humbled

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
noise dept.
almost home
Three Goblin Art
trying on a metaphor
todays bird
dirt enthusiast
🪼
cherry valley forever
Claire Keane
ojovivo
Peter Solarz
Keni

Kiana Khansmith

izzy's playlists!

blake kathryn
No title available
Jules of Nature
tumblr dot com
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@safeforest
humbled
why go to the grocery store or to a restaurant when you can just get food delivered why go to the mall when you can get same day shipping on amazon why go to the library when you have kindle why make art when there’s ai why go to the cinema when you can stay at home and watch netflix. we are in a loneliness epidemic btw
the loneliness epidemic was invented by BIG SHIT to sell you more SHIT
Last week I asked my dad if he remembers sneaking me into the cinema to see Deep Rising in 1998. He said he thought so but didn't remember which cinema it was. He was stunned that I not only remembered the exact cinema but also the time of day and the shirt I was wearing.
Today I forgot what someone told me over the phone even though the conversation ended 3 seconds ago.
“My memory is like a chalkboard and someone else has the eraser while another someone else writes random things in permanent marker instead of chalk.”
-Actual quote from be before I even imagined I might be ADHD.
There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.
At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.
Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.
Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.
The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.
At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.
Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
仁智懷德聖虞唐,
貞志篤終誓穹蒼,
欽所感想妄淫荒,
心憂增慕懷慘傷。
In pinyin, it is:
Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.
Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng
The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."
Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
傷慘懷慕增憂心,
荒淫妄想感所欽,
蒼穹誓終篤志貞,
唐虞聖德懷智仁。
The pinyin:
Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.
It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén
And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."
That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!
At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:
詩圖璇玑,始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."
Or reversed:
蘇氏詩圖,璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."
Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.
For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.
Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).
Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:
- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.
- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.
- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions
- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.
So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
- A love letter (expressing personal longing)
- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)
- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision
And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".
Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.
The heart at the center was filled after all.
I wish I could travel through time and transcend language to hold this woman’s hand and tell her “girl, he ain’t shit”
the fact that we only have “herculean task” and “sisyphean task” feels so limiting. so here’s a few more tasks for your repertoire
icarian task: when you have a task you know you’re going to fail at anyways, so why not have some fun with it before it all comes crashing down
cassandrean task: when you have to deal with people you KNOW won’t listen to you, despite having accurate information, and having to watch them fumble about when you told them the solution from the start (most often witnessed in customer service)
feel free to chime in i ran out of ideas much faster than i anticipated
Promethean task: opposite of a Cassandraean task. You have the right information, and SOMEONE has to share it. But it's all in the delivery and if you're the person to identify the problem you WILL be hated forever.
Oedipal Task: (1) Attempting to avoid an unspeakably awful outcome and in doing so creating the circumstances that will bring it about. (2) Trying to solve an problem and discovering that you are in fact the problem you are trying to solve.
Odyssean task: you’ll complete it but it’ll take 20 times longer than it should and involve multiple side quests and mini-adventures
today i learned that the finnish word for ‘hazardous waste’ is ongelmajäte, which can also translate as ‘problematic garbage’ and my roommate and i immediately agreed this is a word that belongs on tumblr.
Your fave is ongelmajäte
in german it’s Sondermüll which means special trash and that too belongs on tumblr
One man’s ongelmajäte is another man’s sondermüll.
Lady Kasa, from a tanka featured in From the country of Eight Islands; an anthology of Japanese Poetry
new reaction image
After the storm has passed and we no longer ride the same boat, will we still be this close?
"I'm still kicking" is such a funny way to say "I'm still alive". Like lol. I'm still thrashing. Flailing. Writhing even. The violence remains.
My heaven
Letters to the Void
Hi!
We literally started talking less than a month ago, have met on the worst of timings. Failing so miserably I’m sure we cried rivers that could not drown our failure. Trauma bonded on our shared defeat, misery sure loves company.
The way we instantly connect I realized in fright, having someone to bond with no matter the duration nor the distance in between, is always a delight. Sometimes I fear that I am knowing too much of you. For I know in understanding comes L - the next part I’m not ready for.
I can’t help but wonder is our closeness just a fabrication of our circumstances. Forced to brave the same storms, do we talk just because in this boat I’m the only one you know? Don’t get me wrong, these moments we share, I’ll cherish deep in my core.
Right now we could only be friends, even called me to avoid disastrous ends. Trusted me to keep boundaries you dangerously keep pushing, O how I wish to erase the line and be selfish just this once.
me: you literally have a disorder. this is symptoms
me: no perhaps my soul is rotten
reblog and make a wish! this was removed from tumbrl due to “violating one or more of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines”, but since my wish came true the first time, I’m putting it back. :)
OH MY FUCKING GOD, IT’S BACK ON MY DASH.
THIS SHIT WORKS OKAY, I AM DEAD SERIOUS.
The last time I saw this on my dash, I didn’t think it would happen, so jokingly I wished I could go to a fun. concert.
AND GUESS WHAT, I WENT TO A FUCKING FUN. CONCERT.
THIS SHIT WORKS, TRY IT.
YOOOOOOO
I SAW THIS ON MY DASH THE OTHER DAY AND THOUGHT “ITS WORTH A TRY” SO I WISHED I COULD GET A 3DS
LITERALLY LIKE 4 DAYS LATER MY DAD SENT ME A PICTURE OF THE 3DS XL HE BOUGHT FOR ME WHILE I WAS AT SCHOOL
IM STILL FREAKING OUT ABOUT THIS
holy fuck, I didn’t expect this to work, I was like psh, whatever it’s just a quick reblog, but I wished my Dad would actually respond back to me AND HE FUCKING DID A FEW DAYS LATER, I GOT A FUCKING TEXT FROM MY DAD TODAY WHO HASN’T SPOKEN OR RESPONDED TO ME IN MONTHS HOLY FUCK WHAT IS THIS MAGIC IT WORKS.
I WANTED TO SEE MY BOYFRIEND AND I DIDN’T THINK I’D GET DAYS OFF BUT THIS WEEKEND I’M HEADING UP THERE??? THIS IS CRAZY SHIT
SO LIKE I JOKINGLY WISHED FOR MY OWN LEN KAGAMINE AND THEN LIKE A WEEK LATER I GOT A LEN NENDOROID??? H ELP
WTF OKAY SO THIS SHOT ACTUALLY WORKS BECAUSE WHEN I WISHED, I HAD WISHED MY CRUSH WOULD LIKE ME BACK AND GUESS WHAT? I HAVE A BOYFRIEND NOW. WHAT THE HELLLLL?????
ok I’ve said this before but IM DOING IT AGAIN THE FIRST TIME I SAW THIS, MY WISH DID COME TRUE SO I REBLOGED AGAIN AND SAID IT IN THE TAGS BUT THEN I WISHED FOR SMTH ELSE AND IT LITERALLY LITERALLY HAPPENED LIKE A COUPLE DAYS LATER WHAT THE HELL SO NOW IM WRITING THIS HERE FOR YOU BC I DONT BELIEVE IN THIS CRAP BUT STILL IT’S AN AWFULLY BIG COINCIDENCE
THE BOY I FELL I LOVE WITH LEFT TO TRAVEL THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD AND HAS BEEN GONE NOW FOR 3 MONTHS. WE HAVENT SPOKEN SINCE BECAUSE I DIDNT WANT TO MAKE HIM FEEL TRAPPED TO ME AND NOT ENJOY HIS TIME SO I WAITED FOR HIM TO CONTACT ME FIRST. I SAW THIS ON A PARTICULARLY LOW DAY WHEN I WAS MISSING HIM SO MUCH I CRIED FROM THE PAIN, GUYS I REALLY LOVE HIM, SO I THOUGHT MEH WHAT THE FUCK, AND WISHED HE WOULD JUST LET ME KNOW HE WAS OKAY.
GUYS.
HE FUCKING CALLED ME 20 MINUTES LATER
20 FUCKNG. MINUTES. LATER.
GOOD THINGS DO HAPPEN. AND ITS IN THIS POST.
I wish for someone to leave something in my ask.
OKAY SO I ASKED FOR A HEDGEHOG AND NOW GUESS WHO HAS A PET HEDGEHOG
i really hope my wish comes true
my last two wishes came true, one more couldn’t hurt
SO I WISHED FOR AN IMAC THE LAST TIME I DID THIS AND A WEEK LATER MY MOM SURPRISED ME WITH AN IMAC. HONESTLY SHE DIDNT EVEN KNOW I WANTED ONE, I DIDNT TELL ANYONE, IT WAS AN EARLY XMAS PRESENT. Wow this works
I rly hope u guys arent shittin me
how do i get over someone who i never dated