Prose And Poems:

sometimes i read a phrase in a poem or a story or i see the clouds amble in the sky traced by sunlight or i hear a specific combination of notes on a piano and i just get so overwhelmed with a really specific feeling that i can't really name but i know that this feeling is so human and so tender at its core and that i am a tiny little part of a world so delightfully rich with sensations and i exist to experience this very feeling because it stems from the pure human love for coexistence with the world

Last night, I told my mother "I wish I was dead" in a fit of rage and winter clouded her eyes. But it wasn't white and it wasn't quiet, it resembled something like helplessness and rage. She was in pain and I knew I hurt her. I wanted to say something, anything, but how do you withdraw a declaration of war? How do you stop the bombs that already destroyed homelands? In that moment I remembered how she always told me that when she was a kid, she was too afraid to sleep with the lights on. Not because she was afraid of monsters, but because she feared her grandmother would die. Because when you're a kid, not seeing it means it doesn't exist anymore. I saw the winter in her eyes again and I knew I had switched off the light, she wasn't angry, she was afraid.

And I also remembered how she always told me I'd always be 3 years old for her, always a child, and for the first time, I heard in the voice of a three year old "I wish I was dead". My heart broke. And I wanted to hug her and hold her, tell her I was sorry, that I didn't mean it. Before I could move a hand, she left the room. The entire evening, I saw myself as she saw me, a 3 year old child. I saw the child hurt herself and cry herself to sleep every week, fight her friends with her tiny hands and two ponytails, I saw her depression and her anxiety, I saw her yell "I wish I was dead" and I knew. I knew. I wanted to shout through the walls, yell and cry and tell my mother that now I KNEW, but I didn't. I wept and wept until I heard a quiet knock and a soft familiar voice whispered, "Dinner is ready".

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

i love the rare book room at my university

21|06|2022

2/30 days of self care

Self care things I did today:

read first thing in the morning

went on a walk in the morning (while listening to an audiobook)

didn't force myself to study when I wasn't focusing anymore, instead I turned to another productive, but more creative project.

Journaled

Today went well, the combination of reading right after I wake up, as I drink my tea, and then going for a walk before studying is working amazingly, I feel very relaxed when I start my daily tasks. Today I continued working on those historiographical articles I have been reading and annotating. I started working on the last one I had downloaded, it's quite long, and mid-morning I wasn't focusing at all on it. I decided not to force myself since I am not fully back at my normal energy levels, and instead I started working on a creative project. I am creating a reading journal I will be gifting at the end of the month. Working on something creative while listening to music felt regenerating. In the afternoon I continued reading the article, and then I planned my tasks for tomorrow. I also did my daily practice of Irish on duolingo, and posted this reading update.

tranquilstudy's studyblr challenge // day 6

Today I am grateful for having listened to my body

What have been some things that have changed for you this month? Are they big things, little things? How do you feel about these changes? How do you feel about change in general?

In general I do not deal very well with change, I never have. Although I have gotten better with the years chance scares me, plus I am a very habit based person in general, which doesn't help. As I was saying I have been doing better with the years, I have accepted the fact that often change is for the better, so I feel like I am (slowly) growing.

🎵: Running Up That Hill covered by Rain Paris

Alexander’s golden hair shone in the glass sunlight, a moment so perfect it seemed it could fracture at the smallest breath. His eyes looked like green crystals, flicks of blue emerging in the sun.

Alexander didn’t notice this, but Theo did, gazing up at the window. He looked back down at his tattered copy of the Iliad, wondering what book Alexander was reading. The sun was setting, making the world look like a haze of pink and purple. Theo looked at the cotton candy clouds, unaware that Alexander was looking right down at him, sitting on the bench next to the road. Alexander closed his book, Jane Austen’s Emma, and smiled a little half-smile, looking at the way the orange sky reflected off of Theo’s eyes. Those eyes flicked to his, Alexander turning away a few seconds too late, the grin disappearing from his face. Theo’s smile, on the other hand, only widened. Alexander chided himself for his incompetence and looked over at the door of his room, still seeing those gilded curls. He blinked quickly, trying to get them out of his vision. He looked back down at the sidewalk; the boy had gone from the wooden bench. He forced himself to look back at his book.

Cambridge, Nov 4 2017

Details: Seascape, Alfred Thompson Bricher, 1890

Icarus Also Flew

You might look at my life

You might look at a moment of it

You might look at a year

a decade

a century

a millennia

You know I am not to be gone

I will be remembered

My life may look bleak,

My poems laced with sadness.

I look back on them now,

Pretty Little Messages to (sorry I can’t

share this name) and (or this one)—

And to the rain.

But, if you looked at a moment,

A day, even.

Oh, would you see.

Descartes and,

Appalling and,

Hunchback and,

Natalia and,

A Boy and—

Each is my name for a moment.

Together, a name for myself.

Icarus also flew.