[perfectquote]

“Your soulmate is not someone that comes into your life peacefully. It is someone who comes to make you question things, who changes your reality, somebody that marks a before and after in your life. It is not the human being everyone has idealized but an ordinary person, who manages to revolutionize your world in a second.”

— Unknown

[angel-b-torture]

True.

[heavenlyyshecomes]

there is a level of seduction that exists beyond the body. something less tangible, and perhaps more potent. anais nin understood this idea about how desire does not begin with touch but with language, perception, and the sharp electric pull of a mind that challenges and excites you. in her journals, desire is not just a physical hunger but a hunger of the intellect, an unraveling of thought before an unraveling of the body. to be drawn into someone’s mind, to feel their thoughts press against your own, can be more intoxicating than any physical closeness.

—Caitlyn Richardson, 'can intellectual intimacy replace physical desire?', in milk fed

[eatsleepdraw]

[lionofchaeronea]

Every so often, I'm asked the dreaded question: "What's your favorite book?" I've read thousands of books in every genre under the sun, so answering this is every bit as difficult as you might imagine.

I sometimes feel that as a classicist by training, I should answer the Iliad or the Odyssey--perhaps the Aeneid or the De Rerum Natura instead. And they're all wonderful, without a doubt. But you know what my go-to answer is? The Epic of Gilgamesh. I've read it half a dozen times in as many different translations, and it never fails to move me with its profound insight into the human condition. Millennia ago, the author or authors (really, I don't care which) understood that the knowledge of our own mortality, and the fear it engenders, are common to us all, no matter how strong, brave, or famous we may be. Our dearest friends, those whom we love as a second self, will one day die, and nothing we do can change that.

Gilgamesh's quest is doomed to fail--we know that from the beginning, just as we know that Orpheus must look back at Eurydice or Icarus fall from the sky. But it doesn't matter. The quest is less about external dangers, however great they may be, than the inner transformation of Gilgamesh as he comes to terms with both Enkidu's death and the death awaiting himself one day. In the end, he can only point to the walls of Uruk--their solidity, their beauty--as an accomplishment that will stand when he has rotted into dust.

Maybe one day we'll have the whole of the epic, and its gaps will be filled. Yet even in its incomplete state, it surely ranks among the great cultural achievements of humankind. So if I must choose, I'll choose it every time.

[loveridden1999]

anyways remember when toni morrison said "sometimes you don't survive whole, you just survive in part. but the grandeur of life is that attempt. it's not about that solution. it is about being as fearless as one can, and behaving as beautifully as one can, under completely impossible circumstances."

[loveridden1999]

everyone say thank you toni morrison

[emergingghost]

actually my life's purpose is just to listen to more music. i love to discover new music. within 2 minutes your life can change bc you clicked on a random song like???????????/ awesome

[noahverrier]

My oil painting of an Espresso Martini and Uncrustable

[wholeheartedsuggestions]

you’re allowed to get up one day and just decide to change who you are. dress differently, speak up more, laugh out loud even though you’ve never liked your laugh, say what you want to, say hey to people you wouldn’t normally, get that confidence going. we don’t have to stay the way people see us out of the fear that they won’t like the us we want to be.

[untrustyou]

Leo Berne

[lunaa-with-sol]

[ancientsstudies]

I wish I could go to Paris right now.

ig credit: lise_frt.

[389]

Claudia Keep, ‘Morning Swim’, 2022 Oil on masonite panel, 12 x 10” in.

[dizimdedinlen]

Çocukluğumdan söz etmek isterim sana, eğer sıkılmazsan. Bir gün otururuz evde, ben sana hayatımı anlatırım dakika dakika. Kaç yaşımdaysam, o kadar yıl sürer konuşmam. Çay pişiririz. Çaydanlığa su yerine votka koyarız sen dilersen. Sonra da sen anlatırsın: Sevdiğin filmleri, sevdiğin parçaları, sevdiğin canlıları, sevdiğin, hep sevdiğin şeylerden konu açarsın. Ben sıkılmam. Ben seninle sıkılmamayı seni ararken öğrendim. Seni hayal ederken keşfettim sıkılmamanın azametini. Bir insan, bir insanı sıkamaz. Bir insan canı isterse sıkılır. Hacimler açarım sana içimde, dolman için, oraya akman için. Hacimler açarsın bana; çağlayarak gelirim. Endişelenmen gereksiz, Bir nedeni yok. Yalnızca öptüm.

[1five1two]

[knightofleo]

Björk | I’ve Seen It All feat. Thom Yorke

“You haven’t seen elephants, kings, or Peru!” I’m happy to say, I had better to do “What about China? Have you seen the Great Wall?” All walls are great if the roof doesn’t fall “And the man you will marry? The home you will share?” To be honest, I really don’t care I’ve seen it all, I have seen the dark I have seen the brightness in one little spark I’ve seen what I choose, and I’ve seen what I need And that is enough, to want more would be greed I’ve seen what I was, and I know what I’ll be I’ve seen it all, there is no more to see!

[geceilevlenecegim]

Temmuz 2023, Paris.

[rai-r]