An Archivist Found A Long Forgotten 8mm Film Reel In An Old Metal Box, Marked "Philippines 1942". Thinking

just want to thank every single one of you for being here. thank you for existing, for never giving up, for trying your best every day even when some days "our best" isn't much. you have more strength than you realize. everything you thought could destroy you until now, never did. you overcame every obstacle. every feeling of hopelessness. every time you thought the pain wouldn't end, it did. so, thank you for being here. you matter. thank you.

What she says: im fine

What she means: the average age of conception over the past 250k years is apparently 26.9. Let's round it down to 25. Think of your birth mother. Hold her hand. Imagine her holding hands with her mother. Within 4 people, you're back in time 100 years, and it's an intimate family dinner. Just after WWI. Add another 16 people, a small party of 20, and you're in the 1500s. Double it, twice, and you're at 80 people. Your family would fill a restaurant, and you're at the height of the Roman empire. At 100 people, Confucius is alive but Socrates has not yet been born. 100 people. That's a medium sized wedding. A small lecture theatre or concert. 200 people, probably the biggest party i could ever hope to host, takes you back 5000 years. The guests at your soirée of parents would be contemporaries of the Egyptian and Indus Valley civilisations, although you'd probably be too busy fixing drinks and nibbles to talk to all of them. Just imagine it. 200 of you. That's all it takes to get back 5,000 years. And we could go further. 1000 people, a decent sized concert, a large high school, and we're at the end of the last ice age. Your ancestors are comparing their pink floyd vinyl with music played on instruments carved from wood or bones of long vanished species. Wander through the crowd. See your own features and phrases and gestures refract out like a kaleidoscope. What would they make of you? What do you make of them? Why does it feel so unfair that even that first 100 years --that small family dinner of four--is out of your grasp? Maybe it's because questions of spatial distance have become negligible to us now. why, oh why, does time hold out against us so stubbornly

"If you listen very closely when you smile at me, you can hear the birds singing in my soul."

–The Last Incurable Romantic–

"Failing Better: A Conversation with Ocean Vuong" interviewed by Viet Thanh Nguyen for LA Review of Books (2019) [ID'd]

40,000 years ago, early humans painted hands on the wall of a cave. This morning, my baby cousin began finger painting. All of recorded history happened between these two paintings of human hands. The Nazca Lines and the Mona Lisa. The first TransAtlantic flight and the first voyage to the Moon. Humanity invented the wheel, the telescope, and the nuclear bomb. We eradicated wild poliovirus types 2 and 3. We discovered radio waves, dinosaurs, and the laws of thermodynamics. Freedom Riders crossed the South. Hippies burned their draft cards. Countless genocides, scientific advancements, migrations, and rebellions. More than a hundred billion humans lived and died between these two paintings—one on a sheet of paper, and one on the inside of a cave. At the dawn of time, ancient humans stretched out their hands. And this morning, a child reached back. 

Hey overthinkers, we're gonna be okay

Lastly, happy valentine's day to the planet that crashed into the earth billions of years ago to give us our moon <3

thank your local trans girl for being alive right now

Me and my mutuals rebloging the same post