There Are Manmade Joys Beyond My Comprehension, Too. The Horrors Aren’t Special.

Ada Limon said,  “I haven’t given up on trying to live a good life, a really good one even.” and “I want to try and be terrific. Even for an hour.” and  Anis Mojgani said, “Will I be something? Am I something? and the answer comes: You already are. You always were. And you still have time to be.”

“I have never been one of those people—I know you aren’t, either—who feels that the love one has for a child is somehow a superior love, one more meaningful, more significant, and grander than any other. I didn’t feel that before Jacob, and I didn’t feel that after. But it is a singular love, because it is a love whose foundation is not physical attraction, or pleasure, or intellect, but fear. You have never known fear until you have a child, and maybe that is what tricks us into thinking that it is more magnificent, because the fear itself is more magnificent. Every day, your first thought is not “I love him” but “How is he?”

-Hanya Yanagihara, “A Little Life”.

John Steinbeck, East of Eden

no, mom, you don't need to worry about me getting distracted by a boyfriend, you've already fucked up my attachment style so much i can't bear the thought of someone loving me unconditionally without having a nervous breakdown...

Prelude, Brynne Rebele-Henry

"I could make that abstract art, anyone could" then make it. Unironically. Go buy some paints. Do a mild googling. Do it, make the same art. See what it feels like. Find out what it inspires in you. Back in high school one kid was pretty disparaging of Jackson Pollock's art until we MADE Jackson Pollocks and it became his THING for the rest of the year. You could go into the art room on break to find him picking out colors and preparing space to make em. Try on the abstract art and let yourself forge a genuine connection to it, coward.

LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS LIFE HAS NOT FORGOTTEN YOU IT HOLDS YOU IN ITS HANDS

“You read something which you thought only happened to you, and you discover that it happened 100 years ago to Dostoyevsky. This is a very great liberation for the suffering, struggling person, who always thinks that he is alone. This is why art is important. Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.”

— James Baldwin, Conversations with James Baldwin

1. A Game of Thrones - George R. R. Martin / 2. The Lovers - Akseli Gallen-Kallela / 3. The Ballad of Reading Gaol - Oscar Wilde / 4. Deathless - Catherynne M. Valente

[ first contact, communion from everyone on the moon is essential personnel ] by julian k. jarboe