[thathomestar]

just cast the fire spell. dip shit

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

“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.”

— Helen Macdonald, from H is for Hawk (Grove Press, 2014)

[engulfes]

2023

last year i abstained this year i devour

Margaret Atwood

[megairea]

“I want to say: I only love you, And I cling to you Like the peel clings to a pomegranate, Like the tear clings to the eye, Like the knife clings to the wound.”

— Nizar Qabbani, from “I am accused”; Arabian Love Poems (tr. by Bassam Frangieh & Clementina Brown)

[philo-mathes]

We live on a little island of the articulable, which we tend to mistake for reality itself. We can and do make small and tedious lives as we sail through the cosmos on our uncannily lovely little planet, and this is surely remarkable. But we do so much else besides. For example, we make language. A language is a grand collaboration, a collective art form which we begin to master as babes and sucklings, and which we preserve, modify, cull, enlarge as we pass through our lives. Some students in France drew my attention to the enormous number of English words that describe the behavior of light. Glimmer, glitter, glister, glisten, gleam, glow, glare, shimmer, sparkle, shine, and so on. These old words are not utilitarian. They reflect an aesthetic attention to experience that has made, and allows us to make, pleasing distinctions among, say, a candle flame, the sun at its zenith, and the refraction of light by a drop of rain. How were these words coined and retained, and how have they been preserved through generations, so that English-speaking people use them with the precision necessary to preserving them? None of this can be ascribed to conscious choice on the part of anyone, but somehow the language created, so to speak, a prism through which light passes, by means of which its qualities are arrayed. One of the pleasures of writing is that so often I know that there is in fact a word that is perfect for the use I want to put it to, and when I summon it it comes, though I might not have thought of it for years. And then I think, somewhere someone was the first person to use that word. Then how did it make its way into the language, and how did it retain the specificity that makes it perfect for this present use? Language is profoundly communal, and in the mere fact of speaking, then writing, a wealth of language grows and thrives among us that has enabled thought and knowledge in a degree we could never calculate. As individuals and as a species, we are unthinkable without our communities.

Marilynne Robinson, When I Was a Child I Read Books

[lifeinpoetry]

When I lay myself down to sleep, now, I pray I will dream of kindness given and received, I pray to the coils and meats of my brain to be healed of my disbelief in my average goodness.

— Sharon Olds, from "Narcissus in Quarantine," Balladz

[firstfullmoon]

José Olivarez, “Let’s Get Married”

[luthienne]

Andrew Garfield, in an interview with GQ

It's never-ending. The grief is never-ending. The love is never-ending. Like, Oh. That's the nature of love.

[allsadnshit]

Love you guys it's ok to be lonely and sort of feel like you're in your loser era lol the ups and downs are proof we are alive and not just coasting

[thingsworthsaving]

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

-James Baldwin

[schadenfreudist]

“Memory’s truth, because memory has its own special kind. It selects, minimizes, glorifies, and vilifies also; but in the end it creates its own reality, its heterogeneous but usually coherent version of events; and no sane human being ever trusts someone else’s version more than his own”

— Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

(Jonathan Cape, 1981)

[leafcrunch]

a woman alone will download pdfs. two women together will send links and articles. three or more women? that’s a library

[filmswithoutfaces]

Aftersun (2022) dir. Charlotte Wells

[kelseyahayden]

camp breakfast on 35mm film

mt. hood // or.

[spectrologie-deactivated2023041]

Upside-down nectarine & wild blueberry cake w a corn & ricotta batter // Camille • bonjour.bean

[strausswinter]

The Secret History Translation Masterlist

i was going to put this on a spam account but then decided to put it on a public one. who knows, maybe someone will benefit from it! if i’ve made any mistakes, do let me know

à moi. l’histoire d’une de mes folies (to me. the history of one of my follies or my turn. the tale of my madness)

quod erat demonstrandum (it can be shown)

cubitum eamus? (will you sleep with me?)

consummatum est (it is done)

hoi polloi. barbaroi [the many/majority. barbarian (person who doesn’t speak greek)]

bei nacht und nebel (at night and in fog)

deprendi miserum est (it is wretched to be found out)

khairei (hello)

bakchoi (initiates)

cuniculus molestus (annoying rabbit)

arrectis auribus (attentively/ears peeled)

dormir plutôt que vivre (sleep rather than live)

dans un sommeil aussi doux que la mort (in a sleep as sweet as death)

requiescat in pace (rest in peace)

n’est-ce pas (isn’t that so)

amor vincit omnia (love conquers all)

raison d’être (reason for existence)

nihil sub sole novum (there is nothing new under the sun)

quel plaisir de vous revoir (what a great pleasure to see you again)

genis gratus, corpore glabellus, arte multiscius, et fortuna opulentus (smooth-cheeked, soft-skinned, well-educated and rich)

dénouement (outcome)

salve, amice (hello, friend)

valesne? (are you well?)

quid est rei? (what is the matter?)

benigne dicis (i thank you)

bureau de tabac (tobacco store)

Χαλεπά τά καλά (beauty is harsh)

mais, vrai, j’ai trop pleuré! (oh, truly, i have wept too much!)

les aubes sont navrantes (the dawns are heartbreaking)

hinc illae lacrimae (hence those tears)

sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat (such eyes, such hands, such looks)

[timothyolyphant]

“What Jack remembered and craved in a way he could neither help nor understand was the time that distant summer on Brokeback when Ennis had come up behind him and pulled him close, the silent embrace satisfying some shared and sexless hunger. They had stood that way for a long time in front of the fire, its burning tossing ruddy chunks of light, the shadow of their bodies a single column against the rock. The minutes ticked by from the round watch in Ennis’s pocket, from the sticks in the fire settling into coals. Stars bit through the wavy heat layers above the fire. Ennis’s breath came slow and quiet, he hummed, rocked a little in the sparklight and Jack leaned against the steady heartbeat, the vibrations of the humming like faint electricity and, standing, he fell into sleep that was not sleep but something else drowsy and tranced…” – Annie Proulx

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (2005) dir. Ang Lee