Magpies bring me luck

Just a sad sad bloke searching for peace

[xenosagaepisodeone]

"vacations are good for people watching" is as obvious an observation as they come, but I've found that vacations are good in particular for observing the distinction between families who travel for mutual enrichment and families who simply do not. There are families who travel simply because hiring a babysitter would make an affordable vacation unaffordable. There are families who travel out of habit, aware on some level of the dwindling returns each trip brings but unwilling to confront what that means. There are families who travel because they believe that furnishing their lives with what amounts to a checklist of experiences will give the impression of roundedness and authenticity to their otherwise vacuous middle class living. There are families who travel because theyre running out of time and believe that "going away" will give them something they have otherwise been unable to fill their own lives with. There are families who travel to "get away" but ultimately cannot escape what they are. It's the Tolstoy quote about unhappy families but with the cumbersome social politics of 19th century Russia laid over an all inclusive resort. There is an Anna Karenina beneath every brunch buffet table, and its protective amber shell is being chipped away by "I'm hot and tired and bored" and "I don't like the food here"

[jewelleria]

the only person i'd run through an airport for is you.

antigone, sophocles / summer wars (2009) dir. mamoru hosoda / i’ll give you the sun, jandy nelson / elektra, sophocles / ruth madievsky / right now, gracie abrams / the archive of alternative endings, lindsey drager / the fall of the house of usher, steven berkoff / the replacement, brenna yovanoff / ? / fleabag (2016-2019) / practical magic, alice hoffman

[petitchouchou]

18th century mourning ring, traditionally gifted by close friends and family to the bereaved. This one is inscribed “John Thompson Mar 1773″. 

[i-was-today-years-old-when]

i learned that Romans were known to create tombs for their dogs and gave them epitaphs to remember them by. One such inscription read, “I am in tears, while carrying you to your last resting place as much as I rejoiced when bringing you home with my own hands 15 years ago.” (x)

[ntrider]

Why does love hurt so much

because being alive hurts and loving is the most alive you can be

[thenightlymirror]

James Baldwin.

[cwnerd12]

shit man this got me emotional

[mckitterick]

left: the Nebra sky disc, circa 1600 BCE, showing the Moon, Sun, and stars in gold on copper - the oldest depiction of the cosmos in the world

right: the Webb Space Telescope, July 2022, revealing thousands of baby galaxies forming in the early days of the universe - humankind’s deepest look into the sky

[thirdtimecharmed]

[ritikajyala]

My brother cracked my rib one morning and gave me half of his orange in the evening.

I remember being younger and sometimes wishing to be a single child, to have all the attention and gifts and time but when he was away from home for the first time, I remember crying and stroking his side of the sofa as if blurting out my first wish- for him to be home, without thinking twice, without a shadow of doubt. Even the genie cried. Growing up with a sibling is like being the only people on a stranded boat, constantly figuring out how you can live with them and questioning how you could ever live without them.

One evening, in a fit of anger, I told him how I never wanted him to be my brother and he yelled that he didn't ask for it either. The air smelled like kerosene and my chest was filled with arsenic. I was raging and threw his favorite toy aeroplane down the window, 7 stories of guilt and shame. He cried all night and I wanted to cut off my right hand, the hand that hurt my baby brother. I didn't know if he was ever going to forgive me or even talk to me. The next morning at breakfast, he didn't look at me or say a word, I felt like my chest was about to explode and guilt clouded my vision. But then, I felt a hand quietly holding half of an orange my way.

The only people on a stranded boat. How do you live with them? How could you ever live without them?

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

Edit: I added a visualizer for this on my YouTube channel. Check it out here

[katabasiss]

do you guys think jesus, the son of a carpenter, smelt the wood of the cross & temporarily thought of home

[noknowshame]

why is religious Christmas imagery all so joyful and pleasant? where is the inherent horror of the birth of Christ? A mother is handed her newborn child, wailing and innocent. Her hands come away sticky. Red. Simply by giving her son life she has already killed him. He is doomed from the beginning. Her love will not save him from suffering. Because the thing cradled in her arms is not a baby, it is a sacrifice: born amongst the other bleating animals whose blood will one day be spilled in the name of what demands it. the night is silent with anticipation. Mary, did you know? That your womb was also a grave?

[noknowshame]

[petrichara]

And no I don’t think love ever leaves because it’s been eight years since my dad died and he is in every thought and hope and dream. and when I think I can’t fix the computer he is here. and when I eat chocolate cake he is here. and when the sun glows at 3pm he is here. and he will always be here because his life made mine, and my life will be his epilogue

[ashstfu]

having so much love in your heart is beautiful and amazing right up until you’re alone in your bedroom clutching at your chest and whimpering like a wounded dog

[mobydyke]

the mountain goats make music for people who spent their entire lives convinced they would die before they were 17 except now they're 26 and they have a job and friends and hobbies and they're not sure what they're meant to do now that they've survived

[transfemmbeatrice]

“I don’t think that I accepted that I wasn’t gonna die young until I was 26 or 27. I really don’t think I fully...when I was 14, 15, 16, 17–I mean I knew as sure as I know that I am wearing green shoes that I was going to die before much happened. It was a certainty for me. And I had shaken off the directly suicidal urge by the time I was 21 or 22, but I still was pretty sure I was going to die pretty young, it really felt like an inevitability. It takes a long time to realize no, you’ve changed...if you shared those feelings with people at some point you go, ‘well, I guess we’re going to stick around.’ And it’s a funky thing to admit because there’s a part of your inner younger self that kind of judges you for that.”

—John Darnielle

[389]

German armor from the 16th century

[abyssa111]

Claude Paradin's Devises heroïques, 1557

[elucubrare]

one of the reasons why “what if people went on a road trip and it was weird” is one of the oldest story types is that a lot of sense of personhood has been, historically, tied to place. the weird road trip says “what if we went somewhere else, where no one knows us, and tried out being a different person”.

Odysseus, the famous liar, goes on a weird road trip & over the course of it becomes several different people, and then comes home & is all those people as well as himself, wearing the echoes of those other people

[toli-a]

What’s that quote? There are only two kinds of stories: a man goes on a journey, or a stranger comes to town.

[lentilsdotcom]

sibling relationships are so strange... like i love you. you will never understand me in a way that matters. we are the same person in drastically different ways. we are sewn together. we don't talk. we are attached at the hip. you wish i was never born. can i call you. let's eat together. i forgive you. etc