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titsay
Three Goblin Art
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@theartofmadeline
Cosmic Funnies
Jules of Nature
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
Xuebing Du
tumblr dot com
styofa doing anything
$LAYYYTER
Show & Tell
if i look back, i am lost
JVL
Mike Driver
d e v o n
No title available
trying on a metaphor
blake kathryn
seen from Ireland
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@overflowing-smiles
musings on april
Sylvia Plath (Leon Dabo), Edna St. Vincent Millay, E. E. Cummings, Naguib Mahfouz (Edgar Degas), E. E. Cummings (Édouard Manet), Rabindranath Tagore, T. S. Eliot (Edgar Degas), F. Scott Fitzgerald (Alphonse Osbert)
Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl
— Clarice Lispector, from “The Hour of the Star.”
Dog Woman, Chris Abani
Pine to Sound, Nancy Kuhl
My dad and I once had a disagreement over him using the adage "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
I said, "That's just not true. Sometimes what doesn't kill you leaves you brittle and injured or traumatized."
He stopped and thought about that for a while. He came back later, and said, "It's like wood glue."
He pointed to my bookshelf, which he helped me salvage a while ago. He said, "Do you remember how I explained that, once we used the wood glue on them, the shelves would actually be stronger than they were before they broke?"
I did.
"But before we used the wood glue, those shelves were broken. They couldn't hold up shit. If you had put books on them, they would have collapsed. And that wood glue had to set awhile. If we put anything on them too early, they would have collapsed just the same as if we'd never fixed them at all. You've got to give these things time to set."
It sounded like a pretty good metaphor to me, but one thing I did pick up on was that whatever broke those shelves, that's not the thing that made them stronger. That just broke them. It was being fixed that made them stronger. It was the glue.
So my dad and I agreed, what doesn't kill you doesn't actually make you stronger, but healing does. And if you feel like healing hasn't made you stronger than you were before, you're probably not done healing. You've got to give these things time to set.
in between the morning coffee you need to find time to eat something healthy for breakfast so hopefully you prepared something the night before. on the commute over, are you listening to the right podcasts? are you taking the time to educate yourself? are you meditating on today's words of affirmation? in between the emails you have to send and the items you have to organize you have to find time to clean your apartment, the dishes are piling up again and you haven't taken out the trash yet. oh, right, you've been meaning to get your tires checked, you should make a note to check your tires soon. the problem is that you have been meaning to get back into journaling and you want to write down all your memories because your brain is a sieve and if you don't write it down you're going to forget it. speaking of which at some point today you need to get groceries. somewhere between work and dinner you need to find time to exercise. are you eating right? are you getting enough protein? walk the dog when you get home. listen to a book on tape that's kind of hard to get through. are you doing self care? did you remember to pick up your meds? you didn't order your new contacts yet, you need to order your new contacts or they'll be late coming in. did you save up enough money to order a new pair of glasses? will your insurance cover any of this. oh, while you're making dinner, don't forget, you promised you'd follow up with your friends. you promised! wait, did that email send? you haven't been able to find time to put up those shelves yet, jesus christ, this whole apartment is a mess. you need to do more creative things, don't you, otherwise you get depressed. find the time to do something creative per diem. other people can do this! you're just lazy and overwhelmed easily. your clothes are on the floor still, like a slob. you need to water your plants. find time to google all the needs of your plants so you don't kill them. oh, you need to make something healthy for breakfast or you're gonna end up eating something weird again. shit, you forgot to get groceries again. you need to get the tires checked. you've been having headaches, is that a symptom? you need to find time to clean the apartment - just 15 minutes! that's what everyone says! - but also remember that you're supposed to be doing yoga at this hour for wind-down time. make your hands busy. did you go to the gym? did you do something creative? are you breathing? are you even listening? this is easy for other people. this is just adulthood. this is just being a good person. holy shit other people can do this stuff. you still haven't watered your plants. get up, bitch!! get out of bed. you don't have time for this. you don't have your own time, at all. it's just this. running, heart hammering, hand to the door. don't be still, ever, you'll get stuck. stop resting, you don't have time. get up. get up. get up.
Sue Zhao // from “Ifrit”
"To Begin With, the Sweet Grass" by Mary Oliver.
[text ID: Love yourself. Then forget it. Then, love the world.]
Pierce Brown, Golden Son
Ocean Vuong, from "Dear Peter", Time Is a Mother
and in the blink of an eye it has been years since I felt as if I had lost everything it has been years of hard lessons of tears of mistakes and growth and sunny days and best friends I feel everything these days I don’t suffocate my feelings I don’t feel like I'm drowning anymore my head is clear and I can see the waves idly flow past in front of me the wind feels soft in my salty hair and the sun kisses my shoulders my freckles meet the sky as I look up and I know I am okay and I know I am going to be okay and I know I am going to live a life full of love. I still have nightmares and sometimes I can’t sleep I still am afraid of growing up I am afraid of losing what I’ve known all my life but life is a constant act of letting go and I know I can gain more in a year than I can ever imagine. I have so much trust in myself and I know it’s okay to not know where I’ll be in a year because I have myself I have my friends that have become my family I have my health and peace I have a direction to grow so I look up and I say thank you with a smile on my lips and tears in my eyes.
n.c. // Morro Bay (via blooming-anna-rose)
Frank Bidart
@figtreeification
All my life I’ve thought I needed someone to complete me, now I know I need to belong to myself.
Sue Monk Kidd (via quotemadness)
“But I wasn’t trying to make a sentence — I was trying to break free. Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.”
— Ocean Vuong, from “On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous”
