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The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love — whether we call it friendship or family or romance — is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

-James Baldwin

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and i was so young when i behaved 25 yet now i find i have grown into a tall child

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Shifting into summertime mode which is where I don't gaf about anything but 1) reading books 2) going in large bodies of water 3) wearing as little clothes as possible

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patti on instagram, 13 april ‘25

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My religion makes no sense

and does not help me

therefore I pursue it.

When we see

how simple it would’ve been

we will trash ourselves.

I had a vision

of all the people in the world

who are searching for God

massed in a room

on one side

of a partition

that looks

from the other side

(God’s side)

transparent

but we are blind.

Our gestures are blind.

Our blind gestures continue

for some time until finally

from somewhere

on the other side of the partition there we are

looking back at them.

It is far too late.

We see how brokenly

how wearily

how ill

our blind gestures

parodied

what God really wanted

(some simple thing).

The thought of it

(this simple thing)

is like a creature

let loose in a room

and battering

to get out.

It batters my soul

with its rifle butt.

- Anne Carson, My Religion

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Identity is a prison! Let yourself respond authentically to each moment as it arrives, without being bound to the narrative of who you think you are! The self is a construct! The truth of your existence is ever changing and infinite as the universe is ever changing and infinite! Abandon the stories of your past selves and be present and alive in this very moment! IDENTITY IS DEAD! THE SELF IS DEAD! YOU ARE ALIVE!

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― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals

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Rothko wanted to paint basic human emotion. So he painted red over red over red. Behind the colour he was looking for light. In 1942 he painted The Sacrifice of Iphigenia, where Iphigenia is not a girl, but a black pine already resined in grief. Above her the amnesia of light, an umber sky, shadows spilling white, the only motion the white hands of the wind. The story of Iphigenia was never about the girl, but the men who called for the blood of a girl knowing that the winds would one day change. The forest charred, the air stilled, deranged, and the truth beneath it all is fear, was always fear, the open grave, the charcoal line, the dead growing out of the living like lichen, the pine a blood-eyed child, the pyres loose stones and living rooms. Dress it up in the white hands of the wind. Call it need. Call it necessity. Rothko wanted to paint basic human emotion so looked behind the light and found blood rushing to no end and no knowledge of end.

Ollie Cowley, Rothko / On Fear

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this is how it is

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“You are not helpless. You are not heartless. And you have time.”

— Toni Morrison

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Sex scenes should be cut out of all movies but they should be replaced by a series of strange avant- garde shots of industrial machines and objects grinding and rubbing and spinning and vibrating and whining and entering each other that implies some freak shit is going on

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« In English, consciousness and unconsciousness are part of a vertical plane, so that we wake up ↑ and we fall ↓ asleep and we sink ↓ into a coma. Chinese uses the horizontal line, so that to wake is to cross a border towards consciousness → and to faint is to go back ← . Meanwhile, time itself is vertical so that last year is “the year above” ↑ and next year is “the year below” ↓. The day before yesterday is the day “in front” ↑ and the day after tomorrow is the day “behind” ↓. This means that future generations are not the generations ahead, but the ones behind. Therefore, to look into the future one must turn around… »

— Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing

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A Burst of Light, Audre Lorde

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a-way-to-regard-the-world.png

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Kate Bush, “Cloudbusting”

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the only way to get what you want is to be brave enough to move towards it. if there is a willingness to be momentarily uncomfortable in order to live the life that calls from your heart then fear loses much of its claim over you and your decisions

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2025 is the year to get around to it. rub some dirt in the gaping wound of your heart and bare your teeth to your own life