isayaki @isayaki - Tumblr Blog

Portrait of Lady Sunderland (detail) 1786. Joshua Reynolds

social distancing is something that can actually be so personal

“…writing is difficult, unnatural, and even painful, and anyone who teaches university students knows that fifteen or sixteen years of intense training in the art are usually not enough to master it. […] Everyone who writes knows that it can be an intensely physical process involving sore backs, bitten fingernails, headaches, and pulled hair. Books are both literally and figuratively bound in human skin. Writing is labor. It exacts a fierce bodily and cognitive discipline. It has a crucial biomechanical dimension, requiring integration of multiple skills such as eye tracking, vocalization, auditory perception, manual dexterity, posture, and mental exertion. It costs our bodies a lot to incise meaning.”

— John Durham Peters, The Marvelous Clouds

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Source

memoryslandscape-deactivated202

“My memories don’t feel as though they’ve been pulled up by the root. Even if they fade, something remains. Like tiny seeds that might germinate again if the rain falls. And even if a memory disappears completely, the heart retains something. A slight tremor or pain, some bit of joy, a tear.”

— Yōko Ogawa, from The Memory Police, transl. Stephen Snyder (Pantheon, 2019)

ourheartsareoldfriends

i think the thing that makes me the most emotional in life is the realization that everything i have and everything i see has been touched by other people. someone designed the logo of my favorite tea bags and someone decided which paintings should go in the calendar hanging on my wall. someone built the roof above my head and someone paved the street outside my house. someone made this pair of glasses specific for me, someone picked the pear i ate with my lunch and someone designed my favorite sweater. every book i read, every song i listen to, every film i watch, tens, if not hundreds of people had to be there to make it happen. even if i am alone, i am always surrounded by other human beings - a fact that makes my heart squeeze in on itself everytime i remember it.

nonsense-health

You don’t need to be physically and emotionally available 24/7. Sometimes it’s okay to just be.

violetsnotebook-archive

the moon in my coffee cup. from a trip to an indoor jungle of a cafe with a cosy book corner during my paris holiday.

thotsfortherapy

everyone always talks about setting boundaries with other people, but we need to talk about setting boundaries with yourself. it can be things as simple as, "I'm not going to work past 8 because I need to unwind before bed" or "I'm going to go on a daily walk because it's good for my mental health." But it can also be things like, "I'm not going to talk to this person anymore because it's bad for me" or "I refuse to settle for this because I know my worth." when you learn what is healthy for you and what you want out of this life, embrace it. give yourself guidelines that will help you grow.