Learning Devotion

and god said, "survive. and carry my perfume among the perishing."

[cactusflowerfemme]

“We were sittin’ on the mountaintop, where the cactus flowers grow...”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyroGeWi9zk 

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

the achilles scene in the odyssey is haunting tbh. the whole iliad being about men dying to have honor and glory to be remembered after death and achilles is just, just getting to the point where he believes maybe there’s more to life than dying and maybe he doesn’t want to lose his life in this pointless war and then him getting pulled into it anyway, dying the homeric hero he never wanted to be, then meeting odysseus in the underworld and telling him a slave’s lot would be better than his own because at least he would be alive

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

the odyssey as a direct refute to the entire iliad is insane. achilles ultimately choosing the short life with glory over the long one without. achilles choosing, painfully, to never go home. and it’s a mistake

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

odysseus is literally surrounded by the souls of heroes who died before him in glory and achilles looks at him and steps out of the iliad and into the odyssey and says it’s not worth it. it’s not worth it to not to go home.

[aalexan]

no the female character who is a masculine woman is not secretly a transgender man and yes you saying that she is is misogynistic <3

[snakeautistic]

People underestimate how much it fucks you up to be subtly excluded as a kid. I would try to talk to my classmates and be met with disinterest or annoyance. The one friend I had, who I clung to and nodded along to his every word, had other friends he liked just as much or more. And his other friends didn’t care for me at all.

I look back at pictures from the time and see how separated I was from them. I remember knowing I was different. I remember posing questions about the world to the girls playing next to me and realizing that they had never asked the same ones to themselves. That the ways we thought couldn’t be more different.

I kept myself amused with my own fanatical stories and musings in my head. I would wander the playground on a circular path, imagining a friend and being sorely disappointed when it didn’t feel as real as I’d hoped.

There was a bubble separating me from everyone else, thin, and nearly invisible, but with a pearly sheen you could catch under the right conditions. I knew it was there, they knew it was there, and it changed me

[bitstitchbitch]

my family is lucky enough to own a 26 acre mountain property, log cabin and all. Most people would go up there and think that it is fairly pristine nature. There’s the cabin, and a few dirt roads for 4-wheelers, but the surrounding woods look untouched.

But we actually carefully maintain that nature. We cut down the deadfall. We pull invasive plants. We trim the elderberry bushes. We get more animals than almost anywhere else on the mountain because we put up salt licks and water troughs.

some of these same things are true of national parks. A lot of places that you think of as “untouched wilderness” are influenced heavily by human care and maintenance. And this isn’t a bad thing. We are animals too. In many ways, our ecosystems depend on us to keep them healthy. Many “wild” plants that are useful for food or building materials are actually semi-domesticated because indigenous groups cared for them and encouraged their growth so they do better with human care.

we have a place in nature. We just need to be conscious of our actions.

[fictionadventurer]

It's a little crazy how much my philosophical worldview keeps boiling down to:

Everything is Cardinal's Map

Everything is Theology of the Body

Or to put it another way

The abstract exists and is beautiful and we as humans are constantly seeking it even if we can't sense it by material means

The abstract is reaching out to us and makes everything in our world a symbol for some greater meaning

Or to put it yet another way

There's a story beyond us

We are in the story

[womaninwinter-deactivated202503]

had a weird dream where I was arguing with someone about whether or not the Crucifixion is beautiful and they were like well “how do you define beauty” and dream me said “beauty is when something makes you want to do something good” and idk I think my subconscious was on to something there

[womaninwinter-deactivated202503]

obviously this raises the question as to how you define goodness, and dream me gave the example of the kind of self sacrifice inspired by the crucifixion as good actions and again I think she had a point: good is what makes you go out of yourself. Beauty brings you out of yourself

[dubioushonour]

Spin this wheel of ~300 AO3 tags three times.

Congratulations! The 4th dimension exists and you are their FAVORITE blorbo. The tags you got are from the most popular, most influential fanfic starring you. How are you feeling?

this is the best possible outcome for me

this is pretty good

this is fine. i guess.

this is terrible actually

they're assassinating my character

i'm suing the fourth dimension

Voting ended onFeb 13, 2025

[cactusflowerfemme]

Maybe if your daughters looked like you, you would be able to see your features as beautiful

What does it mean when someone is only beautiful because of love? What about second hand love? Could I be beautiful without relying on clawing my way into the heart first?

[cactusflowerfemme]

do you think God thinks you are ugly? you are fearfully and wonderfully made. praying that you are able to see yourself with even a fraction of the kindness that God sees you, because you are a beautiful and intentional part of His creation and His adopted child and heiress.

No, I don't think He thinks that, but He did know what He was doing when he put me in a society that considers most of my features to be ugly. I think that hurts: to know that He knew all the ramifications that come from being ugly in a culture that so highly prizes beauty, and yet still wanted me this way.

[cactusflowerfemme]

i hate that God made me ugly and i hate that i don't know why He did

[lucidloving]

Ada Limón, "Accident Report in the Tall, Tall Weeds" // SouthFloridaReporter.com // Wikipedia, "Baking Powder" // Caroline McCaughey (AARP), "8 Big Inventions Inspired by Love" // Wikipedia, "Band-Aid" // Jim Walsh, "What's the love story behind Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers?" // NYFA, "The History of Drive-In Movie Theaters" // Caroline McCaughey, ibid. // Sarah Ruhl, The Clean House

[tunisian]

even if you were a burden to bear i would gladly carry you. you are my friend

[butterflybi-deactivated20220418]

i love it when people are obsessed with their wives. it’s like yeah that’s literally what you’re supposed to do

[many-sparrows]

[why-bless-your-heart]

I think I saw something somewhere where Ursula K. le Guin (maybe?) said something like

Okay hold on let me start over

[why-bless-your-heart]

It came to me in a dream

[why-bless-your-heart]

It has been argued that epic or adventurous literature is male-dominated because it has its roots in the oral tradition of the brag or the boast. This makes story-telling a masculine art, and forces one to ask what story-telling looks like as a feminine art.

I would say that, while the boast may be an integral part of storytelling tradition, it is a root, not the root. I would go even further and argue that the foundation of storytelling is not self-aggrandizement, but pedagogy. The most ancient, enduring epics may be full of the accomplishments of men, but they survived because women tell stories to their children.

To answer the question then, what story-telling looks like as a feminine art, I would say it looks like storytelling. It looks like characters being confronted with trials and either overcoming them or succumbing, it looks like the story of Gilgamesh and Odysseus and Beowulf, it looks like an attempt to answer the question that every story is, at its core, concerned with: “How, then, should we live?”

[evermore-fashion]

Favourite Designs: Linda Friesen "The Ghost Gown" Haute Couture Gown