#auralaesthetics

[florealegiardini]

“Love is a springtime plant that perfumes everything with its hope, even the ruins to which it clings.” — Gustave Flaubert, ~ archive moodboard for @auralaesthetics ❀❁*:･ﾟ✧ ~

[itspileofgoodthings]

Twelve year-old me is so elated that you enjoyed The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I read it a few years before I ever picked up Jane Austen, and it's true, my heart must have known there was something Austenesque about it because I never forgot it. Nat and Kit are definitely one of the all time OTPs, full stop.

They’re sooooo good!!! And centered so perfectly.

I’m so happy I read it! (And I’m glad you enjoyed the liveblog. 💚💚💚)

[itspileofgoodthings]

@auralaesthetics Y E S. This quote is everything 🩷🩷🩷

[itspileofgoodthings]

I hope I'm not too late to send you a star! 🌟 I love Maisie Peters so I'm very interested to see which songs you pick!

Your songs are:

1) Happy Hunting Ground!

Because of the English rose line, for one. It really seems to fit! And because there’s a tenderness and a seriousness to it that seems to match your aesthetic. There’s also something about this song where, even though it’s modern, seems to match the mood of period pieces which I always associate with you!

2) Take Care of Yourself

Because I think it’s a good one to send to people regularly. And I thought it would be nice for the moment. <3

I hope you and your family are doing better lately!

[ Ask Game Closed ]

[itspileofgoodthings]

Call this presumptuous, but I'd love to hear your personal feelings on Wuthering Heights. I never hear anyone say they actually like Hareton, and that intrigued me.

So ! I read it a while ago and had an immediately negative impression in that I found it upsetting and almost graphic? Not in terms of content but emotionally and so it was a draining experience. That was all I got from my first read of it. It gripped me and held my attention completely but it left me empty and tired.

But then I read one post on tumblr on it that changed my life (it’s in my wuthering heights tag) and it talked about how our current culture approaches this story wrong, and about how we aren’t meant to idolize Cathy and Heathcliff, we’re supposed to understand that they’re two broken and tragic individuals, and we’re supposed to focus on younger Cathy and Hareton and their story because it’s THEIR story that provides the key to the book. Their story is one of education and healing. Cathy teaches him how to read; they teach each other how to love, how to have a relationship. And it’s not perfect but it’s human and good and it’s miles better than the tragic, charged bond between Heathcliff and Cathy.

I can’t remember the story very well, in terms of the specifics of their family background, but I know it’s dark and there was abuse in their childhood—definitely in Heathcliff’s but i think in Cathy’s too?—and so their love is this desperate, broken thing in the sense that their pain bound them together and so they are each other’s whole world and they will choose each other over everything for always, including over goodness and light? and it’s VERY dramatic and not to be romanticized, in that I think it shouldn’t be. I get why people do it, “whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same” is! a! line! But a) it’s a destructive thing, as I said and b) it’s also so close of a bond it’s almost not romantic? There’s a sense of sibling-ness to it all and best friends but also more than any of that it’s all relationships ever rolled into one because they turned to each other for their everything and that isn’t a healthy thing, though it’s a moving thing. You’ve got to have more than one kind of relationship to be whole and healthy, you cannot pour yourself into one and Cathy and Heathcliff, in the most fundamental way, DO pour themselves into each other even when Cathy is agreeing to marry whoever Cathy’s dad is, Edmonton? Edward? Edmund? I cannot remember but you know who I mean.

So I feel like I have now lost my thread but yeah! The point is that younger!Cathy and Hareton are the answer to original Cathy and Heathcliff. younger!Cathy is a lot like her mom, petulant, spoiled etc. and Hareton is a lot like Heathcliff, totally rough around the edges, uneducated, streak of wildness to them both but they’re also different. In circumstances and temperament—Hareton has a more naturally loving heart than Heathcliff, it’s open and it’s soft and younger!Cathy doesn’t have her mom’s total wildness and strong will, but especially in their choices. They choose something beside what their “parents” did. (They’re not all related but you know what I mean.) They choose education and growth and ....civilization over the wild, savage, awful brutality of Cathy and Heathcliff’s love and it saves them. The younger generation saves them and breaks the cycle of pain the older ones have been living in and perpetuating.

Also I can’t totally remember but isn’t there a scene when Cathy is mad at Hareton and he’s mad at her and they start acting out but then he apologizes and they pick it back up?? Don’t they start out hating each other and then learn to get along? I love 😭

(Final caveat: I am no authority on the subject though because it’s been so long since I read it, but I did love this book once I found this way to look at it. And I absolutely think it’s how we’re supposed to look at it.)

[itspileofgoodthings]

@auralaesthetics haha so this is just in reference to a story I’ve told a handful of times on tumblr.

And the story is that a family friend of ours met his wife at this catholic youth group and after that first evening told another friend of his that he couldn’t be a priest (he and this other friend were in that discerning vocations stage of catholic life) because he had just met Dorothea and couldn’t live without her.

The other friend has since become a priest and tells this story a lot as an example of one of the first times he understood what love really was.

[itspileofgoodthings]

Milk!

🥛 Milk: What is a food you find comforting when you are sad? 

Soup. Also cheeseburgers. Also ice cream. 

[itspileofgoodthings]

How is it that Elinor and Willoughby ended up together IRL? I swear she saw right through his BS about loving Barton Cottage.

I KNOW 😂😂 every time I watch it I am surprised all over again.

I kind of love it though. I think Emma Thompson said once that working on S&S and meeting Greg both helped her heal and pulled her out of a depression.

And it’s nice to know Willoughby is nice in real life. :)