I AM LESS OF MYSELF OUTLOUD.
franz kafka, edit unknown / rachelle toarmino / charlotte brontë / franz kafka / richard siken / nayyirah waheed
pictures that fill me with infinite tenderness
I saw an article called “Make Peace With Your Unlived Life” and it really made me stop and think. So much of our lives is mourning for what we didn’t become. It’s a waste. We didn’t waste any opportunities. What came and went was not meant for us.
it astounds me even until now how i can come to this blog and go with a piece of my soul back in place. i was wondering if you had any poems on 'ghosts' and their 'haunting' people and places, romantic or otherwise. there is a ghost, you see, and she haunts me even though i know her to be alive and well. i am unsure of which terrifies me more: her being in and out of my reach or my hope that i too am her ghost.
so these are not all poems, but:
“I think ghosts are memory—memory haunts bodies, haunts places, haunts the narratives that hold our minor and miraculous lives together. Ghosts are that which return and return and return. The body has its own hauntings, too: phantom limb sensation, organ transfer memory, the traumatic self. And others.”
— Shastra Deo, interviewed by Sumudu Samarawickrama in Liminal Mag
— Valeria Luiselli, from Faces in the Crowd (tr. Christina MacSweeney)
— Janet Fitch, from White Oleander
“But the fall—the falling / of it / even after it’s done—”
— Jorie Graham, from Overlord: Poems; “Omaha (Lowest Tide, Coefficient 105, Full Moon)”
— Jessie Lynn McMains, To Be Haunted
— Dorothy Allison, from Boston, Massachusetts (The Women Who Hate Me, 1983)
“it’s not enough to look back at the past as at a thing / to shy from, this is not / nostalgia, you must look at it,”
— Carl Phillips, from Wild is the Wind: Poems; “Gently, Though, Gentle”
— Nikki Giovanni, from “[Untitled]”
— Rebecca Solnit, A Field Guide to Getting Lost
— Adonis, from Selected Poems; “A Piece of Bahlul’s Sun” (tr. Khaled Mattawa)
—James Baldwin, from Jimmy’s Blues and Other Poems; “Conundrum (on my birthday) (for Rico)”
I think what Good Omens really cemented for me, personally, and forced me to realise and accept is that… I’m just never going to understand what its like to experience sexual attraction towards other people. I’m just not going to get it.
Look, I watched the whole series start to finish at least four times before I went online and looked for fandom content. I’d never, ever, seen a relationship like theirs done so absolutely perfect before, in any media. I love it, I adore it, it resonates so clearly and purely with me. I was so completely wrapped up in them that it wasn’t until I came online and saw all this nasty discourse about queerbaiting and homophobia in Good Omens that it occurred to me that anyone could doubt the validity of their love. Even now when I watch it back, over and over, it baffles me that people don’t get it. They adore one another. They are completely devoted to one another, its so obvious, in their words, their actions, the way they look at each other, what they do for one another, its all just…. right there.
But that’s thrown into question because why? Because they dont kiss on screen? Because there’s no dramatic confession of love? Because, God forbid, they dont fuck? To me that’s just… ludicrous. Unfathomable.
I just dont get the need for it. Love is more than kissing, more than sex, and I just dont understand why physical affection must be a requirement of love. I guess I’ll just never get it.
*becomes everything I dreamed of when I was little and almost doesn’t notice*
GROWING PAINS
david wojnarowicz / alexander harding / su xinyu / @pearpoem / lorde / open house (1998) / billy collins / mitski / as i was moving ahead occasionally i saw brief glimpses of beauty (2000) / alain de bottom / hollis brown thornton / kalyn roseanne
𝒯𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝒾𝓈 𝓃𝑜 𝒷𝓁𝓊𝑒 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝓎𝑒𝓁𝓁𝑜𝓌 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝓌𝒾𝓉𝒽𝑜𝓊𝓉 𝑜𝓇𝒶𝓃𝑔𝑒 - 𝒱𝒶𝓃 𝒢𝑜𝑔𝒽
The best drawing advice I can give to anyone who wants to improve quickly is to use cheap notepad paper and ballpoint pens. I know it's tempting to buy the cool fancy supplies but then you'll feel pressured to not waste them. Use garbage materials and burn through them with zero thought. Only use pen because it forces you to commit and stops you from second guessing your lines and redrawing them over and over. Learn how to use your mistakes and then learn how to get it right the first time. I took numerous art classes and nothing taught me more than buying a big pack of Bics and legal pads and sketching anything that came to mind without hesitation. Fill a few pages everyday with the first thing that comes to mind. Don't rip out pages you don't like, just flip to the next page and try again. Watch yourself improve. If you really want to be a good artist, you need to learn how to draw from the ground up without relying on quality materials.