Acies Instructa

terrarum dominum pone supercilium I like the Classics, hockey, and other shit, too. Find my hockey musings at filppadelphia or at vegasshittyknights.

[vaeputodeusfio]

On this day: January 1, 42 BCE

Julius Caesar was formally deified as Divus Iulius by the Roman Senate.

[aciesinstructa]

I kissed you

the moment the lightning

struck.

I wanted to know,

with bright certainty,

that for the rest

of your life

every time you heard

thunder,

you would taste

my lips.

Tyler Knott Gregson, Typewriter Series #812

[aciesinstructa]

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

any experience,your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and

my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility:whose texture

compels me with the colour of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens;only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

E E Cummings

[aciesinstructa]

Evening Solace

THE human heart has hidden treasures,

In secret kept, in silence sealed;–

The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures,

Whose charms were broken if revealed.

And days may pass in gay confusion,

And nights in rosy riot fly,

While, lost in Fame's or Wealth's illusion,

The memory of the Past may die.

But, there are hours of lonely musing,

Such as in evening silence come,

When, soft as birds their pinions closing,

The heart's best feelings gather home.

Then in our souls there seems to languish

A tender grief that is not woe;

And thoughts that once wrung groans of anguish,

Now cause but some mild tears to flow.

And feelings, once as strong as passions,

Float softly back–a faded dream;

Our own sharp griefs and wild sensations,

The tale of others' sufferings seem.

Oh ! when the heart is freshly bleeding,

How longs it for that time to be,

When, through the mist of years receding,

Its woes but live in reverie !

And it can dwell on moonlight glimmer,

On evening shade and loneliness;

And, while the sky grows dim and dimmer,

Feel no untold and strange distress–

Only a deeper impulse given

By lonely hour and darkened room,

To solemn thoughts that soar to heaven,

Seeking a life and world to come.

- Charlotte Brontë, as Currer Bell

[aciesinstructa]

One Art

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three loved houses went.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident

the art of losing’s not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

- Elizabeth Bishop

[microbrkfst]

Advent Time of Modern Madonnas // special thanks to adamosgood

BUY PRINTS

[octopuscato]

What I’ve learnt from GoT

Dany: You’re doomed to be like your parents. Even if you never knew them. If they were terrible people, you’ll be as well. There’s no rising above this, there is no other way.  Jaime: There’s no escaping horrible relationships, and there’s no bettering yourself. You’re doomed to go back to what you used to be, no matter how far you came. Theon: As a trauma survivor, you’ve got no place in this world. It doesn’t matter if you were able to rebuild yourself from nothing, that after all the trauma you went through, you managed to find yourself. They might mourn you when you die, but there’s no place among people for you.

Sansa: The only way to be strong is to become like your abusers. Having ideals and principles makes you stupid, growth is not learning to see see reality for what it is while deciding to stay true to yourself, it’s throwing away every shred of your personality and becoming exactly what you used to hate. Sandor: You can’t heal. You can’t decide to leave your abuser behind. You have to have your hate and revenge, even if it kills you. (No, his self-awareness and what he told Arya don’t make it any better.)

Tyrion: It’s not worth it to believe in anything or anyone. Better stay a drunk cynic - you had it right from the beginning.

Grey Worm: In the end, you become what they tried to make you, a killing machine without mercy for innocents. There’s no escape.

Missandei: Once they’ve got you in chains, you will die in chains. They’re someone else’s chains than your first masters’, but they’re chains nonetheless.

Jon: Decent people are stupid and wilfully ignorant. Wanting peace is naivety, wanting people to try and work together is the height of ridiculous.

Probably forgot a hell of a lot of characters and ‘lessons’, but I think I’ve got enough for now. I’m just so tired of ‘grimdark’ stuff, and idk what narrative purpose any of this serves other than ‘everything’s futile and the world is a shit place’.

[finelythreadedsky]

thinking about youth and loss and crushed flowers

[coveredwithsnow]

roses are red, violets are blue

[aciesinstructa]

To Jane: The Invitation

Best and brightest, come away!

Fairer far than this fair Day,

Which, like thee to those in sorrow,

Comes to bid a sweet good-morrow

To the rough Year just awake

In its cradle on the brake.

The Brightest hour of unborn Spring,

Through the winter wandering,

Found, it seems, the halcyon Morn

To hoar February born.

Bending from Heaven, in azure mirth,

It kissed the forehead of the Earth,

And smiled upon the silent sea,

And bade the frozen streams be free,

And waked to music all their fountains,

And breathed upon the frozen mountains,

And like a prophetess of May

Strewed flowers upon the barren way,

Making the wintry world appear

Like one on whom thou smilest, dear.

Away, away, from men and towns,

To the wild wood and the downs—

To the silent wilderness

Where the soul need not repress

Its music lest it should not find

An echo in another’s mind.

While the touch of Nature’s art

Harmonizes heart to heart.

I leave this notice on my door

For each accustomed visitor:—

“I am gone into the fields

To take what this sweet hour yields;—

Reflection, you may come tomorrow,

Sit by the fireside with Sorrow.—

You with the unpaid bill, Despair,—

You, tiresome verse-reciter, Care,—

I will pay you in the grave,—

Death will listen to your stave.

Expectation too, be off!

Today is for itself enough;

Hope, in pity mock not Woe

With smiles, nor follow where I go;

Long having lived on thy sweet food,

At length I find one moment’s good

After long pain—with all your love,

This you never told me of.”

Radiant Sister of the Day,

Awake! arise! And come away!

To the wild woods and the plains,

And the pools where winter rains

Image all their roof of leaves,

Where the pine its garland weaves

Of sapless green, and ivy dun

Round stems that never kiss the sun:

Where the lawns and pastures be,

And the sandhills of the sea:—

Where the melting hoar-frost wets

The daisy-star that never sets,

And wind-flowers, and violets,

Which yet join not scent to hue,

Crown the pale year weak and new;

When the night is left behind

In the deep east, dun and blind,

And the blue noon is over us,

And the multitudinous

Billows murmur at our feet,

Where the earth and ocean meet,

And all things seem only one

In the universal sun.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley

[w-byers]

a compilation in honour of our first christmas without vine.

[pearl-likes-pi]

WHY ARE YOU RUNNIG

[livefromphilly]

[theancientwayoflife]

~ Apollo Sauroktonos (“Lisard-killer”).

Date: Roman copy after a bronze original ca. 350 B.C. by Praxiteles

Provenance: Rome, Vatican Museums, Pius-Clementine Museum, Gallery of statues, 62 (Musei Vaticani, Museo Pio-Clementino, Galleria delle statue)

[imperium-romanum]

[thoodleoo]

ladies if he:

never responds to your texts

abuses our patience

eludes us with his madness

boasts himself about with unbridled audacity

lives even though the senate and the consul see what plans he has taken up

not just lives, but comes into the senate, is a participant in the public council, and marks out each and every one of us for slaughter with his eyes

he’s not your man. he’s lucius sergius catilina

[deadpinkss]

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