The Unbearable Weight Of Staying

Adam Sackler’s dance of frustration

Look, the trees are turning their own bodies into pillars

of light, are giving off the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment,

the long tapers of cattails are bursting and floating away over the blue shoulders

of the ponds, and every pond, no matter what its name is, is

nameless now. Every year everything I have ever learned

in my lifetime leads back to this: the fires and the black river of loss whose other side

is salvation, whose meaning none of us will ever know. To live in this world

you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it

against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

—  In Blackwater Woods by Mary Oliver

Fucking hell, you’re so beautiful.

the signs as historical anecdotes

Aries: The Greek philosopher Diogenes was once captured by pirates and sold into slavery. The slave merchant asked Diogenes what trade he could be sold into (like a carpenter, scribe, etc.). Diogenes said his only skill was leading men, and said that he should be sold to a man who needed a master.

Taurus: In 207 BC, Greek Stoic philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter while watching his drunk donkey eat figs.

Gemini: In the midst of an impassioned debate on the Senate floor, a page delivers a private message to young Julius Caesar. His opponent, Cato, demands the letter be read aloud. Caesar initially refused, but after much pestering, showed the rival senator the note. It was a love letter from Cato’s half sister.

Cancer: The Roman Emperor Caligula made his favorite horse Senator and gave it voting rights. The horse was named Incitatus and had a whole stable in marble complete with furniture and a staff of servants.

Leo: When Alexander the Great was in Corinth, all the great men of the city came to pay him tribute. When he didn’t see Diogenes among them, he went out to find him, and met the philosopher sun bathing next to the barrel he lived in. Alexander, conqueror of half the known world, greeted him and asked if there was anything he could do as a favor to the famous thinker. Diogenes answered, “Yes, move over a little. You’re standing in my sun.”

Virgo: Maria Fedorovna, Empress of Russia and wife of Tsar Alexander III, was known for her charitable works. In fact, she once saved a condemned man from exile in Siberia by changing a single comma in the warrant signed by her husband. Instead of reading: “Pardon impossible, to be sent to Siberia,” she changed the document to read: “Pardon, impossible to be sent to Siberia.” The man was thus saved and released.

Libra:  The Greek tragedian Aeschylus was killed when an eagle dropped a turtle on his head, after mistaking it for a rock on which to crack open the shell.

Scorpio: Pope Stephen VI didn’t like his predecessor, Pope Formosus, and therefore ordered his remains to be dug up and put on trial. At the infamous “Cadaver Synod” of 897, Pope Stephen VI cross-examined the corpse, declared it guilty, and had it mutilated and thrown in the Tiber River as punishment.

Sagittarius: Hippocleides of Athens got so drunk at a betrothal dinner party he jumped on the dinner table and started dancing like a madman. His prospective father-in-law Cleisthenes of Sicyon told him “Oh son of Tysander, you have just danced away your marriage.” Hippocleides responded with “Hippocleides doesn’t care”

Capricorn: The Persian king Xerxes sentenced the sea to 300 lashes for destroying two of his army’s bridges.

Aquarius: Virginia Woolf and her writer friends successfully tricked the Royal Navy into showing them their flagship, the battleship HMS Dreadnought, by pretending to be Abyssinian princes, dressing up with fake beards, skin darkeners and turbans. (Here’s a picture, Virginia to the far left)

Pisces: In 1518, a “dancing plague” struck Strasbourg, Alsace, whereby hundreds of people danced fervently in the streets over the period of a month. There was no music nor any apparent reason behind it. Some suffered heart attacks or strokes, and many others died from sheer exhaustion.

Are you coming with me?

#Skywalkers are on that bullshit

Visual motif: The mighty Kylo Ren, kneeling in front of Rey, the girl who came from nowhere.

Elizaveta Boyarskaya, Viktoriya Isakova

Grace and Megs (6/5 9:02PM CT, Austin, TX)

CATE BLANCHETT in “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (2008, dir. David Fincher) → Costume Design by Jacqueline West