the unreachable barrier between I and not-I

[holdhard]

Tim Walker, “Inside/Outside, Eglingham Hall, Northumberland, England” 

©Tim Walker, Dreamscapes at The Bowes Museum

[purplebuddhaproject]

The birds have vanished into the sky, and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together, the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains.

Li Po (via purplebuddhaproject)

[memoryslandscape-deactivated202]

you sit a long time, quiet, under the thick pines, in the silence that follows. as though it were your own twilight. as though it were your own vanishing song.

Mary Oliver, from “The Loon on Oak-Head Pond,” House of Light (Beacon Press, 1990)

[lifeinpoetry]

you never thought your body could be anything except bruised. your locked door. your haunted house. the unlearning is taking so long.

Fortesa Latifi, “fingertips,” We Were Young (via lifeinpoetry)

[heartcountry]

My heart is a stone I skip across the river. Not a single wave is made.  I forgive the stillness. Sometimes the words just aren’t there  anymore.  I don’t have the hands to carry the love I ask for in prayers. A highway full of people all headed somewhere, and I’ll never know them past these roads. Do the oceans think about what they’ve taken? Do they mourn the countries erased from maps? My heart is a stone tied around the ankle of everyone I love. I forgive the eventual untying. Sometimes I think of a name and I don’t let go of it. My body is stubborn. It holds on to secrets even I don’t know about. I stopped writing because what’s left to say? I’m lonely. My heart is a ghost story, and I forgive the haunting. My big fear is that no one else will.

Y.Z, Lightning Bug Gone Quiet  (via weltenwellen)

[lora-mathis]

There is always a man eager to explain my mental illness to me. They all do it so confidently, motioning to their Hemingway and Bukowski bookshelf as they compare my depression to their late-night loneliness. There is always someone that rejected them that they equate their sadness to and a bottle of gin (or a song playing, or a movie) close by that they refer to as their cure. Somehow, every soft confession of my Crazy that I hand to them turns into them pulling out pieces of themselves to prove how it really is in my head. So many dudes I’ve dated have faces like doctors ready to institutionalize and love my crazy (but only on Friday nights.) They tell their friends about my impulsive decision making and how I “get them” more than anyone they’ve ever met but leave out my staring off in silence for hours and the self-inflicted bruises on my cheeks. None of them want to acknowledge a crazy they can’t cure. They want a crazy that fits well into a trope and gives them a chance to play Hero. And they always love a Crazy that provides them material to write about. Truth is they love me best as a cigarette cloud of impossibility, with my lipstick applied perfectly and my Crazy only being pulled out when their life needs a little spice. They don’t want me dirty, having not left my bed for days. Not diseased. Not real. So they invite me over when they’re going through writer’s block but don’t answer my calls during breakdowns. They tell me I look beautiful when I’m crying then stick their hands in-between my thighs. They mistake my silence for listening to them attentively and say my quiet mouth understands them like no one else has. These men love my good dead hollowness. Because it means less of a fighting personality for them to force out. And is so much easier to fill someone who has already given up with themselves.

My Mental Illness Is Mansplained To Me Again, Lora Mathis (via lora-mathis)

[crashinglybeautiful]

“I remember Marianne and I was in a hotel in Piraeus, some inexpensive hotel and we were both about 25, and we had to catch the boat back to Hydra, and we got up and I guess we had a cup of coffee or something and got a taxi, and I’ve never forgotten this. Nothing happened, just sitting in the back of the taxi with Marianne, lit a cigarette, a Greek cigarette that had that delicious deep flavor of a Greek cigarette, that has a lot of Turkish tobacco in it, and thinking, I’m an adult. You know. I have a life of my own, I’m an adult, I’m with this beautiful woman, we have a little money in our pocket, we’re going back to Hydra, we’re passing these painted walls. That feeling I think I’ve tried to recreate it hundreds of times unsuccessfully. Just that feeling of being grown up, with somebody beautiful that you’re happy to be beside and all the world is in front of you.”

—Leonard Cohen

Pictured: Leonard Cohen & Marianne, Hydra 1960  

[kirascuro-deactivated20241231]

Old Drury Lane Theatre on fire, 1809 - Abraham Pether

[write20xx]

You deserve the kind of love you would give someone else.

A Message to My Followers and Everyone Else That Ever Reads This (#127: February 3, 2014)

this hit me like a train

(via rnarypat)

[archiemcphee]

Today the Department of Awesome Natural Wonders treats us to an amazing look at the exquisitely beautiful structure of a luna moth wing viewed through a vintage microscope. These fascinating images were captured by Redditor Proteon using a 1951 American Optical Spencer microscope.

[via Twisted Sifter]

[kafkas-diaries]

6 July. Insomnia; headaches; jump out of the high window but on to the rain-soaked ground where the fall won’t be fatal. Endless tossing with eyes closed, exposed to any random glance.

Franz Kafka, Diaries (via kafkas-diaries)

[thelovejournals]

A love like that was a serious illness, an illness from which you never entirely recover.

Charles Bukowski, The People Look Like Flowers at Last (via thelovejournals)

[quotemadness]

One day, you will be old enough to start reading fairytales again.

C.S. Lewis (via quotemadness)

[onlinecounsellingcollege]

Home is a place we all must find, child. It’s not just a place where you eat or sleep. Home is knowing … knowing your mind, knowing your heart, knowing your courage. If we know ourselves, we’re always home, anywhere.

Glinda, the good witch. (via onlinecounsellingcollege)

[199714424-deactivated20161223]

My final image of this world would be of a mother crumbling.

Ying Chen, Ingratitude  (via 199714424)

[fyp-psychology]

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Carl Jung (via fyp-psychology)

[sixpenceee]

This is a Saturn storm complex.