[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

I remember one of my favorite professors saying that the way he read the iliad changed when he became a parent and I think about that a lot

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

like it’s about thetis helping her son to disastrous ends it’s about zeus knowing his son is doomed and being unable to save him it’s chryseis’ father trying to bargain his daughter back from the greeks it’s hector and andromache wishing their son will survive but knowing he won’t it’s priam kissing the hand of the man who killed his son just to be able to bury him. the iliad is so fundamentally familial

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

via @thesarosperiod

[nicandros]

Have you ever wondered which ancient didactic poet you are? Take my single question uquiz and find out now!!!

[abettertomorrow]

all of you read jamie berrout’s essays against publishing and r.m. haines’ poets should be socialists

[densebutnotanidiot-deactivated2]

'annoying' is the most romantic adjective you can use to describe someone

[heavenlyyshecomes]

hi my reader friends lithub has a new syllabi section that has some great (u guessed it!) syllabi from much beloved writers like ocean vuong and ross gay here’s the full list that i have already added half of to my tbr:

ekphrastic poetry with victoria chang (featuring works of john ashbery, joy harjo, paul tran)

the literature of obsession with julia may jonas (obsession as transformation, destruction, catharsis and form)

place, space and landscape with alexandra kleeman (featuring didion, okorafor and hernan diaz)

lyric research with ross gay (books that combine research with an “I” like nelson’s bluets or christle’s the crying book)

hybrid poetry with ocean vuong (traditions, innovations and possibilities featuring bhanu kapil, rimbaud, clifton)

multigenre experiments in form with paul lisicky (for writing that explores connections between genres)

reading about writers with peter ho davies (books that teach the craft and give writing advice, think ‘the outline’ trilogy)

speculative women with lina maria ferreira cabeza-vanegas (a look at speculative works by women writers like jemisin, butler, k le guin)

writers and the world with viet thanh nguyen (rankine, baldwin, and coates)

sports and contemporary writing with sam lipsyte (exactly what it says on the tin)

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

eventually you realize you don’t want to die. you just don’t want to live the life you’re living. and slowly you try to create a life you want to live. just gotta start there.

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

no one needs to add “sounds fake but ok”, “no”, “well, not me”, “impossible”, etc. to this post. and i’d rather you not.

[duckbunny]

one day you think: I want to die.

and then you think, very quietly: actually. actually. I think I want a coffee. a nap. a sandwich. a book.

and I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friend, I want to sit in the sun

I want a cleaner kitchen

I want a better job

I want to live somewhere else

I want to live

[zenosanalytic]

The thing to understand is that Depression

Even When It Is Trying to Kill You!

Is Defensive.

Your brain exists to preserve you; it’s just Dumb, and how it goes about “preserving” is determined by evolution’s ‘Good Enough’ meat-and-chemistry mechanisms rather than a firm grasp of biology.

You know how, stuck atop a burning building, ppl will sometimes throw themselves off in a vain hope of surviving? That’s what depression-driven suicide is. You are under THAT amount of stress, often sustained for a FAR longer time. Your brain only understands “Stress”: it doesn’t know causes, it doesn’t know Events, and it only has the one set of instinctive ‘extreme measures’ to fall back on. I made things SO hard on myself for SO Long conceiving of Depression as a Fight I had to Win, rather than a chronic illness in need of my understanding and careful management.

Help your brain. Nurse it. Ask yourself where it hurts and why. Recognize that the desire to die is a symptom, an injury, and not your ‘Truth’. Try to calm it, Try to endure: It WILL Pass. As perverse as it sounds, your desire to die is an expression of how PASSIONATELY you want to get away from the pain tormenting you; of how MUCH you want to LIVE. PLEASE Live!

[winelover1989]

If you’re not in a place to accept positive messages, here’s a cynical way to look at it. The day after my suicidal tendencies peaked but my plans failed purely because my body and survival instincts told me to fuck off… I just looked at my life the next day like “oh, had I succeeded in my plan, I wouldn’t be working this shitty job today, I would no longer be in this toxic relationship, I wouldn’t be living in this place I hate living, etc, etc so why am I still doing all these things?”

You can just start killing the life you hate one stressor at a time. What do you have to lose? You already want out.

[lovelyporridge]

why don’t you read a poem about the sunrise written 5 centuries ago and contemplate the fact that we have been writing about the same sun for centuries upon centuries and then maybe you’ll calm down

[exeggcute]

had a minor crisis when 12ft.io went down yesterday and thankfully it's back now but this seems like a good opportunity to compile a list of similar paywall-evading tools in case 12ft ever gets canned for real:

12ft.io: the legend himself. definitely my favorite of the bunch by virtue of being the easiest to use (and the easiest url to remember), but it's configured to disable paywall evasion for a handful of popular sites like the new york times, so you'll have to go elsewhere for those.

printfriendly: works great; never had any issues with removing paywalls, even on domains that don't work with 12ft.io. since this site is literally designed to make sites print-friendly, it might simplify the overall formatting of the page you're trying to access, which can be a good or bad thing. my only real issue is that the "element zapper" (which lets you remove content blocks from the print-friendly preview) is a little sensitive if you're browsing on a touchscreen device, which means you might accidentally delete a paragraph when you're just trying to scroll. but if that happens you can reload the page and it'll revert everything back to its original state.

fifteen feet: basically a 12ft clone, minus 12ft's restrictions. haven't used it much since I only discovered it yesterday in the wake of 12ft's 451 error but it seems to do the trick.

archive.today: an archival tool very similar to the wayback machine, but it also works as a de facto paywall removal tool. (the wayback machine seems to remove paywalls as well, but archive.today has better UX imo and is way faster to use.)

and an honorable mention for sci-hub: only works for scientific/academic journals, not random news articles, but the other sites listed above only work for random news articles and not academic publications so you gotta have this one in your toolbelt for full coverage. pubmed is your oyster.

[metamorphesque]

I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk / down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs / to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you” / when someone sneezes, a leftover / from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying. / And sometimes, when you spill lemons / from your grocery bag, someone else will help you/ pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other. / We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot, / and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile / at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress / to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder, / and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass. / We have so little of each other, now. So far / from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange. / What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these / fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here, / have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”

— Small Kindnesses, Danusha Laméris

[mortalityplays]

one of the most important things, perhaps the most important thing I have learned in my life is that nice people can fuck each other up in monstrous ways. people can be bone deep kind and loving and self reflective and still lash out under pressure. people can be earnestly neighbourly and charitable and hospitable and generous and still find themselves in situations where they become selfish. people can be well meaning and easygoing and gregarious and hold deep seated opinions that turn them into vicious little bullies under the right conditions. nobody is just one thing, and nobody stays one way. every person is a kaleidoscope and they will surprise you. you will surprise yourself. it's not a warning and it's not a judgement and it's not an excuse, and it's certainly not a reason to stop trying or to stop trusting. it is just a fact.

[rudjedet]

listen i am a bitter little fuck and i get angry a lot about a great many things that i see wrong with the world but if there’s anything i absolutely hate it’s that godforsaken attitude that humanity is inherently evil. die on the hill of your self-defeating ecofascist rhetoric so that i can picknick on your grave, ta.

[stuckinapril]

literally no one is ugly sorry. i get the idea of getting people to “accept themselves” by telling them to “embrace their ugliness” bc it’s supposed to reject conventional beauty standards, but like. the execution just fails for me bc i truly and genuinely believe everyone is beautiful in their own way, and that everyone has a right to feel beautiful. wanting to feel beautiful does not mean that you’re leaning into beauty standards, it just means you’re a living human and you deserve to be venerated for existing. idk at the end of the day “you’re beautiful regardless of what society says” just seems like a much stronger message than “you’re ugly. and u know what, that’s okay!!”

[jellypis-deactivated20240308]

THE WHOLE UNIVERSE SINGS 

Black Holes Sing / Listen To The Fish Sing / Earth’s Wild Music

[drunkwhenimadethis]

Learning to be joyous about the complexities of people and their hidden worlds. Relieved that I don’t have to oversee and maintain everything; my only job is to keep it pure on my end. I will never have all of the control nor all of the power nor all of the information. Most of it is beyond words. “Everyone should cultivate their secret garden.” Not taking it personally that I don’t take up all the real estate in their mind and body. Being happy for them and their senses, dreams, desires that exist outside of myself. Choosing to love on the distant days and the close ones. The moon and the river are really both perfect, both gorgeous, and they do two separate things, they go two different places. But they work together and I love the tide

[lament-lapin]

this is it 

[theglintoftherail]

WHY ARE YOU LONELY: A TEXT GAME - Mallory Ortberg

WHY ARE YOU LONELY: CHOOSE ONE

FAILED TO NURTURE RELATIONSHIPS BORN OUT OF CONVENIENCE ONCE CHANGING CIRCUMSTANCES REQUIRED ACTIVE PARTICIPATION FROM YOU

WATCHED NETFLIX FOR SEVEN HOURS INSTEAD OF SLEEPING BECAUSE YOU HAVE ONCE AGAIN MISTAKEN INERTIA FOR REST

CONFUSED “SELF-CARE” WITH “SELF-INDULGENCE” AGAIN; YOU ARE INCAPABLE OF EXPERIENCING GENUINE REFRESHMENT OR RESTORATION BUT YOU DO SPEND A LOT OF MONEY AT NAIL SALONS

ONCE AGAIN CONFUSED “EMPATHY” FOR “TAKING RESPONSIBILITY” AND INVITED OTHERS TO UNLOAD THEIR EMOTIONAL BURDENS ON YOU WITHOUT FIRST ENSURING RECIPROCITY, WHOOPS

ANTICIPATORILY BLAMED OTHER PEOPLE FOR NOT CALLING YOU WITHOUT ONCE ASKING YOURSELF WHY YOU CAN’T CALL THEM

ASSUMING ANY TIME SPENT TOGETHER THAT YOU HAD TO INITIATE IS SOMEHOW LESS AUTHENTIC THAN REQUESTS FOR TIME SPENT TOGETHER THAT YOU ACCEPT

BELIEVE “PERIODICALLY EXPERIENCING THE HUMAN CONDITION” MEANS SOMETHING IS FUNDAMENTALLY BROKEN WITHIN YOU

CONSTANTLY LIE ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS THEN WONDER WHY YOU FEEL LIKE NO ONE KNOWS YOU

MISTAKENLY BELIEVE THAT NEGATIVE FEELINGS MUST BE MISTAKES EITHER TO BE AVOIDED OR FIXED RATHER THAN EXPERIENCED

DESIRE TO BE FULLY UNDERSTOOD WITHOUT THE CONCOMITANT WILLINGNESS TO FULLY EXPLAIN YOURSELF

BELIEVE TRYING AT SOMETHING A LITTLE BIT SHOULD RESULT IN INSTANT PERFECTION AND FIND YOURSELF HORRIFIED AND ASHAMED OF MAKING REALISTIC PROGRESS

TRY COCONUT OIL

CONVINCED THAT HONESTLY ADMITTING YOUR PROBLEMS WILL DRIVE PEOPLE AWAY BECAUSE NO ONE LIKES COMPLAINING SO INSTEAD YOU OFFER EVERYONE A PISS-POOR SIMULACRUM OF BEING EASY-GOING

STILL JUST WAITING FOR THINGS TO HAPPEN TO YOU INSTEAD OF EXPRESSING YOUR DESIRES ALOUD

THINK YOU’RE BEING PLAYFUL BUT ACTUALLY YOU JUST GET MEAN WHEN YOU DRINK

SPEND ALL YOUR TIME SAYING THINGS LIKE “EITHER’S GOOD” OR “DOESN’T MATTER TO ME” WHEN IN FACT ONLY ONE THING IS GOOD AND IT DOES MATTER TO YOU BUT YOU THINK “NOT EXPRESSING A PREFERENCE” IS THE BEST PERSONALITY TRAIT YOU HAVE TO OFFER OTHERS

PEOPLE ACTUALLY MORE AWARE OF YOUR BARELY-CONCEALED CONTEMPT FOR THEIR CHOICES AND RELATIONSHIPS THAN YOU THINK THEY ARE

NO GOOD REASON, SORRY

Mallory Ortberg plz stop laying my psyche bare for the world to see

[etirabys]

One of the many stupid feelings humans are capable of having is the private, repulsive rage of seeing someone getting support and sympathy for a problem no one helped you with when you were having it, either because you didn’t have anyone or because it never occurred to you that you could ask for help. Suddenly the world seems to split into two – the realm that contains people like them, the connected and loved – and the realm that contains you, the miserable and the alone, who must suffer in solitude. This is sufficiently horrible that you grasp for reasons or world-understandings to make this reality acceptable, and a mentally available one is that it is superior to be in the miserable solitude realm, that the problem is one that should be solved with self sufficiency and dignity. That this other person is pathetic for being aided and loved when you were not. Scorn is more palatable than confronting the notion that you could have received aid (if you had made different choices or been luckier), that you desperately wish you could have been aided but were not. Scorn is more palatable than the howling hunger for things to have been different for you. So your mind chooses scorn.

It is also a bad place to be. Human existence is full of such traps.