O my stars, winged creatures @flowersforflorence - Tumblr Blog

Joan Baez “The Wild Mountain Thyme” Edinburgh, Scotland, October 5, 1965.

Thinking about literature made me realize how little books outside the common "classics" represented mostly by Western European authors are known.

So why don't we help each other and fix this mistake? Reblog this, tell where you're from, and recommend one book from your country (I know, picking just one is hard, that's the challenge).

I'll start. Ukraine 🇺🇦 and Tiger Trappers by Ivan Bagriany

speedlimit15

you can’t even run away and join the circus anymore

ololygas

variations on a theme by elizabeth bishop, john murillo

cosmicanger

heavensghost

it’s quiet here

doctorcurdlejr

Of course I'm pro nouns i love people places and things

grayghostofthenorth

Borzoi White Mohair with zipper (box for pajamas), glass eyes

elodieunderglass

It’s so weird that pyjama cases were a thing. They went so abruptly out of fashion, too. The idea was (I think) that it was vaguely indecent to leave your pajamas around, and it definitely spoils the look of your nicely made bed, so lots of people put them under the pillow; but a cuter thing to do was to have a specially made empty stuffed animal or cute purse or pillow thing, with a zipper, and you’d stuff it with your pajamas in the morning and place it cutely on your nicely made bed. Then in the evening, you would unzip and disembowel the soft plump object, and reclaim the pajamas. It wasn’t just a thing for kids; adults did it too. In the kind of pre-1950s novels I like to pick up, authors describe a character’s pyjama case to reveal a bit about the character; but of course they never say why you’d have a pyjama case. “Everyone knows what a horse is.”

I suppose it’s been culturally decided that it’s an unnecessary step in the bedtime process. We’re busy bastards, aren’t we? Who makes their bed every morning, I mean, really?

Perhaps, also, our clothing is no longer of the material and methodology where you have to spend extra time/attention/tools on them. Pyjama cases may have had some benefit - extending the life of the pyjamas, or something. Perhaps it was more common in those days for mice to climb into your silk pyjamas, or they kept them from being attacked by dogs, or something. It’s possible that there are unspoken benefits to keeping your pyjamas in a stuffed toy, which previous generations knew instinctively and we have forgotten. Some people are like that, they maintain rituals and practices that don’t get written down, and so become arcana. My father-in-law owns special clothing maintenance tools such as shoe trees (which you place in your shoes every night at night) and trouser presses (in which you leave your worn-but-not-dirty trousers overnight so they are crisp in the morning). He irons his pocket handkerchiefs - why? so that they fold into a precise pocket shape, with the same fold pattern as plastic-wrapped disposable tissues: the optimised shape for pockets. You are not going to read in the literature about there being a reason for ironing pocket handkerchiefs. It is a habit that is not captured by history. You have to speak to a practitioner to even consider that there is a specific value in pocket handkerchief folding. Maybe we operate at a remove from the people who could have told us why they bothered with the idea and then stopped.

You can buy a selection of pyjama cases online, but with no explanation of why you’d want to, it’s hard to see how this helps. The only real thing i can see is that it’s cute and tidies the pyjamas up, but we’ve all decided that untidy pyjamas are a problem that doesn’t need solving.

Pyjama cases have no Wikipedia article; search engines have nothing to offer. Old books only self-reference them being a normal thing. Someone who knows about pyjama cases or textile history could heroically fill this in. Please do. Otherwise, this tumblr post is going to suddenly become the leading analysis of pyjama cases, and that would be sad.

horseimagebarn

horse being held standing up in someones hands in front of a black background this horse is so small and so young it is easily held in two human hands and arms this foal does not seem upset or unsteady on its perch it seems bright and aware this shows the brevity of youth as one could not do this to a full grown horse or even most young horses only one very young and small

eatpussypraylove

I was a pretty weird outcasted child so one of the greatest wonders of my adult life has been realizing that you can just go someplace and meet some people and casually make some friends, and they might not be in your life forever but you can hang out for a while, and then you can go somewhere else and do it again, and again, if it doesn’t work out no biggie, etc.

yesterdaysprint

Courier-News, Plainfield, New Jersey, November 10, 1936

effemimaniac

sorry for the delay in responding to your message. I was walking around the house with unclear intentions

mysterieuxclairdelune

{Hannah Green, from "Are you still hungry, Mother?"/ Unknown/Sam Gordon, "A Mother's Hate"/ Ella Wilson/ Joan Tierney/ Ella Wilson/ Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous/ Unknown/ Nayyirah Waheed/ Sharon Olds, “Holding To A Wall, Treading Saltwater”/ John Green, Turtles All the Way Down/ Safia Elhillo, "an inheritance," published in Narrative Northeast/ Annie Ernaux, from I Remain in Darkness/ Poplar Street by Chen Chen/ Unknown/ Tumblr User: @inkskinned/ Elena Poniatowska, from "La Flor de Lis," published c. January 2011/ Kyung-Sook Shin, Please Look After Mom}