thinking about that illustration of solitude vs loneliness in which solitude is a dog peacefully holding its own leash & loneliness is a feral dog fighting against the restraint of the leash & feeling slightly insane
the number of hours we have together is not so large btw. you can linger in the doorway uncomfortably if you want idk. you can forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it if you even care
Folks have got to understand that they probably aren't messed up by some Secret Big Trauma that they just can't remember; but rather by a million tiny microtraumas that they do mostly remember but don't even register as traumatic because nobody actually understood that these things would cause trauma, much less stack on each other over the years.
« We take pictures because we can’t accept that everything passes, we can’t accept that the repetition of a moment is an impossibility. We wage a monotonous war against our own impending deaths, against time that turns children into that other, lesser species: adults. We take pictures because we know we will forget. We will forget the week, the day, the hour. We will forget when we were happiest. We take pictures out of pride, a desire to have the best of ourselves preserved. We fear that we will die and others will not know that we lived. »
— Michelle Richmond, The Year of Fog
Anonymous asked: In your honest opinion, what does it mean to be human?
I started smoking when I saw my uncle smoking a cigarette and looking at the window with melancholy. I was 2 days old
“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with. I was convinced of people’s need of illusion.”
— Anaïs Nin, from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. I: “November, 1933”
Raiders at the Gateway to Paradise - Helene Schjerfbeck 1924-25
Finnish 1862-1946
the lover(s)
Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh
The Doors - People Are Strange (1967)
“I kept thinking about the uneven quality of time – the way it was almost always so empty, and then with no warning came a few days that felt so dense and alive and real that it seemed indisputable that that was what life was, that its real nature had finally been revealed. But then time passed and unthinkably grew dead again, and it turned out that that fullness had been an aberration and might never come back.”
— Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Glass Beach, California
In 1949 this beach was an unrestricted dump. For 18 years glass, car parts, razors and other broken and used items were thrown away here before the council realised it was probably a bad idea. For the next 30 years, the elements worked their magic on all of the rubbish and with humans rectifying their mistake by removing rusted metals and other objects, this beach is now a unique and beautiful tourist attraction.