bucolics anonymous

[adobecreativesuite]

Danielle’s blog entry on deadjournal from 2002 while she was on ecstasy in 8th grade

[bucolics-anonymous]

7/20/26

Last days in Athens spent sitting around tiny tables crowded with glasses of lemonade, water bottles, cups of coffee, carafes of wine. Fielded many questions about U.S. politics, mainly midterms. I always feel like an elephant abroad. Got the blues about going home. Our driver to the airport was a LeBron James superfan from Crete. Still slightly jetlagged today but mostly a headache. This afternoon we’re picking up keys to a 2BR. Same building, a few floors down. A writing/guest room, the last item on my Material Desires List. How tempting it can be to believe we earned this life. The outrageous allure of deserve.

[clarabeau]

“Down on your knees, Achilles. Farther down. Now forward on your hands and put your face into the dirt, And scrub it to and fro. Grief has you by the hair with one And with the forceps of its other hand Uses your mouth to trowel the dogshit up; Watches you lift your arms to Heaven; and then Pounces and screws your nose into the filth. Gods have plucked drawstrings from your head, And from the templates of your upper lip Modelled their bows. Not now. Not since Your grieving reaches out and pistol-whips That envied face, until Frightened to bear your black, backbreaking agony alone, You sank, throat back, thrown back, your voice Thrown out across the sea to reach your Source.”

— War Music [Down on your knees, Achilles], by Christopher Logue. (via exempli-gratia)

[bucolics-anonymous]

Frank Bidart

[bucolics-anonymous]

“The young and healthy-minded do not readily entertain fear. Even a child-victim (people talk of child-victims nowadays, just as they talk of land-surveyors or mothers-in-law, but I use the hyphen with reluctance; it is like the stripe, a symbol of some hideous rank) — even the victimized child is not in terror at every hour of the day; there are always occasions when its tormentors are cheerful and kindly. Perhaps the mouse, between one blow and the next, has respite enough to appreciate the softness of a cat's paw.

Among all the torms of absurd courage, the courage of girls is outstanding. Otherwise there would be fewer marriages and still less of the wild ventures that override everything, even marriage. All that can be said is that if so many girls put their hands into the hairy hand, give their lips to the exasperated convulsion of gluttonous lips and watch without alarm the huge, unknown, male shadow on the wall, it is that the promptings of sexual curiosity are potent in their ears. In a few hours an unscrupulous man will transform an ignorant girl into a prodigy of licentiousness. Disgust will not deter her; disgust has never been a hindrance. Like morality, it comes later. I once wrote: ‘Dignity is a man's fault.’ I would have done better to write: ‘Squeamishness is not a woman's virtue.’

A consuming sensual audacity drives too many impatient little beauties into the arms of Lotharios half spoiled by time, and it is with them that, remembering my own youth, I have my quarrel. The seducer does not even have to take trouble; his mettlesome prey is afraid of nothing — at first! In fact she is often surprised: ‘And is that all? Isn't there anything else people do? At least we can begin again, can't we?’ As long as her compliance or her curiosity lasts, she does not see her instructor clearly. Ah! if only she would pay more heed to the shadow on the wall — Priapus! looming huge in the lamplight, the moon-light. The shadow dwindles and is presently revealed as the figure of an already ageing man with blueish eyes, a veiled and impenetrable glance, a terrifying gift for tears, a marvellously husky voice, whose stout body is strangely light and quick, who is hard as an eiderdown stuffed with flints. Such a rich assortment of conflicting subleties, such a variety of traps!”

—Colette, My Apprenticeships.

[huariqueje]

Untitled   -  Lars Elling, 2016.

Norwegian,b.1966-

Egg tempera paint on canvas , 170 x 170 cm.

[bucolics-anonymous]

7/11/26

Attended my first public screening for the short film I co-wrote. If you need to see it, you’ll find it on your own. I double-dog-dared myself to sit thru the entire thing but had to sneak off and smoke the last of my 3 Vacation Cigarettes once the narration started. Still, given I originally didn’t want my name on the script, given I know our particular ecosystem to be teeming with the most insufferable haters, showing up at all was a big deal for me. A few ppl were suspiciously effusive, but the overall reception was warm and all seemed to agree Danae’s soundtrack whips ass.

[bucolics-anonymous]

I am about to do something scary! If it goes okay, I’ll tell you about it. If it goes poorly, we may omit it from the record.

[bucolics-anonymous]

Once the swelling went down, A. counted 43 mosquito bites on the backs of my legs???? Literally How??????????

[rivalryflyer]

Keeper – from life

Emily Brontë

24 April, 1838

Keeper and Emily were devoted to one another, and the inhabitants of Haworth were well used to the sight of the dog and his mistress striding out together. Following Emily’s death, Keeper walked alongside the mourners at her funeral, following her coffin to the vault, and continued to make daily visits.

Collars were part of the legal obligation of the dog tax. Keeper’s reputation for ferocity was legendary in Haworth and his collar gives some indication of his size and power.

[bucolics-anonymous]

Terracotta group of two girls playing a game known as ephedrismos.

Late 4th–early 3rd century BCE, Corinthian.

[bucolics-anonymous]

I have an idea for a novelty centaur t-shirt that could be sold in virtually any tourist shop in Greece and I can’t tell too much bc some rando might use AI to create it, make 2 million $$, and plagiarism trauma 2008 would be renewed *calculates w/o adjusting for inflation* a thousandfold. But the back says “If you can read this, the nymph fell off.”

[bucolics-anonymous]

Back from Pelion. 5 days in the mountains for the “summer camp” associated with [international conference]. Like a joke: how many critical theorists can you fit in a Peugeot? Seminars in either stuffy 19th-century rooms with chessboard ceilings or the garden of an octogenarian analyst. Feeling stupid, staying quiet. Sweet smell of butter-and-onion wafting thru the open window, sour rainrot underneath. All meals from a single taverna: grilled sujuk, yogurt with thyme honey, huge slabs of feta. Tables in the village square, conversation flitting from English to Greek to French. The familiar cadence of one child taunting another, identifiable across languages. A striped kitten in protracted combat with a dead cicada. Horrible social anxiety. I felt a leaf fall into my hair, but it was a small praying mantis. All of this like a dream; I’m glad it’s over.

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

the boy from Two Serious Ladies would be great at sending asks and replying to posts on here.

[bucolics-anonymous]

Envoi

Frank Bidart

“If it resists me, I know it's real—”

a friend said. I thought of you ... When I said,

“I feel too much. I can't stand what I feel”

I meant, as always, facing you.—You're real;

and smile at me no less woundedly, dead.

If it resists me, I know it's real.

Now no act of Mind,—or Will,—can reveal

the secret to un-say all we once said ...

I feel too much. I can't stand what I feel.

The only way we stumbled to the Real

was through failure; outrage; betrayals; dread.

If it resists me, I know it's real.

Is the only salvation through what's real?

But each book ... reads me—; who remains unread.

I feel too much. I can't stand what I feel.

Mother, I didn't forgive you. Conceal

unreal forgiving. Show me your face in fury—; not dead

If it resists me, I know it's real.

I feel too much. I can't stand what I feel.

[jareckiworld]

Younguk Yi — "A portrait of a dog who, having resolved no longer to cower, pauses on the brink of attack" (acrylic on linen, 2025)

[bucolics-anonymous]

Work denied us the 12-month contract they’ve been dangling since March but in doing so they have approved our long lunches, monthly illnesses, and 90-minute workdays…

#positivementalattitude