how’s that house that raised you?

simply cannot ever resist what i call the little mermaid or the tin man or the pinnochio plot, the one about a character who is either inhuman or human but outside in some way, constantly searching for whatever it is that they consider to be the quintessential proof of humanity, preoccupied by it so deeply that they fail to realize the proof is in the act and fact of the search itself

(via @notaficwriter)

MAYBE WE’LL FIND IT IF WE BOTH LOOK

Victoria Chang, from With My Back to the World: Poems; “The Islands, 1961”

“the possibility of rejection is essential to forming deep relationships with people” - chanté joseph for british vogue

i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point

you get it. you get the themes. i dont have time to do it justice. just look at it its on the ceiling

—Fyodor Dostoevsky

ALT

Maggie Dietz, "November" [ID in alt text]

i believe in everyones capability for joy everlasting and it looks like a coat you are warm in.

The excerpt paragraph made me look up and stare at my wife for three solid minutes waiting for them to return to the couch. I couldn’t move on with my life. I had to read it aloud to them to their audible disgust and then they read all the comments with unbridled delight.

Now we keep repeating “Like Zorro.”

Every generation needs its own 'oh john ringo no!'

My grandfather and my godfather (a beloved neighbor and dear family friend) had a long standing bet- for one dollar- about who would die first. Both of them being slightly pessimistic (in the funny way), they both insisted that they themselves would be the first to die. Any time my grandfather had a health scare, he’d gleefully call up my godfather to boast that he’d be passing “any day now” and he was sure to win the bet. It was a big family joke and they were always amiably sparring and comparing notes about who was in worse shape, medically speaking.

When my grandfather was in hospice care dying of liver cancer, my godfather was quite ill also. It took him great effort to make the journey to see his dying friend. As he came into the room, supported by a family member, he shuffled to my grandpa’s bedside and silently handed him a dollar bill. He was ceding his loss of the bet, as they both knew who was going first. My grandpa had been in quite bad shape for a while and was no longer able to speak but let me tell you he snatched that dollar with unexpected strength and literally laughed aloud. He knew exactly what the gesture meant and he couldn’t help but find the humor within the grief. It was the last time any of us heard my grandpa laugh, as he passed shortly after.

When I talk about my appreciation for “dark humor” I’m not so much thinking about edgy jokes, but rather the human instinct to somehow, impossibly, both find and appreciate the absurdity that is so often folded into the profound grief of life and death. When I tell this story I think it kind of perturbs people sometimes, but it’s honestly one of my favorite memories about two men I really deeply admired. I could never hope for anything more than for my loved ones to remember me laughing until the very end, and taking joy in a little joke as one of my final acts.

“Gaza is not the most beautiful of cities. Her coast is not bluer than those of other Arab cities. Her oranges are not the best in the Mediterranean. Gaza is not the richest of cities. (Fish and oranges and sand and tents forsaken by the winds, smuggled goods and hands for hire.) And Gaza is not the most polished of cities, or the largest. But she is equivalent to the history of a nation, because she is the most repulsive among us in the eyes of the enemy – the poorest, the most desperate, and the most ferocious. Because she is a nightmare. Because she is oranges that explode, children without a childhood, aged men without an old age, and women without desire. Because she is all that, she is the most beautiful among us, the purest, the richest, and most worthy of love.”

— Journal of an Ordinary Grief - Mahmoud Darwish

bitches r like “i can suture the wound that drains you of life. i can close the gash through which your days leak away hour by hour” uhm the wound is endlessly extending 😂 like the tracks of a snake through desert sand

I just know Franz Kafka would have done fucking numbers on Tumblr

He is doing numbers here

when kafka said ‘you wouldn’t believe the kind of person I could become if you wanted it’ and when brontë said ‘if you ever looked at me with what I know is in you, I would be your slave’ and when Sartre said ‘if I’ve got to suffer it may as well be at your hands’