#on mortality

[paradoxarchive]

i am too in love with life, i don't want to die (i cannot fathom the absence of living)

arthoesunshine | sunlightafterdark | joseph cambell | mary oliver | amy krouse rosenthal | joseph brodsky | unknown | gregory orr | colette, tr by matthew ward | anaïs nin

[poeteunoia]

"from my rotting body flowers shall grow"

Credits:

Edvard Munch quote from Tumblr / Pinterest / Oscar Wilde quote from Pinterest / Pinterest / Pinterest / quote from Pinterest / Pinterest / quote from Pinterest / Charles Bruce MayKay quote / witchy quote from Pinterest / Pinterest / from Pinterest / poem by Jimmy Osborne / Pinterest

[jewelleria]

life may be sad, but it’s always beautiful.

the son of neptune, rick riordan / encyclopedia of an ordinary life, amy krouse rosenthal / dead poets society (1989) dir. peter weir / romain gary / @arthoesunshine on tumblr / tales from earthsea (2006) dir. goro miyazaki

[the-most-sublime-fool]

Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing.

Orson Welles

[halfelven]

Legolas sits with hair undone. Rain falls on the window, heavy enough to disguise the world behind entirely. The diamond panes of glass look out upon a river. This river will fall to the land, will join the Bruinen, will to flow to the sea. He has never seen the sea. But Aragorn has told him how the great waves rise and fall, and crash and break on the earth. How nothing else sounds like it. How it could drive you mad, with want or love, or fear.

Aragorn isn’t afraid of the sea. He isn’t afraid of death either. He brought Legolas pieces of sea glass — a treasure. Legolas put them in a glass bowl on his windowsill.

‘Have you ever seen the sea?’ he asks Bilbo Baggins, who once lived in his house, although they never met. That was before Aragorn and the sea glass.

‘No,’ Bilbo says. ‘But I will someday. I’ve promised myself that.’

Legolas nods. The ring once lived in his house too. He didn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel it when Frodo carries it either. He hasn’t asked anyone else if they do or don’t. He thinks it might make Gandalf feel strange, but he doesn’t dare ask.

‘What else did you promise yourself?’ Legolas asks. He rests his chin on his drawn up knees. Bilbo sits quite close to the fire, and he has a green blanket over his lap. He is old. Younger than Legolas in years, but older than him in every way that matters.

‘That I would see my Frodo again,’ Bilbo says. ‘That we’d have a happy ending.’

‘How do you promise a happy ending?’ he asks. Death is strange and far away. But it always seems sad.

Bilbo looks at the fire, and Legolas looks at the window.

‘It has to be,’ Bilbo says. ‘All the best stories end that way. Or, well, my favourites do.’

‘I don’t like thinking of endings,’ Legolas says.

‘That’s because you’re an elf.’

Legolas does not disagree with Bilbo. He hugs his knees and rocks back and forth, humming. The melody is like the rain, and not like the sea. The sea he can hear in the shell Aragorn brought him.

‘I’ll see it too someday,’ he says.

Bilbo looks at him. ‘A happy ending?’

‘The sea, and no endings.’

‘Every story ends somewhere, Thranduilion.’

‘I know,’ Legolas says, but he counts death as violence. Bilbo can count death as peace. ‘I’ve heard that all water runs to the sea.’

‘Yes, but not all find it.’

The rain thins. Legolas can see the world outside again. A crow flies to a white pine. Water runs slowly down the window.

[solitude-and-books]

- maria popova

[jeffbuckley1997]

To Amy, I was too young to know I’d be your mirror.

I never knew you like I wish I had. Most days I wish to replace my face with your own, we share the same brain after all. I hold you deep inside of my heart. Every part of you. With each fleeting beat of that wretched organ I feel the soft velvet of the pool table we sat on, I was too young to remember what we talked about. Despite you being gone nearly 10 years I won’t ever forget how warm you were. Do I look too much like your daughter for you to love me? Could you love a mind so similar to yours? Your mind, the very thing that aided in your burn out. I can’t pick up a pencil without feeling you. You move my bones-one by one, piece by piece, until I am able to finish each life you started. I follow your memory around like a lost dog. I am waiting for you just the same. I tried to see you again last week. Did you turn me away once more? I should’ve done so much more to see you.