#dawnet

[nblizzieforbes]

Janet x Dawn (school spirits)

[poeticruins]

[causedandcreated]

“Is he not sacred, even to the gods, the wandering man who comes in weariness?”  -  the Iliad by homer 

{the revolutionaries}

[mehlancholic]

𝑵𝒐𝒗𝒆𝒎𝒃𝒆𝒓 𝑨𝒆𝒔𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒄 : Dark woollen sweaters, fallen rose petals, gothic literature, sipping cherry apple tea, burning frankincense and cedar wood candles, writing till 3 AM, fog clinging to windows, maroon velvet blazers and silk dresses, watching film noir, black and white photo albums, listening to U2, empty libraries

—trisha barua

https://www.instagram.com/p/BpxKXMenwBh/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1430cg6sx97au

[prettylittlelyres]

I feel like when people ask why there aren’t any dark academia works surrounding Law students... they are forgetting... the iconic... Legally Blonde... and that is a massive injustice.

[darkacademiawomen]

Hello members! Since Halloween’s fast approaching, we’ll have some spookier prompts in the following weeks.

This week’s prompts are:

shadows

blood

shatter

moonlight

panic

Please tag your works under #dawnet and #darkacademiawomen. Contributions from members and non-members are all welcome.

[ebp-brain]

footnotes

(not a member, but very into the @darkacademiawomen network’s weekly writing prompts. here’s a spooky bit for the season!)

prompt: shadows, blood, shatter, moonlight, panic

The dark liquid trickled under her office door and pooled at her feet. She thought at first that it was wine. Then she bent down and saw that it was not.

She couldn’t have said exactly what time she noticed it, but it was certainly late at night, so late that only grad students and untenured faculty, like her, were still haunting the grey stone halls of the venerable university’s Literary and Cultural Studies department. She pushed open her office door, staring at the thin red line beneath her feet.

It went on and on, down the corridor, into the shadows.

She hovered at the edge of the darkness, soft golden light behind her, uncertainty ahead. Her peace of mind had been shattered, she told herself; she would get no more work done tonight. Not until she discovered—though the thought of such a discovery made her squirm—where the red trail ended. Not until she found its source.

So she followed the blood like she followed the citations in heavy old books: painstaking, careful, paying close attention to the twists and turns, the obscure and unexpected pathways, weaving deeper and deeper towards the truth at the heart of things—wandering, a perpetual pilgrim in search of meaning. The blood was a sticky-red thread like a line of ink in a medieval manuscript, pointing towards the most important, the most divine, passage.

Her footsteps fell too loudly on the cold grey stone. How had the blood traveled so far?

As she walked she felt herself getting closer and closer to the beginning, to whatever waited for her in the darkness. Surely it was just around the next corner, or down the next staircase. Her hands trembled, and a panicked-bird heartbeat fluttered against her chest. She should go back. She should get out.

Because she knew all about the search for origins: it was futile, always, there was no origin, no center, only fragments, assemblage, middles, endlessly branching rhizomes—no roots—no branches, leading up to an apple—no first bite into the red flesh, no spilling out from the vital source—no source at all—

The trickle of blood stretched on, and on, and on, and she kept on following.

[phi1omena]

The heavy ivory curtains of the studio let the rosy light of the sunset pass through its openings, painting the floor like a graceful canvas in which the shadows of the trees and birds appeared and disappeared with the brush strokes of the unpredictable wind. The room was filled with the gentle notes of the piano, played by Sylvia. She accompanied the  concerto that enter from the open windows, like a breeze, describing in the air ephemeral duets tasted like summer days now forgotten and forlorned lands. I loved listening to her play, thanks to her music I could forget what it means to be themselves. I could become a poet who with their soul in continuous metamorphosis could borrow the essence of everything, weigh it on their body and abandon it, jumping here and there between the embalmed darkness of poetry.

The piano and Sylvia’s dark figure stood out on the otherwise empty backdrop and- as if the protagonist of a painting came to life in front of the skeptical spectators- she stopped playing and turned to look at us.

-How was the presentation? -

Frances answered her

-You should have come, at least you would have laughed at the banality of the speech of the so-called art expert.-

-He was mistaking Bellini’s Apollo and Daphne for a Canova’s statue.- added Odette.

-Lately the banality and ignorance descend into my body as melancholy infection. I think it's the winter air, I miss the sound of the nightingale in the nearby meadows ...-.

Sylvia stopped talking for a moment. She stared out the window, her figure almost motionless, contemplating whether or not to reveal her hidden thoughts. She had certainly pondered it for the entire duration of our absence, perhaps even before, ever since the professor of art history had revealed to us his new "work of art" ,that he had then shown to the press and to the poser art critics today, during the conference that lasted almost two hours.

-For someone who has studied how the evolution of thought has shown itself into the reality, it saddens me how the professor decided to create something only for diffusion and earning purpose that completely lack of artistic qualities.- Her expression hardened and with a slow movement rose from the chair. Among the curly raven hair her golden earring transpired which, thanks to the contrast with her obsidian skin, made her similar to a goddess from ancient times.

As we waited for her to start talking, the shadows in the room grew longer until the dusk came. Although it was becoming difficult to distinguish the shapes of objects, none of us moved to light the room as if held by invisible threads of spiderweb. At a time like this, in which in the mind of Sylvia were evolving the thoughts that from that night on changed our lives, the light seemed to us all an enemy that could reveal to the world our true nature.

-The object that the professor Dyerworth has declared art, I find that it is nothing but a poor representation of modern times: without taste, feelings and beauty and in which the value of things is not given by humanity preserved in it but by the vile money. Tomorrow the person who bought it will come. I wish that before then the professor will understand what art means.-

_______________

The secondary door that led to the auditorium was open as usual. Although all the external entrances were sealed and it was impossible to enter the structure from the outside, from the inside it was possible to access to any public place.

Only the moon illuminated our path, guiding us through the rows of chairs arranged neatly in the great hall. Our steps echoed on the marble and ended up heavily in the air, carried by the dust and settled on the statues, depicting ancient mythological figures that adorned the angles of the whole room. Their faces seemed benevolent under the moonlight, accomplices in our crime.

Sylvia stopped in front of the professor's work, which was on a raised floor, and waited Odette and France to reach her at both of her side. With a nod, Sylvia pointed to the base of the statue and all three began to push it. I stood in front of the heavy main door at the opposite side of the room from which I could admire the whole scene. In the moment the statue finally lost its balance and fell to the ground my mind became lucid as if like it awakened from a somnolent torpor. The loud sound cracked the veil of maya that divided my mind from the reality and the thousands of pieces of which the statue had shattered come to my feet as a great wave that washed away my panic. Though the intact statue looked trivial and vulgar, his corpse seemed to me more magnificent than ever. In the momentary nature of that unrepeatable scene, we managed to created art from that shallow and caddish object. For the first time I finally understood Sylvia’s words.

-Move Bea, the director has probably woken up!

Sylvia came running towards me and took my hand in hers. Without moving a single fragment we reached the centre of the massacre and I left a lonely blood-colored rose on the floor.  Frances was keeping the small door open and intimated us to reach her . Sylvia and I began to ran away but before the door closed I turned around for one last time. The statues that had formerly seemed allied to me now had a accusatory expression on their face.

________

Thanks for reading till the end!

This is the first time I try to write something, I really want to improve my writing though english is not my first language (please correct me!).

I wrote this for the other @darkacademiawomen week's prompts but I've notice that I used all the new words.