aych

[fenfable]

Deep in the forest

Portfolio

[proustitute]

Oh listen to these words I’m spitting out for you. My distance from you makes them louder.

Jorie Graham, “The Guardian Angel of the Private Life” (via proustitute)

[soothifying-sounds-asmr]

Goats Go Wild Over a Small Wheelbarrow of PAAsta via ryleeranch

[vangoghcore]

by peter_outdoor_

[aychgilder]

His real motive was one of the strongest known to humanity, the need to torment himself.

- Penelope Fitzgerald, The Blue Flower

I looked up the last quote I posted: July 2014. I have a few saved up.

[dappermouth]

Something in the wind has changed—it calls you by a different name.

[ovadrive]

[theremina]

Fuck, man… I just finished up a weeklong course of prednisone and this is basically what the inside of my brain feels like.

[molosserdogs]

Angel of death AKBASH…

[blackfashion]

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. New York, New York IG - @soouizz

[danchaon]

MY FAVORITE SONGS OF 2016

#6   Kevin Abstract,  “Empty”      

On the surface, Kevin Abstract’s “Empty” sounds like a mid-2000’s hip-hop/pop hit, but it soon reveals itself to be something much darker and deeper, a gorgeously heartfelt little jewel about the ache and agony of high school love.  Miraculously, it manages to be fun and funny while reaching surprising heights of anguish.

“��

[aychgilder]

See, and this one. What a lovely video, too.

[simply-canine]

A really interesting cross I discovered via Facebook: Afghan Hound x Doberman.

[gdfalksen]

Chiune Sugihara. This man saved 6000 Jews. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania. When the Nazis began rounding up Jews, Sugihara risked his life to start issuing unlawful travel visas to Jews. He hand-wrote them 18 hrs a day. The day his consulate closed and he had to evacuate, witnesses claim he was STILL writing visas and throwing from the train as he pulled away. He saved 6000 lives. The world didn’t know what he’d done until Israel honored him in 1985, the year before he died.

[bemusedlybespectacled]

Why can’t we have a movie about him?

[elasmata]

He was often called “Sempo”, an alternative reading of the characters of his first name, as that was easier for Westerners to pronounce.

His wife, Yukiko, was also a part of this; she is often credited with suggesting the plan. The Sugihara family was held in a Soviet POW camp for 18 months until the end of the war; within a year of returning home, Sugihara was asked to resign - officially due to downsizing, but most likely because the government disagreed with his actions.

He didn’t simply grant visas - he granted visas against direct orders, after attempting three times to receive permission from the Japanese Foreign Ministry and being turned down each time. He did not “misread” orders; he was in direct violation of them, with the encouragement and support of his wife.

He was honoured as Righteous Among the Nations in 1985, a year before he died in Kamakura; he and his descendants have also been granted permanent Israeli citizenship. He was also posthumously awarded the Life Saving Cross of Lithuania (1993); Commander’s Cross Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland (1996); and the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Order of Polonia Restituta (2007). Though not canonized, some Eastern Orthodox Christians recognize him as a saint.

Sugihara was born in Gifu on the first day of 1900, January 1. He achieved top marks in his schooling; his father wanted him to become a physician, but Sugihara wished to pursue learning English. He deliberately failed the exam by writing only his name and then entered Waseda, where he majored in English. He joined the Foreign Ministry after graduation and worked in the Manchurian Foreign Office in Harbin (where he learned Russian and German; he also converted to the Eastern Orthodox Church during this time). He resigned his post in protest over how the Japanese government treated the local Chinese citizens. He eventually married Yukiko Kikuchi, who would suggest and encourage his acts in Lithuania; they had four sons together. Chiune Sugihara passed away July 31, 1986, at the age of 86. Until her own passing in 2008, Yukiko continued as an ambassador of his legacy.

It is estimated that the Sugiharas saved between 6,000-10,000 Lithuanian and Polish Jewish people.

[returnofthejudai]

It’s a tragedy that the Sugiharas aren’t household names. They are among the greatest heroes of WWII. Is it because they were from an Axis Power? Is it because they aren’t European? I don’t know. But I’ve decided to always reblog them when they come across my dash. If I had the money, I would finance a movie about them.

[westsemiteblues]

He told an interviewer:

You want to know about my motivation, don’t you? Well. It is the kind of sentiments anyone would have when he actually sees refugees face to face, begging with tears in their eyes. He just cannot help but sympathize with them. Among the refugees were the elderly and women. They were so desperate that they went so far as to kiss my shoes, Yes, I actually witnessed such scenes with my own eyes. Also, I felt at that time, that the Japanese government did not have any uniform opinion in Tokyo. Some Japanese military leaders were just scared because of the pressure from the Nazis; while other officials in the Home Ministry were simply ambivalent.

People in Tokyo were not united. I felt it silly to deal with them. So, I made up my mind not to wait for their reply. I knew that somebody would surely complain about me in the future. But, I myself thought this would be the right thing to do. There is nothing wrong in saving many people’s lives….The spirit of humanity, philanthropy…neighborly friendship…with this spirit, I ventured to do what I did, confronting this most difficult situation—and because of this reason, I went ahead with redoubled courage.

He died in nearly complete obscurity in Japan. His neighbors were shocked when people from all over, including Israeli diplomatic personnel, showed up at quiet little Mr. Sugihara’s funeral.

[fahrlight]

I will forever reblog this, I wish more people would know about them!

[rhube]

I liked this before when it had way less information. Thank you, history-sharers.

[mousezilla]

Tucked away in a corner in L.A.’s Little Tokyo is a life-sized statue of Chiune, seated on a bench and smiling gently as he holds out a visa. 

The stone next to him bears a quote from the Talmud; “He who saves one life, saves the entire world.”  

I had no idea it existed until a few weeks ago, but it’s since become one of my favorite pieces of public art. 

[brainflossandmindfrills]

@evokerhythm @heytherehydrangea

[bernesemountaingoat]

trailing… by Alyat

[thenearsightedmonkey]

This is the scariest movie.

Halloween costume idea:  The Still Face

[aychgilder]

Saw a longer version of similar study at a trauma seminar. A year later, kids returning to the room the study took place in had increased, clear signs of distress and didn’t want to be there. From two minutes of non response, a year before.

[katiecoyle]

Thursday, October 27th, 2016

It’s a weird time to be doing what I’m doing. It’s a weird time to be huddled in a dark room beside a sleeping baby sighing in her crib, to be formulating my first real sentences in eight weeks in the short window before she will rouse, and smile, and coo, and eat. Sometimes I fear that as an adult she’ll come across a record of the year in which she was born and say, You thought it was a good idea to bring me into this? How can I ever explain myself? The hospital gave us a newspaper from the day she was born with a Trump headline, does it even matter at this point which, and I had the fleeting, solemn thought, We have to burn this before she sees. I’ve done nearly nothing but tend to my newborn daughter for almost two months, and so dispatches from the outside world come to me in tweets that I scroll through hazily while nursing, and they seem like bad jokes or very short pieces of very bleak dystopian fiction. Meanwhile my world is cozy and strange and small: blankets and milk, repeated performances of “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?,” and staring into my child’s bright, adorable eyes.

We lost our first baby and spent the next fifteen months completely terrified. Before we tried for another we had to make sure that neither of us carried the mutated gene that damaged Hawk’s heart. If one of us had it any baby we conceived would have a fifty-percent chance of having it; if one of us had it our own life expectancy would lower by a lot. We went to India not knowing. We waited two months after that. Hawk died in May, and it wasn’t until around 6 p.m. on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving that a geneticist called me and told me that neither of us were carriers. The mutation was random bad luck. After that a fog lifted for about as long as it took for me to find out I was pregnant, and then there was every ultrasound to fret over, every hour in which I didn’t feel her kick. I didn’t tell a lot of people I was pregnant because everyone naturally wants to believe that every pregnancy ends the way it’s supposed to, and I needed to remember that it wasn’t true. I have a baby now—a sweet, hungry, beautiful bean—but since I don’t carry that mutated gene I understand that the difference between her being here and her being somewhere else is only a bit of muscle in the heart that hardened the way it was supposed to. That’s all. The understanding makes life feel eternally precarious, but that’s okay, because it is. 

You thought it was a good idea to bring me into this? I did. I don’t think you can go through what we did and go on to try again unless you really, really believe that the world is a place worth living in. It has racists and war and demagogues, but it also has dogs and autumn afternoons and Mad Men, and dancing to music from Fiddler on the Roof at your brother’s wedding, and eating dumplings with your best friend on a rainy day. It has the tiniest socks you’ve ever seen. It has the capacity for extraordinary good luck, wherein you meet a man and watch That Thing You Do! with him, marry him, have a baby, and watch the man hold the baby, and watch the baby smile at the man. The world has baseball and Hamilton and Barack Obama and Christmas. 

And now it has Tessa, too.

[theverge]

Me trying to handle my responsibilities

[nprfreshair]

Will Toledo is a singer-songwriter who performs under the name Car Seat Headrest. He self-released 11 albums before signing to a major label, and his new collection is called Teens of Denial. Rock critic Ken Tucker says the new album is ambitious and passionate:

“It’s been said that Will Toledo took the name Car Seat Headrest because he recorded some of his first songs while sitting in his car, a refuge for some privacy. Still in his early 20s, Toledo sings exactly like you might expect a young man craving both solitude and connection with the world might sound: conflicted, moody, wry, depressed, and angry around the edges. Like a lot of good rock music, he makes his intense self-consciousness compelling, even exhilarating.” 

[aychgilder]

Yet to pick up the album, but I listened to "Something Soon” on repeat for days a while back.