Latest Posts by my-dearest-giulia - Page 3

His pillow was wet with salty tears and his eyes were swollen from crying as he woke up. His chapped lips stung with the taste of saltwater. Diana called him.

“What time is it,” he asked, his voice cracking. He hoped she would think he was just tired. She did not.

“It’s just about 8 o’clock. What’s wrong?”

He didn’t say anything but simply hung up. He walked to the South Meadow again, slower than last time. He did not see Theo next to him. After a few minutes sitting at the bench next to the field, he heard a voice behind him.

“You’ll be late to chapel,” it said quietly, worried. Theo popped up in front of him. He tried his best to smile. Theo did not mask the concerned expression on his own face. He noticed a stray tear right under Alexander’s eye, and knelt down to wipe it away. The feeling of his hand on Alexander’s face made his skin tingle. He started to smile honestly. Theo sat down next to him quietly.

It started to rain, and Theo stood up from the bench.

“We’ll be late,” he repeated simply. Alexander walked behind him to chapel.

Alexander woke early; he had left the window open, and fragrant pear blossoms were now floating in and depositing themselves on his face and chest. He thought of yesterday evening and smiled, picking up the little, white flowers one by one and dropping them onto the floor of his room. He stood up and dressed quickly. He picked up his bookbag and nearly ran out the door, but stopped to fuss over his hair, blowing in the spring breeze that came in from the half-open window. He gave up and went down the stairs, skipping every other step. With his bag carelessly flung over his shoulder, he started walking towards the South Meadow, breathing in the sweet air. He hadn’t realised how he felt towards Theo, not now, not yet. All he did was smile and look at the clouds running their slow race across the sky. Before he knew it, Theo fell into step beside him. He kept smiling.

“Good morning, Alexander.” Hearing his name on Theo’s lips awoke him from his reverie.

“Morning,” he said, suppressing his smile so that only the left corner of his mouth turned upwards.

They walked in silence for a bit, passing the few boys that were awake at this early hour. Alexander noticed the way Theo’s curls fell onto his forehead, the way his eyebrows scrunched up and his lips parted slightly when he seemed to be thinking about something, the way he examined Alexander’s face when he thought he couldn't tell. Their eyes met more than once, sweet moments of horror intertwined with whatever that feeling you get when you smile like an idiot is called.

They sat down at a bench near the meadow, and Alexander opened his book. Theo, however, pulled out a sketchbook and started drawing something that Alexander couldn’t see. Before he knew it, the noise built up, and Alexander opened his phone to check the time. They ran to assembly together, laughing the whole way. Everything felt fuzzy for that entire day. They smiled at each other in English, and Alexander noticed how often they agreed on arguments. He also noticed how Theo looked so deeply at the words on the pages of whatever piece of literature they were examining, as if he were trying to piece together a puzzle without all of the pieces. He always looked for a deeper meaning behind every word so quickly, looking for some sort of wonder where Alexander didn’t think to search.

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.

the poetry students

as requested by @shout-into-the-voiddd

reciting stanzas of your favorite poems under the light of the moon

pages covered in notes and annotations

repeating words aloud to feel how they roll through your mouth

a love for beauty and the many ways it can be expressed

quiet moments outside, listening to the sounds of nature

paying attention to little things others might miss

understanding the importance of diction and figurative language

studying the lives of famous poets, seeing how their worlds impacted their writing

the crunch of autumn leaves underfoot

an appreciation for those who can use a few words to communicate something infinitely complicated

long hours curled up reading in your favorite chair

feeling a sense of camaraderie between yourself and your favorite poets

thin poetry volumes stacked on your shelves

a love for metaphor and simile

reading the works of Langston Hughes and Emily Dickinson, Jamaica Kincaid and Lord Byron, appreciating the infinite variety

a messy desk, drawers filled with an array of papers

awe over how mere words on a page can transmit deep emotion

cloudy mornings

a notebook filled with half-formed poems, lines and stanzas borne from a moment of inspiration

warming your fingers on a mug of hot tea

seeking a way to capture the human condition in ink on the page

using poetry to make sense of your world and experiences

thinking about how orpheus turning to look back at eurydice isn’t a sign of mortal frailness but a sign of love

last book that I…

bought: the secret history, donna tartt

borrowed: letters home, sylvia plath

was gifted: infinite jest, david foster wallace

started: uno, nessuno e centomila, l. pirandello

finished: song of achilles, madeline miller

didn’t finish: emma, jane austen

last book that I;

bought: stone blind, natalie haynes

borrowed: the collected poems of sylvia plath

was gifted: a set of antique 1830-1850s novels

started: elektra, jennifer saint

finished: a thousand ships, natalie haynes

gave 5 stars to: tales from the estate, sadie davidson

gave 2 stars to: war of the worlds, h. g. wells

didn't finish: if we were villains, m. l. rio

tagging anyone who wants to take part

subject aesthetics masterpost

completed:

humanities and social sciences

history

political science

psychology

economics

sociology

law

forensics & criminology

anthropology

philosophy

archaeology

linguistics

classics

folklore studies

theology & religious studies

international relations

women’s studies

east asian studies

natural sciences

chemistry

biology

physics

astronomy

botany

wildlife science

paleontology

geology

marine biology

mathematics and logic

mathematics

computer science

statistics

engineering

engineering

computer engineering

bioengineering

electrical engineering

mechanical engineering

civil engineering

chemical engineering

aerospace engineering

agricultural engineering

art 

art & art history

music

dance

photography

film

theater

design

language

language

french

japanese

chinese

translation & interpretation 

arabic

literature

literature

creative writing

poetry

journalism

medicine

medicine & anatomy

pharmacy

veterinary science

nursing

occupational therapy

respiratory therapy

other

education

geography

library management

architecture

cryptography

in progress/requested:

humanities and social sciences

european studies

africana studies

postcolonial studies

social work

communications

marketing

finance & accounting

medieval studies

viking studies

psycholinguistics

indian classical students

natural sciences 

gemmology

astrophysics

biophysics

toxicology

environmental studies/environmental science

cognitive science

data science

horology

oceanography

microbiology

robotics & biotechnology

quantum physics

art 

interior design

fashion & fashion history

double bass

languages

hebrew

greek

latin

tamil

hindi

german

italian

sanskrit

urdu

applied linguistics

spanish

korean

medicine

remote medicine

nutrition

opticianry

epidemiology/public health

oncology studies

psychiatry

neuroscience

dentistry

diagnostics

speech language therapy

literature

comparative literature

russian literature 

other

game design

city planning

teaching assistants/TAs

food technology

port & maritime management

veterinary forensics

student athlete

thanatology

political ecology

cybersecurity

the cryptography students

messy handwriting, rushed scribbles on the page

the satisfaction of untangling a particularly difficult substitution cipher

coming up with your own codes 

half-finished crossword puzzles tucked into your bag

seeing patterns everywhere you look

analyzing how information travels from person to person through the internet

the familiar weight of a calculator in your hand

a fascination with puzzles and mysteries

secrets told in hushed whispers

valuing privacy and security

reading about the history of codes and codebreaking

applying elegant, pure math to the real world

the shining rotors of an antique cipher machine

a chessboard, frozen in the middle of an unfinished game

the elegance of a well-constructed cipher, easy to encode but difficult to break

passing encoded notes back and forth with your friends

a stack of thriller novels on your bookshelf

watching old spy movies, laughing at the inaccuracies

a powerful sense of determination, refusing to give up

understanding the importance of cryptography in the internet age

I've been thinking about this for weeks:

Gorgeous by Taylor Swift, but it's Neil Perry when meeting one Todd Anderson, because, goddamn, how can someone be that damn pretty. it shouldn't be allowed.

at first he thinks it's envy. it must be.

todd anderson, gorgeous, gorgeous, todd anderson, who is not only beautiful, but so talented, and poetic, and somehow he manages to make tripping over a stair look graceful !

but then, if it truly is envy, why does he love it ?

why does he love the shine in his eyes, and the peeking prose that hides under his lips ?

he's furious. todd anderson is so gorgeous it hurts, and he can't take it. he loves it. he can't breathe. he's never felt this nervous in his life before.

and who knows, if he actually is just painfully in love with those ocean blue eyes looking in his, that's nobody's business but his own. and maybe todd's. with his stupid, gorgeous face.

“It isn’t Spring until you can plant your foot on twelve daisies.”

- Cambridgeshire Saying

Source: Botanical Folktales of Britain and Ireland

Quotes from famous writers (on the process of creating)

1. "You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it." - Octavia E. Butler

2. "Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it's the only way you can do anything really good." - William Faulkner

3. "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." - Toni Morrison

4. "I'm writing a first draft and reminding myself that I'm simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles." - Shannon Hale

5. "Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer." - Barbara Kingsolver

6. "It is perfectly okay to write garbage as long as you edit brilliantly." - C. J. Cherryh

7. "Write your first draft with your heart. Rewrite with your head." - Mike Rich

8. "If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write." - Somerset Maugham

9. "If the book is true, it will find an audience that is meant to read it." - Wally Lamb

11. "You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write." - Annie Proulx

12. "As a writer, you should not judge, you should understand." - Ernest Hemingway

13. ''One thing that helps is to give myself permission to write badly. I tell myself that I’m going to do my five or 10 pages no matter what, and that I can always tear them up the following morning if I want. I’ll have lost nothing—writing and tearing up five pages would leave me no further behind than if I took the day off.'' - Lawrence Block

14. ''Remember: Plot is no more than footprints left in the snow after your characters have run by on their way to incredible destinations.'' - Ray Bradbury

15. ''This is how you do it: You sit down at the keyboard and you put one word after another until it’s done. It’s that easy, and that hard.'' - Neil Gaiman

16. ''Read, read, read. Read everything – trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.'' - William Faulkner

17. ''You reach deep down and bring up what feels absolutely authentic to you as you move along with the book, but you don’t know everything about it. You can’t.'' - Anne Rice

18. ''There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.'' - W. Somerset Maugham

19. ''I do not over-intellectualise the production process. I try to keep it simple: Tell the damned story.'' - Tom Clancy

20. ''People say, ‘What advice do you have for people who want to be writers?’ I say, they don’t really need advice, they know they want to be writers, and they’re gonna do it. Those people who know that they really want to do this and are cut out for it, they know it.'' - R.L. Stine

21. ''Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.'' - Barbara Kingsolver

22. ''No person who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.'' - CS Lewis

Photo booth photos shared by Alice Oseman

current favourite words:

• esoteric: likely to be understood or enjoyed by only a few people with a special knowledge or interest

• hubris (greek tragedy): excessive pride towards or defiance of the gods, leading to nemesis

• trepidation: great worry or fear about something unpleasant that may happen

• hedonistic: based on the belief that pleasure is the most important thing in life

• decadence: moral or cultural decline as characterized by excessive indulgence in pleasure or luxury

• writhe: respond with great emotional or physical discomfort to (a violent or unpleasant feeling or thought)

• acerbic: (of a person or what they say) critical in a direct and rather cruel way

• sanguine: blood red

- Sylvia Plath, from 'Ariel'

Dear June, please be good to me.

This is what I found when I searched Giulia on Pinterest.

Elegance, for me, is the manifestation of sophistication and tranquility of the soul, knowing how to beautify your life inside and out—to emanate grace, love, compassion, and wisdom that will touch those that surround you.

— Frances Q. (Musing Diary of a Delicate Petal)

Linguistics, my beloved.

Interviewer: What difference in usage would you point out in these three languages [Russian, English, French], these three instruments?

Nabokov: Naunces. If you take framboise in French, for example, it’s a scarlet color, a very red color. In English, the word raspberry is rather dull, with perhaps a little brown or violet. A rather cold color. In Russian it’s a burst of light, malinovoe; the word has associations of brilliance, of gaiety, of ringing bells. How can you translate that?

- Vladimir Nabokov, Think, Write, Speak: Uncollected Essays, Reviews, Interviews and Letters to the Editor. Bryan Boyd and Anastasia Tolstoy, Eds.

A Poem of Many Poems

To write, my darling

It is the only way, truly,

To be heard forever

I write because-

Because

No one can take it away

From me

Or from the world

As the poets say,

Littera scripta manet

The written word remains

Indefinitely

Even when not a soul

Can understand a word

Of what I’ve written,

The letters will be there,

The sounds,

The beauty

That there is in words,

In language

I will be a relic,

A fossil preserved in the golden amber

Of eternity

And words

The poet is as the musician is,

Forever in sound

Words and are simply that,

Beautiful melody

I went to see Mozart’s Don Giovanni in the estates theatre, where it had originally debuted in 1788.

*drowns myself in romanticized idealizations*

She read books like she ran into the woods, each tree consuming her slowly as she disappeared into the green.

When sunflowers can't find the sun,

They turn to face each other.

Lately, it feels like the sun has been hiding,

So I've been turning to face you;

You haven't been looking back.

Maybe you've found the sun where I can't see it?

I'll follow your eyes,

Follow you to the sun.

To write is to cradle myth & memory both & emerge with the fact

of your flesh. I praise the first book that touched me because it was beautiful,

because it was written by a stranger born looking just a little like me & that made him beautiful, & in it

I find every person I’ve loved into godhood tunnelling through the page & beyond the echo

of those precious trees allowing breath: their shadows blurring into a wave, rich & urgent, to greet me.

— Natalie Wee, from “Self-Portrait as Pop Culture Reference,” Beast at Every Threshold

Hmmm maybe not Mr. Elton, but Mr. Knightley?

This very morning, my history professor picked up the book I was reading, looked me in the eye, and said “Don’t read Wuthering Heights.” He then proceeded to walk away and continue class.

i love knowledge. i love knowing even the smallest of things. i love translating text and finding hidden meanings. it doesn't matter what it is, learning something new every day has always been a source of true happiness.

I haven’t finished Emma yet, but I have a theory. I’ve had this theory ever since we first saw Emma, Harriet, and Mr. Elton in a room together, but I’m just sharing it now. I think Mr. Elton might like Emma and not Harriet? No, I’m nearly positive. I guess we’ll see?

This very morning, my history professor picked up the book I was reading, looked me in the eye, and said “Don’t read Wuthering Heights.” He then proceeded to walk away and continue class.

Ahem, I may or may not have read far too many novels recently. How do I know this? I have now developed a slight crush on my academic rival in school. Goodness.