Outside your room

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Fyodor Dostoevsky; Letter to his brother 9th August 1838

[hopelesstargzer]

Me

[hopelesstargzer]

I want to experience a love so genuine and soft that would make my heart grow and shine at the sight of my person, and I want to hold their hand and go to sleep very late together, talking nonsense and maybe we would watch bad movies to laugh and bake awful cakes because none of us know how to bake. I want to cry over how beautiful they are, not only physically but as a person, and I really want to make them playlists with a bunch of songs that remind me of them, I want to fangirl over how beautiful their hair looks in the sun and get excited because their eyes sparkle when they look at me.

I want to love and to be loved back

[becherdireinen]

Do you ever just miss a bond you had with someone? Like regardless of what happened between you two, you miss the conversations, the laughs you guys had over the stupidest things, or the way that they were there for you when you weren't at the best. The little things matter.

[hopelesstargzer]

Now that we don't talk anymore, I can't help but wonder if I wander through his mind like he does on mine?

[hopelesstargzer]

I think it's amazing how people meet other people that complement them perfectly, I've seen them share the same humor, the same music taste, the same favorite books and I can't help but to be jealous because I also want to find someone like that, someone who doesn't make me feel weird.

[remanence-of-love]

[plumslices]

I wish i was different i wish it all was different . *cleans and does laundry *

[inkipri]

sometimes all it takes is one cool breeze and i'm like. wow.. i'm going to live the fullest life everything is so great and i am so grateful and alive

[aropride]

sure u call urself an anarchist and have “be gay do crime” in ur bio but are you nice to people in real life

[isnt]

[what-iz-life]

Be so fucking proud of yourself for passing the hardest moments alone while everyone believed you were fine.

[ice-block]

It’s so fucked up how tiktok culture has made clout-poisoned people turn the public into content, every day I see people minding their business have their entire faces put online for thousands of likes, a couple kissing on the train, a lady dancing across a cross walk, a guy nodding his head to the music at a club, a lady buying a banana at the store, ring camera footage of the neighbors kids being stupid. Just let people live jfc

[problematicprocrastinator]

If you’re feeling down or anxious today, you can pretend you’re in my room with me. It’s raining outside but its cozy in here. I’m at my desk writing, you can lay on the bed and read or take the arm chair. It’s really comfy and I have extra blankets if you’re cold. You want to borrow a hoodie? You want hot chocolate? You can look through my vinyl collection or watch a movie. If you want to talk, I’ll put my writing away. Or you can just sit quietly. Whatever you want to do, just know that you’re safe here. You can stay as long as you want and you can always come back. Everything is going to be okay x

[remanence-of-love]

[soracities]

the number of times i think about the full body viking skeleton i saw in the museum is ridiculous like when i say it haunts me i mean it actually haunts me

[soracities]

every time i remember the questions are endless — what was his name? what did his mother call him? what sounds did he wake up to? what sounds did he die to? how old was he when he died? how old when he fell in love? how old when he first fell out? who cried with him and laughed with him? who cried for him? how many miles of separation can i draw between my ancestors and him? was he kind, serious, jokey? was he sombre or impulsive? was he chatty and good-humoured or a cantankerous asshole? like…i have never stopped thinking about this.

[soracities]

the fact that at one point in time this was a living breathing person. with memories and petty hates and the dumbest jokes. and friends he loved. and the fact that he probably at some point burst out into drunken song or punched someone in an argument or GOT punched in an argument or tripped into the mud while his friends pissed themselves laughing or or or or…countless or‘s into infinity

and the fact that before all of that this massive skeleton was tiny toddler (was he scared of the dark? did he squabble with his siblings? did he have siblings?) who may or may not have hid behind his mother or probably got hoisted onto an adult’s shoulders and in his little mind thought this person was the strongest human in the world and that he could hold the whole sky up just by standing there like that and as long as he was up there he was king of the world or could be.

like…what am i supposed to do with this? what does ANYONE do with this? how are you supposed to cope with the enormity of this while at the same time realising just how tiny and fleeting our lives are? there is literally more than a THOUSAND years between us & ALL of it has been pinched down to a glass case not even 2 inches thick like…i’m losing my mind.

[gummywormy]

I got this feeling when I saw some petroglyphs on the side of a cliff like.. a human made those. That human felt all of the emotions I feel they went through the same universal human experience and they each had vivid internal lives and memories. Wild.

[soracities]

ok this is next level and i honestly…i honestly can’t

[kneesntoess]

during my prehistory module we got given Roman pottery and roofing slabs that had thumb prints in the handles and I put my thumb over those thumb marks and cried in the middle of the tutorial 

[white-aster]

I do pottery, and it’s one of my favorite things about the medium: that you can often see the shape of someone’s fingers in the surface. I love it when someone just shoves a finger somewhere while throwing, and leaves it there as a place for YOU to put your finger. Little thumbrests on top of mug handles is a fave. “How did you make those ridges like that on the outside? How did you make that spiral on the bottom?” “With my fingers.”

[allsortsoflicorice]

All of this. 

At Wells Cathedral in England the stairs down from the chapter house have had dips worn into their stone by centuries of human feet taking the most direct route up and down. 

Thinking about the immense distances between the stars makes me panic, but looking back into human history gives me peace. 

[kendrixtermina]

Reminds me of when we got to see this exposition on ancient egypt. 

I was like, “Wow a real life papyrus!”

but then my mom said, clearly moved, “Wow, that’s someone’s handwriting.”

[peaceheather]

Part of why I love medieval calligraphy so much is that my sources are these centuries old manuscripts that have… doodles in the margins, and scribbles where they tested their pens and ink, notes at the end and in the margins complaining about the temperature or their work materials or thanking god that they’ve finished. There are surviving artifacts with cat paw prints across the page where some pet got into the ink, and there’s even one with a pee stain on it followed by a long note explaining why nothing of importance is written on that page and a reminder not to leave your books out at night.

They were made by people, and I love feeling connected to those people by what I do.

[colorschanging]

The one that gets me every time is this bowl:

I want to know what the person who was making it was thinking, so badly. Maybe it was all done very seriously. But maybe they were giggling, as they said to themselves, “But what if I put feet? FEET ON THE BOWL!” Were they giggling at the idea? Did it make them happy, every time they shaped those little toes? If they were having a bad day, did they make a foot bowl, to cheer themselves up?

Did they ever consider that, some 6000 years later, someone would look at their foot bowls, and smile every time, and wonder about the person who made them?

[vaspider]

As someone who has worked in clay? Yes, we think about that. We wonder about it. We wonder who will see our work, if it somehow survives even a hundred years, let alone a thousand, two, or – amazing! – six thousand years. When you work in a durable medium, you wonder whose thumb will fit the prints you leave. Who they will be. If your work will bring them the same joy that it brought you in its making.

[bluelakeandsky]

I transcribe documents. Mostly ship logs. But also personal diaries and journals. They were just like you and me. They write don’t forget eggs, and wondered if their neighbors secretly hated them or if they are reading into it too much. They loved and were loved and they wondered. They wondered about you. Who were you going to be? Would you live in a hose like them? Would you travel the stars? Would you care about them? The things they wrote the things they made? Did they leave an impression. Everything I transcribe from ship notes, research papers, census, to diaries. Are just people saying I was here, what I did mattered, please remember me. And every word I type out is me whispering back. You were, you did, we will.

[pizzopaps]

[vr-trakowski]

The addition about Wells Cathedral reminded me - when I visited it in the late 1990s (it may be different now) the main part of the cathedral was lined on either side by sarcophagi.  They had effigies on top, carved stone figures lying on their backs - there must have been twenty at least. 

They dated back centuries.  All these worn images, bits broken off here and there, pits and cracks - but most of the damage was just from time passing. 

Except for one. 

I don’t remember whose tomb it was, but one of them was absolutely covered in graffiti.  Names and dates scratched all over it.  Centuries of graffiti.  People had been cutting into that stone since before the English set sail for America. 

And what got me wasn’t so much the time illustrated by those dates…it was the long, unspoken, intergenerational agreement that this one particular tomb would be the only one defaced.  Decade after decade, visitors and vandals had kept this silent rule unbroken. 

People are fascinating. 

[bastetsbard]

In an archaeology lab I worked in in college, I found a fragment of pottery that nobody had ever realized had red painted designs on it. It looked like a sideways version of the 90s famous S drawing we all learned how to do as kids.

Later that year, I was working in a different lab (opposite side of the hall!), cataloging tiny little shards of obsidian. These were ridiculously sharp. They had been bound on to the shafts of tools, to help the early settlers of Alaska get themselves dinner. Someone had to have taken incredible control to make, they were so fine and tiny and STILL INTACT AND FUNCTIONAL despite their immense age.

One of the microblades cut my hand and I STILL have a scar from it.

9,000 years old and still sharp as fuck because somebody took the time to develop incredible skill in tool making.

[currahee]

Everyone, including me, who's familiar with Pride and Prejudice: Hahahaha Mr. Collins' is so useless and thinks he's so fantastic at small talk, but he isn't.

Me at any given Christmas dinner party: WHAT EXCELLENT BOILED POTATOES- MANY YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE I'VE SEEN SUCH AN EXEMPLARY VEGETABLE

[yourbigsisnissi]

A part of being an adult is living with regret and not allowing it to consume you. The older you get, the more mistakes you’ve made, opportunities you’ve missed, people you’ve disappointed. And every day you have to remind yourself to be kind and forgiving of yourself. You accept and love the you from the past and understand that it’s all a part of the process. Then you move on and live your best life, knowing now as old as you feel today, you’ll never be this young again.