[notgreatbob]

''i wasted those years'' who cares. you lived the only life you could've lived in those moments

[callmezeemonic]

You did the best you could with all you had and knew. That was then. Here is now

[ancientsstudies]

Subway Hands by hannahlafolletteryan.

[aloo-bhorta]

Sometimes when I’m feeling especially homesick, I can feel it in every cell in my body. 

With every pump of my heart, something heavy presses against my ribs.

It sits in my throat. 

It threads itself through my veins and arteries. 

It moves with ever sinew and tendon when I walk. 

It rises and falls with each breath. 

This will be my fourth year living away from home, and the second country I’ve lived in by myself. 

People say it gets easier. 

It doesnt. 

It doesn’t get easier with every family photo I’m not in. 

It doesn’t get easier with very funeral and Eid I miss. 

And it doesn’t get easier knowing that I don’t even want to be here. 

In an ideal world, Bangladesh would not feel like a place I had to escape in order to survive. 

In an ideal world, it would not be shaped by systems carved out by colonialism and shaped by capitalism. 

Systems that hollowed out institutions, warped politics, and turned staying into something only the unfortunate do. 

There wouldn’t be this constant unrest. This exhaustion. This cultural erosion. This suffocating mix of sexism, religious extremism and economic precarity. 

I think that’s why I care so much about colonialism. Because it doesn’t just live in the journal articles I have to read for class. It lives in the fact that I am not allowed to imagine a future in the place that I am from. It lives in my body, in every single cell that resists insulin. 

And each and every single one of these cells ache when the roads are too quiet and the air is too clean. 

Sometimes the sirens in the middle of the night remind me of the ones in Dhaka. 

When I’m crossing the road before the little man turns green, I think I feel echoes of the same rush I felt when my mum would march into traffic with her orna fluttering in the wake of cars whizzing by, while I scurry behind her, trying to not get hit by one of them. 

The grey air laced with smoke from vapes and cigarettes tries to emulate Dhaka’s signature cocktail of carbon monoxide and dust. 

But it’s not the same. Obviously. 

Ekhankar rastar moyla gula beshi porishkar. Kono gondho uthe na. 

Ekhankar brishti beshi bhodro. Prottekdin brishti porleo, ekdino desher moton gach-kapano jhor hoy na. Matir theke kono shugondhi gran uthe na. 

Majhe majhe ami nijeke ghinna kori. 

Ami amar deshe thakte eibhabe kore bhalobashte pari nai keno? 

Kintu jokhon eirokom jhapay monkharap lage, eiguli kisui jay ashe na. 

My body remembers the sweat clinging to my skin. 

The noise. 

The colours. 

The substantiality of it all. 

And it stays. 

Whether I like it or not. 

The feeling ebbs and flows. 

Sometimes its too much to bear. 

Sometimes I can bury it in the back of my mind. 

But it’s never something I can just forget

[words-and-coffee]

Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated. They are a reminder, too, that one is not all things to all people.

Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake

[queensinchains]

THE NAMESAKE (2006) dir. Mira Nair

[divorce-enjoyer]

why go to the grocery store or to a restaurant when you can just get food delivered why go to the mall when you can get same day shipping on amazon why go to the library when you have kindle why make art when there’s ai why go to the cinema when you can stay at home and watch netflix. we are in a loneliness epidemic btw

[divorce-enjoyer]

the loneliness epidemic was invented by BIG SHIT to sell you more SHIT

[decompositie]

[max1461]

"I would never-"

You would if you were tired enough. You would if you were hungry enough. You would if your mind and body had been worn down enough, through pain or disease or toil or violent struggle. You might if you were put on the wrong medicine, or you got the wrong kind of head injury, or you were forced to choose between someone else and yourself. You might if your livelihood was staked on it, or all your hopes and dreams. You might if you didn't know what else to do, if it's what you were taught or if nobody taught you anything else.

I have not been worn down in most of these ways. I have lived a remarkably privileged life. But I have been worn down in some ways. And they were enough to teach me that in the wrong circumstances, any of us can become someone we don't want to be. It's worth keeping that in mind.

[diaryofandnwoman]

[irenthel]

Architecture of return, escape (The British Museum) 2022 Pigment and acrylic on deer hide, 36 x 55 in. (91.4 x 139.7 cm) Nicholas Galanin Born 1979, Tlingit/Unangax̂

"Galanin’s work engages themes of persistence, power, and survival in the face of settler colonialism and its legacies of institutional racism and collective amnesia. Here, the floor plan of the British Museum is painted over a blue field. Pictograms of baskets, masks, woven hats, weapons, tools, and textiles reference the contested objects held in the museum’s collection, while a red line maps an escape route for these examples of Indigenous cultural production. In many Native cultures, hide paintings relay histories across generations and objects embody lineages; in referencing both, Galanin is proposing a getaway plan for his ancestors."

[singing-bowl]

thinking about how ursula k leguin said "what goes too long unchanged destroys itself. The forest is forever because it dies and dies and so lives" and how everyday i wake up slightly different and i can feel myself shed the skin of who i used to be slowly, slowly, until i look back and can scarcely recognise who i was... but also she is still a part of me, part of the leaf litter and the humus, supporting me as i send new roots down and new leaves stretching up to the sunlight

[persianmom-deactivated20251026]

don’t abandon joy because it is brief. don’t commit to solitude because happiness is fleeting. it’s okay that good things do not last forever. it’s okay to simply enjoy a thing for as long as you have it.

[okthatsgreat]

saw a video that was like “everybody comment what you did today so we can see how everyone experienced something different” and the comments have me tearing up on this train. what the fuckkkk. the human experience

[okthatsgreat]

mannn. what ever

[teaboot]

Alright kids say it with me

My thoughts don’t make me a bad person

My feelings don’t make me a bad person

My thoughts, feelings, and impulses only exist inside my head, and none of it matters unless I act on it

Nobody can see my thoughts or emotions

The only things anyone can see and judge me on are my actions

There’s no such thing as a thought crime

thank u

[ferrantte]

kahaniyaan: vibha mehta, dhyany, and parineet kaur for ganga fashions, ph. tarun kalyani

[lelif]

on survival

-// @aridante // @orivu // @buzzkillgirls // ? // ? // richard siken// @cemeterything // moomin, tove jansson// @disenchanted-killjoy // isn't that enough, shawn mendes// @ prettytheyswag on twitter// @ coletyumuch on twitter// ? // ? // bird by bird, anne lamott// undertale// @strawberrycircuits

[elisecairo]

[boycritter]

maybe i like my tech a little bit inconvenient

[boycritter]

maybe i like pulling out my debit card instead of using apple pay. maybe i like untangling my wired headphones. maybe i like typing something into the search bar instead of using siri or whatever. maybe i like curating my own social media feeds over an algorithm. i just don’t think everything has to be perfectly streamlined and efficient i like it when things feel tethered to the real world.

[wedarkacademia]

Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.

Bonnie Burstow