Dry
Cooked inside like a husked melon
Carved out by the child who nursed me clean
wallacepolsom
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH

⁂
Xuebing Du
YOU ARE THE REASON
trying on a metaphor

roma★
🪼
Sade Olutola

祝日 / Permanent Vacation
$LAYYYTER
Cosimo Galluzzi

Janaina Medeiros
occasionally subtle

@theartofmadeline
NASA

#extradirty

shark vs the universe

pixel skylines

oozey mess

seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Mexico
seen from Vietnam
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States

seen from United States
seen from Indonesia
seen from Brazil
seen from United States

seen from Brazil
seen from Lithuania
seen from Saudi Arabia
seen from United States

seen from Türkiye

seen from United States

seen from United Kingdom
seen from Lithuania

seen from France
@wateredwords
Dry
Cooked inside like a husked melon
Carved out by the child who nursed me clean
Grateful
she knew she was covered in stardust
from the traces she left in her tread
the galaxies giggled above and within her
the universe sweetened her bread;
this girl, she found berries by moonlight
befriended the fiends in her way
surrounded by mountains that shielded and healed her
she’s lucky - they liked to say.
I Believe
Laugh, laugh at all my dreams! What I dream shall yet come true! Laugh at my belief in man, At my belief in you.
Freedom still my soul demands, Unbartered for a calf of gold. For still I do believe in man, And in his spirit, strong and bold.
And in the future I still believe Though it be distant, come it will When nations shall each other bless, And peace at last the earth shall fill.
--Shaul Tchernichovsky (1875-1943)
Also, one of the simplest paths to deep change is for the less powerful to speak as much as they listen, and for the more powerful to listen as much as they speak.
Gloria Steinem
Mirror Self
I wish I had a friend like me.
The deepest solace lies in understanding, This ancient unseen stream, A shudder before the beautiful
The act of faith is aboriginal, exploding with elemental force as an all-consuming and all-pervading eudaemonic-passional experience in which our most secret urges, aspirations, fears and passions, at times even unsuspected by us, manifest themselves. The commitment of the man of faith is thrown into the mold of the in-depth personality and immediately accepted before the mind is given a chance to investigate the reasonableness of this unqualified commitment.
Joseph B. Soleveitchik, "The Lonely Man of Faith"
Tree
I want to climb a tree.
I want to skin my knees failing and falling and feeling And then hoist my limbs up its limbs So we’re one breathing entity. I want to reach that armchair shaped branch Sink into the cobwebbed canopy And read the gnarled ageless foliage a story. Just to hear it breathe back its own version. I’d weave the threads of my polyester jacket with leaves and let the birds use my hair to keep their eggs warm.
I’d weep with the willow And whistle with the sparrow And listen to the bellow Of the evening wind.
Clumsy, inept,
I’d do the nonsensical be the unnatural. Up there in the branches, I’m a graceful dancer.
I just want to climb a tree.
The fact is, gentlemen, it seems there must really exist something that is dearer to almost every man than his greatest advantages, or (not to be illogical) there is a most advantageous advantage (the very one omitted of which we spoke just now) which is more important and more advantageous than all other advantages, for the sake of which a man if necessary is ready to act in opposition to all laws; that is, in opposition to reason, honour, peace, prosperity – in fact, in opposition to all those excellent and useful things if only he can attain that fundamental, most advantageous advantage which is dearer to him than all. “Yes, but it’s advantage all the same,” you will retort. But excuse me, I’ll make the point clear, and it is not a case of playing upon words. What matters is, that this advantage is remarkable from the very fact that it breaks down all our classifications, and continually shatters every system constructed by lovers of mankind for the benefit of mankind. In fact, it upsets everything… One’s own free unfettered choice, one’s own caprice, however wild it may be, one’s own fancy worked up at times to frenzy – is that very “most advantageous advantage” which we have overlooked, which comes under no classification and against which all systems and theories are continually being shattered to atoms. And how do these wiseacres know that man wants a normal, a virtuous choice? What has made them conceive that man must want a rationally advantageous choice? What man wants is simply independent choice, whatever that independence may cost and wherever it may lead. And choice, of course, the devil only knows what choice. Of course, this very stupid thing, this caprice of ours, may be in reality, gentlemen, more advantageous for us than anything else on earth, especially in certain cases… for in any circumstances it preserves for us what is most precious and most important – that is, our personality, our individuality. Some, you see, maintain that this really is the most precious thing for mankind; choice can, of course, if it chooses, be in agreement with reason… It is profitable and sometimes even praiseworthy. But very often, and even most often, choice is utterly and stubbornly opposed to reason … and … and … do you know that that, too, is profitable, sometimes even praiseworthy? I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! …And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don’t know? You will scream at me (that is, if you condescend to do so) that no one is touching my free will, that all they are concerned with is that my will should of itself, of its own free will, coincide with my own normal interests, with the laws of nature and arithmetic. Good heavens, gentlemen, what sort of free will is left when we come to tabulation and arithmetic, when it will all be a case of twice two make four? Twice two makes four without my will. As if free will meant that!
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from the Underground
A Baby In The House
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox
I knew that a baby was hid in that house, Though I saw no cradle and heard no cry; But the husband was tip-toeing ‘round like a mouse, And the good wife was humming a soft lullaby; And there was a look on the face of the mother, That I knew could mean only one thing, and no other.
The mother, I said to myself, for I knew That the woman before me was certainly that; And there lay in a corner a tiny cloth shoe, And I saw on a stand such a wee little hat; And the beard of the husband said, plain as could be, 'Two fat chubby hands have been tugging at me.’
And he took from his pocket a gay picture-book, And a dog that could bark, if you pulled on a string; And the wife laid them up with such a pleased look; And I said to myself, 'There is no other thing But a babe that could bring about all this, and so That one thing is in hiding somewhere, I know.’
I stayed but a moment, and saw nothing more, And heard not a sound, yet I know I was right; What else could the shoe mean that lay on the floor, The book and the toy, and the faces so bright; And what made the husband as still as a mouse? I am sure, very sure, there’s a babe in that house.
In the Name of Art and Spare Time
Me standing by the kitchen sink, concentrating intently on my rubber cement, cans of peas, cloth and cardboard.
Mother: What are you doing?
Me: Binding a book.
Mother: Why on earth would you do that?
Me, sheepishly: ....
Life taken a little less seriously is seriously the life
What we all know but still
Music + Lyrics
Words unspoken Those words unsaid Words that leave me choking Instead
Words like fallen angels Thirsting to be freed Though my heart is open oh I Don’t want to bleed
It’s written in the sky Somewhere far away Where a glass piano tinkles And smiles and sometimes cries
That sticks and stones can’t break me But these words inside just might Let the solid sounds be heard To the tune of newfound light
And if only we were free men And if only I were you Then I’d tell me that I miss me And I’d know your story too
And if only you would listen And if only I could speak Then we’d have a conversation Till the night begins to leave.
Sonnet #29
When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state, And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries, And look upon myself, and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising, Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.
–William Shakespeare
(By the way: facing the wall, such gentlemen–that is, the “direct” persons and men of action–are genuinely nonplussed. For them a wall is not an evasion, as for us people who think and consequently do nothing; it is not an excuse for turning aside, an excuse for which we are always very glad, though we scarcely believe in it ourselves, as a rule. No, they are nonplussed in all sincerity. The wall has for them something tranquillising, morally soothing, final–maybe even something mysterious … but of the wall later.)
Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky