life-long interpreter

Lee | 24 | she/her/hers | Scientist

[romanticmaterialism]

Although they are

only breath, words

which I command

are immortal.

Sappho

[romanticmaterialism]

Poetry aims for an economy of truth — loose and useless words must be discarded, and I found these were not separate from loose and useless thoughts. Poetry was not simply the transcription of notions — beautiful writing rarely is.

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

[romanticmaterialism]

...But what is grief, if not love persevering?

Vision, WandaVision 0108

[romanticmaterialism]

This was why he had done it, not because of guilt or pride but because this was the moment he’d been waiting for: the chance to show someone else wonder, to watch them realize that they had not been lied to, that the world they’d been promised as children was not something that had to be abandoned, that there really was something lurking in the wood, beneath the stairs, between the stars, that everything was full of mystery. 

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

[romanticmaterialism]

Magic has been lessened. The age of miracles has been ground to a powder by the twinned stones of caution and rationality. 

Middlegame by Seanan McGuire

[romanticmaterialism]

6 November 2020 | As usual, the quarter and 2020 slow down for no one. Week six is now a thing of the past and the second round of exams is coming up in the following days. Three exams--all while the United States hits peak Covid-19 related cases/deaths and deals with the aftermath of a tumultuous election day/week. Revision begins... now!

[romanticmaterialism]

20 October 2020 | Will I be able to conserve this momentum through the end of my assignments tonight? Will my arithmetic errors be as negligible as gravity seems to be in all these problems? I guess we’ll find out. 

[romanticmaterialism]

Prodigy is, at its essence, adaptability and persistent, positive obsession. Without persistence, what remains is an enthusiasm of the moment. Without adaptability, what remains may be channeled into destructive fanaticism. Without positive obsession, there is nothing at all. 

Earthseed: The Books Of The Living Lauren Oya Olamina

[romanticmaterialism]

The day was now departing; the dark air released the living beings of the earth from work and weariness...

Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, "Inferno, Canto II"

[romanticmaterialism]

My eccentricities are tolerated: my love of cities, of poetry, my appreciation for being rootless, for being, in some ways, more Gardener than Garden, or Gardened. My appetites, that being flooded with Garden can’t seem to sate. 

You, though, Red—

Blue to Red, This is How You Lose the Time War

[romanticmaterialism]

As little flowers, which the chill of night  has bent and huddled, when the white sun strikes,  grow straight and open fully on their stems,  so did I, too, with my exhausted force;  and such warm daring rushed into my heart  that I—as one who has been freed—began...

The Divine Comedy, "Inferno: Canto II”

[romanticmaterialism]

It was impossible that he should leave this place. He was like a traveller in an enchanted wood. Every step deeper bewitched him further, and deeper he did go, from room to room as though guided by instinct, down secret stairs to a sub level where dust lay thick on books undisturbed for years. He disturbed them. It seemed to him that he awoke them, and they awoke him. 

Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor

[romanticmaterialism]

Overhead the constellations dip and wheel. My divinity shines in me like the last rays of the sun before they drown in the sea. I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.

Circe by Madeline Miller

[romanticmaterialism]

I know what ambition feels like. This feels different. Like a weight around my shoulders, or a stone carried over my heart. 

Chih to Almost Brilliant in The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo

[romanticmaterialism]

Those who are here can place no hope in death, and their blind life is so abject that they are envious of every other fate. The world will let no fame of theirs endure; both justice and compassion must disdain them; let us not talk of them, but look and pass.

Virgil to Dante at the Gate of Hell, The Divine Comedy, “Inferno: Canto III”

[romanticmaterialism]

Romanticism looks to the ancient world for inspiration, not because it has renewed and emphasized its myths, but because it is dissatisfied with its own rationalist, enlightened age, and therefore it resolves into a poetic art. Materialism, which appears on the heels of Romanticism, not only accepts its own era but believes it represents the highest phase in the total evolution of reason. The gods are dead, even if they had to slake their thirst with human blood in the process, and the divine has come down to earth.

Eugenio Montale, The Divine Comedy, “Introduction”