Oh Stranger

一期一会 (ichi-go ichi-e)

[sosuperawesome]

chedilkm on Instagram

[lisaminnci]

STUDIO GHIBLI + CITYSCAPES

Whisper of the Heart (1995) Tales from Earthsea (2006) Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) Only Yesterday (1991) Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) Castle in the Sky (1986) Spirited Away (2001) Porco Rosso (1992) From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)

[sosuperawesome]

Toko Taira on Instagram

[ohstranger]

He was still too young to know that the heart's memory eliminates the bad and magnifies the good, and that thanks to this artifice we manage to endure the burden of the past.

— Gabriel García Márquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

[wishbzne-deactivated20210526]

[perlabionda-deactivated20210716]

[lustik]

Guram Khetsuriani.

[criwes]

Myself I think shall never know, how far beneath the wave I go & Against the mass of night by Kaye Donachie

[wishbzne-deactivated20210526]

notes from underground, fyodor dostoevsky

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

gosh but like we spent hundreds of years looking up at the stars and wondering “is there anybody out there” and hoping and guessing and imagining

because we as a species were so lonely and we wanted friends so bad, we wanted to meet other species and we wanted to talk to them and we wanted to learn from them and to stop being the only people in the universe

and we started realizing that things were maybe not going so good for us– we got scared that we were going to blow each other up, we got scared that we were going to break our planet permanently, we got scared that in a hundred years we were all going to be dead and gone and even if there were other people out there, we’d never get to meet them

and then

we built robots?

and we gave them names and we gave them brains made out of silicon and we pretended they were people and we told them hey you wanna go exploring, and of course they did, because we had made them in our own image

and maybe in a hundred years we won’t be around any more, maybe yeah the planet will be a mess and we’ll all be dead, and if other people come from the stars we won’t be around to meet them and say hi! how are you! we’re people, too! you’re not alone any more!, maybe we’ll be gone

but we built robots, who have beat-up hulls and metal brains, and who have names; and if the other people come and say, who were these people? what were they like?

the robots can say, when they made us, they called us discovery; they called us curiosity; they called us explorer; they called us spirit. they must have thought that was important.

and they told us to tell you hello.

[swanjolras-blog-archive-deactiv]

this is far and away the most popular post i ever made on tumblr. people have asked me if they could illustrate it, people have asked me if they could turn it into a novella, people just messaged me to say it made them cry. that means more to me than i can say.

you probably heard that the mars opportunity rover died today. 

it was hard news to hear. i cried at my desk at work. it doesn’t make it easier that it was only supposed to run for 90 days at all; it doesn’t make it easier that it lived 14 years longer than it expected to. it lived a full life. it lived a very good life. it was the first set of eyes on miles and miles of mars. it was an explorer, it was tough, it was very, very brave. and none of that makes it easier, none of that makes it okay that it is not going to sing happy birthday to itself again.

about a year ago, my childhood cat died. i loved her more than anything. i don’t live near my family any more, and i wasn’t there for it, but my parents were, and they held her while her body gave out, and they say she knew she was with them, she knew she was loved.

i know opportunity was a computer inside a movable body, and not a person, or even an animal. still, i wish it had had people to hold it. i wish it had been with the people who cared for it. it seems very hard to me, to die so far from home.

but i think - to the extent to which we can say computers “know” things, which i think is a great deal; i think knowing is most of what computers do; i think if they have a consciousness, knowledge must be nearly all of it-

i think opportunity knew it was loved. 

every couple of months i dream that i’ve gone home and my cat’s there. even now, even though my grieving is over and done with, i visit her in my dreams, and i hold her, and every time, she purrs. she missed me. she’s so happy to be with me again.

that’s a very human thing, dreaming of what we’ve loved. what we’ve lost. dreaming things that outlast death. like robots, and singing.

[queercheersquad]

[lesbophobes-deactivated20220907]

everyone is deleting the caption to this but this work is called “perfect lovers” by the gay artist felix gonzalez-torres. the piece is about the illness and death of his HIV-positive partner ross laycock:

For Untitled (Perfect Lovers) (1991), he synchronized two industrial clocks placed side by side. Inevitably, because batteries fail and things tend toward entropy, the clocks would slowly begin to advance at differing rates, out of sync, having moved, however briefly, perfectly together. (x)

[neurotic-prayer]

“Don’t be afraid of the clocks, they are our time, time has been so generous to us. We imprinted time with the sweet taste of victory. We conquered fate by meeting at a certain time in a certain space. We are a product of the time, therefore we give back credit where it is due: time. We are synchronized, now and forever. I love you.” (Gonzalez-Torres, 1988)

[thecollectibles]

Girl by Xi Zhang

[awanqi]

curiosity

[bsd-bibliophile]

I’m no longer afraid, even of a darkness, as fathomless as that is. I’m sure true happiness can even be found within it. Let’s search for it, however long it takes, or however far we must go.

Miyazawa Kenji, “Night on the Galactic Railroad” (via bsd-bibliophile)

[alighthouseofwords]

“I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.”

— Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (via wordsnquotes)

[ohstranger]

“If we believe in life after death Then I often wonder why We assume the dead like coffins When people were never meant to live in boxes So I pray that our children have the good sense To leave us a little wiggle room Leave us exposed like stray dogs in a thunderstorm And I will hear the breeze but not know it as the breeze And I will feel the rain but not know it as the rain And I will behold the sky but not know it as the sky Instead I will hear the breeze and think it’s your love Returned into the hearth of my ears And I will feel the rain and think it is the pinprick of your kiss And when the rain is tender I will know that something has softened you And when the rain is violent I will know something has shaken you And in this newfound understanding without eyes or ears…or hands…or lips Our bare bones will make love in the dirt never knowing our nakedness” - excerpt from The Happy Couple (Death Poem) by Alysia Harris

[joze1123]

Moon earrings