Seurat.

“Responsibility to yourself means refusing to let others do your thinking, talking, and naming for you; it means learning to respect and use your own brains and instincts; hence, grappling with hard work. It means that you do not treat your body as a commodity with which to purchase superficial intimacy or economic security; for our bodies to be treated as objects, our minds are in mortal danger. It means insisting that those to whom you give your friendship and love are able to respect your mind. It means being able to say, with Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre: “I have an inward treasure born with me, which can keep me alive if all the extraneous delights should be withheld or offered only at a price I cannot afford to give.””

— Adrienne Rich, “Claiming an Education” (1977), On Lies, Secrets, and Silence (via sadladypoetssociety)

There is supposed to be a place where no one can reach you. Traditionally, the home, but now we settle for the ocean, the airplane, the summit of a mountain, the middle of a lake, the shower, the womb, the grave

– Lucie Brock-Broido, from “A Meadow”

- Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the wife of deceased firefighter Vasily Ignatenko, Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexeivich (transl. Keith Gessen)

I remember once sort of sitting down and thinking, ‘I am terribly depressed and this can not go on…’ and then I thought, ‘Well, you can do two things. You can kill yourself or you can get interested in absolutely everything.’ I read the newspaper every day; I read scientific books and geographical books and historical books and books in other languages, as well as the books that professionally I had to read, and suddenly the world became wonderful. 

AS Byatt, 1936-2023 (x)

Pleinair Paintings by Florian Herold

Chen Chen

give me a world you have taken the world i was tuesday

do it scared do it stupid do it badly whatever it is that's worth doing, that's worth anything at all, we do it. be it scared be it stupid be it badly. the sincerity remains the same.

im like if a girl thought she was irredeemable despite never having done anything that should make her feel this way

my hobbies? uhh.. peeling back the layers…. uncovering metaphors.. mirroring…..connecting dots…..stuff like that

this man’s description of his wife in a newspaper article is gonna make me cry

Safia Elhillo, from Spring

the fact that i still have to unlearn shame… like come on that’s literally the most embarrassing thing to not have unlearned yet