The Blog of YY

"Let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.” ―A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

[quotespile]

“I want to tell you, don’t marry suffering. Some people do. They get married to it, and sleep and eat together, just as husband and wife. If they go with joy they think it’s adultery.”

— Saul Bellow, Seize the Day

[quotespile]

The face of “evil” is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: “Wouldn’t you?” Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way.

William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (via quotespile)

[quotespile]

It was like the classic scene in the movies where one lover is on the train and one is on the platform and the train starts to pull away, and the lover on the platform begins to trot along and then jog and then sprint and then gives up altogether as the train speeds irrevocably off. Except in this case I was all the parts: I was the lover on the platform, I was the lover on the train. And I was also the train.

Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs (via quotespile)

[boysofbooks]

His smile ripples, shifts. Gone is the gentleman; again, the wolf.

V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (via boysofbooks)

[quotespile]

It’s hard to tell them apart, what we bring upon ourselves and what destiny determines. They’re as difficult to disentangle as love and sorrow.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Forest of Enchantments (via quotespile)

[themoonbase]

Yelena Moskovich, A Door Behind a Door (2021)

[theoptia]

Marguerite Duras, from The Lover

Text ID: And I'll always have regrets for everything I do, everything I've gained, everything I've lost, good and bad,

[geryone]

Kingdom Animalia, Aracelis Girmay

[quotespile]

Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it’s time for them to be hurt.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (via quotespile)

[quotespile]

I want what we all want… To move certain parts of the interior of myself into the exterior world, to see if they can be embraced.

Jonathan Lethem, You Don’t Love Me Yet (via quotespile)

[quotespile]

But who can say what’s best? That’s why you need to grab whatever chance you have of happiness where you find it, and not worry about other people too much. My experience tells me that we get no more than two or three such chances in a life time, and if we let them go, we regret it for the rest of our lives.

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (via quotespile)

[quotespile]

“But with a sigh he had released her hand, while she was so lost in the fantasy that she hadn’t felt it go away, as if he’d known the best moment to let go.”

— Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49

[lilcowgirl7-deactivated20210223]

I needed this drag. Let’s change guys and not look back

[user87262893]

working out your brain is a must!!

• hydrate it by drinking lots of water

• eat dark chocolate and blueberries and walnuts and salmon and other foods high in antioxidants!!

• play little brain games on your phone; I like wordconenct! anything that makes you think!

• read books. It’s simple but necessary. Even better - join a book club, or read with a friend, so you can have discussions after. This will improve your reading comprehension.

• do puzzles - it doesnt have to be sudoku, I love playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Rift because it makes my brain have to match colorful patterns to physical movements very quickly!

• learn a new dance - even a tik tok trendy dance. Learning new dance moves are proven to strengthen synapses!!

• go bird watching, or foraging, or anything outdoors that requires you to explore pattern recognition and visual searching

• watch a movie with the intent of analysis - this is best done with a cinephile friend!! talk about tropes and symbolism and character growth

• cross stitch, or sew, or do anything that requires matching nimble hand movements to patterns

• play or learn an instrument!

• develop a consistent sleep schedule (or as close to consistent as you can get!)

• when eating, try to identify the ingredients and flavors you’re perceiving!

I hope this helps :)

[moonlightwaterhealing]

I like how this went from me feeling like “hm why is this attacking me 🤨” at first, but feeling grateful seeing an added guide on a genuine expansion on a “ how to” work out the brain. This genuinely helps a bunch. People find solace in doing activities that get them through life by doing said activities of phone/tv or if that’s all they’ve ever known in their life to get them through things + etc tho. However, this was very impt to point out. Slowly beginning incorporating things to work the brain in ones own time.

[avi-why]

okay, so here’s a thing i do that i never see talked about in writing circles: prewriting.

prewriting, for me, serves two functions: one, to stave off writer’s block and get me hyped up to write, and two, to make sure the tone of my writing stays consistent. i know we’ve all encountered that problem where we’re writing glorious purple prose, take a five minute break, and come back unable to write sentences more complex than those in a picture book. prewriting is, in essence, any refresher of your wip that you look at before you start writing. my prewriting agenda takes about 15 minutes, and it goes like this:

For ~10 min i read a published book that has the prose i want to emulate (in this case, Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo) For ~5 min I look at the WIP: moodboards or graphics i’ve made, my outlines, and most importantly, the chapter (or several chapters) that precede what i’m about to write. this is the most important step for me, as it reminds me of what’s going on and the flow of the story. cons of prewriting: it’s very, very easy to get distracted by all the cool inspiration you have and not actually write. to prevent this, i set a timer. a loud one. even though this might seem like obvious advice, consciously establishing a writing routine, including a proper setup, boosted my word count like mad, and i hope it benefits some of you as well. peace.

[lastparty]

After all, when people are lying on their deathbeds, don't they always start talking about their spouses and children? And isn't death just the apocalypse in the first person? So in that sense, there is nothing bigger than what you derisively call 'breaking up or staying together' (!), because at the end of our lives, when there's nothing left in front of us, it's still the only thing we want to talk about. Maybe we're just born to love and worry about the people we know, and to go on loving and worrying even when there are more important things we should be doing. And if that means the human species is going to die out, isn't it a nice way to die out, the nicest reason you can imagine? Because when we should have been reorganising the distribution of the world's resources and transitioning collectively to a sustainable economic model, we were worrying about sex and friendship instead. Because we loved each other too much and found each other too interesting. And I love that about humanity, and in fact it's the very reason I root for us to survive — because we are so stupid about each other.

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You?

[funnytwittertweets]

[sindri42]

Bees choose to live in the box where they know damn well that a large fraction of the honey will periodically be removed, instead of simply leaving that place like they are perfectly able to do, because the human box comes with an invulnerable titan to guard them against all threats. The bees consider the payment offered to this colossal mercenary to be a pretty good deal.

[intjint]

Bees know about supply and demand

[urbanfantasyinspiration]

Protection money

[stitch-n-time]

Protection honey

[l2g-deactivated20240513]

i cant think of the fact that humans send messages saying ’where are you? who are you?’ from earth to the giant and empty space all around us for too long because it makes me cry so hard and feel so human and lonely

[l2g-deactivated20240513]

things that humans have sent to space as a friendly gesture that make me cry my eyes out:

- whale songs

- sounds of footsteps, laughter and a kiss

- an hour-long recording of the brainwaves of someone who was, among other thoughts, thinking about what it is like to fall in love

- an illustration of two people holding hands

- so many sentences in almost 60 languages, including these: ’Friends of space, how are you all? Have you eaten yet? Come visit us if you have time.’ ’Greetings from a computer programmer in a small university town on planet Earth.’ ’Are you well?’ ’We are happy here and you be happy there.’ ’How's everyone? We all very much wish to meet you, if you're free please come and visit.’ ’Wishing you happiness, health and many years.’ ’Welcome home. It is a pleasure to receive you.’