I Am Not Your Negro, Dir. Raoul Peck (2016) (via Lunamonchtuna)

Clementine von Radidc, James/ Jenny Slate, Little weirds/ Elena Ferrante, my brilliant friend trilogy/ serethereal/ Taylor Swift, it's time to go

Emily L., Marguerite Duras // Bertrand Russell, What Desires are Politically Important? // Octavio Paz, "The House of Glances" // Mitski—Francis Forever // Chen Chen, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities // VIVINOS and QMENG, Alien Stage (Round 6) // Bryan Fuller, Hannibal (2013) // Richard Siken, "Little Monster" // Christa Wolf, Cassandra: A Novel and Four Essays // Mitski—I Bet on Losing Dogs

“And God looked the other way”

@/avainblue // antigone, sophocles // @/sinfulscrapbook // unknown // it is right to draw their fur, dave eggers // day after tomorrow - phoebe bridgers // unknown // sun bleached flies - ethel cain // tonight I’m someone else, chelsea hodson // the war of vaslav nijinsky, frank bidart

its been 2 months since i read cloud cuckoo land by anthony doerr and i havent really talked about it cause its not "fandomizable" or whatever but i started thinking about it again out of nowhere today so i gonna get my thoughts out here.

as you may know for the past several months ive been really into finding obscure music to listen to. not because i want to feel elite or superior or win the obscure music competition, but because its such an intimate experience to me. its like the artist is reaching across time and space to deliver me the song personally and entrusting it to me and I have to take care of it and share it with the people in my life so it can be loved and grow up big and strong. its especially true for songs that are 15 or 20 or 30 or more years old cause it makes me wonder where the artist is now and how theyre doing. their musical career may not have taken off, but it made its way to me all these years later. its touching, you know?

now imagine instead of a song from a decade or two ago that you can stream on spotify, it's a manuscript that's thousands of years old. five times over, across millenia, somebody discovered a story that was doomed to be lost forever and singlehandedly worked to rescue and preserve and share it so that it could keep on living, because it was important to them. whether the story is "good" or not, hell whether its even complete or legible, is not what matters. what matters is that for their own reasons, some part of it resonated with each of them, and they felt a responsibility to pass it on so it would not die with them.

to put it more crassly, cloud cuckoo land is basically a story about lost media. the need to preserve and record and recover information no matter how trivial it may seem is such a human thing to do and i love that

it's been a while since i did a book review post but i'm not sure if i can be normal about this one boys

cloud cuckoo land by anthony doerr is a novel about the preservation of a (fictional) diogenes play of the same name. but it's actually a book about five of God's most autistic soldiers and the ways in which this play shapes their lives. but it's actually a book about how books and stories give our lives meaning in the face of unthinkable horrors. but it's actually about the hope that his niece will feel better.

this book says it's all worth it. even the shit parts. maybe especially the shit parts. it says if you can make it to the end of the story maybe something beautiful will be waiting for you there.

Apparently seals in Aberdeen have learned to climb onto a branch and rest there

Arboreal seals

I AM LOSING! IT!!

ARBOREAL SEALS

i love you in the strongest way there is

via nozu on tumblr // richard siken // charles bukowski // nothingbutloveforyou on tumblr // inanotherunivrse on tumblr.

Four Houses as Famous Poems

Ravenclaw: O Me! O Life! By Walt Whitman 

Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me, Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined, The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?                                       Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Hufflepuff: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and frozen lake The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake To ask if there is some mistake. The only other sound’s the sweep Of easy wind and downy flake. The woods are lovely, dark and deep, But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep.

Gryffindor: Night (O you whose countenance) by Rainer Maria Rilke

Night. O you whose countenance, dissolved in deepness, hovers above my face.

You who are the heaviest counterweight to my astounding contemplation.

Night, that trembles as reflected in my eyes, but in itself strong; inexhaustible creation, dominant, enduring beyond the earth’s endurance;

Night, full of newly created stars that leave trails of fire streaming from their seams as they soar in inaudible adventure through interstellar space:

how, overshadowed by your all-embracing vastness, I appear minute!— Yet, being one with the ever more darkening earth, I dare to be in you.

Slytherin: The Best Thing in the World by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

What’s the best thing in the world? June-rose, by May-dew impearled; Sweet south-wind, that means no rain; Truth, not cruel to a friend; Pleasure, not in haste to end; Beauty, not self-decked and curled Till its pride is over-plain; Light, that never makes you wink; Memory, that gives no pain; Love, when, so, you’re loved again.

What’s the best thing in the world? —Something out of it, I think.

e.e. cummings, from “in time of daffodils(who know” (in 95 Poems), Complete Poems: 1904-1962

[Text ID: “In time of daffodils(who know the goal of living is to grow)”]

when Richard siken said “these, our bodies possessed with light” and when Anthony Doerr said “So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?” and when Leonard cohen said “there is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”