You hate yourself so loudly. You hate yourself at the top of your lungs. Your loathing for yourself permeates your speech. “Sorry I’m just rambling.” “Don’t worry about it.” “Just ignore me.” “Sorry if I’m annoying you.” “Sorry I don’t make sense.” “Sorry about that.” Sorry, sorry, sorry. You act as if you have to beat everyone else to the punch. As if the punching bag is you. If you hate yourself first, if you hate yourself loudest, then nobody will hurt you. You clapped your hands over your ears and shut your eyes and balled yourself up so that you’d never have to experience people’s loathing for you. And it meant you never heard their love. You drowned it out. You screamed your hatred over it. And you never got to hear it.
Stephanie Foo, What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis // @i-wrotethisforme // Jorge Louis Berges // @smokeinsilence //@viridianmasquerade //Jorge Louis Berges // @honeytuesday // Kaveh Akbar // F. Scott Fitzgerald // AKR //Olivie Blake, from “Alone With You in the Ether” // Kaveh Akbar, Pilgrimage
2024
EAT EMPTINESS IF IT EATS AT YOU
SYMPATHETIC MAGIC IS STRONGEST ON YOURSELF, YOU ARE YOUR ITERATED DOUBLE
(IT TAKES TIME)
YOU ARE SOMETHING OTHER THAN THE NETWORK OF THE SYSTEMS THAT AT ONCE GIVE YOU A LIFE AND MAKE IT YOURS; TO UNDERSTAND AND UTILIZE THEM WILL NOT IMPRISON YOU IN THE MONOTONOUS END OF YOUR DESPERATE-TO-COME-ALIVE POETICS AND UNRECREATABLE GESTALT MEANINGS BUT RENDER THE PHYSICS OF YOUR WORLD A REARTICULATABLE MEDIUM ON WHICH TO KNEAD AND BAKE THE RESTLESSNESS YOU ARE TRYING TO SEEK IN THE GLOW OF THE EMERGENCY EXIT, I.E., YOU DONT NEED TO KNOW THE NARRATIVE TO NARRATE
IT MIGHT HELP TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE RUNNING FROM
FLOODED PLAIN; HOLD FAST
INSIST ON A JOY THAT IS UNFORGETTABLE
REDUCE THE FREQUENCY WITH WHICH YOU LOOK BACK
KEEP DANCING
the idealized version of my tomorrow self will fix this
Albert Camus, letters to María Casares.
fake idgafer, i saw you yearning
If this pops up while you’re scrolling, I wish you unconditional love and massive success.
— Franz Kafka asking Felice Bauer to marry him (Letters to Felice)
Briony Marshall (Peaceful embrace or the melting of boundaries), Stephan Sinding (To Mennesker), Gustav Vigeland (Kiss), William Zorach (Embrace), Antonio Canova (Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss)
Sylvia Plath, from a letter featured in The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol. 1: 1940-1956