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margaret atwood, november

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— a girl is a haunted house, tathève simonyan

[text ID: “I could’ve lived like this”, echoed in my head. / As I looked around, my eyes unthinkingly clung to places where I could’ve hidden my selves: the ones that didn’t come to being and the one that I was. In the cupboards of this kitchen I could’ve buried all the women I could’ve grown into. While doing so, I would’ve put on the apron of the one who inhabited the kitchen. The cups and the glasses would’ve made place for me. I could’ve easily found a home in between the kitchen table and refrigerator. As the fragrance of rosemary and thyme found their way to me, a picture found its way to the back of my eyes: a hushed scene, full of contentment, a shot of me standing in the center of this kitchen, feet thick brown trucks giving birth to dozens of snakelike radixes, covered in colorful moss, devoid of flowers but who needs flowers when all they do is wilt anyway? I would’ve thought so, had I been the me of that frame. / I could’ve been content here, not happy, but content. The cutlery and the plates would’ve made place for me. The dull roar of the washing machine would’ve hidden my cries, with the same diligence it sheltered my mother’s. The “what ifs” of this particular scenario smelled of cinnamon and vanilla. / I could’ve been content here. I thought as I placed the coffee cup on the countertop next to the gas stove: the surface always wet for it filled the space between the sink and the stove, in between water and fire.  / I could’ve been content here. I repeated as I unscrewed the lid of the coffee jar and took out a spoonful of the umber powder. / While turning on the gas and putting the cezve on its designated place, I cursed the mind that yearned for more, yearned to be more than what it was supposed to be. I cursed the eyes that only saw what was not in front of them, hands that wished to touch what wasn’t theirs to touch and the tongue that longed to taste what wasn’t hers to taste. I cursed myself because I understood that I could’ve been content here, and as the umber froth fought its way to the surface, my tears caved in to the gravitational force.]

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literally anything handmade is so dope. idc what it is it could be anything. a quilt, a painting, a basket, a sweater, a wooden table, a shed, a meal. how magical

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Grief is the only proof that I love and I love well. Love and grief are actually intertwined with each other and as "Akif Kichloo" once wrote, "the opposite of grief is not laughter or happiness or joy. It is love. It is love. It is love."

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Paul Auster, The Brooklyn Follies

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https://twitter.com/isabelunraveled

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― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

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i wanna make you fall in love as hard as my poor parents teenage daughter / she'll be the best you ever had if you let her

Sylvia Plath from a letter to Ann Davdiow-Goodman written 1951; Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956 / Jeanette Winterson excerpt from Lighthousekeeping / Rosamund Hodge excerpt from Cruel Beauty / unknown / image: Angelica Alzona Intimacy (2012) words: The National Daughter of the Soho Riots (2005) / Tathève Simonyan A Prayer / @/FAUNTHEKiD (pinterest) / Victoria Chang Foghorn; Six poems / image: unknown words: Richard Siken excerpt from Crush / Hala Alyan I'm Not Speaking First

i. Sylvia Plath, letter to Ann Davdiow-Goodman

[ "I know I'll always think of you with something like hurt and nostalgia - and a great deal of love." ]

ii. Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

[ "This is not a love story, but love is in it. That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in." ]

iii. Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty

[ "You fought and fought to keep all the cruelty locked up in your head, and for what? None of them ever loved you, because none of them ever knew you." ]

iv. unknown

[ "and you've cried once more because recognition feels like forgiveness, which is a burning furnace that can't stand on its own. love is a feast but you've learned to abstain. there is a sickness that follows the shame of giving with love only to be met with slaughter." ]

v. Angelica Alzona, Intimacy / The National, Daughter of the Soho Riots

[ Surrealist painting of a man and a woman kissing as their faces blend together. Red outlines of hands reach up around them. "BREAK MY ARMS / AROUND THE ONE I LOVE" ]

vi. Tatheve Simonyan, A Prayer

[ "Rage, that is love - rotten! / Rage, that is desire - rotten! / Rage! - like a prayer, unanswered, ricocheting from your ceiling and landing right onto your eyes, never quite reaching where it was meant to." ]

vii. FAUNTHEKiD

[ "being in close proximity to you / is being led to the slaughter / if that the lamb is aware is alive is accepting / if that the slaughter is love love love" ]

viii. Victoria Chang, Foghorn

[ "The great mystery / is whether I love you or / I just love mourning. / The absence of a laugh just / gone, and the air that fills it." ]

ix. unknown/Richard Siken, Crush

[ Silhouette of a boy looking downwards. Red streaks from the background spread outwards from the middle. "I'll be your / slaughterhouse, / your killing floor, / your morgue / and final resting" ]

x. Hala Alyan, I'm Not Speaking First

[ "Nothing's Freudian anymore. A cigar's a cigar. I want to love something / I want to love something without having to apologize for it. Please don't tell." ]

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on shame and yearning (pt.2)

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anne boyer “the harm will come: it never doesn’t” / julia armfield “to watch a horror movie is to know that something bad is going to happen. to have a body is really the same thing” / hilary mantel “we don’t have to invite pain in, it’s waiting for us: sooner rather than later” / marie howe “you know how we’ve been waiting for the big pain to come? I think it’s here. I think this is it. I think it’s been here all along” / gregory orr “I want to go back to the beginning. we all do. I think: hurt won’t be there. but I’m wrong” / toni morrison “the hurt was always there” / torrey peters “pain that had to be endured, withstood, pain that was the same as being alive, and so without end”

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Jennifer Chang, from "Dialogues (Against Literature)"

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― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

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― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

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—Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

[That’s what the world is, after all: an endless battle of contrasting memories.]

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from THEORY OF MOTION (4): ANOTHER MIDDLE-CLASS BLACK KID TRIES TO NAME IT by cameron awkward-rich, published in transit

[Text ID: Please—what’s the word for being born of sorrow that isn’t yours? For having a family? For belonging nowhere? Not even your body. Especially not there. /End ID]

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evening sketch 28/12/17.

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How can I explain to you, my happiness, my golden, wonderful happiness, how much I am all yours – with all my memories, poems, outbursts, inner whirlwinds? Or explain that I cannot write a word without hearing how you will pronounce it – and can’t recall a single trifle I’ve lived through without regret – so sharp! – that we haven’t lived through it together – whether it’s the most, the most personal, intransmissible – or only some sunset or other at the bend of a road – you see what I mean, my happiness?

— Vladimir Nabokov, Letters to Véra