nstalgicnight

[nstalgicnight]

every morning i wake up & get my coffee & i recite in my head this excerpt from ‘invitation,’ by mary oliver:  “it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.” & i just say it over & over again until it sticks to my mind for the rest of the day. it is a serious thing. i am alive. i am so lucky. this fresh morning i get the chance to live again & again & again

[nstalgicnight]

what do you mean i can’t read every book, study every academic subject, taste every food, live in every city in every country, visit every museum, listen to every single song ever produced, learn every language, meet every interesting person, memorize every particle of knowledge to ever exist ???

[nstalgicnight]

“Courage, dear heart.”

— C.S. Lewis (via naturaekos)

[nstalgicnight]

“Read, read, read. Never stop reading. And when you can’t read anymore, write.”

— James Baldwin

[nstalgicnight]

A GUIDE TO WINTER: invest in good socks, go on a walk everyday, drink at least one hot drink, wear compression socks when standing long periods of time, light an unscented candle (for atmosphere), invest in scarves, learn a new skill, lather yourself in oils and take one warm bath a week, add another blanket to your bed, add a blanket to just the foot of your bed, soup!, write letters (to send to someone or to no one), eat a meal with another person, read a book (or a magazine, or a journal, or a comic, or something), mend what needs mending, fix what needs fixing, throw away or replace what needs throwing away or replacing, release the tension, stretch, throw a ball (an actual ball or a party, you choose), pray?, pray!, analyze your dreams, check your horoscope, practice discipline, embrace pleasure, lose peace then find peace, you are really that hungry so eat, you are really that tired so sleep, talk to someone (even if that someone is just you), add a red light bulb to your bed side lamp, sit in a red lit room, change something about yourself (some options include bleaching your eyebrows, shaving your head, getting a tattoo, changing your legal name), make something, make anything, make meaning from nothing, make everything meaningless, hug something living (a tree counts), develop a ritual and call it sacred, balance it all, repeat this list.

[nstalgicnight]

Gillian Flynn, from Sharp Objects

[nstalgicnight]

"I think about dying but I dont want to die. Not even close. In fact my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape. I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic. There's so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all. I'm still here in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can't quite figure out what the hell I'm doing or how to get out of it."

- Matty Healy

[nstalgicnight]

“‘Love’, this English word: like other English words it has tense. ‘Loved’ or ‘will love’ or ‘have loved’. All these specific tenses mean Love is time-limited thing. Not infinite. It only exist in particular period of time. In Chinese, Love is ‘爱’ (ai). It has no tense. No past and future. Love in Chinese means a being, a situation, a circumstance. Love is existence, holding past and future. If our love existed in Chinese tense, then it will last for ever. It will be infinite.”

— Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers

[nstalgicnight]

— Edna St. Vincent Millay, from a letter to Arthur Davison Ficke

[nstalgicnight]

It’s cold and it’s sunny and I’m going to live.

[nstalgicnight]

“Autumn is my season, dear. It is, after all, the season of the soul.”

— Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Violet Dickinson written c. July 1907

[nstalgicnight]

I have two aspirations in life: to be beautiful and to be disgustingly overeducated.

[nstalgicnight]

maybe there is no best version of myself. just me, right now, vulnerable and tired and hopeful, willing to show up regardless of what it looks like.

[nstalgicnight]

“To be with her is to sit in autumn sunlight.”

— Virginia Woolf, in a letter to Violet Dickinson, September 1907

[nstalgicnight]

“I don’t know what to do with my heart.”

— Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Lavinia Dickinson written c. March 1862 

[nstalgicnight]

pretty sexy of me to keep going despite each day being more unbearable than the last

[nstalgicnight]

I blog for the girls who cry on their birthdays and lose a little bit of themselves during the summer months