[qualia]

let's be real

[thelovejournals]

Won’t we be quite the pair?—you with your bad heart, me with my bad head. Together, though, we might have something worthwhile.

Zelda Fitzgerald, from a Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, 20 Dec. 1940  (via soracities)

[circumstanceanddisposition-deac]

I think that if one is faced by inevitable destruction — if a house is falling upon you, for instance — one must feel a great longing to sit down, close one’s eyes and wait, come what may …

Fyodor Dostoevsky The Idiot (via thiscorrosion)

[rubyetc]

GREAT

[maureenjohnsonbooks]

This.

[redqueenofbookland]

The bigger the issue, the smaller you write. Remember that. You don’t write about the horrors of war. No. You write about a kid’s burnt socks lying on the road. You pick the smallest manageable part of the big thing, and you work off the resonance.

Richard Price (via redqueenofbookland)

[midsummerday]

When it feels scary to jump, that’s exactly when you jump. Otherwise you end up staying the same place your whole life. And that I can’t do.

A Most Violent Year, J.C. Chandor (via mishproductions)

[lifeinpoetry]

they teach you to love hunger; / to turn your stomach into an unfilled grave / so you will always have enough space to bury things

Scherezade Siobhan, from “day 13: what you won’t let them do,”Bone Tongue: A Collection of Poetry (via lifeinpoetry)

[bang--katzenjammer]

This is the year that my fashion taste will almost fully transition over to Beck. 2015 Beck, preferably, not early 90′s Beck. I guess what I’m saying is I’m going to start wearing more serapes, hats, and sunglasses.

[stephenearp]

Highbury bridge, Gidleigh.

[othersashas]

We carry the lives we’ve imagined as we carry the lives we have, and sometimes a reckoning comes of all the lives we have lost.

From H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald. (via othersashas)

[voxsart]

[mishproductions]

Steve McQueen

[bang--katzenjammer]

#lifegoals

[bang--katzenjammer]

ac(H)e

I'm crossing state lines

between solid, liquid, and gas

tasteless

odorless

I weigh less

and less

on your mind as time passes.

With every sip and every breath

you can collapse my lungs without nearing my chest.

I can combust at the slightest touch,

on par, en pointe,

your preparing knife slices the worst.

Every line leaving

every fire feeding into flame

every net loss posing as net gain

I knock myself out

and douse my own name.

When want turns to need

and fire to thirst,

when the tables stop turning

ask why I never once came first.

::

[bang--katzenjammer]

XY

I took a sort of personality test at work on Thursday detailing our most influential motivator based on a series of questions. While I'm too realistic to believe that humans are simple enough, or perhaps not even "simple" enough but black and white enough to boil down to anything less than grey, it did sort of pose a philosophy of X being your motivator and Y being the cost. With my current employment, not even line of work as it's nothing I studied before, everything boils down to the Y. What does it cost? How much does it cost? Why? Why Y. Do it the same, but better. Do it the same, but free. I take everyone's Y and justify it with an X. Why? Because this is what you want. Bottom line? If it's free, you're the product.

My results told me two things X) Growth Y) Me

You're viewed as self-centered and private, often neglecting meaningful relationships for personal development. You need privacy and time to retreat to recharge. While often level-headed, if denied your privacy, you will react with anger. When you constantly seek knowledge and to find the truth and to keep bettering your understanding of your surroundings, you will ultimately be the cost of your own curiosity. This motivator and cost will run you ragged. Your personal development stunted by your physical inability to keep up. 

Currently, I work diligently at something I don't even care for, in a city I've grown out of, in a room that isn't my own, and in my spare time I try to foster a relationship with a partner, amidst trying to temper a restless anxiety and ceaseless depression. My free time feels as if it never belongs to me and my muscles will never stop beating fast enough to just relax. For someone that went to school to be a "Writer", to share their opinions and understandings with the world, I sure do a good deal of hiding.

Of the few relationships I have, I can count on my one hand the amount of people I actively keep up with and plan to know until I die. I haven't seen them all in quite a while and sometimes we don't speak for months, but I love them just as much as when we shared more time together. Maybe I was born this way, maybe I'm a product of my environment, my generation, my economic class. For the past two and a half years my life has been hinging on a yearning to move back to Chicago. Just as it was three years ago, there would be poverty, fatigue, and a deep loneliness but my desire to learn and grow make the cost not seem a large enough deterrent. Maybe all this planning, all this forethought, is moving the lowly pawn into the right place. The odds are about as good as beating a computer at Chess. I suppose for me, the odds are beating myself.

On this Sunday evening, oh great Tumblr void, I guess I wanted to call out a few things and start holding myself more accountable. When you look so long at the bottom line you become cross-eyed and lose interest even in yourself. Invest in what brings you joy. I want to put more stock in and double my self-worth. Time to go back to basics. Starting here, starting with words.

[larmoyante]

Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.

Albert Camus, The Fall (via canadianvogue)

[bang--katzenjammer]

dryspell

There has to be more than this.

[bang--katzenjammer]

And I must be insane to go skating over your name and by tracing it twice I fell through the ice Of Alice There's only Alice

Tom Waits

[bang--katzenjammer]

how much?

There's no currency for sorrow

It's still just paper in your hand

and metal in your mouth.

It burns a hole in your pocket

and will find a way out

because darling copper doesn't float

unless you fashion yourself a boat

copper doesn't float

doesn't fight

doesn't give a fuck

who's holding it

but it'll cost you

it'll cost you where it hurts

where the sun don't shine

because a dollar nine

is just a dollar nine

this time.

[bang--katzenjammer]

about drowning on dry land

I took a week off work for self-discovery and a reaffirmation of beliefs...

And instead I end up with masochism and self-deprecation.

I channel inwards looking for some sort of solid state to grab a hold of, only to find waves. Where most "wander" content with a lack of consistency or ultimate benefit, I find myself wading, willingly stepping in too deep. I'm drowning. Sputtering up incoherency and insecurities and everything I tried so hard to avoid. This isn't even logical. I'm consciously watching myself lose oxygen and helplessly battling paralysis. I've already burned the candle in every angle imaginable and I don't have enough left in me to stay afloat. I acquiesce to the gentle ambivalence of the waves. When you're already in the thick of it, what's the difference between sinking and swimming if there isn't a way out?

It's no wonder I keep myself perpetually moving. When I'm going from task to task, from opportunity to completion, I don't have time to analyze if those tasks are even worth doing. When you take the time to question your choices and direction, and you realize you not only have no idea what you're doing but you have even more time to keep considering your short-comings? That's quite possibly drowning.