#The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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Juliette Binoche holding a Praktica LTL camera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988)
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03.06.24. Things that happened recently: posted my review for The Unbearable Lightness of Being; read 2 outstanding books consecutively; had late nights trying to catch up with work; caught up with work, then a new project came up with an even tighter deadline; brought my sickly dog to the vet; and launched a podcast. Wondering whether the fear of failure and uncertainty will ever go away, and trying to keep going despite of it.
On a lighter note (Milan Kundera has really done something to my brain) if you like podcasts maybe you can check out the one I'm doing for work as the first episode just got released.
#books#bookstagram#bookworm#classic academia#booklr#coffee#light academia#*#this is a brain#dump#the unbearable lightness of being#milan kundera
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Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost.
― Milan Kundera, R.I.P. 1929- 2023
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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There is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one's own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.
~Milan Kundera
(Book: The Unbearable Lightness Of Being)
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“The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
R.I.P.
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🍂mom, I'm tired.
#class of 2013#mother#mommy issues#lady bird#ladybird movie#milan kundera#the unbearable lightness of being#chen chen#ocean vuong#on earth we're briefly gorgeous#mitski#quote#quotes#poetry#quote collection#web weaving#literature quotes#lyric posting#lyrics#mother daughter relationship#i cried while making this
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― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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The swing doesn’t creak under his weight. It’s different from the little tyre Dad had strung up for him in the backyard when he was a kid. But in the ways that matter, it’s exactly the same.
Securing his grip on the chains, Pete takes a few steps back. And then, he lets go. Swings ahead, kicking the air. The white of his shoelaces almost glowing in the dark.
The height of the swing increases with every pump of his legs, a glorious breeze blowing against his damp brow. The rise in his body’s centre of mass making itself know in bubbly feeling floating in his belly.
It’s almost like one little swing is enough to turn-off something as big as gravity.
And maybe, gravity only exists as a manifestation of the loneliness of all the molecules and atoms and protons and neutrons and electrons that make up the Earth.
Of the loneliness experienced by all the living breathing people with burdens and disappointments and broken dreams that inhabit the planet.
“Pete… slow down. Please.”
The voice reaches out to him, but he can’t really hear it. Smooth syllables rounded out by the faint buzzing in his ears. ‘Cause somewhere in Pete’s head, all the sound has gone out.
And what is life? What does it even mean to be alive?
He closes his eyes against the cool wind buffeting his face, raises his legs as he reaches the topmost part of the arc of his swing. Takes in a breath that makes a gasping sound at the back of his throat.
Is it this?
The act of breathing in and breathing out.
Is inspiring oxygen and expiring carbon dioxide, pumping enough blood from his heart to his arteries and eventually, all of his visceral organs, enough to classify Pete as alive?
Maybe, it is.
If so, maybe he’s only as alive as an insentient tree, or a patch of symbiotic lichen growing on the bark of a tree. Or a non-flagellated bacteria that cannot move freely through its own immediate environment and lives out its brief, insignificant existence stuck in the same ultra-microscopic space that Nature deemed it appropriate to cage him in.
After all, what is he?
A universe of atoms. An atom in the universe.
There’s fresh wetness burning behind his eyelids, clumping his lashes, and Pete makes a valiant attempt to fight the stupid, overwhelming, all-encompassing need to cry, till he ends up crying a little, anyway. Staring up at a flock of stars scattered across the night sky. At the light that’s been traveling for hundreds and thousands of years to reach his tired eyes.
“Push me higher, Daddy, I want to fly!” he would implore. And his father’d always obliged. Instructing him to hold on tight, as the sky rushed up to welcome him with open arms.
The metal chains of the swing dig into his palms, but Pete doesn’t notice the discomfort, tightly closing his hands around the only thing tethering him to the ground.
Pumping his legs for the last time, Pete wonders whether he and his father are looking up at the same night sky, whether Dad sees the frozen lights twinkling against a backdrop of crushed, black velvet, and thinks about just how small he is in the grand scheme of things.
And in that sublime moment that seems to stretch on infinitely, Pete is flying.
After a while, he does slow down, spots Tom who’s now standing next to his swing, off to the side. His shoes skid against the sand as he comes to an abrupt stop. Little spots dancing in front of his eyes. Growing bigger and bigger. Taking on shapes and colors: starry-blues, fuchsia-pinks, firetruck-reds. Till his vision starts crumpling ‘round the edges.
Till strong hands grip his waist and his arm, deftly lower him into the swing, hold him securely till the colors fade away. Bleed into the night.
“I’ve got you,” Tom murmurs, warm hand moving up to cradle Pete’s tear-stained cheek. To caress his quivering chin with a calloused thumb.
This way they’re at eye level, and Pete can see his face clearly. Can smell his scent. Like a rain shower in the summertime after the grass has been cut.
“I really don’t know what this is, but I feel so scared, Tom… I feel so alone...”
Moonlight glances off Tom’s wedding ring, and Pete brushes his pinky against the cool metal. A minuscule movement that stills Tom’s hand. Turns it boneless in Pete’s grip.
“But you’re not alone, Pete. You don’t have to be scared, ‘cause I’m going to take care of you. You have me. You’ll always have me,” Tom whispers. And it feels as though he’s reciting a prayer, breathed into existence against the unsteady beat of Pete’s heart.
He runs his thumb along Tom’s knuckles, over the warmth seeping through his sun-kissed skin. Over the faint scars sloping over the smooth ridge.
Remembers how Tom got those scars. The bubblegum pink balloons that littered the varnished gym floor at prom. The fraying ends of the ribbon tying the corsage to his wrist. It’s rose petals picked away by his anxious fingers. The short-lived relief of getting away from the heat and the people and the noise. From all of the eyes on him, and all of the whispers. Of Annapolis admissions and impending engagements and the possibility of getting bonded before marriage. Of the fact that the Academy forbade Midshipmen from getting married. But didn’t stop them from bonding their omegas.
He remembers the sharp smell of unfamiliar alpha stinging his nose. The cold burn of calloused fingers on his neck. The yelp of distress punching it’s way out of his chest. The white-hot shock that flooded his insides when a senior he hardly recognized leaned in to deliberately scent him and remark: Kazansky’s got himself a sweet one, all right. But you don’t seem to like him very much, do you? Say, if you’re looking for someone better—
Remembers only being able to string together three weak words, nascent tears choking his voice: Let me go.
Remembers the blur of motion at the edges of his vision. Strangled sounds of a brief scuffle. Raw knuckles clenched into tight fists. A spot of blood staining the pressed-clean collar of Tom’s dress shirt. Quicksilver glinting in his steady blue eyes.
Unapologetic even in the face of detention and the threat of suspension.
The same eyes that are looking at him now: open and vulnerable and all the more steadier for it.
“Please, let me be there for you. Let me be good to you. Let me take care of you. Let me…”
Tom shuffles closer, touches the hem of his tee-shirt with shaky fingers. Smooths it down where it had ridden up, exposing a sliver of his pale abdomen.
“Okay,” he whispers.
Because Tom isn’t a liar. He would never lie. Not to Pete. Not to anyone.
Because Tom would never not be good to him.
Because Tom’s hands never shake, but they’re shaking now. As Pete cradles them in his own, brings them down to his still flat belly. Feels the press of them against his covered skin. The space between his breaths shortening, till he lets a little breath go.
Till he closes the distance between them, his mouth hot on Tom’s, the whole of him held between Tom’s shaky palms.
Because Tom feels like home.
Tom’s eyes widen, his next inhale coming in a little shorter, a little sharper. And Tom tugs him a little closer, curls his calloused fingers round the slope of his jaw, kisses Pete deeper. Something desperate in the hard press of his lips on Pete’s. Something heartbreakingly tender about it.
And Pete doesn’t know what to do with it. With the way his chest’s heaving like it’s being crushed under the weight of his ribs. With the way his lungs are bursting, ballooning up and taking his breath away.
And it feels so simple. So easy. Even though it really isn’t. The honesty of it. Of wanting to hold. Of wanting to be held. Of wanting to love and be loved.
But he leans into it. Fingers weaving softly in Tom’s thick hair, thumbs tracing the curve of his cheekbones.
Because, Tom is home.
#the unbearable lightness of being#omegaverse#icemav#tw: unplanned pregnancy / misogyny (in the context of omega verse) / mentions of assault (in the past)
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 1988.
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You keep going for family.
Tess and Joel .
#pedro pascal#pedro pascal fanart#artists on tumblr#dave york#dieter bravo#frankie morales#oberyn martell#the bubble#triple frontier#agent whiskey#the mandalorian#the unbearable lightness of being#the last of us#marcus pike#max phillips#javier peña#silva and jake#maxwell lord#marcus moreno#din djarin#digital art#pero tovar#joel miller#art
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From Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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