they warp. they fade. they're eaten away by time and rot until they're unrecognisable. we inter them in mausoleums of albums and frames to preserve them, but this only slows the inevitable process. they're relics of a moment that will never exist again, and in capturing them in an attempt to prolong their memory, we only invite ourselves to witness their decay. a camera is a medium for communing with ghosts.
"Please be a dear boy and destroy this note." is a queer art piece I made for a textile art show that'll take place in July.
We often hear things like "queer is just a trend" or "there weren't as many queer people before", and you know what? Queer people have always been here. We've been here from the beginning of history.
So I took this quote from a transcript of a police raid in a queer space in 1934 (link, National Archive Catalogue reference: MEPO 3/758) and I referenced Wilde's green carnation.
And on top of that, I decided to use a traditional sardinian weaving technique (pibiones) to do the textile, AND I made a font based on the Olivetti lettera 32 font (the typewriter my mother used when she was young; I wanted a touch of personal/familiar history as well).
Because we have traditions. We have history. We've been oppressed, silenced, made invisible; but that doesn't mean we weren't here.
Imagine that one day as you're walking on a hot sunny path, your hat jumps off your head and lands into a muddy ditch. And you look at your muddy hat and ask it: "What did you do that for?"
"I don't want to be a burden anymore", your hat answers. "You are always carrying me around, and I can't carry you. That's not fair."
"I don't mind carrying you, little idiot", you tell your hat, "you hardly weight anything at all, and you shelter me from the sun."
"But that's different", your hat protests. "I don't mind the sun scorching on me. That happens anyway. It's literally no trouble for me to shade you too."
"Just the same it's no trouble for me to carry you. But now, because you wanted to stop inconveniencing and bothering me, I am now hatless and you are in the dirt."
everytime someone says halloween is satanic i literally just wanna ask why satan always conveniently shows up wherever colonisers found indigenous traditions they didnt understand
tantalus remains the most enduringly horrifying of the greek mythological figures for me because his punishment is so miserably uncircumnavigable in its brutal simplicity. the idea that everything you could ever want is forever just beyond your reach, and it's an indelible quality in yourself that makes it so. one must imagine sisyphus happy, one must imagine that icarus died free with the sun warming his skin and clean sea air in his lungs that had only ever known the damp chill of stone, one must imagine euridyce understood that orpheus loved her too much not to look back and forgave him in an instant, but the tantaluses of the world will never reach a resolution that makes all their suffering and deprivation worthwhile. it's in their nature not to.
I think it's better than that. A Tumblr blog isn't just a journal or diary; it's more of what was known as a commonplace book.
Commonplace books aren't just for recording your thoughts and personal histories. They include quotes, stories, drawings, ephemera, and other pieces of things that catch your attention or that you find significant. If one heard a poem they wanted to keep, or saw a field they wanted to sketch, or had an insightful thought about a play, they would collect all that in the commonplace book.
Isn't that what we do here? We collect and create art, and jokes, and commentary, and political thought, and a lot of us cram it all onto the same blog and throw it at our followers who can then choose to keep it for themselves or let it pass by. We're basically in a salon passing our commonplace books to one another and occasionally copying a passage (reblogging), making an addition (reblogging with commentary), or making an aside to our companions (commenting in the tags/replying).
My name is Saja. I’m a wife, a mother, and a woman who once believed her story would be simple. I thought my days would be filled with watching my daughter grow — from her first smile to her first steps — surrounded by the small joys of everyday life.
But life had other plans.
War has returned to our home. Again.
And once again, we find ourselves living under skies that never seem to rest.
There was a moment — a fragile, breathless moment — when the bombs paused and the world seemed to remember us. It gave us hope. We thought maybe, just maybe, we could start to rebuild. But now, we are back in the dark — hiding, holding on, praying.
I’m writing this not as someone seeking pity, but as a mother who has no other choice but to speak.
Imagine holding your baby in the middle of the night, not because she cried, but because the world outside roared too loud for either of you to sleep. Imagine whispering bedtime stories not to lull her into dreams, but to keep the fear from settling into her tiny bones.
This is my life.
This is my daughter’s life.
And even now — especially now — I believe in softness. I believe in kindness.
Because when everything else is taken from you, hope becomes the most valuable thing you have.
Why I’m Reaching Out
Our home has been damaged. Our lives changed. But through it all, my daughter wakes up every morning with a smile. She reaches for me with trust, with love, with faith that I will keep her safe.
That’s why I keep going.
I’ve launched a campaign to ask for help — not because it’s easy, but because silence is no longer an option. I am asking for support not just for me, but for my baby, and for the quiet strength of so many mothers like me who are fighting, every single day, to hold their families together.
How You Can Help:
🤍 Help us restore parts of our home so we can live with dignity
🤍 Support women and mothers in Gaza with access to care and resources
🤍 Keep the light of hope alive for a generation born in the shadows of war
💛 If you can, please support our journey here:
My name is Saja. I am a wife, a mother to a precious 8-month-old girl, and I am writing this in a moment that I wish I didn’t have to live t
If you can’t give, please consider sharing.
Your voice might be the reason someone else hears ours.
From My Heart to Yours
Maybe our lives are worlds apart. Maybe you’ve never lived through war.
But if you’ve ever held a child and wished the world could be better for them — then you understand more than you know.
I don’t want my daughter to grow up thinking the world turned away.
Please, if you’ve read this far — thank you.
Thank you for seeing us. Thank you for caring.
We are still here. Still hoping. Still holding on to every kind act like it’s a lifeline.
My name is Abdelmajed.
I never imagined I’d be sharing my story like this, but life in Gaza has become unbearable. I am a survivor of the war here, and in the blink of an eye, everything I once knew—my home, my safety, my community—was ripped away from me.
The war has transformed Gaza into a graveyard of broken dreams. The buildings that once stood as symbols of life and resilience are now piles of rubble. Every corner is filled with the echoes of explosions. Every moment is shrouded in uncertainty. There is no security. There is no stability. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.
Basic needs have become luxuries.
Food is scarce. Clean water is even scarcer. Hospitals are overwhelmed and under-resourced, and there is almost no medical care to be found. Every night, families go to bed hungry, praying they’ll wake up to see another day. The cost of basic necessities has skyrocketed, and it’s become a daily battle just to survive.
I’ve seen things I never thought possible—standing in long lines for a piece of bread, rationing every drop of water, and watching my people suffer in silence. I have lost everything—my home, my safety, my dignity.
Escape from Gaza is my only hope,
but it’s almost impossible without financial help. The cost of evacuation is far beyond my means, and without support, I’m trapped in a warzone with no way out.
I’m reaching out to you now, in the hopes that someone, anyone, can help. I am not asking for luxury. I am asking for a chance—just a chance—to live. A chance to escape this never-ending cycle of fear, destruction, and loss. A chance to rebuild my life somewhere safe, where I can begin again, where I can find hope once more.
My name is Abdelmajed, and I am a survivor of the war in Gaza. Everything I once knew has been taken away—my home, my safety, and the people
Any amount you can give will help me get closer to safety.
Even the smallest donation will make a difference—it could be the lifeline I need to survive. If you are unable to donate, please share my story. The more people who hear it, the better the chance that I can find the support I desperately need.
Your kindness and support mean the world to me. You’re not just helping me escape a war; you’re giving me a chance to live, to rebuild, to breathe again.
LIVE Commentary on Rinascita's Main Story Quest! [Act I and II]
Hello! I'd like to share and archive my thoughts and comments on Rinascita's Main Story Quest as I play, mainly because I have so much to say about this patch and storyline! It's gotten me really hooked, to the point that it pulled me out of my online inactivity. Forgive me in advance if some of the comments don't make any sense. You can think of this as a dump of my immediate reactions and responses as each dialogue and scene plays out.
✶ Nyarla's entire dialogue regarding the significance of the masks is so important to me, as someone who wrote an entire research paper on masks as a conduit for performance. I hope this makes sense, but it reminds me of the sacred rites of Dionysus/the Bacchic rituals, particularly due to its sense of liberation. Masks, given that its a symbol of Dionysus, is seen as a liberating symbol (one of Dionysus's famous epithets is "the Liberator"), and the festivals held in honor of him is celebrated by many because it promoted a sense of equality, in which anyone can partake in the celebrations, no matter what class or community you originate from, providing a medium in which they can escape the constraints imposed onto them by society. (Please feel free to correct me if I'm wrong regarding this!)
✶ As someone who has a complicated relationship with religion, primarily due to my Christian upbringing and the subsequent religious trauma I endured partially due to my parents' imposition of their beliefs on me, the moment the Acolytes were introduced and their manner of speech when speaking about their Sentinel was made clear to me through their dialogue, I immediately knew that we're going to be dealing with a religious corruption narrative. An organization that clings onto order, who exiles and banishes those that defy their beliefs, under the guise of protecting the peace, cannot be entirely reliable. It's quite clear that they're using fear, particularly the people's fear of their Sentinel's wrath, to keep them under their control. I wonder what real life organization does the same? (I ask sarcastically.)
✶ Listening to Priest Alessio preach about unity or uniting people towards a common goal, while justifying their actions that impede or restrict people's freedom of expression is so chilling, particularly because it is somehow reminiscent to a period in my country's time. The idea of exile under the guise of religious pilgrimage, knowing fully well that they might not survive the journey at sea, precisely because they went against the organization's imposed rules, functions similarly not only with religious ostracization, but also with the concept of the "disappeared" in my country, in which individuals who go against the regime are taken and violently "silenced," with those in power claiming that they left for somewhere or ran away.
On the crest of a hill, the third voice enters: a voice that demonstrates, with elegant precision, the primacy of speech over writing. Johann Drake is trying to swallow a Bible. Take it, and eat it up. Eating a book is a nonliterate response to text. Ingested and digested, the words become part of the speaker, who is then endowed with the spirit of prophecy. The image echoes the sacrament of communion, in which participants ingest the body of Christ, the Word made flesh. The vision of eating a book evokes a transcendent relationship with language, in which one is not a speaker but an instrument. The words of the Book flow from one’s mouth. Pure praise, pure expression, like lark song. As the old hymn puts it, “How can I keep from singing?”
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