What did i expect ?
To leave a hemorrhage of violets wherever I walked ?
No.
A lost son is called prodigal.
A lost daughter is just called lost.

Origami Around
Show & Tell
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
i don't do bad sauce passes
Monterey Bay Aquarium

ellievsbear
we're not kids anymore.
h
Mike Driver
hello vonnie
AnasAbdin
Xuebing Du

Kaledo Art
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
occasionally subtle
Claire Keane

⁂
RMH
Sade Olutola

pixel skylines

seen from Germany
seen from Australia
seen from Italy
seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom

seen from United States
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from Sweden

seen from United States

seen from Germany

seen from Germany
seen from Spain

seen from United States

seen from Türkiye
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Germany

seen from Sweden
seen from Bangladesh
seen from Malaysia
@oeuvre-academia
What did i expect ?
To leave a hemorrhage of violets wherever I walked ?
No.
A lost son is called prodigal.
A lost daughter is just called lost.
Nostalghia (1983), dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
so soft it hurts
I grabbed a pile of dust, and holding it up, foolishly asked for as many birthdays as the grains of dust, I forgot to ask that they be years of youth.
Ovid, Metamorphoses
I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.
Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
It's my 4 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳
“One tree was cut years ago and the big one has been holding onto and feeding it ever since. They “wake up” together in the spring and “go to sleep” together in the autumn.”
—
underdiscussed benefit of auditory processing issues is that I’m basically immune to catcalling because I fully. do not understand a single word of what people are saying. half the time I barely realise it’s me they’re talking to because it‘s not like I can figure it out based on content and context clues. there’s just Some Guys Yelling on the other side of the street, and it barely occurs to me to feel addressed because I am, at any given time, too busy thinking about the menacing duality of rhododendrons
Do you ever think about autistic medieval nuns. I'm pretty sure there were some, it's statistically impossible there weren't nuns that were on the spectrum. Other nuns at the monastery looking at them like "Sister Margary always looks to be in peace and so content with this life, why cannot I be such a good nun as well" and then immediately start grieving about the sin of envy or some shit.
Meanwhile Margary has zero fucking idea that anyone is staring at her, busy thinking "oh man I sure fucking love having the same meal at the same time every single day, and then going back to my simple repetitive work where Nobody Fucking Talks At Me all day."
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Maybe I deserve more than all this madness
“I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me.”
— Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Tell me a soft memory
we would find out later i had burned off my entire cornea - about 65% of my eye. my doctor told me it is the organ with the highest concentration of nerve endings - i was in an amount of pain that can't be spoken.
and i was blind. for the first time in my life, i was totally blind. i kept thinking about reading, about writing. weirdly, just once, about driving. we had no idea if i would ever see again. just like that - my entire life was different.
it is a strange place to reference for a soft memory, to begin here.
my siblings were taking excellent care of me, but there was a moment in the hospital where, just through bad luck and timing - both of them had to step away for a moment. i was crying at that point; not emotionally. for 3 days after this i would still be crying, my tears, like a mermaid's, a frothy pink with blood.
my brother worried about leaving me. he had another, just-as-bad emergency.
"i got her," someone said. "don't worry."
a soft hand held mine, and then she started talking.
her name was jess. she has a wife named clyde. they live a few blocks up the street. clyde fell down, but the x-rays seem to be coming back better than expected. jess says she's got long dark hair and "more wrinkles than an elephant". jess describes every chair in the room and every person. she talks about her two kids and her cats and her favorite memories from college.
a doctor came. i had to switch to a different waiting room. i tried to stand up to follow the voice - i found jess's hand, following me. she didn't let go. she kept talking the whole way: lamp to your left, just a few more steps, okay to your right is the ugliest painting, good, now a little more walking straight, you got it baby
in the new silence of the next room she sat me down and called my brother for me, telling him where we'd gone to. and she stayed there for a bit, just chatting, her voice echoing in the eerie quiet. gently describing the room to me. and then someone was rude. from the sound of the voice, a kid, i think.
"why is she crying?"
"she just lost her vision," jess said. "she can't see."
"oh." said the kid. "that's scary."
the kid tells me he is here because he has peas stuck up his nose. that makes me laugh, his mom (?) groans. she tells me about the kid (he's 6, he likes paw patrol and eating cheese), about herself, about moving from cali.
jess says she's sorry, but she has to leave now, she's gotta go check on her wife.
"don't worry," says the mom. "i got her." and then i felt her hand press into mine.
for hours like that: i am taken care of by strangers. each person just talking with whatever comes to their head - not for any reward or celebrity or real reason, i guess. just because i am scared and alone and in the hospital and blinded and need to be distracted. not everyone even got told the story - they would just pick up in the silence with - oh by the way the television is playing HGTV - do you like that kind of a thing? yeah, me too, but could never quite get into those open-floor plans, i'll tell you -
by the time my brother is able to come back, the room is buzzing. we talk to each other like old friends, laughing, cracking jokes about if you don't like hospital food wait until you get on an airplane and can't believe i'm up past two in the morning what a party animal i'm becoming. i am holding the hands of someone named drew, who likes my crow tattoo and making crochet snails.
there are many dark moments full of pain in this world. this - in the low of absolute-dark, absolute-pain: people find a way to paint in it anyway. the color splash of their voices: this triumphant, radiating kindness of - let's be here together, let me help you, let's keep going.
i never saw their faces. i can't remember many of their names. but i think about them often, and the way we all took a deep breath - and did something gentle amongst the pain.
Tom Chambers
Fernando Pessoa // Michel Foucault
Michael Cunningham, from “The Hours”
“I have buried you in every place I’ve been. You keep ending up in my shaking hands.”
— Bon Iver, A song for a lover of long time ago