titsay
$LAYYYTER
dirt enthusiast
Cosimo Galluzzi
blake kathryn
NASA
⁂
YOU ARE THE REASON
Sweet Seals For You, Always
Xuebing Du
Not today Justin
todays bird
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Misplaced Lens Cap
if i look back, i am lost
tannertan36
tumblr dot com
No title available
oozey mess
Janaina Medeiros
seen from Finland
seen from Denmark
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Italy
seen from Italy
seen from Denmark
seen from Denmark
seen from United States
seen from Vietnam
seen from India
seen from Türkiye
seen from Malaysia
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seen from Malaysia
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@treehuggingwitchypoet
Faerie Door
My momma said she lost me
I went through a fairy door
She remembers it in Ireland
But i know it happened more
I remember in the Black Hills
When i had nature to explore
I climbed and climbed
And looked and looked
And then i looked some more
My momma said she called me
When i was gone too long
And though i didnt know it
I must have heard her song
For back again i came to her
To the chiming of a gong
& Though she feared it wasnt right
I knew myself it wasnt wrong
one thing about me is that I will pretty much always love a book about bonds between people and dragons
That's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you.
First they came for my neighbors,
And I didn't stay silent,
I spoke up for the different,
The othered, myself.
Loved ones and strangers,
Blamed for their birth,
The color of their skin,
Who they loved,
or their gender within.
So is it a sin?
That I've loved and defended?
Am I so wrong,
For who I hold close at night?
You say they deserved it,
So I guess so do I.
Though I've followed the law,
Always tried to do right.
Did the children ask for it?
That's why they aren't in school?
Even the ones,
Following all of the rules?
Is the problem who we are,
Are we really so violent?
Or are we just different,
And refuse to submit?
Op made the post unrebloggable lol but I want to add that this is actually a very good way to learn any languages. Hell, I do this with my own mother tongue too
You should turn all those words into flash cards. I recommend using Anki to do so.
Also, in no world do you stop learning words once you're an adult. Learning goes on forever. That doesn't change and become Not Normal just because you personally already knew these particular words.
Also, it deserves mentioning that these are amazing words she's saving. Good for her.
You are a person who covers your counter space in clutter and inadvertently makes a shrine to a long forgotten god who shows up to thank you.
The pepper grinder is small and copper with a brass knob at the top that allows you to hand-turn the grinder. You’re never sure where you picked it up – it’s not a gift or a purchase, otherwise you’d have the saltshaker to match – but it feels right sitting next to your fruit bowl. Logically, it should go by your stove where the rest of your spices have congregated in a misshapen mob, getting stained by Bolognese and fry oil. However, your fruit bowl is a stoneware behemoth you found in the crawlspace under the house, and the shine of the copper next to the earthen tone reminds you of spending long hours excavating in the Italian countryside as an archeology sophomore in college (about two years before you became an English major), so it stays.
Then, of course, you’re too busy to eat fruit before it rots and the bowl sits empty- barring a lemon or lime here or there- and that’s no good either because it takes up over half of the counter to the right of your sink and backs up against the blank wall at the end of your galley kitchen where you can’t hang anything because both the fridge door and the pantry door swing into it.
So when your mother gives you another worry stone for your birthday – rose quartz this time, which means she thinks if you’re not worried about being single in your 30s, you should be – you hold it while staring out the kitchen window, drinking coffee over the sink, and when you finish the last sip full of grounds you toss the mug in the sink and the rose quartz in the bowl. It clinks loudly and then settles between those two lemons that you need to find a use for before the weekend, lest they go hard and unusable except for cleaning your sink.
After that, belated birthday wishes show up in the mail, and you can’t bring yourself to throw them out. Your Aunt Sylvia sends a postcard from Peru that she’s been holding onto for “a special occasion” for the last five years and, -aren’t you lucky?- you’re the special winner of a National Geographic photo of Machu Picchu. And you’re not a monster. The card may not hold the same significance to you as it did to her, but the thought does and so tucked between the bowl and the wall it goes where the very tippy top of the ruins rise over the brown rim, as if from the depths of a valley.
Then your college roommate (the archaeology one who made you want to do the study abroad program in the first place), Audra, sends you a shard of Roman pottery and a note in Latin that you can’t read but understand perfectly by the coffee stains littering the edge of it. The sight of the coffee stains warms your heart more than the pottery shard, so both go in the bowl where you can occasionally glance at them as you drink your own coffee over the sink and reminisce over study dates and the few regular dates you shared before her passion stole her abroad.
(And if the clay and the rose quartz lie next to each other and you suddenly think of marriage and nostalgia and her stoneware eyes that led you to save the same-colored fruit bowl from the depths of your house in the first place, it’s a natural series of associations and doesn’t prove your mother right at all.)
The driftwood isn’t from anyone. Your agent calls to tell you that you won an award for one of your books. The driftwood is in your hand, scavenged along the Potomac from amidst the pebbles deposited by the last storm, and it’s suddenly your only tether to reality as she explains what this means. It means reviews and author readings and an interview - of you! – and a guaranteed sequel. The stick is smooth under your fingertips and you wave it in the air is if it’s a wand in an attempt to burst your bubble.
Only you’re home the next moment and you’ve still got the driftwood in your hand and your bubble is unburst. It feels significant that you brought it back with you so you put it across the top of your fruit bowl as if it’s the award itself. You have a decaf coffee to celebrate that evening and see that stick guarding your rose quartz and your pepper grinder and your pottery shard and you think, I’m doing okay. And the joy you feel from that is so powerful that your next thought is, I’m happy.
Which is, of course, when the power goes out.
Outages happen all the time in a block as old as yours. Before, you’d see it as free time and go lay down in bed and wait for the world to relight or for morning to come. But you don’t have time now. Your agent is planning to call you soon. You are an award-winning author and you have things to do before your 42% battery runs out.
You make your kitchen your base and set the six pillar candles on your counter, lighting them one by one. They’re the rainbow ones from last June your mother bought you in a sweet yet confusing show of support and you’ve never found a special enough occasion to burn them. You smile at Machu Picchu peaking over your fruit bowl. Your aunt is the one who taught you about special things.
Then your agent calls and, while you’re hammering out the details, you see that the candles are about to drip colored wax onto your white, plastic countertops and even though you really want to replace them, you can’t afford to (at least until you sign a contract). You snatch up your driftwood and use it to scoop the wax from the sides until a kaleidoscope of color is collected and you have to keep spinning it to keep it from dripping.
You blow on the hot wax, thinking of Audra and your family and the future your agent is painting for you until it cools. Then you place the driftwood over the bowl where it belongs.
It’s just a bowl. Of course, it’s just a bowl. It does a good job of taking up a huge amount of your counter and of holding onto things you’d forget in a junk drawer. It looks good in the candlelight, warm and earthy and welcoming with the three bright lemons scattering amongst your treasures. It’s nice to see reminders of your loved ones every morning from the summit of Machu Picchu to your worry stone to that shard of pottery, but it’s not anything more.
At least it’s not until you put your driftwood, wax-covered wand back and think, I wish I could see her.
The flames of the candles sputter and turn gold, radiating a pure and steady light that could never come from a mundane fire. Your agent stops herself midsentence, apologizes, promises to call you back when she has a better connection, and hangs up. The bowl rattles and shivers and you take a step back as your copper pepper grinder tips over. You must not have put it together correctly because it spills when it does, little peppercorns that roll across your counter towards the edge.
You expect to hear the dried pepper hit the ground, but it doesn’t. Each peppercorn stops unnaturally.
G…
R…
A…
N…
T…
E…
D…
What?
The candles splutter and return to normal flame. Your bowl is still. The lemons seem less appetizing than they had a moment ago, but your treasures are still there and lovely.
You pick up your Roman shard.
Your phone rings. Audra. Although you can’t imagine talking to anyone after what you’ve just witness, your body isn’t on the same page. Muscle memory and association has you answering before the second ring.
“Mal, I got the job!”
“…The job?”
“Oh, I didn’t tell you. Not because I was hiding it! But nobody ever gets it and I didn’t want you to get your hopes up and then my hopes up—”
Her rapid-fire word is grounding. You laugh. “Because my hopes are your hopes.”
“Obviously,” she says. She takes a deep breath. “I got the Smithsonian. The curator role. The job.”
She’s coming home. The realization hits like electricity, raising all the hair on your arms and almost making you drop the shard. You blink quickly to stop the automatic tears.
“Mal?”
“I’m here,” you say. You go to put the pottery shard back with more care than you ever have, as if it’s Audra herself. She can probably hear the way your voice trembles, but you can’t compose yourself. “Oh, I’m so happy. When?”
“In a month. I have to hand over some current projects, which should only take a week, but finding someone to take over my classes might take a little longer, but not too long! I promise. After that it’s packing—”
You put the pottery shard back in the bowl as gently as you ever have. Audra’s voice is the sweetest music as she says goodbye, in a hurry to start packing. You hear that music long after she hangs up. Your knees are weak. She’s coming home. She’s coming home. Thank whatever god, she’s coming home—
Your fingers touch something coarse and feather-light. Your brow furrows as you pull a scrap of ancient paper from the fruit bowl.
You’re welcome.
“Oh,” you breathe.
The lights flare as the power returns.
---
Thanks for reading! If you'd like to support what I do and/or would like to see new work from me, please consider checking out my Patreon (X)!
Thanks for all the support! Excited for another year on this blog. I'll probably make a mushy post about it at some point, but...EIGHT years! And counting! What an amazing time this has been :D
This story was based off my actual fruit bowl
A poem, of sorts.
-_- apparently the cut-off for this thing I want to submit to (which closes tomorrow) is 70k words, and I’ve got 67k
I need to think of three thousand words of bullshit to pad this thing. like a chapter where everyone goes for coffee, or something.
okay there are 42 chapters in the book, and dividing 3000 by 42 = ~72
so I’d have to write the chapter titles like this:
Chapter 2: In Which an Elf Is Concussed, but it’s Not Really My Fault Because What Would You Have Done? Would You Not Have Concussed the Elf? No, Of Course You Would Have. We All Would Have Concussed the Elf. Besides Which, I Am Very Sorry for Concussing Her and Will Try to Make Amends Later If She Stops Trying to Kill Me. Also, Her Intent to Kill Me Was a Highly Relevant Factor In My Decision to Concuss Her
and who will stop me? God?
TWO YEARS LATER! Titan Books is publishing this, and every chapter title takes up a third of the page. god didn’t stop me after all
(you can pre-order here: Barnes & Noble, Books A Million, Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Indigo, Waterstones, Forbidden Planet, Bookshop.org)
it’s so funny to see this all fancy and formalized
HEY BY THE WAY, bookshop.org is running an anti-prime day sale (to counter amazon), so this is a great time to pre-order the book with free shipping! here’s the link
also, all orders through bookshop.org right now will have the fancy sprayed pages!
When I was young
I thought my life was too easy
To write good poetry
I'd like to
Go back to that
Please
Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), poem 85 from “The Gardener”, 1914 Translated by the author from the original Bengali. New York: The Macmillan Company.
It is an hundred years hence now. Go open your doors.
i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point
you get it. you get the themes. i dont have time to do it justice. just look at it its on the ceiling
Why choose fear? By Tr. Molly
Does it scare you?
That I'm up
at odd hours?
Messaging you
In the middle of the night?
Why?
Let me rest, be active, sleep, get up. Just like the cats I've always loved.
The only person
Who needs to be scared
Is a tiny little man
Who wasn't
Hugged
Enough
As a child.
Maybe I can hug him to death,
or hug him to life?
Or maybe I will just
Sit on his face.
Squash the evil out.
You think I'm joking,
Crazy even.
But I am just sane
In an insane world.
Ready to fight
Against injustice.
I know my odds.
I know my team.
And THIS
Is a battle
I can win.
love shakespeare. did a hamlet run tonight, looked someone dead in the eye to say “am i a coward?” during a speech and the fucker shrugged and nodded
we literally ruined society when we invented the fourth wall. let’s bring back call and response. heckling, even. fuck you hamlet you dumb piece of shit kill your uncle or shut up
"When we took Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” into a maximum security woman’s prison on the West Side… there’s a scene there where a young woman is told by a very powerful official that “If you sleep with me, I will pardon your brother. And if you don’t sleep with me, I’ll execute him.” And he leaves the stage. And this character, Isabel, turned out to the audience and said: “To whom should I complain?” And a woman in the audience shouted: “The Police!” And then she looked right at that woman and said: “If I did relate this, who would believe me?” And the woman answered back, “No one, girl.”
And it was astonishing because not only was it an amazing sense of connection between the audience and the actress, but you also realized that this was a kind of an historical lesson in theater reception. That’s what must have happened at The Globe. These soliloquies were not simply monologues that people spoke, they were call and response to the audience. And you realized that vibrancy, that that sense of connectedness is not only what makes theater great in prisons, it’s what makes theater great, period."
Oskar Eustis on ArtBeat Nation
I was in the front row of a Hamlet performance where the "Am I a coward?" was directed at me and I, being a no-impulse-control gremlin, hollered back "Yes!!" (they'd primed us ahead of time that audience interaction was encouraged). Hamlet got right up in my face as he kept talking and just kept going until I gently pushed him back; I forget what line it was on when it happened but he took the direction of the push and reeled away across the stage.
This meant that I had marked myself as someone willing to be fucked with, and so during the graveyard scene later he approached me again. "Here hung those lips that I have kissed--" he booped my mouth with the skull's "-- I know not how oft."
I have stories related to me from those at Blackfriars, the American Shakespeare Center (they play in a replica of the original Blackfriars, with modern safety conventions like lightbulbs in the chandeliers, but a great dedication to the way structure shaped the original work in the original Blackfriars. Their house is only about 45 ft deep (roughly 15 m I think), which is about the max distance two sighted people can be from each other and still make eye contact. They play with the stage and house equally lit, they talk to the audience, they enter from the audience, they whip up crowds from within the audience. It’s fantastic. But anyway, on to the stories.)
Hamlet. There’s a scene where Hamlet sees Claudius praying and debates whether to kill him now or wait (because if Claudius dies praying he will automatically go to heaven). The actor playing Hamlet was genuinely asking the audience the questions in the speech, and when he got to “and should I kill him now?” someone in the audience shouted “YES KILL HIM HE NEEDS TO DIE!” Hamlet took the entire rest of the monologue to that person, enumerating his reservations so persuasively that they started to nod in agreement.
Romeo and Juliet. In this production, the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt happens in several rounds, of which Mercutio won the first. Mercutio’s actor made the choice, upon his victory, to run down the audience with his hand out for high-fives. He decided this in rehearsal, so he had time to plan for the three responses people would probably give him: a) a high-five back; b) being stunned and not reacting; and c) the old “oops too slow.” What this Mercutio did not prepare for was the audience member who panicked and deposited their handful of M&Ms into his open palm. The way I heard it, Mercutio was still processing this when Benvolio came up beside him and stole the M&Ms out of his hand to eat them.
King Lear. Edmund has a speech in which he asks whether he should marry “Goneril? Regan? Both? Neither?” Again, the actor was legitimately asking the audience, and again he’d prepared for the audience to respond in favor of any of those choices. What makes it even cooler was that the next line is “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive,” which works as a response to any of those options. One night, though, Edmund got his answer as “KILL THEM BOTH AND TAKE THEIR MONEY!” To which he gleefully agreed, “Neither can be enjoyed while both remain alive!!”
#Oh I have SO many stories from peak audience moments at the American shakespeare center#I have been to plays there that legit felt more like rock concerts#And I don't even mean the parts of the show where the cast is also a live band and they play#Covers of songs relating to the show#Fair maid of the west with Ginna Hoben#We were all SO on her side we absolutely lost our whole shit any time she even entered or exited#Knight of the burning pestle where Rick would pick a random audience member to be his lady love he was fighting for every night#And one time (I saw it thrice) he picked an older lady#And there's a part of the show where iirc he like gets almost defeated?#And he calls out to his lady love to like inspire him to keep fighting smth like that#And she Got Up Out Of Her Seat and went over to him and kissed him on the cheek#And no one was expecting that least of all Rick#And we all lost our shit whooping and hollering#They did a hamlet where...I forget who was polonius that year but there's a line where he's like 'what was I gonna say again'#And he paused SO long on that line you were legit unsure if he the actor had actually forgotten it#And once someone in the audience called out the next line and he was like 'oh that's right' and carried on#It was scripted though there were other nights no one said anything and we all sat there#In wonderful horrid awkward silence#Until he resumed#Please go if you get a chance#And sit stateside (via @rootingformephistopheles)
I was in a production of Hamlet in a small black box theatre, when a drunk guy came in from from outside, wandered onstage and started singing "We built this city on rock and roll." The guy playing Hamlet just went with it until the stage manager and crew could usher the drunk guy back outside. Then Hamlet continued with his next line, which was (no joke) "Now I am alone." Brought the house down.
Just saw an amazing production of A Midsummer's Night Dream where they added a lot of music, but the very best part was the fact that they surveyed couples in the audience at the beginning, then interviewed one married couple for their love story, and ended the play with a little personalized song sung to them!
I love you PBS I love you NPR I love you public libraries I love you wikipedia I love you project gutenberg I love you librivox I love you libby I love you hoopla I love you openlibrary I love you internet archive I love you resources that make information free and accessible to the public
anyone remember what these things are called like little cartoony expressive doohickies i think they have a real name but i can’t remember
im not fucking crazy.
if i have one more person say sparkles on this post im gonna blow i swear to god
They're squeans I'm pretty sure! If they pop like that anyway. But the term for this kind of "symbol to refer to the general vibe of something in art" is called "Emanata" because it emanates from a person or object.
Sir Terry Pratchett was not remotely in the vicinity of Fucking-Around, and had never even heard of that ridiculous thing some of his esteemed colleagues referred to as “Chill.” (1)
(1) In point of fact, he had heard of it, on numerous occasions, most often when a friend or well-meaning-but-politely-horrified acquaintance advised him to locate some, but he always studiously ignored this in favor of a much more productive righteous fury, which he kept hot enough to boil the kettle for his afternoon tea. If the world was not going to work as it should, then damn it all, he would create one in which people had some blasted sense for a change. And he did. Spite, as it turns out, makes for an excellent motivator.
Freedom (in nature)
by Tr. Molly Aung
I want to be free to be
Unencumbered
Free to walk the path
That the animals walk
Explore the forest
Follow nature's footsteps
Feel the ground
Beneath my feet
I want to be free to be
Unobserved, or
At least unjudged
By those I love
Free to pick up trash
Or pick some flowers
Plant some magic
For you to find
Still want this...
