THE GARDEN

The  Astronomer’s Garden ~ Ulla Thynell

Walt Whitman, 'Song of the Open Road', Leaves of Grass

as you get older, you realize that you’re not always right and there’s so many things you could’ve handled better, so many situations where you could’ve been kinder and all you can really do is forgive yourself and let your mistakes make you a better person.

go home

Cities are smells: Acre is the smell of iodine and spices. Haifa is the smell of pine and wrinkled sheets. Moscow is the smell of vodka on ice. Cairo is the smell of mango and ginger. Beirut is the smell of the sun, sea, smoke, and lemons. Paris is the smell of fresh bread, cheese, and derivations of enchantment. Damascus is the smell of jasmine and dried fruit. Tunis is the smell of night musk and salt. Rabat is the smell of henna, incense and honey. A city that cannot be known by its smell is unreliable. Exiles have a shared smell: the smell of longing for something else; a smell that remembers another smell. A painting, nostalgic that guides you, like a worn tourist map, to the smell of the original place. A smell is a memory and a setting sun. Sunset, here, is beauty rebuking the stranger. But to love the sunset is not, as they say, one of the attributes of exile.

Mahmoud Darwish, In the Presence of Absence (via yesyes)

please be gentle to your pets, they trust you so much and believe that whatever youre doing for them is the best thing. they trust you to be kind and benevolent. small critter or otherwise, you have the trust of this animal, and i implore you to be gentle and decent. don’t betray that trust

“When I love I become liquid light”

— Nizar Qabbani, from “When I Love” (via oiseauperdu)

inktober day 2 - the moon