Jane Hirshfield, From "The Weighing", The Asking: New And Selected Poems

stop glamorizing “the Grind” and start glamorizing whatever this is

My dad had once told me it would be abnormal to be normal after all you’d been through and I’ve been looking at life differently ever since

I'm going to *remembers suicide is often not a desire for death itself but rather an attempt to radically change one's life because the current state of being has become unbearable but the person can't think of any way to change it other than death* kill myself

the “humans are inherently selfish” fanclub can genuinely and in all honesty go to hell. i once came back from a school yard where the kids had heaped piles of leaves and cut wildflowers on a narrow strip of grass bc a bee had died. i actually want to cry.

A group of rough looking boys walked past me today and all I heard of their conversation was “he’s got that anxiety disorder bro so I went with him so he’d be more comfortable” and it made me realise the world isn’t all that bad

“There’s a lot of pressure for people to make a very polished poem, to keep shining and shining it, and say here, it’s a perfect gem. There are many beautiful poems like that. A lot of Mary Ruefle’s poems are like that. But there’s also beauty to me in what I perceive as excess. One way I define poetry is as a blueprint to a feeling, so every line matters, even if it feels inconsequential or tangential. Even those tangents matter. So revision is really hard for me as a poet. Certain poems call to be revised because they want to look like that gem. Other poems are like, accept me as I am. Accept this mess.”

— Devin Kelly, from “On allowing yourself to be surprised”, from a conversation with Denise S. Robbins, published December 21, 2022 (via kitchen-light)

An archivist found a long forgotten 8mm film reel in an old metal box, marked "Philippines 1942". Thinking it was lost WWII footage, he sent it in to be restored/digitized. When he got the footage back, he found puppies instead (via)

get in loser we’re healing and loving ourselves

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