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Love Means Encouraging Self-Trust

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“When I was beginning to discover languages, I had a romanticized view of words like “speak” and “fluency”. But then I realized that you can be nominally fluent in a language and still struggle to understand parts of it. English is my first language, but what I really spoke was a hybrid of teenage slang and Manhattan-ese. When I listen to my father, a lawyer, talk to other lawyers, his words sound as foreign to me as Finnish. I certainly couldn’t read Shakespeare without a dictionary, and I’d be equally helpless in a room with Jamaicans or Cajuns. Yet all of us “speak English.” My linguistics teacher, a native of Poland, speaks better English than I do and seems right at home peppering his speech with terms like “epenthetic schwa” and “voiceless alveolar stops”. Yet the other day, it came up that he’d never heard the word “tethered”. Does that mean he doesn’t “speak” English? If the standard of speaking a language is to know every word — to feel equally at home debating nuclear fission and classical music — then hardly anyone is fluent in their own native tongues.”

— Tim Doner (x)

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There must be a line where I begin and you end

Doris Dana, from a letter to Gabriela Mistral (@liriostigre) | If Beale Street Could Talk dir. Barry Jenkins (@timotaychalamet) | Letters to Milena, Franz Kafka | If Beale Street Could Talk dir. Barry Jenkins | This Is How You Lose the Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone | Shadow, Raleigh Ritchie

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Have you ever thought about losing your brother?

me vs. making webweaves on dying and family. really this was just an excuse to think about killing flies.

Killing Flies, Michael Dickman | Separation, W.S. Merwin | Eurydice, Ocean Vuong | It, Stephen King | Winnie-the-Pooh, A.A Milne | Fading Kitten Syndrome, ROAR | Quote via. Maurice Sendak | A Meeting, Wendell Berry | Anguish, August Friedrich Schenck | West Wind I, Mary Oliver | Planet of Love, Richard Siken | Quote via. C.C, Aurel | Oats We Sow, Gregory and the Hawk | The Living to the Dead, Käthe Kollwitz | Quote via Fortesa Latifi | Antigonick, Anne Carson | Killing Flies, Michael Dickman (cont.)

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pls give me some courage to study lol

THE EARTHWORM DOES NOT THINK OF ALL THE EARTH THROUGH WHICH IT MUST MOVE BUT ONLY THE 5"X5" POCKET OF DIRT THAT SURROUNDS IT IN THE HERE AND NOW THIS IS HOW IT PERFORMS ITS GOD GIVEN DUTY AND YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT FROM THE EARTHWORM AND YOU TOO HAVE YOUR 5"X5" POCKET OF SOIL AND YOU TOO NEED ONLY FIND THE SMALLEST POSSIBLE STEP YOU CAN TAKE AND DO IT AND THEN FIND THE NEXT SMALLEST AFTER THAT, AND THE NEXT SMALLEST AFTER THAT AND THE NEXT SMALLEST AFTER THAT AND THE NEXT SMALLEST AFTER THAT REMEMBER THE MOUNTAIN DOES NOT EXIST ANON ONLY THE TRACK BELOW YOUR FEET AND WHERE U TAKE THEM LOVE YOU BE THE EARTHWORM GOOD LUCK

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― Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks

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Marya Hornbacher, Waiting

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How will the world end?

it’s genuinely not something i think too much about. there are people to love and dishes to do in the meantime.

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where's that quote abt like. being embarrassed abt the thinness of ur life the way ur embarrassed by a threadbare piece of clothing. bc like yeah

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on death with 1. lilies abounded, @petfurniture, twitter; 2. frances molina, “o’death”

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everyone in this room will someday be dead- emily austin

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Song of the Anti-Sisyphus, Chen Chen

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300122, S.T.

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“I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures to the end and far past the end. If this is my end, I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.”

— Robinson Jeffers, from Be Angry At The Sun: Pomes; “Contemplation of the Sword,” (via violentwavesofemotion)

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“It was only once – once – that an audience went to see Romeo and Juliet, and hoped they might live happily ever after. You can bet that the word soon went around the playhouses: they don’t get out of that tomb alive. But every time it’s been played, every night, every show, we stand with Romeo at the Capulets’ monument. We know: when he breaks into the tomb, he will see Juliet asleep, and believe she is dead. We know he will be dead himself before he knows better. But every time, we are on the edge of our seats, holding out our knowledge like a present we can’t give him.”

— Hilary Mantel, “Can These Bones Live?” 2017 Reith Lecture

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“I want my rage to elicit love and more love. I want people to stop asking if I love this country. No. Ask if it loves me.”

— Noor Hindi, from “USCIS Trip #2: Violation,” DEAR GOD. DEAR BONES. DEAR YELLOW.

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“THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”

— Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive (via theglasschild)