hi just a reminder this was the decade that lemony snicket wrote ‘I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch everything go wrong’ and I think it is the greatest love poem in existence
connections between the humane, the monstrous, and the divine:
1. “Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable–your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers–and pretend they’re across the room. It’s too ugly to be human. It’s too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves.” (richard siken, from editor’s pages: black telephone)
2. “Who has not asked himself at some time or other: am I a monster or is this what it means to be a person?” (clarice lispector, the hour of the star)
3. “This beast, this angel is both you and I.” (adrienne rich, from the complete poems: this beast, this angel)
4. “Frankenstein not only gives form to the dialetic of monstrosity itself and raises questions about the pleasures and dangers of textual production, it also demands a rethinking of the entire Gothic genre in terms of who rather than what is the object of terror. By focusing upon the body as the locus of fear, Shelley’s novel suggests that it is people (or at least bodies) who terrify people, not ghosts or gods, devils or monks, windswept castles or labyrinthine monasteries.” (j. halberstam, skin shows: gothic horror and the technology of monsters)
5. “Monsters exist because they are part of the divine plan, and in the horrible features of those same monsters the power of the creator is revealed.” (umberto eco, the name of the rose)
6. “But girls contain multitudes. We are made up of so many odd parts. The reason that the monster in Frankenstein is so memorable is that, when it opens its mouth, out comes the voice of an alienated teenage girl.” (heather o’neill, portrait of the artist as a young corpse)
7. “God should have made girls lethal when he made monsters of men.” (elisabeth hewer, wishing for birds)
8. “I think the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.” (fyodor dostoevsky, the brothers karamazov)
push yourself to get up before the rest of the world - start with 7am, then 6am, then 5:30am. go to the nearest hill with a big coat and a scarf and watch the sun rise.
push yourself to fall asleep earlier - start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable.
get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. sit and eat it and do nothing else.
stretch. start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. stretch your fingers. stretch everything.
buy a 1L water bottle. start with pushing yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice.
buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. no detail is too small.
strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear draw into the washing machine. put a massive scoop of scented fabric softener in there and wash. make your bed in full.
organise your room. fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. light a beautiful candle.
have a luxurious shower with your favourite music playing. wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. lather your whole body in moisturiser, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck.
push yourself to go for a walk. take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. bring your dog and observe the dog’s behaviour. realise you can learn from your dog.
message old friends with personal jokes. reminisce. suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. push yourself to follow through.
think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? find a book about it and read it. there is a book about literally everything.
become the person you would ideally fall in love with. let cars merge into your lane when driving. pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. stick your tongue out at babies. compliment people on their cute clothes. challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day. then two. then a week. walk with a straight posture. look people in the eye. ask people about their story. talk to acquaintances so they become friends.
lie in the sunshine. daydream about the life you would lead if failure wasn’t a thing. open your eyes. take small steps to make it happen for you.
“Maybe a damned good night’s sleep will bring me back to a gentle sanity. But at the moment, I look about this room and, like myself, it’s all in disarray: things fallen out of place, cluttered, jumbled, lost, knocked over and I can’t put it straight, don’t want to. Perhaps living through these petty days will get us ready for the dangerous ones.”
— Charles Bukowski, The Last Night of the Earth Poems
escapes for when you feel anxious
exploring a flowery town with cute villagers
drinking a milkshake in an empty diner at 3am
real life that feels dreamlike
cute sunflower field dates
in love with the universe
softest love songs
living inside an 80s tv show
drinking tea on a cozy raining morning
you’re an angsty teen in a coming-of-age film
summer road trip in the west coast
vacation in san francisco
living in an old French film
stargazing and contemplating the meaning of life
late night drives in a 90’s movie
watching a beautiful sunset over the beach with someone you love
feeling dazed and drifting off under dreamlike sunlight
going to the beach in a camper van in 1960′s california
collecting whimsical music-boxes and taking pictures of clouds in paris
falling asleep on the moon
city lights at midnight
half dreaming,half awake in faded 60s sunlight
remembering someone else’s memories like they’re your own
being the guardian of a snowy forest who befriends wolves and takes care of baby fawns
being in a vintage fairytale
wandering the avenues of vintage New York City
living in a cinematic landscape and watching over a magnificent scenery
exploring an art museum
eating fruit in a small italian seaside town
hey not to be a killjoy but can y’all spread the carrd about what’s going on in Poland
obvious warning for homophobia, transphobia, etc. in the link above.
I was born there. I have countless of LGBT friends there, and the fact that this is happening in the year 2020 is inhumane and terrifying.
If you’re Polish, vote in the upcoming election. If you’re not polish, please spread the carrd around.
I am not an ideology. Nie jestem ideologią.
what does your bio mean? "the sea was never blue" ?
Homer used two adjectives to describe aspects of the colour blue: kuaneos, to denote a dark shade of blue merging into black; and glaukos, to describe a sort of ‘blue-grey’, notably used in Athena’s epithet glaukopis, her ‘grey-gleaming eyes’. He describes the sky as big, starry, or of iron or bronze (because of its solid fixity). The tints of a rough sea range from ‘whitish’ (polios) and ‘blue-grey’ (glaukos) to deep blue and almost black (kuaneos, melas). The sea in its calm expanse is said to be ‘pansy-like’ (ioeides), ‘wine-like’ (oinops), or purple (porphureos). But whether sea or sky, it is never just ‘blue’. In fact, within the entirety of ancient Greek literature you cannot find a single pure blue sea or sky.
— The Sea Was Never Blue, Maria Michela Sassi
What, from a cursory glance, appears blue generally has more to say. You lift a precious stone to the sunlight and it lights up, it refracts, but there’s always a side you can’t see. If you think you’ve thought of it all, think a little longer. There’s always more to consider.
—female rage
? // medusa by caravaggio // gregory radionov // artemisia gentileschi // monstrous flesh: on women’s bodies in horror by rebecca harknis-cross // carrie (1976) // corruption by camille norton // midsommar (2019) // helen of troy does countertop dancing by margaret atwood // medusa in her throne by reza sedhi