Being A Young Adult Is So Strange. You Enter A Coffee Shop. The 20 Year Old Girl Waiting Behind You Cried

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry but I want you to be too

I want to look down on you while you gasp and cry and feel the pain you caused me

and I think my therapist would say that that doesn't make me a bad person but I think it does

Because you can articulate the pain I caused you and I can't do that to mine I can just feel it but oh god I caused that hurt and I'm so sorry so sorry so sorry

But I want you to be sorry t—

one of the biggest things I can advocate for (in academia, but also just in life) is to build credibility with yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of thinking of yourself as someone who does things last minute or who struggles to start tasks. people will tell you that you just need to build different habits, but I know for me at least the idea of ‘habit’ is sort of abstract and dehumanizing. Credibility is more like ‘I’ve done this before, so I know I can do it, and more importantly I trust myself to do it’. you set an assignment goal for the day and you meet it, and then you feel stronger setting one the next day. You establish a relationship with yourself that’s built on confidence and trust. That in turn starts to erode the barrier of insecurity and perfectionism and makes it easier to start and finish tasks. reframing the narrative as a process of building credibility makes it easier to celebrate each step and recognize how strong your relationship with yourself can become

The man who saw her lips and knew defeat

Embraced the earth before her bonny feet;

And as the breeze passed through her musky hair

The men of Rome watched wondering in despair.

Her eyes spoke promises to those in love,

Their fine brows arched coquettishley above—

Those brows sent glancing messages that seemed

To offer everything her lovers dreamed.

The pupils of her eyes grew wide and smiled,

And countless souls were glad to be beguiled;

The face beneath her curls glowed like soft fire;

Her moneyed lips provoked the world's desire;

But those who thought to feast there found her eyes

Held pointed daggers to protect the prize,

And since she kept her council no-one knew—

Despite the claims of some—what she would do.

Her mouth was tiny as a needles eye,

Her breath as quickening as Jesus' sigh;

Her chin was dimpled with a silver well

In which a thousand drowning Josephs fell;

A glistening jewel held her hair in place,

Which like a veil obscured her lovely face.

The Conference of the Birds, Attar

Hiroshima

Der den Tod auf Hiroshima warf Ging ins Kloster, läutet dort die Glocken. Der den Tod auf Hiroshima warf Sprang vom Stuhl in die Schlinge, erwürgte sich. Der den Tod auf Hiroshima warf Fiel in Wahnsinn, wehrt Gespenster ab Hunderttausend, die ihn angehen nächtlich, Auferstandene aus Staub für ihn.

Nichts von alledem ist wahr. Erst vor kurzem sah ich ihn Im Garten seines Hauses vor der Stadt. Die Hecken waren noch jung und die Rosenbüsche zierlich. Das wächst nicht so schnell, dass sich einer verbergen könnte Im Wald des Vergessens. Gut zu sehen war Das nackte Vorstadthaus, die junge Frau Die neben ihm stand im Blumenkleid Das kleine Mädchen an ihrer Hand Der Knabe, der auf seinem Rücken saß Und über seinem Kopf die Peitsche schwang. Sehr gut erkennbar war er selbst Vierbeinig auf dem Grasplatz, das Gesicht Verzerrt von Lachen, weil der Photograph Hinter der Hecke stand, das Auge der Welt.

--Marie Luise Kaschnitz

Fuck them. Fuck them for laughing. Fuck them for being so mindless. It hurts even worse knowing laughing at pain wasn't a conscious decision. It came so naturally to them.

Fuck them for having the power to hurt me without even thinking about it.

//—i thought about adding what situation exactly I mean but does it even matter

truly some people have no genre savviness whatsoever. A girl came back from the dead the other day and fresh out of the grave she laughed and laughed and lay down on the grass nearby to watch the sky, dirt still under her nails. I asked her if she’s sad about anything and she asked me why she should be. I asked her if she’s perhaps worried she’s a shadow of who she used to be and she said that if she is a shadow she is a joyous one, and anyway whoever she was she is her, now, and that’s enough. I inquired about revenge, about unfinished business, about what had filled her with the incessant need to claw her way out from beneath but she just said she’s here to live. I told her about ghosts, about zombies, tried to explain to her how her options lie between horror and tragedy but she just said if those are the stories meant for her then she’ll make another one. I said “isn’t it terribly lonely how in your triumph over death nobody was here to greet you?” and she just looked at me funny and said “what do you mean? The whole world was here, waiting”. Some people, I tell you.

YOU CAN MAKE THE WORLD A KINDER PLACE BY BEING KIND! THAT’S ALL IT TAKES!!

musings on July

"NW" Zadie Smith, "the Hands of Friendship" in Yerevan (@metamorphesque). "Jane Eyre" Charlotte Brontë (@flowerytale), Franz Kafka’s Diaries (@hungryfictions), "Summer night by the beach" Edvard Munch, "A Magic Mountain" Czeslaw Milosz (tr by Czeslaw Milosz and Lillian Vallee), "Answer July" Emily Dickinson, "Four Sunflowers Gone to Seed" Vincent van Gogh, The Diaries of Franz Kafka (@shisasan)