Do I dare disturb the Universe?

"Find someone who has a life that you want and figure out how they got it. Read books, pick your role models wisely, find out what they did and do it." -Lana del Rey

[for-her-madness]

I thought I was done loving lost boys but every time you come soaring into my waiting window with your pointy hat and pixie dust, I find that it doesn’t take too much energy to conjure happy thoughts when you are always ready to make me fly. On mornings when I wake up to find you spent and sprawled on my bedroom floor, know that I will take your shadow, the darkest parts of you that you keep trying to get rid of, and remind you that I will always be here to sew whatever it was you lost back on.

Marla Miniano (in case you come back)

[dsilentstormb-deactivated202502]

Walk away and save you’re parting words Don’t need another reminder of why it hurts Or just how much of me I gave away to understand you better.

(via walatulogumalisnagluluto)

[bookmania]

From Shinji Moon’s The Anatomy of Being, the author’s debut poetry collection which is described as youthful and fragmented, a journey inward from the perspective of the hopes and pains of adolescence. (More bookish stuff at bookmania.me)

[mischiefseven]

“Yet, even amidst the hatred and carnage, life is still worth living. It is possible for wonderful encounters and beautiful things to exist.”

— Hayao Miyazaki (via weirdmageddon)

[wishbzne-deactivated20210526]

Liv Ullmann, from Changing

[weltenwellen]

Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

[apoemaday]

In Praise of Feeling Bad About Yourself

by Wislawa Szymborska

The buzzard never says it is to blame. The panther wouldn’t know what scruples mean. When the piranha strikes, it feels no shame. If snakes had hands, they’d claim their hands were clean.

A jackal doesn’t understand remorse. Lions and lice don’t waver in their course. Why should they, when they know they’re right?

Though hearts of killer whales may weigh a ton, in every other way they’re light.

On this third planet of the sun among the signs of bestiality a clear conscience is Number One.

[noosphe-re]

The Three Oddest Words, by Wisława Szymborska

When I pronounce the word Future, the first syllable already belongs to the past. When I pronounce the word Silence, I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing, I make something no nonbeing can hold.

[metaphorformetaphor]

The hour when earth betrays us. The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars. The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour. Blank, empty. The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning. […] And let five o'clock come if we’re to go on living.

— Wislawa Szymborska, from “Four in the Morning,”  A Book of Luminous Things: An International Anthology of Poetry (Mariner Books, 1998)

[ri-science]

Escape velocity

A snippet from a full page graphic - vintage scientific illustration c.1960

[weltenwellen]

Anaïs Nin, The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1920–1923

[notbecauseofvictories]

“Empathy isn’t just something that happens to us—a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain—it’s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It’s made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse. Sometimes we care for another because we know we should, or because it’s asked for, but this doesn’t make our caring hollow. The act of choosing simply means we’ve committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations: I will listen to his sadness, even when I’m deep in my own. To say “going through the motions”—this isn’t reduction so much as acknowledgment of the effort—the labor, the motions, the dance—of getting inside another person’s state of heart or mind. This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always arise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones.”

— Leslie Jamison, “The Empathy Exams” (via The Believer)

[bookworm-on-rainy-days]

[adrianivashkovs]

“Dobby, no, don’t die, don’t die -” The elf’s eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words. "Harry…Potter…" And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see.

[stoicremains-deactivated2017102]

I only found words or emptiness.

Jean-Paul Sartre, The Wall  (via homo-infimus)

[watchoutforintellect]

I see everyone and no one in myself.”

Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals Of Sylvia Plath  (via homo-infimus)

[cosmictraffic]