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I’m fine, everything’s fine

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Universities love to make their websites completely unusable and impossible to find things on it's their favourite activity

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cause of death: tried to organize an activity with more than 2 friends at once past the age of 25

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Pro Tip for Writers

If you want a great spelling check website, all you have to do is hit the "post/publish" button and all your mistakes will become abundantly obvious to you through the magic of absolute mortification

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Understanding Art - a beginner’s guide

I came across one of the best articles, in my opinion, that briefly explains art over centuries. I couldn’t have done a better job or even half of the job that they’ve done, so I thought I’d link it below instead provide an excerpt.

Art as a timeline and a short summary:

Art historians typically consider the Romanesque art era to be the start of the art history timeline. Romanesque art developed during the rise of Christianity ca. 1000 AD. During this time, only a small percentage of the European population were literate. The ministers of the Christian church were typically part of this minority, and to spread the message of the bible, they needed an alternative method. Intended to teach the masses about the values and beliefs of the Christian Church, Romanesque paintings had to be simple and easy to read.

Just as in the Romanesque period, Christianity lay at the heart of the tensions of the Gothic era. As more freedom of thought emerged, and many pushed against conformity, the subjects of paintings became more diverse. The stronghold of the church began to dissipate. Gothic paintings portrayed scenes of real human life. The focus moved away from divine beings and mystical creatures as more focus was given to the intricacies of what it meant to be human.

The Renaissance can be seen as a cultural rebirth. A part of this cultural rebirth was the returned focus on the natural and realistic world in which humans lived. Renaissance artists painted human bodies and faces in three dimensions with a strong emphasis on realism.

The expression of feelings and human gestures, even items of clothing, is exaggerated deliberately in mannerist paintings. The small S-curve of the human body that characterizes the Renaissance style is transformed into an unnatural bending of the body. This is the first European style that attracted artists from across Europe to its birthplace in Italy.

Baroque paintings often showed scenes where Kings would be ascending into the heavens, mingling with the angels, and reaching ever closer to the divinity and power of God. Here, we really can see the progression of human self-importance, man is increasingly the central power within the compositions.

The paintings from the Rococo era are typical of the French aristocracy of the time. Paintings of this era were no longer strong and powerful, but light and playful.

Classism reverted to earlier, more serious styles of artistic expression. The art produced in this era was used internationally to instill feelings of patriotism in the people of each nation.

Romanticism is often seen as an emotionally charged reaction to the stern nature of Classicism. In contrast to the strict and realistic nature of the Classicism era, the paintings of the Romantic era were much more sentimental.

In contrast to the beautiful and deeply emotional content of Romantic paintings, Realist artists presented both the good and beautiful, the ugly and evil.

Historians often paint the Impressionist movement as the beginning of the modern age. A significant change that occurred during the Impressionist era was that painting began to take place “en-plein-air,” or outside. Galleries and international exhibitions became increasingly important.

Artists became preoccupied with the representation of feelings and thoughts through objects. The favorite themes of the Symbolism movement were death, sickness, sin, and passion.

The art produced in the Art Nouveau period includes a lot of symmetry and is characterized by playfulness and youthfulness. Art Nouveau has a lot of political content.

Expressionism originated in Germany and is intended to contrast Impressionism. Towards the beginning of the First World War, Expressionist paintings had a disturbing intensity about them. Intended to criticize power and the standing social order, Expressionism spread these political ideas through the medium of paint. Art was beginning to become political.

Cubism was a rejection of all the rules of traditional western painting and has had a strong influence on the styles of art that have followed it.

Futurism is less of an artistic style and more of an artistically inspired political movement. Founded by Tommaso Marinetti’s Futurist Manifesto, which rejected social organization and Christian morality, the Futurist era was full of chaos, hostility, aggression, and anger. The militant nature of the Futurist movement has resulted in many people believing that it was too close to fascism.

Dadaism represents the beginnings of action art in which painting becomes more than just a portrait of reality, but rather an amalgamation of the social, cultural, and subjective parts of being human. The art movement encompassed several art forms including writing, poetry, dance, and performance art.

Surrealism is fundamentally psychoanalytical, and many Surrealist artists would paint directly from their dreams. Sometimes dealing with uncomfortable concepts, hidden desires, and taboos, Surrealism was a direct critique of the ingrained ideas and beliefs of the bourgeoise. As you can imagine, this style of art was not popular when it began, but it has greatly influenced the world of modern art.

Many of the themes within New Objective art were social critiques. The turbulence of the war left many people searching for some kind of order to hold onto, and this can be seen clearly in the art of New Objectivity. The images represented in New Objectivity were often cold, unemotional, and technical, with some favorite subjects being the radio and lightbulbs.

Abstract Expressionism is said to be the first art movement to originate outside of Europe. Emerging from North America, Abstract Expressionism focused on color-field painting and action paintings. Rather than using a canvas and a brush, buckets of paint would be poured on the ground, and artists used their fingers to create images.

For the artists of Pop-Art, everything in the world was art. From advertisements, tin cans, toothpaste, and toilets, everything is art. Painting and graphic art became influenced by photorealism and serial prints.

Starting in the 1980s, Neo-Expressionism emerged with large-format representational and life-affirming paintings. Berlin was a central point for this new movement, and the designs typically featured cities and big-city life.

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Tumblr is being too real today

I think that growing up just means that you're a little bit lonely all of the time.

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it’s just me and my unrealistic to-do list against the world

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Relaxing…and looking cool 😋

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Warsaw, Poland (March-April)

Back when I was in Warsaw for my field research, I would come and sit by this lake everyday, at least once, without fail. There were so many unbelievable things happening, so much to process and feel grateful about, it felt overwhelming at times. Now that I look back, very surpringly this was the only time in my life when a string of good events felt earned. It did not feel like I did not deserve or that something bad is likely to follow. I would wake up with gratitude and soak it all in

The lake would be mostly still and uninteresting except for a few people jogging or bringing their dogs out for a walk. I would sit on some bench or some stroll corner with my headphones on and just pass the time. There will be a lot of thinking but also a lot of peace.

This was also the time I realised that a lot of the big meaningful moments of my life will be savoured alone. But I was also taught here in this one trip that it does not necessarily have to be lonely. I will do things, will achieve many things and will go very far but I have to get used to being comfortable in my own presence. It was jarring and confusing at first, especially the first night. It felt like I was living such a big moment in my life and I had no one to share it with right by my side.

It took time, but it got easier.

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Battle wounds

27.11.2022

By this time we have spent half the day together, and it was going really well. We both were laughing together after a really long time without immediately feeling guilty. At some point during a meal we sat for, she cried. She took a minute and I held her hand while she rubbed her tears off with a napkin. And then we talked some more about everything that happened in the last few week and finished our late lunch to leave.

It is odd how much I wanted her around the past few days. Somehow we both stay back, engage in some more window shopping until she disappears for a minute. When I find her, she is on the floor next to a rack clothing line at the store we were in.

"Check the group. Asima."

We are at the emergency exit gate of the mall 5minutes later because that is the only place where the blasted loud music from the mall is lower. This was the first time in days that Asima took to the group to be honest about how she is doing and we both were at the edge.

We call her brother. He gives us more uncomfortable details about how difficult her in-laws are being and how she needs to rescued soon. I could only stand, process everything while also think of what I can possibly do to help while Shree and Aaqif discussed visa appointments for Netherlands for Asima's mother. It was agreed that the sooner she is sent back to Niejmegen with her mother, the better it is for her.

When the call ended we both sat on the stairs and quietly breathe as we processed everything. Process. That's it. That's all we have been doing for the entire month. And still, it never ends. There is always something new and unanticipated that happens imemdiately and then we have to sit down and process that too.

"Let's go outside."

It felt bizarre when we walked out of that emergency exit corridior into the main mall area to find our way out of the main exit. Things were merry, vibrant, loud and unassuming, unlike the circumstances we are trapped in. People were buying, eating, laughing and chilling all at the same time. We realised we both lost our appetite for that ambience within the last few mins.

I took the photo outside sometime after a long discusssion in which she sobbed a bit more and I nursed a growing headache. Out of nowhere I would smell smoke and find a married couple next to me with cigarettes. He was beyond shocked when I approached to ask for one; for starters he was my father's age and I realised visitors to this particular mall usually 35+ age couples or parents who would least expect a 20 year old to ask for a cigarette.

Shree wanted to buy one last thing before we head home. She waited until I finished. We both sat in silence until I commented it hasn't even been a month since we last sat with Zain. There was sharp intake of breath and she took a minute to wrap her head around that fact.

When I took this photo I only wanted an evidence of this. Of this night, of this time in our lives when we could not have been more helpless about all that was happening to our friend and to us. We were tired, exhausted, mentally drained and heartbroken and it did not matter. We hardly got the time to acknowledge that. Because all that we actively chose to feel was worry, dread, fear, concern and pain for everything that was happening to Asima.

"Asima's life and what she is going through, it is like someone made a cocktail of the worst things that can happen to anyone."

I think we only mourned Zain for three days. The most was on the day he was finally removed from supportive care and laid to rest. And the following two days when we were not needed around Asima. It was always Asima and how she was taking it in. The problem was, we really had no gameplan about how to do a better job at being a friend at a time like this.

"How do you deal with this? How do you be a friend to someone who has lost everything that mattered to her the most? How do you support a friend who is going through this nightmare?

I would ask variants of this question to myself and to Shree everyday of this month since Zain was declared brain dead. And for the two days that he was still kept in ICU after that shree and I would just sit motionless next to her wondering what to do or say.

I will never understand why things happened the way they did. To even say maybe it was for the better feels horribly cruel. None of this should ever be for the better. Life should not have to crush you so hard on the this to make way for better things. In the past few weeks, everyone unanimously agreed that all of this was unbelievably unfair. There was no rational explanation for why Asima and even Zain had to go through this. When we all met on 28 of October 2023, we were happy, laughing and full of gratitude. By 18 November 2022, we were all broken beyond repair. And one of us was no longer amongst us.

When I would constantly talk about how bad this year was, I did not in my worst nightmare imagine things to go downhill like this. And I have had difficulty telling at least my closest people how badly this year had crippled. Never in my life had I sought emotional support more than I do right now, never have I been vulnerable this long. Everyone is nice enough to ask me how I am and reassure me that things will be better. But I know I have truly broken down this year, and Zain's death was the last shred of whatever resolve I had to bulldoze through a series of bad events from this year. More than his death, it is seeing Asima going through the pain and not being able to help. While treating Bindi, I was fine until I started noticing she was in pain by the end of October. And then I could not. I took charge of being there when they euthanised her because it was a relief amidst the agony to know she won't be suffering anymore.

And somewhere all this while, until my therapist pointed it out herself, i was unwilling to being a little more compassionate with myself. I have never known how to deal with grief I realise and I wish I did not feel so alone navigating it. I am miserable and desperate to go home because I know there comfort and unconditional, warm hugs there. And I don't know how they'll help but they will. They have to.

Because I don't know what else to lean onto anymore.

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Kaun kare, kaun kare, phir se jatan abb kaun kare.

This too will become one of those songs that will faintly remind me of someone. Of a time, of a place and of a journey I wasn't truly anticipating.

But someday when this song is entirely mine, I will know I have grown enormously yet again.

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Love language

3.07.22

If I can only explain how rough this year has been. Last night amidst a most inevitable breakdown, I asked myself which was a truly happy moment from this year.

I could not think of any.

I had a breakdown again today. The thing about low depressive moments is that try as you might, you cannot seem to know who to turn into. Your head convinces you there isn't anyone you can call, you can tell. It feels alone, lonely and hopeless beyond imagination.

I try to cry but my panic on what exactly is causing this outpour refuses to let go. I am crying but also frustrated with myself enough to push a pillow to my face.

Somewhere, a slice of courage cuts through the despair and I call a friend. We talk for an hour. She listens, only listens. I try to make sense of words, struggle through two languages to come to words that best describe how I feel. I take a detour of my routines, moments through the day and thoughts that ocassioanlly paralyze my rationality, to investigate my own condition. We exchange possibilities, reasonable explanations on what is troubling me.

I also talk of heartbreak and anxiety, both of which she has sufficiently overcome at some point. She does not advise but she tries to remind me of the person she knows as me. She agrees to my "buts" and yet she also subtly places her own doubts.

An hour of this conversation later where I am speaking more and sobbing less, she asks me to go out. There is someone waiting for me with a package. I protest but in delight and curiosity. I still walk out and find the food delivery guy waiting with cold coffee and some New York Cheesecake.

Very casually and unseemingly, the point is made. I have the people I need to get through the tide and they know how to be there for me. A person is enough, although i know if not for the helplessness there would be more.

Two hours later, my room mate comes back. Things are better. We chill and talk for hours and laugh at mindless things. And life is good again.

It will be hopeless, and helpless and unyieldingly depressing again, I would know soon. Not for long. But for that one night there is this overpowering sense of gratitude and love for anybody who has ever done something nice for me.

Quietly, to myself, I pray I never forget to be full of this gratitude ever again.

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Tim Tim, Tigger, Himbo, Duplu and Tiliki

These 5

It's been six months since I lost them and this has been the single biggest heartbreak I ever had to go through. The fact that I am going home soon and I am going to be in house where they aren't around all of our feet for absolutely no reason but to make their presence felt is a heartbreaking thought that pulls me down each time.

I have lost pets but never liek this, never to this degree. Never in a way that made hopelessness overpowered every good feeling I have ever known. For the first month I would not allow myself to remember them. I'll shake my head like I was shaking out every memory of them, every memory that brought me glee and bliss. I can't go through my gallery because for the past two years I have only captured them across the house like my life depended on them.

It is a heavy feeling that has receded over time as life went on. But I wonder what it would be like, sitting in my room, doors and windows open, lawns all gree with puddles of rain water in several pockets. I wonder what it would be like knowing there furry little babies won't be striding into my room like they own it.

And that is how homecoming this time will be the most bittersweet experience it has ever been.

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“You are imperfect, you are wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.”

— Brené Brown

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I am not obsessed with the sky, I am chasing anything that gives me momentary joy. 🪁🌻

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