Verbo Vitae

I am an English grad and enthusiast of words, especially phonoaesthetic (pretty-sounding) and obscure ones. (See: 'petrichor' or 'apricity'). I create/relish poetry, fiction and photography.

[verbovitae]

'Never?' she said, and behind her voice I could hear the sounds she always evoked at such moments - seas lapping on old beaches, voices of people centuries dead. She had the capacity to evoke a feeling of vast areas of time by a smile or a tone of voice that could delight me, rest me, fill me with joy - but I didn't want it just then.

‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing

[verbovitae]

“I stood in the centre of the big room, naked, letting the heat strike me from the three points of heat, and I knew, and it was an illumination - one of those things one has always know, but never really understood before - that all sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel the roughness of a carpet under smooth soles, a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under flesh. If this goes, then the conviction of life goes too. But I could feel none of this. The texture of the carpet was abhorrent to me, a dead processed thing; my body was a thin, meagre, spiky sort of vegetable, like an unsunned plant; and when I touched the hair on my head it was dead. I felt the floor bulge under me. The walls were losing their density. I knew I was moving down into a new dimension, further away from sanity that I had ever been. I knew I had to get to the bed fast. I could not walk, so I let myself down on my hands and knees and crawled to the bed and lay on it, covering myself. But I was defenceless.”

- ‘The Golden Notebook’ by Doris Lessing

[verbovitae]

But God is only a white cold eye, a quarter-moon poised above the smoke, blinking, blinking, as the city is gradually pounded to dust.

‘All the Light We Cannot See’ by Anthony Doerr

[verbovitae]

"...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence - that which makes its truth, its meaning - its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream - alone.

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

[verbovitae]

[...] Happiness is almost definitionally a condition of which you are not aware of at the time. To inhabit your own contentment is to be wholly present, with no orbiting satellite to take clinical readings of the state of the planet. Conventionally, you grow conscious of happiness at the very point that it begins to elude you... It is a bracketing assessment, a label only decisively pasted onto an era once it is over.

The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver 

[verbovitae]

“It has always seemed strange to me,’ said Doc. ‘The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.”

- from Cannery Row by John Steinbeck 

[verbovitae]

Exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted.

- Edward Said

[verbovitae]

"The sun rises, gloriously ignorant of the fact that a new day is not necessarily a good day. […] I remind myself that this sunrise has already happened in some other place. And later, our sunset will be somebody else’s sunrise. I look to the sky, where fully rigged clouds are already steering themselves towards some other destination."

from The Nature of Blood by Caryl Phillips

[verbovitae]

Observations while alone in a room

(Poem)

[verbovitae]

Spring 

Earth’s awakening –

The bruised blue winter gives way

To a fledgling sun.

[powells]

“Poetry is the liquid voice that can wear through stone.” ― Adrienne Rich

[penamerican]

#poetry #adriennerich #PEN #PENAmerican #writers #writing #words

[forgottengenres]

“Sleep, delicious and profound, the very counterfeit of death”

Homer (via greatauthorquotes)

[verbovitae]

'Photograph'

[The brilliant click of the camera's eyelid - rising/falling - on some sliver of movement, some slice of a moment

                   in existence only here,

                                          only now.]

[thetinhouse-deactivated20180604]

[thetinhouse-deactivated20180604]

“I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.”

― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar (via thetinhouse)

[the-final-sentence]

Dark at its full.

Samuel Beckett,  from Mercier and Camier (via the-final-sentence)

[erinalise]

HELLO AGAIN.

Unrooted magazine is on it’s second issue! Wow! How exciting~ The theme for this month is Awaken, going with the appropriate theme of new beginnings for the brand new year! This issue will be released on January 1st, and will contain our hand-picked art and lit submissions. Want to be one of them? SUBMIT to us and be part of this cool thing we’re doing! If you want to try your hand at feature writing, playlist making, or cool thing suggesting, send us your stuff and we might feature you on our site some time in January! LET’S GET GOING, AND WELCOME THE NEW YEAR WITH INCREDIBLE ART, WRITING, AND MUSIC. 

Check out the mag here!

Visit our 8tracks!

Like us on Facebook!

Any and all submissions can be sent to [email protected]. 

Let’s make something incredible! <3

!!!! BONUS: reblog this post and we will give you a shoutout on our website in January. That’s a promo for your Tumblr, folks! (To an extent, we are not going to promo any blog that’s largely nsfw, for obvious reasons, sorry!) 

Also, check out the lovely people who reblogged last month by clicking here! They’re all the best. Seriously. 

P.S., we are still looking for artists to join our team as regular illustrators! If you’re interested, apply within. 

[erinalise]

NINE DAYS LEFT AND WE ARE SHORT ON ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY SO SEND US YOUR VISUAL ARTS STUFF AND YOU COULD BE (sorta) FAMOUS.