the soul without a heart

{She/her. INFP. Psych. Indian.}

[brandneweyescd]

they were right btw. you have to dig yourself out of your grave over and over again

[choysum]

Anne Boyer

[letterstoyourlove]

“Their grief is in proportion to their affection they know their loss to be irreparable”

-Jane Austen’s tombstone, Winchester Cathedral. (Epitaph written written in 1817 for legendary author Jane Austen by her brother James, in which he describes the grief of all who knew her).

[edwardianedwin]

I am so consumed by my love for you, my darling

[primulaceas]

Mary Oliver, "From The Book of Time." Devotions

[metamorphesque]

Perhaps the World Ends Here, Joy Harjo

[metamorphesque]

The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

[metamorphesque]

i am accused of tending to the past, Lucille Clifton

[somewordsarebiggerthanothers]

[geryone]

Past Lives, Future Bodies, K-Ming Chang

[blistexenthusiast]

engraved carabiners

[thewriterwithout]

It arrives, at first, tingling small, fleeting, a lump at the base of your throat. something fragile and birdlike is trapped in your body, fluttering inconsolable fear. You swallow it in.

- Danya Kukafka, from Notes on an Execution

[thewriterwithout]

Thank you @sumdayz902 and everyone who got me to 1000 reblogs!

[feelingthedisaster]

are you telling my expierences arent original and its common to have a homoerotic slightly toxic girl friendship during the formative/teenage years that never ends in the best terms that after years you countine to think of?

[thewriterwithout]

It arrives, at first, tingling small, fleeting, a lump at the base of your throat. something fragile and birdlike is trapped in your body, fluttering inconsolable fear. You swallow it in.

- Danya Kukafka, from Notes on an Execution

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

angels, deciding what shape to take when interacting with The Humans: well….eye contact is important to humans, right? they find it reassuring when they can see the eyes of the person they’re talking to. so if we have LOTS of eyes, in very visible places, that’ll be even MORE reassuring

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

can’t stop thinking how much sense it would make if every design choice angels made was just a misguided attempt to Relate To The Humans. imagine how those conversations went

wings: “humans don’t like things they can’t understand, so if we’re going to levitate we should have wings. in fact we should probably have lots of wings, since we’re so big and impressive. humans like wings”

loud, booming voices: “fuck off Azrael the humans needs to be able to hear us.”

glowing: “no no no, it’s about visibility, right? the main human sensory organ works by detecting light, so if we emit light…” 

wheels: “why the hell are you shaped like that?” “piss off, the humans are really proud of this invention”

multiple faces/eyes: “it makes me relatable” “i swear to God it doesn’t–” “i need to see in every direction” “ Azrael you are a supernatural messenger of god you do not need–” “THE HUMANS NEED TO KNOW I’M WATCHING”

multiple limbs: “humans have lots of limbs! they like limbs” “look i let you keep the wings but–” “how do you expect me to walk?” “70,000 feet is not a reasonable number of feet, Azrael!” “fuck off i’m ENORMOUS” 

general gross misapprehensions of biology: “holy shit are your wings made out of eyes?” “look before you say anything i’m like 100% sure i’ve seen animals who have both wings and eyes. and you can fit so many more in this way!” “….you godforsaken googly-eyed genius”

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

#and this is why angels got so boring in the new testament after the Updated Guidelines were rolled out. “Four limbs???? i’m only allowed a maximum of FOUR LIMBS????? this is BULLSHIT”

#alternatively all the reported sightings of creepy ass angels was literally just the SAME angel  #just the same freak who kept changing its meatsuit for funsies before god caught on

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

ok i have REFINED my theory!

Old Testament Angels look like that because life in the ocean outnumbered life on land, so naturally when they visited earth they modeled their appearance on the most common lifeforms. Hench you get things like

radial symmetry (i.e. angels shaped like spheres) which is objectively cooler than bilateral symmetry (starfish understand this)

Very Numerous Limbs (2 is not the average number of arms in the ocean)

random glowing (bioluminescence)

just generally being objects of Absolute Terror to land dwellers

a thousand eyeballs being the Norm (have you seen scallops)

in the majority of inhabited Earth areas (i.e. anything deeper than the continental shelf) old school angels would actually pass as Normal And Relatably-Shaped Lifeforms

[elljayvee]

this checks out

[beatrice-otter]

I think you all need to know the actual reason that seraphim have six wings–with two they covered their faces and with two they covered their feet and with two they flew–because it’s awesome.

So, first thing, in most of the Hebrew Bible nobody can look directly at God’s face and live. God is simply too amazing/great/alien. You see God’s face, you die, not because God wants to kill you (God doesn’t!) but just … because it’s the inevitable result of contact with God’s holiness. (This is responsible for such incidents as the time God mooned Moses. Moses wanted reassurance, and asked to see God. God said, “well, you can’t see my face, but how about this. You hide in that crevice in the rock over there, and I’ll cover you up so you’re safe, and then I’ll pass by, and when I’m safely past you can look at my back, k?” And that’s how it happened.)

Anyway, even angels can’t bear to look at God, which is why the seraphim cover their faces in God’s presence. All the weird stuff you all have just been attributing to angels? Can be applied to God with at least as much plausibility.

And then we come to the seraphim covering their feet. Or, perhaps I should say “feet.” Because the Hebrew language, like many languages, has some euphemisms for genitalia. One of them is to call them “feet” or “hands.” This is how, for example, Ruth gets Boaz to marry her. She goes in and lays down at his “feet.” Wink wink, nudge nudge.

So when Isaiah tells us the seraphim are flying around covering their “feet” with a pair of wings, what they’re actually doing is this:

[radiantbabey]

hello september. i’m greeted by your moss covered hands and dew on the windowsill. things are changing once again. this time, i let them.

[thewriterwithout]

[great-and-small]

You probably won’t find it in any official field guides, but you should know that in my neck of the woods we call a baby spoonbill a “teaspoon”