•Rosie•

Tender & Feral

[nudibutch]

love women btw. absolutely fantastic stuff. keep it up women

[promqueendyke]

aleksandra waliszewska // yves olade // joy priest, horsepower // richard siken, wishbone

[insomniac-dot-ink]

Into this World

The first baby ever born in Antarctica was in 1978. An entire continent empty of the cry of children and empty of tiny feet until one small boy arrived to break it’s long history of rejecting our incursion. He was Argentinian and born to try and claim sovereignty over the white expanse at the bottom of our planet. Still, he wasn’t born for that, not really, he was born to live, screaming, in freezing conditions. He was born to grace the first human life on a place covered by ice and rock and a place of never-night and always twilight, killing cold and biting wind. And yet still, he joined this world.

An alligator mother will place her young between her enormous jaws and swim them to water and safety in a mouth of one of the strongest bites on earth. A father emperor penguin will sit on their eggs for two months without food. Giant octopus mothers die after their brood hatches after six months of constant watch and caressing to keep them oxygenated.

In a mouth of teeth and a place of hunger and at the bottom of the ocean, they join this world.

And sometimes we say animals do not care in the same way we care. But how can you watch elephants mourn their dead, and fight off predators, and place their young in the center of circle of adults when danger approaches and say they aren’t a mirror to ourselves? We cannot claim a monopoly on the concept of love. Alone and yet unalone on our planet.

Every month babies are born in cars and planes and trains because we can’t stop the process of trying to become part of this world. In the backseat of Volkswagens and on the side of the road and aren’t we an impatient species that burst into being in convenience stores and hiking trails and in the in between of here and nowhere.

And future children, we are a social species that feel alone in the crowd and you will know hardship and you will know want, but come and show yourself because we’re here to get through this together. Even as you look up and see all the black empty night and wonder how can we be so alone in the universe. How can life like us be so rare when we make ourselves so quickly and so dearly.

Babies are born in war zones and storms and forest fires that scorch the skin and earthquakes that shake buildings apart around us. And there is nothing to do but to try again to welcome them into this world and say “look, look, there is pain and a universe of emptiness above and emptiness below and yet, here we are, here we are to make it full.”

[quotefeeling]

“Beautiful, you said. You said I was beautiful, and when you said it, I was.”

— Sandra Cisneros, from Woman at Hollering Creek: Stories; “Never Marry a Mexican”

[facinaoris]

How to Cure a Ghost, Fariha Róisín

[oheavens]

women’s bodies are nothing short of a miracle

[ofthewinedarksea]

I’m gay asf

[antoniettabrandeisova]

The Progress of Love: Hollyhocks (detail), ca. 1790–91. Jean-Honoré Fragonard (French, 1732–1806), Oil on canvas

[softhe4rted]

on a father’s rage

catherine lacey // halsey, i would leave me if i could // @heavensghost, It lingers for your whole life

[liquidlightandrunningtrees]

“Be present. Make love. Make tea. Avoid small talk. Embrace conversation. Buy a plant, water it. Make your bed. Make someone else’s bed. Have a smart mouth, and quick wit. Run. Make art. Create. Swim in the ocean. Swim in the rain. Take chances. Ask questions. Make mistakes. Learn. Know your worth. Love fiercely. Forgive quickly. Let go of what doesn’t make you happy. Grow.”

— Paulo Coelho

[strawberrysw1tchblad3]

i keep coming back to this (x)

[theoptia]

Euripides, from The Trojan Women; tr. by Alan Shapiro

﹙ Text ID: I may be mad, God-seized, but I will stand outside my madness﹚

[ofthewinedarksea]

Which one of you thots keeps screenshotting my memes and sending them to a classics fb page??? Loool

[arandomthot]

Have to answer this one carefully

[medoisa]

godd i just hate the idea of academia as an aesthetic so much . we’re out here trying to demystify scholarship and destroy the image of classics as this sacred, elistist, mysterious subject n people are like no we’d rather think about the idea, the feeling, the persona of academia rather than actually engage in analytical, scholarly thinking or any self-reflexive critiscism of the way that imagery and aesthetics help perpetuate an elitist ideal deeply rooted in classism and colonialism im not saying that dark academia is inherently problematic or that classics students are oppressed bc youre fetishising our degree or anything but like . i swear to god if i see another post thats like ‘how to be more dark academic’ im going to eat my computer

[loumargi]

Antonio Canova (1757-1822) – Aphrodite et Adonis

[armafeminamque]

A Love Poem - CIL 04, 5296

Transcription: 

Translation:

O, would that it be permitted to hold your delicate arms, 

fastened around my neck, and to offer kisses to your tender lips.

Go now, darling, and trust your joys to the winds;

trust me, the nature of men is fickle.

Often while I lie awake in the middle of the night, lost in love,

I reflect on these things with myself: many are they whom Fortune has lifted up high;

and in the same way these, suddenly thrown down headlong, she now oppresses:

just as when Venus has unexpectedly joined the bodies of lovers,

daylight divides them, and (they?)…

Bibliography:

Milnor, Kristina. “Gender and Genre: The Case of CIL 4. 5296.” In Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

(The picture and transcription are taken from this source, p 198 and 209. There is obviously MUCH more scholarship on this, but Milnor is a good starting place.)

I’d recommend looking up Rebecca Benefiel if you want more information specifically about graffiti in domestic spaces.

Comments:

A beautiful love poem from one woman to another, neatly inscribed on the wall inside a house in Pompeii. There’s much to say about this poem, but I’ll keep it brief! There’s a lot of debate as to whether this was actually written by a woman, to a woman, and scholars sometimes bend over backwards to try to justify another explanation. But I (and many others) argue that it rejects the involvement of men both thematically and grammatically. The speaker does not seem interested in men’s “fickle nature.” The gender of the speaker can be determined by the perdita in line 4: a nominative, feminine perfect passive participle. The gender of the addressee is shown by pupula, a vocative, feminine noun (a diminutive term of endearment, literally meaning “little girl,” but probably more like “darling,” or maybe even “baby”?)

Please add your own translations, comments, and bibliography if you like!

Thanks to @ciceronian for the great request!

[medoisa]

“winged words” or, as I prefer to say, pterodactylic hexameter