And Stars

[mathematikerin-freyja]

I think it would be really wonderful if seagulls were constructed more like bottles with a mystery inside. What I'm imagining is that were you to catch one, you could then unscrew its face and there would be a glowing gem nestled in some sort of socket. The Core of the Gull so to speak. Then you could swap that around with other seagulls, and after screwing the faces back on they would fly off as if nothing happened. Hm... Is this too esoteric, or do some of you see what I am getting at?

[astraque]

why am i always going to some fuckass location

[sweetashe]

the lonely vulture of sadness and devastation: I’m so sad I wish somebird would hug me…

the kind and welcoming vulture of affection:

[postarcadian]

@gymnogypscalifornianus

[cucurb]

hey guysss so unfortunately the rumors are true and im leaving the narrative. Buttt the good news is my absence will create such a gaping hole in your lives that it will become a sort of presence itself, and so in a way it will kind of be like i never left! But i am. Leaving just to be clear.

[gumy-shark]

playing stupid games but im really bad at them so im not even winning the stupid prizes

[thehumanwiki]

if someone was in a timeloop and started saying all of my dialogue before i said it i’d be so mad. like congratulations, you’ve repeated me over and over to the point where my free will is like that of a machine’s, to where i am nothing more than a glorified automated response generator to you and my personhood is but a lie. pray i don’t remember this loop or next time i’ll stab you, how’s that for predictable

[rabbiteclair]

scientists have recently announced that exoplanet HR 3499a is no longer believed to be potentially capable of supporting life, after new spectroscopic readings indicated that it doesn't even have a dishwasher. "i mean, it doesn't even have a fucking dishwasher," said the lead researcher. "I guess you could live there, but, like, would you really want to?"

[the-quasar-hero]

You can tell a lot about a person by entering their mind palace and encountering their greatest fears and darkest hopes in a labyrinth reflective of their subconscious thoughts.

[fer1972]

Portrait of a small boy reading by Gluyas Williams

[typingwithmyhandstied]

a friend with a boyfriend is a type of dead wife

[fluentisonus]

the thing you have to remember about catullus – and to his credit as a complex author I think he is aware of this & calls attention to is, although not from a 'feminist' angle obviously – is that however much he might write & play with his own patheticness & powerlessness, ultimately he as the author is has the last word as it were in the power dynamic, like he is the one in control of what is being said & so even when he is being cut down like a flower at the edge of a meadow he is the one writing lesbia cutting him down. which is still quite interesting that he would choose to write himself like this, in a sort of traditionally demeaning position, I think there is a lot to explore there, like it's really endlessly chewable. but you have to be aware at the back of your mind that catullus is (self awarely & also self admittedly) doing a sort of tricksy thing here wherein he is in control of what the reader reads (& even feels about it! cf. poem 16), and this has only been exacerbated by the fact that there is very little actual historically reliable information that survives about him or anyone else here. so like as much as he is being caught by lesbia in the poetic material he is catching her as the poet, and the reader too to a certain extent in that he is manipulating their perception. and then interestingly he is sort of putting the admission of that out there for you as the reader to catch him about it in turn. do you see what I mean

[folklorespring]

Fruit vendor in Tbilisi waiting for customers. 2005, Martin Roemers.

[bugthingsdaily]

Today's bug thing is this pair of horseshoe crab earrings from Bamboo Jewelry!

[une-poire-confite]

this morning i read this poem with a girl i tutor (who’s not a big fan of poetry) and she loved it. thank you paula bohince.

[ametoraeye]

[evilwizard]

one time i walked into God’s room when He wasn’t expecting me and He was kneeling by the foot of His bed praying. tf. who was He praying to ..?

[evilwizard]

i mean at least He wasn’t jacking off

[catilinas]

Similarity is the favourite verse form of nature. And no doubt Homer learned his love of simile not just by listening to poets, but by listening to grasshoppers. Or perhaps they were cicadas. The Homeric word τέττιγες gets translated into both insects. A group of old men was sitting by the Skaian Gates, no longer of fighting age, but excellent speakers, like cicadas in a thicket kneeling on the tips of trees send forth their flower-like voices. These ancient Trojans were sitting hunched there on the turret, and when they saw Helen approaching, sent forth their winged voices. What an extraordinary laminated simile, in which the voices of humans have wings, and the voices of insects are flower-like. According to the lexicon, λειριόεσσαν is an adjective formed from a lily. Liddell and Scott suggests their voices are 'lily-pale.' Richard Lattimore translates it as 'delicate.' Robert Fagles avoids the strangeness altogether, saying they were 'eloquent speakers still, clear as cicadas settled on treetops, lifting their voices through the forest, rising softly, dying away.' But none of these catches the Darwinian exactness of Homer, in which an old man can speak the same language as a cicada, speaking the same language as a lily. The likeness is full-bodied, cross-species, synaesthetic, ecological.

Alice Oswald, Anonymous and Onymous