i have seen them riding seaward on the waves

(i have heard the mermaids singing)

[deadcamera-deactivated20190920]

2/22 in Baton Rogue, LA 

[songoftides]

People, at least in my experience, rarely say anything interesting to each other. They always talk about their lives and they don't have very interesting lives. So I get impatient. For some reason I think you should only say something if it's interesting or absolutely has to be said.

Peter Cameron, Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

[songoftides]

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matter; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

[songoftides]

'maybe a fairer way of putting this would be to say that adulthood's full of ghosts. [...] I'm talking about these people who've ended up in one life instead of another and they are just so disappointed. Do you know what I mean? They've done what's expected of them. They want to do something different but it's impossible now, there's a mortgage, kids, whatever, they're trapped. Dan's like that.' 'You don't think he likes his job, then.' 'Correct,' she said, 'but I don't think he even realizes it. You probably encounter people like him all the time. High-functioning sleepwalkers, essentially.

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

[89rooms]

“All that I do, is bleed and bleed and bleed - and yet, you keep talking to me like I am human.”

— Helaena Moon @ : http://hapless-hollow.tumblr.com/

[skull-heads]

The Caretaker. 

[songoftides]

In the last third the diary shows two rotating moods. In romantic passages Cecilia despairs over the demise of our elm trees. In cynical entries she suggests the trees aren't sick at all, and that the deforesting is a plot 'to make everything flat.'

Jeffrey Eugenides, Virgin Suicides

[songoftides]

Alas, John, you must die, because the shape of the book requires it.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

[nevver]

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, James Whistler

[cigarettesmokeandexyracquets-de]

“I have scars on my hands from touching certain people.”

— J. D. Salinger (via philosophium)

[songoftides]

'Are you asking if I believe in ghosts?' 'I don't know. Maybe. Yes.' 'Of course not. Imagine how many there'd be.' 'Yes,' Kristen said, 'that's exactly it.'

Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

[ex0skeletal]

Wild Hunt by IrenHorrors

Instagram | Facebook | Shop Wild Hunt is a European folk myth involving a ghostly or supernatural group of huntsmen passing in wild pursuit. The hunters may be either elves or fairies or the dead. The myth of the Wild Hunt originally comes from a Scandinavian legend that has become fairly widespread and varied (the leader of the retinue could be Odin, Hecate, Herne the Hunter, etc.)

[songoftides]

the road        is too long the sky        is too vast the wandering                      heart is homeless                at last

Leonard Cohen, The Book of Longing

[songoftides]

--they said nothing, and our parents said nothing, so that we sensed how ancient they were, how accustomed to trauma, depressions, and wars. We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in, and that for all their bitching about crab-grass they didn't give a damn about lawns.

Jeffrey Eugenides, Virgin Suicides

[lionofchaeronea]

Chinese hair ornament, thought to have been worn by the Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908).  Made from gilded copper alloy worked into phoenix-shapes, decorated with pearls, other gemstones, and kingfisher feathers.  Now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.  Photo credit: Walters Art Museum.

[songoftides]

A very queer, composite being thus emerges. Imaginatively she is of the highest importance; practically she is completely insignificant. She pervades poetry from cover to cover; she is all but absent from history. She dominates the lives of kings and conquerors in fiction; in fact she was the slave of any boy whose parents forced a ring upon her finger.

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

[lifeinpoetry]

In the space between “I’m glad you’re okay…” and “Are you alright?” Sunlight in a stained glass window.

Jasminne Mendez, from “Dar a Luz” published in Gulf Coast (via lifeinpoetry)