patmcgrathreal on ig
We’re each of us alone, to be sure. What can you do but hold your hand out in the dark?
Ursula K. Le Guin, from “Nine Lives”, in The Wind’s Twelve Quarters (via antigonick)
“She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris.”
— Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Tired of people talking about sex like Whatevvverrr get your head shrunken and attach it to a keychain
[” – Men’s letters are proverbially uninteresting and uncommunicative – ”]
Charlotte Brontë, in a letter to Ellen Nussey, dated 7 November 1854
Marco Bozzato by Sofia Goncharenko – Haze Magazine (Winter 2020)
When you pick up a sword for the first time you will be slow and awkward. This is frustrating, but refuse the temptation to try and become a “faster” fencer. Chasing after speed is like trying to catch smoke. If you try and pursue speed, all you will accomplish is haste. Haste is the enemy of 1st class fencing.
Speed is a lie the untrained mind tells itself when it sees an action it cannot follow. The truth is a combination of timing, control, and fluidity. Fluid motion, even done slowly, will always arrive before a hasty strike. Control will allow you to move without wasteful motion that will slow you down. Timing will eliminate the need to move fast almost entirely. There is no need to get somewhere fast so long as you get there at the right time.
demon, after possessing me: now that i have control over y-
me: y'know.. this is actually kind of hot, if you think about it.. romantic, even. in a way
demon: *immediately exorcizes itself*
“Medusa lost her beauty—or rather, it was taken from her. Beauty is always something you can lose. Women’s beauty is seen as something separate from us, something we owe but never own: We are its stewards, not its beneficiaries. We tend it like a garden where we do not live. Oh, but ugliness—ugliness is always yours. Almost everyone has some innate kernel of grotesquerie; even fashion models (I’ve heard) tend to look a bit strange and froggish in person, having been gifted with naturally level faces that pool light luminously instead of breaking it into shards. And everyone has the ability to mine their ugliness, to emphasize and magnify it, to distort even those parts of themselves that fall within acceptable bounds. Where beauty is narrow and constrained, ugliness is an entire galaxy, a myriad of sparkling paths that lurch crazily away from the ideal. There are so few ways to look perfect, but there are thousands of ways to look monstrous, surprising, upsetting, outlandish, or odd. Thousands of stories to tell in dozens of languages: the languages of strong features or weak chins, the languages of garish makeup and weird haircuts and startling clothes, fat and bony and hairy languages, the languages of any kind of beauty that’s not white. Nose languages, eyebrow languages, piercing and tattoo languages, languages of blemish and birthmark and scar. When you give up trying to declare yourself acceptable, there are so many new things to say.”
— What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness?, Jess Zimmerman (via xshayarsha)
Detail: The Fallen Angel, 2007, by Arantzazu Martinez | If you are sensitive to the majestic beauty and delicacy of this painting, don’t go searching for his head. Just enjoy the little things about life.