The Lost Princess Of Oz By L. Frank Baum, Illustrations By John R. Neil (1917)

Eve - Louis Hierle

“La Rubica” (1954) by Francisco Soria Aedo (1898-1965)

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

Portrait of Mrs. Waldorf Astor, 1908 by John Singer Sargent

Photograph of Nancy Astor as viscountess in 1908. She was the first woman seated as a Member of Parliament from 1919 to 1945.

7.9.22

first day in missoula!! visited one of my fav spots, the book exchange and had a big tiring day of travelling!

— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

[text ID: I never tried to be anything other than a dreamer. I never paid any attention to people who told me to go out and live. I belonged always to whatever was far from me and to whatever I could never be. Anything that was not mine, however base, always seemed to be full of poetry. The only thing I ever loved was pure nothingness.]

“Study (seated woman in quasi-classical dress)” by Harold Speed (1905)

6.22.22-6.23.22

wooo these were my summer classes crunch days but now i’m ahead in my hw!! also i graduated speech therapy so my mom and i went out for lunch and starbies yesterday. today i went out to coffee with my dad all morning and now i’m at work. i did so much hw at my job i feel so productive. also i finished dracula today and i feel so adrift now. what is next for me???

from ‘Bright Dead Things’ by Ada Limón

history | charles dana gibson

charles dana gibson was an american illustrator, who is best known for his creation of the gibson girl, which was an iconic representation of an independent euro-american woman at the turn of the 20th century. a gibson girl was described as “a member of upper-middle-class society, always perfectly dressed in the latest fashionable attire appropriate for the place and time of day. the gibson girl was also one of the new, more athletic-shaped women, who could be found cycling through central park, often exercised, and was emancipated to the extent that she could enter the workplace. in addition to the gibson girl’s refined beauty, in spirit, she was calm, independent, confident, and sought personal fulfillment.”