Latest Posts by lrs35 - Page 11

“reasons to not kiss him: 1. you weren’t raised to love tender. 2. when he’s around all you do is tremble. when he’s around you want to get on your knees. look how much power he has over you. it’s dangerous. 3. he’s too good at forgiving and you’re too good at violence. 4. you know what they say about monsters. you know what happens to the boys who love them. are you going to do that to him? 5. your hands don’t know how to be gentle. think about the last beautiful thing that shattered in your palms. the fresh rosebuds crumbling between your fingers like a bruise. you wolf-boy, you war machine. you wouldn’t know how to hold something magic and not destroy it. 6. if you hurt him it might kill you 7. if you hurt him you might kill yourself. 8. you are very bad at rehabilitation. this is one addiction you’d fail to give up. he’s going to ruin you for all other kisses and all other boys and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to forget his name. 9. you still aren’t sure he isn’t a dream. 10. if you kiss him, you might wake up.reasons to kiss him: 1. because he’s beautiful. 2. because he asked. 3. because he preceded please with, i’m not afraid of you.”

— yes & no // natalie wee (via wondersmithinc)

A display from a smalltown second hand bookstore. What has been found in books.

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

advocate for weird and pathetic girls

A.F. Vandevorst installation for Arnhem Mode Biennale 2011

“A girl sleeping in a hospital bed in her A.F. Vandevorst dress. But here, the girl as well as the mattress and pillow are made out of candle wax. Once lit, what starts as a perfect image will slowly melt and perish during the biennale.”

The 12 full moons of 2022 by loonarpix

“You don’t meet the people you love, you recognize them.”

― Anna Gavalda, “Life, Only Better” , trans. Tina Kover

“You and I know each other in our bones”

― Kurt Vonnegut, from a letter to Nanny Vonnegut 

“but everyone had this patina

  of slightly bruised longing, this shimmer of

  I think I knew you when we were children,

  this look of I’ve loved you ever since you

were born

  and probably longer than that”

― Paul Hostovsky, from “Everyone was Beautiful,” Dear Truth (Main Street Rag, 2009)

“He’s been here in my heart before I even knew him. Understand? He’s always been here. Always.”

― Sandra Cisneros , from Woman at Hollering Creek: Stories; “Never Marry a Mexican,”

“You came into my life–not as one comes to visit…but as one comes to a kingdom where all the rivers have been waiting for your reflection, all the roads, for your steps…”

— Vladimir Nabokov, in a letter to Véra Slonim (1923), Letters to Véra

“I love you. I feel as though we were never strangers, you and I, not even for a moment.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, from a letter to Mathilde Trampedach

“Eventually soulmates meet, for they have the same hiding place.”

— Robert Brault

“Here when I say “I never want to be without you,”

somewhere else I am saying

“I never want to be without you again.” And when I touch you

in each of the places we meet in all of the lives we are,

it’s with hands that are dying and resurrected.

When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life,

in each place and forever.

— Bob Hicok, Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem

“She said that she had been searching for my eyes in the crowd because she felt as if she were talking to my heart.”

— Audre Lorde, from “Zami: A New Spelling of my Name,” published c. 1982

“Who knows? perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us yesterday, separate, in the evening…”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from You who never arrived (tr. by Stephen Mitchell); Uncollected Poems: 1913–1918

This is my aesthetic. I've found it at last. mountain road signs bearing sexual puns.

a really little animated black cat with giant eyes and no other discernible features

some articles i enjoyed recently (faves are bolded) 

the genesis of blame, london review of books

the narcissism of queer influencer activists, gawker

there’s no moral imperative to be miserable, james greig

the cult of the imperfect, umberto eco

susanna clarke’s world of interiors, the new yorker

your camera roll contains a masterpiece, the new yorker

are you a baby? a litmus test, haley nahman on substack

prestige television and the moral life, article & podcast ep

how tv became respectable without getting better, current affairs

the cultural revisionism history, gawker

have we forgotten how to read critically?, dame magazine

found images, real life mag

nostalgia for nostalgia, real life mag

on internet & technology

google search is dying, dkb on substack

what lies beneath, real life mag

how the tiktok algorithm figures out your deepest desires, the wall street journal

the great offline, real life mag

nameless feeling, real life mag

i’m not there, real life mag

Dear December,

please. bro please. please. bro please. please. just. dude. please. just a break. let me have one break. dude please, im begging you man, im already down, don’t kick me. bro please-

nah cause i knew this reminded me of something

autumn in art [winter]

vincent van gogh / natasha tarasova / arthur rackham / john william waterhouse / carl friedrich deiker / jasper francis cropsey / john atkinson grimshaw / loré pemberton

hi my reader friends lithub has a new syllabi section that has some great (u guessed it!) syllabi from much beloved writers like ocean vuong and ross gay here’s the full list that i have already added half of to my tbr:

ekphrastic poetry with victoria chang (featuring works of john ashbery, joy harjo, paul tran)

the literature of obsession with julia may jonas (obsession as transformation, destruction, catharsis and form)

place, space and landscape with alexandra kleeman (featuring didion, okorafor and hernan diaz)

lyric research with ross gay (books that combine research with an “I” like nelson’s bluets or christle’s the crying book)

hybrid poetry with ocean vuong (traditions, innovations and possibilities featuring bhanu kapil, rimbaud, clifton)

multigenre experiments in form with paul lisicky (for writing that explores connections between genres)

reading about writers with peter ho davies (books that teach the craft and give writing advice, think ‘the outline’ trilogy)

speculative women with lina maria ferreira cabeza-vanegas (a look at speculative works by women writers like jemisin, butler, k le guin)

writers and the world with viet thanh nguyen (rankine, baldwin, and coates)

sports and contemporary writing with sam lipsyte (exactly what it says on the tin)

What people think why i became a bookbinder: Oh she wants to explore her artistic horizon with those pretty leather bound books of hers. She even gives them out as gifts to her friends. It most likely helps her with anxiety or maybe she just wanted a more special costume made notebook.

Why I actually became a bookbinder: I just illegally downloaded and printed out several of my favourite fanfics and books and started binding them into books cuz I love reading them but looking at screens for too long gives me headaches.

Stained glass

Mushroom or art?

the water reflection of the bridge

open a new window somewhere in the world. 

— Silas Denver Melvin, from GRIT: a poetry collection

PASTEL BEIGE AESTHETIC.

Once I stop procrastinating and starts reading 365 pages books in two days again then it's all over for everyone.

Midnights is for the girls who worked hard to get a life of their own, but now feel empty, it's the album you listen to when you're alone in the kitchen with no partner to cook with, no friends to go out with, no parents to comfort you. It's for the jo march girls, who gave up everything and everyone and pretend like it's alright but cry themselves to sleep every night, it's for the girls who stare at the ceiling for hours after coming home, it's for the masterminds, the people pleasers, for the girls who think they're unlovable, it's for the autumn/winter girls, it's for the girls who love rain and gloom, it's for the girls who read the most gut wrenching books to feel emotions, it's the ultimate sad girl album.

Embroidered watch faces

i can only relate to people who are complete loners & afraid of everything 

Aging Gracefully

Y'all ever think about how children's media is the only media to really put priority to friendship (ex: the power of friendship) and how once you grow up media starts to shift towards a focus on romantic love and sexual relationships and how that kind of puts out this idea that valuing friendship is a childish thing you need to grow out of and replace with romance and sex cause I do.

why did God give me these battles (getting dressed and leaving the house)