cities & sense

Scout | PhD in EngLit | teacher | 30s | queer

[lettersfromhav]

October is going by quickly. I’ve been really busy at work & also dealing with a lot of mental health stuff. I hope you’re all holding up ok.

Today, I need to finish some work for an 8am deadline tomorrow, plus clean the apartment, do laundry, and cook food for the week ahead. What’s on your to-do list?

[lettersfromhav]

Lately, I’ve been waking up every morning not wanting to go in to work. I still make myself go but it’s become quite difficult to find joy in things; basically, I operate on autopilot a lot. Tonight I came home and didn’t even have energy to make dinner. I just ate some popcorn and fell asleep on the couch.

If you’re feeling a similar way, I hope things improve for you soon. At least my plants are doing OK.

[idlestudy]

I’m really going for the early fall vibe here with these greens and creams, and I love it 🍃

[freckledstudy]

27 Sept ‘18 // Working in my college library this morn on some reading for my thesis. Cambridge is still yawning from the summer, weirdly quiet and gradually shading into myriad oranges. Michaelmas term officially resumes in a week, and the undergraduates start arriving in full force this weekend.

[englishgradinrepair]

marilynne robinson, housekeeping

from the garden

may sarton, the journals of may sarton: vol. 1

fanny howe, “loneliness” (second childhood)

[darknwilde]

classic academia 🕊

[macrolit]

“None of us can help the things life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you’ve lost your true self forever.”

— Long Day’s Journey Into Night Eugene O’Neill (b. 16 October 1888)

[lotusohm]

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House was published sixty years ago today. The novel begins with one of the best openings I have ever read:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

[larvinya]

[virgcvenus-moved-deactivated202]

the three weeks dedicated to the Brontë sisters are over and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall has exceeded my expectations

[teachingliteracy]

[lettersfromhav]

For not being one of my favorite colors, red has been showing up a lot in my summer. Trying to enjoy the last days of August before work starts again. The complete wreck of last year has made me not want to return to work even more than usual, and all my teacher friends feel the same.

A thunder storm is brewing here and I hope it hits soon. It’s been way too hot.

[holyisthenameofmyruthlessaxe]

To the Bone, Dorothy Allison 

[ID: That summer I did not go crazy / but I wore / very close / very close / to the bone.]

[moonshinestudies]

08.07.2021

“Know that you can start late, look different, be uncertain and still succeed.” -Misty Copeland

Library days, waking up to sunshine and sunsets after a tiring day 🌻

[metamorphesque]

July is ending and I’ve lost the hope in who I was meant to become 

1. charlotte eriksson | 2. hope gangloff | 3. richard siken | 4. vincent van gogh | 5. ocean vuong | 6. kaethe butcher | 7. mary oliver | 8. essam marouf | 9. franz kafka | 10. essam marouf | 11. mary oliver 

[smithsonianlibrariesarchives]

Two children on a biplane being attacked by a tiger, for some reason, from L.R.S. Henderson’s The Flight brothers (1912). Illustration by Emile A. Nelson.

Full text available here.

[lettersfromhav]

How is it almost the end of July already?

I dislike summer weather but I’m not ready for the season itself to end, mostly because I still feel too burnt-out to return to work. Some health issues have arisen and I’ve been sleeping a lot and trying to exercise when I can, since unfortunately none of my doctors have more tangible advice right now.

Listening to AKMU to try to get that summer feel; “Dinosaur” is the best for it, but I do love this sheep cameo from the video for their newest track.