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citationless behavior

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what reading some modern adaptations of the iliad feels like

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Gianfranco Ferre Spr/Sum 2006

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its called alpha/beta/omega dynamics bc the ancient greeks wouldve loved them

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why are men so self conscious about their height when there are so many more important flaws to be self conscious about like the lack of emotional intelligence

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when priam is like hi helen you have done nothing wrong in your life ever i only blame the gods and fate. btw who is that massive hottie on the battlefield. and helen is like you have been at war with this guy for the past nine years how do you not know who agamemnon is

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alla mingalёva

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aeschylus is dead sophocles is dead euripides is dead and me i feel not so good

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Mosaic with sea creatures from the House of the Faun, Pompeii.

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Your boyfriend starts mumbling in Latin in his sleep and it scares the hell out of you but upon translation he’s introducing himself, inquiring on the price of grain, attempting to sell dormice, brainstorming silly Saturnalia gift ideas. In his sleep he somehow becomes a 1st century BC plebeian, of modest means but with a pleasant outlook on mundane life.

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What's the point of a diary if you're not lying in it?

On Anaïs Nin, literary self-mythologizing, and why personal writing should always be slightly dishonest. (from my substack)

If you’re not lying in your diary, you’re just journaling, and journaling is for people who don’t know how to edit.

A diary is not a record of events; it is an act of creation. The best diarists know this instinctively. Anaïs Nin knew it better than anyone. Her diaries were not mere confessions but performances, half-lit mirrors where the truth shimmered, distorted but no less real.

Nin understood that life is not lived in a single register. Her diaries are a study in contradiction—one moment, she is in love; the next, repulsed. She is independent yet wholly consumed by those around her. But contradiction isn’t falsehood; it’s literature. She rewrote and edited her diaries, sculpting herself into the character she wanted to be. And is that really so dishonest?

People love to be outraged by the idea of a diary that is not entirely factual. But fact is not the same as truth. Diaries, at their best, are emotional truths, shaped by mood, by desire, by the need to impose a narrative on the chaos of daily life. Nin was not interested in being objective—she was interested in being immortal. She once wrote, “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.” But why stop at tasting? Why not rewrite, reshape, embellish? If we can curate the lives we present to others, why should we not do the same for the versions of ourselves we leave behind?

Nin herself was a master of this. She edited her diaries before publication, removing, refining, turning herself into a protagonist. She blurred lines, shifted timelines, made herself more alluring. She called it shaping reality. Others call it lying. The truth, of course, is that all personal writing is selective. Even in confession, there is curation.

The danger, of course, is that history will take the performance at face value. That the diary, once private, will harden into biography. But this, too, is a kind of truth. A diary is not a static object. It lives, it breathes, it deceives, but always in service of something larger than the mundane details of existence.

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David Lynch, “The Angriest Dog in the World”

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wine & dine

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Versace Atelier Fall/Wint 1997

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Gaurav Gupta Haute Couture Spr/Sum 2024