justme

💫| 23

[rusol]

Do not let your tongue mention someone’s faults,

You are also full of faults; and people have tongues too.

[inmagasroom]

Lessons with Kiarostami

[weltenwellen]

Ilya Kaminsky, from "While the Child Sleeps, Sonya Undresses", Deaf Republic

[your-gay-grandma]

i need everyone to know that community is what will save us all in every single way imaginable. you forming a bond with your neighbour or coworker might help them move house or feel less alone or have the courage to leave an unhealthy living environment. you helping a stranger might provide them with hope. in turn, being able to lean on your community in times of need will save you. your broader bonds with your community are the revolution we need. our society seeks to divide and separate us in so many ways but we are all so much more united in our struggles and joys than you are made to believe. we need to hold onto each other very tightly.

[youngerfrankenstein]

To put it very bluntly.

You will always make a better impact helping people who need it than trying to hurt people you think deserve it.

[weltenwellen]

Ocean Vuong, “A Letter to my Mother that She Will Never Read” The New Yorker, May 2017 

[ashstfu]

fall wishlist —

100 black turtlenecks

romance that’s pure & consumes

24 hours of uninterrupted sleep

creamy roasted garlic tomato soup

[missmisanthrope]

Clarice Lispector, A Breath of Life

[ashstfu]

“to buy a potted plant is to admit both faithlessness and need. to water the plant, perhaps daily, perhaps once in a while when you remember and the leaves start to droop, is as close to love as it gets. other things mean other things. to light a lamp is to hide darkness in the same closet as sleep, along with silence, desire, and yesterday’s obsessions. to read a book is to marry two solitudes, the way a conversation erases and erects, words prepare for wordlessness, a cloud for its own absence, and snow undresses for spring. the bedroom is where you left it, although the creases and humps on the sheets no longer share your outline and worldview. in that way, they are like the children you never had time for. a cooking pot asks the difficult questions: what will burn and for how long and to what end. TV comes from the devil who comes from god who comes and goes as he pleases. to hide the remote control in someone’s house is clearly a sin, but to take the wrong umbrella home is merely human. the phone is too white to be taunting you. the door you shut stays shut. the night is cause enough for tomorrow, whatever you believe. remember, the car keys will be there after the dance. walls hold peace as much as distance. a kettle is not reason enough for tears. the correct answer to a mirror is always, yes.”

— Alvin Pang, “Other Things”

[what-even-is-thiss]

You cannot become a parent just because you want a baby that guy you made is gonna start having independent thoughts faster than you think he will

[lostsometime]

on Father’s Day, sitting in a restaurant with my parents and my brother, my mom commented idly that THIS was what she wanted when she & my dad started planning for kids almost 40 years ago. Not how cute a baby would be, not teaching a child to read or ride a bike, but THIS - a holiday meal with her two adult children who are grown and happy, living lives they enjoy. And I thought how lucky I am, that I have her. To know that my whole life was what she wanted and looked forward to, not just my infancy or childhood. To know that she was looking forward to knowing me, as a full and complete person.

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[petaltexturedskies]

When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears. Like that sky. It's rain and sun both, noon and midnight... I think of the lips l've kissed, and of the wretched child I was, and of the madness of life and the ambition that sometimes carries me away. I'm all those things at once. I'm sure there are times when you wouldn't even recognize me. Extreme in misery, excessive in happiness—I can't say it.

Albert Camus, A Happy Death

[ashstfu]

maybe growing up isn’t about having all the answers. maybe it’s about learning to live with the questions, to embrace the uncertainty and to keep going even when it feels like you’re stumbling in the dark. and maybe, just maybe, there’s beauty in that. maybe there’s beauty in the not knowing, in the endless becoming. i’m not who i was and i’m not who i’ll be yet. but i’m here, in the middle, figuring it out as i go. and maybe, for now, that’s enough.

[havingapoemwithyou]

don’t hesitate by Mary Oliver

[scorpionlafemme]

[kafk-a]

"Sometimes while I ride the subway I try to look at each person and imagine what they look like to someone who is totally in love with them. I think everyone has had someone look at them that way, whether it was a lover, or a parent, or a friend, whether they know it or not. It's a wonderful thing, to look at someone to whom I would never be attracted and think about what looking at them feels like to someone who is devouring every part of their image, who has invisible strings that are connected to this person tied to every part of their body. I think this fun pastime is a way of cultivating compassion. It feels good to think about people that way, and to use that part of my mind that I think is traditionally reserved for a tiny portion of people I'll meet in my life to appreciate the general public. I wish I thought about people like this more often. I think it's the opposite of what our culture teaches us to do. We prefer to pick people apart to find their flaws. Cultivating these feelings of love or appreciation for random people, and even for people I don't like, makes me a more forgiving and appreciative person toward myself and people I love. Also, it's just a really excellent pastime."

— Dean Spade, from his essay For Lovers and Fighters

[simulationswarm]

our house is a very very very fine house with two cats in the yard life used to be so hard now everything is easy cause of you