The Way Ivan Aivazovsky Looks At The Sea…i Think…i Think That’s What Love Looks Like.

when hands touch..

He asked me when I fell in love with him and I knew it sounded dramatic to say the moment I saw him, so I told him this story of my grandma who had Alzheimer's- she forgot her name and the words for fruit and food, she forgot her address and how to use the washroom, all her life lost to the disease. The only thing she remembered was her son's name and when that began to fade, the one thing she always remembered was that she loved him, even in illness, even in insanity. She saw this 6 foot 2 man with a scrubby beard and she didn't know him but she said she trusted him, she asked him to hold her hand when she died. When does memory end and love begin? All I know is- she loved him before she remembered him.

-Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire

dictionary

a dialogue between the unloved and the loving

neil hilborn // miranda july // @orpheuslament // aaron o’hanlon // georges bataille // georges bataille “my mother/madame edwarda/the dead man” // @khariyaha // natalie wee “least of all” // @fridayiminlovemp3 // maria petrovykh “love me. i am pitch black” // “the seven husbands of evelyn hugo” // sylvia plath “johnny panic & the bible of dreams” // mary oliver “wild geese” // sue zhao // virginia woolf from a letter to katherine mansfield // trista mateer

[ID: a collection of excerpts of text.

..saying goodbye. yes, there is a place where someone loves you both before and after they learn what you are.”

“finally, in a low whisper, he said, “i think i might be a terrible person.” for a split second i believed him - i thought he was about to confess a crime, maybe a murder. then i realized that we all think we might be terrible people. but we only reveal this before asking someone to love us. It is a kind of undressing.”

screaming take me as I am or kill me / screaming peel my skin off like a blindfold / screaming love me despite the horror / screaming please, God, love me because of it.

“show me your thorns and i’ll show you hands ready to bleed.”

“i don’t want your love unless you know i’m repulsive and love me as you know it”

People always think we look for love at our lowest to distract us. I am convinced we do it because we want someone to look us in the eye, to look our ugly in the eye and still choose us. I didn’t want a distraction, (highlighted) I wanted you to see a mess and still find me worthy of love, to tell me that you could still love me anyway. (end highlight)

“i kneel into a dream where i / am good & loved. i am good. / i am loved. my hands have made / some good mistakes. they can always / make better ones.

 capitalized letters that look like they’ve been cut and pasted on top of overhead pictures of fields. it reads: “tell me every terrible thing you ever did / and let me love you anyway.”

love me. i am pitch black, / sinful, blind, confused. / but if not you, then who else / is going to love me?

“if you are intolerable, let me be the one to tolerate you,” i said, and then i kissed her and tasted the lemon juice on her lips.

“you have seen the rotten streak in me and you have come back, no matter how bad it was. you have always come back. can’t you see? you have taken me always as I am, no matter what.”

“i wish you wouldn’t look at me like that.” “like what?” “i don’t know,” she hesitated. “like you could love me.”

“i love you, and i am conscious of you all the time.”

in this space right here that we have made for each other, you can say anything and i will not abandon you. unwrap the worst things you have done. watch me hold them up to the light and not even flinch. 

 end of ID]

Anaïs Nin, from “The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1955–1966”

we still have the moon.

Enomoto Seifu-Jo, tr. by Kenneth Rexroth, from Written on the Sky; Poems from the Japanese / Tomoharu Okamura SUI-GETSU Japanese paper, Metallic foil, Mineral pigments, Pigment 2017 / Emily Skaja, from Brute: Poems; “No, I do not want to connect with you on Linkedin” / Still falls the rain, Daichi Takagi / Adonis, ‘Beginnings of the Body, Ends of the Sea’ / Winter night in the Netherlands -  Stefan  Bleekrode , 2018. / e.e. cummings, from “the moon looked into my window” (excerpt from Is 5), Complete Poems: 1904-1962 / Golden House Nocturne   -  Christopher Burk / The Door, Margaret Atwood / Lois Dodd, New Moon Through the Trees. 2015 /

five recipes for an exciting life (in my opinion)

spending enough time creating things with your hands (baking, drawing, scrapbooking, doodling, crocheting, journaling and so on)

keeping track of things like pretty skies, milestones, happy memories, appointments you're looking forward to

listening to music that genuinely makes you feel happy and energetic

making a habit of reaching out to people in a way that's comfortable to you (i send my dad songs he might like, my friend sends me monthly life updates)

being kind to all your five senses → like investing in a scented candle or essential oil dispenser or body mist, having a soft blanket or socks (or a soft animal to pet), listening to birdsong or the rain, looking at the sky more often, and having your favorite foods enough times

Anne Sexton, from “The Truth the Dead Know”, The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton

—Yiwei Chai, The Jacaranda Years

"Have you ever had that feeling—that you'd like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?"

"I’m still wandering through the streets, looking, sitting by the sea, enjoying the sunshine. I am entirely alone. I don’t know anyone, no one knows me, and for me that is a great pleasure."

hanya yanagihara, a little life / haruki murakami, the wind-up bird chronicle / stand by me (1986), dir. rob reiner / donna tartt, the secret history / phoebe bridgers, i know the end / daniel clowes, ghost world / j.d. salinger, the catcher in the rye / nikos kazantzakis, from a letter to galatea kazantzaki / lora mathis, how to disappear in the modern age / moonlight (2016) dir. barry jenkins / richard siken, the torn-up road / sylvia plath, the bell jar