so soothing. cancel my appts. gonna be watching a bubble freeze in real time for the foreseeable

that is insanely cool and also how I mentally picture setting wards

Freddie Mercury Wikipedia Page//Mother Love Wikipedia Page//Mother Love Genius Page

i think about this song a lot. its almost like he dies right there in the middle of the song. right between the second verse and the third. i cant imagine what it must have been like for brian may to sing that last verse.

i don’t think people understand how much of life is grief. not just people dying, but losing the version of yourself you thought you’d become. grieving the city you had to leave. the friends you lost not in argument, but in silence. the summer that will never come back. the feeling that maybe you peaked at 12 when you were reading books under the covers and believing in forever

My resolution last year was to do one thing before bed that would make my morning feel easier, and that’s become a daily habit that I’m carrying into this new year.

Some nights even filling up the kettle and setting an empty mug out for my morning tea felt hard. But I was always thankful for it in the morning.

Other nights, one thing would lead to another, and I’d wake up in a clean house with everything ready to go.

And, on a rare few nights, the one thing that I could do to make my morning easier was going straight to bed and allowing myself to rest.

What stayed the same each day is that I would take a moment to think of what I could do for my future self and do it, even after a hard day. And I would wake up knowing that I had done my best and any effort—no matter how small—was a kindness to myself.

I’ve been doing a lot of “a treat for future me” moments lately.

That’s a great way to look at it, and I love this artist! (Anna-Laura: instagram / website)

TINY WRLD (2020)

everyone on replies is terrified of this fact but i just think it's so sweet and heartwarming. she's holding our hand and leading us somewhere secret and we're both giggling like kids. i love her

let’s travel through the vast unknown with mama

Space chickens

Posts like this are why I'll never leave Tumblr

Will occasionally gets postcards in the mail.

No name. No address. No matter where he is.

Always of art.

Postcards of paintings from all around the world.

He likes researching them and learning about the artist, what the paintings mean, where the paintings hang now.

He knows she wouldn’t be there if he went, but he still looks into the cities that the galleries are in. Reading about the history and imagining her telling him about it. Imagining her exploring. Learning. Existing freely.

He doesn’t tell anyone because he knows she trusts him not to. Trusts him to not try and find her.

He likes to think she still checks in with him as occasionally the meaning or subject of a painting will hit too close to home with him and whatever the current thing that was bothering him.

He wishes he could write back. Wishes he knew how to check on her as she checks on him.

But since everything ended, his powers lay dormant. Only evidence they still exist are the small ‘electrical faults’ that are perfectly timed with big emotions and always end in a nose bleed.

"Because I Love You" by Lex Marie.

She spent hours upon hours just beating the canvas with a belt...

when you look at the finished painting, you can almost see letters - but there aren't any. It's all noise. a lot of adults process this sort of beating by insisting there is a lesson in it. with the title and artist statement in mind, it's like they're trying to read a message of love written in that chaotic canvas.

you can never go back. this is your one life. you had a bad childhood and that's it. you lost your teen years to mental illness and that's it. you're miserable in your 20s and that's it. you just go forward

you had a bad childhood so let your inner child drive once in awhile. jump on crunchy leaves. you lost your teen years to mental illness so let yourself like things now. you're miserable in your 20s so do something to make yourself happy. this is your one life. you have to make efforts to appreciate the little things. keep trying. ask for help. it's easier to go together.

just because the past was bad doesn't mean you can't let yourself live now.

live. WANT to live.

I love how this is worded so much, I’m gonna try to live even while still surviving 😭🫶🏻✨

The Muppet Christmas Carol is now considered a holiday classic and probably one of the best of the Muppets’ filmography, but when you look at it, it is such a departure from all the previous Muppet media. It’s much darker- both in terms of tone and color palette. There’s no celebrity cameos. A human is the central character instead of one of the Muppets. There are many new Muppets instead of relying on regular Muppets for some of the roles and some the Muppets are in roles you wouldn’t expect.

A lot of this makes much more sense with the context that this is the first Muppet project after Jim Henson’s sudden death and Muppeteer Richard Hunt was incredibly sick due to complications from AIDS that he was unable to participate (he would die during production). It’s a film created by a lot of people actively in the grieving process. You can feel that grief in scenes like the ones in the Cratchit home. It also explains why certain Muppets appear and some don’t. They really only use Jim and Richard’s characters when they have to. You can’t have a Muppet movie without Kermit, so Kermit is in. Statler and Waldorf are both perfect for Jacob Marley, so they both had to be recast because they were performed by Richard and Jim (which makes the fact they are ghosts kind of sad). Beaker is one of Richard’s characters and because you can’t have Bunsen without Beaker, Beaker was recast. Of Jim’s other major characters, Dr. Teeth and Rowlf are present but silent and the Swedish Chef has a more active cameo. Of Richard’s regular characters, only Janice is present. Scooter and Sweetums are not in the film. Frank Oz was busy with other jobs, so he really only does his main four of Miss Piggy, Animal, Fozzie, and Sam the Eagle. Dave Goelz, Steve Whitmire, and Jerry Nelson did a lot of the main characters, except the Ghosts of Christmas Past and Future. Jerry Nelson did the face puppeteering and voice of the Ghost of Christmas Present. I think it speaks to Jerry Juhl’s skill as a writer that he was able to not only adapt to these casting considerations, but also write one of the most faithful adaptations of A Christmas Carol.

I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love

I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on

‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.

My new favorite mordern interpretation is this work, José y Maria by Everett Patterson (http://www.everettpatterson.com)

I had to look at this like FIVE TIMES to register all the layers of symbolism going into the piece by Patterson. 

The hoodie as a veil. 

Weisman cigarettes

Each of them is haloed by an advertisement sticker. 

No Vacancy sign on the motel. 

Dove sticker over Maria’s head. 

Neon sign with a star symbol also over Maria’s head. 

The crown over the ‘Dave’s City Motel’ sign. “New Manger.”

The sign behind Jose’s elbow likely says ‘Herod.’

The wee little plant growing through the cracks at their feet. 

It’s like a New Testament ‘I Spy.’ I love it!

Ugh.

New favorite interpretation of the nativity. 

Ezekiel 34 15-16 on the phone

Good news sticker above José

Maria sitting on a donkey

Shepherd Watches advertisement in the newspaper

Gloria sticker on the payphone

from an exhibit of nativity sets in barcelona (2023), with jesus born next to atm machines (top), in a war-destroyed movie theater (middle), and in an alley (bottom, featuring graffiti saying “coronavirus”, “no human being is illegal”, and the anarchist symbol)

when i was a child i thought that heaven was a huge garden where it was always daytime, and always summer, and no one ever slept. there would be fruit everywhere and lions that didn’t hurt people. i thought that when people got to heaven, they got to choose what age they wanted to be. and if they wished they could have wings.

i thought that i would wish to be four years old again, and have sparkly blue wings.

i hated summer, and i loved nighttime, so i was not looking forward to constant sunshine. i thought that would be annoying, and wished people were allowed to sleep in heaven.

when i was a child i thought that hell was blue. green. teal. a muddy teal. i saw abstract images of how they (anonymous figures with block heads) hung, drew and quartered you. you’d get sliced through a tube. you’d get your head chopped off. no one talked, but no one was people either. you were bits. i saw it in two dimensions. hell did not go to effort in my young brain. it was bad, as easily as possible.

i didn’t quite like hell either.

my family members would always say that they simply can’t wait to be in heaven. usually, it’s because they can’t wait to reunite with my great grandma. my mother says that the four babies she miscarried are in heaven, and so i’m not the youngest anymore. the thought of four more siblings is beyond comprehension. i wonder if their hair is red or brown. but it makes me sad when my family says these things, because i can wait to get to heaven. i’d like to wait a long long time. i’d like to wait 100 years, and that’s me being reasonable. i’ve just started, and all the people i care about are right here, down here. i want to do things, and i want to do everything. and after people say they can’t wait for heaven, they don’t do anything. they’re not looking around themselves. they’re not looking at me. the thought of eternity scares me.

the thought of eternity with these people scares me.

if i had to live forever, it would be in a cave behind a waterfall where i could see the sun, the rain, the harvest.

so i grew up to not believe in heaven, because it was easier. and to not believe in hell, because it sounds a bit ridiculous.

i’m not going to say that heaven found me anyway.

i’m going to say on purpose. you found me on purpose and i chose you on purpose and you chose me on purpose.

and heaven is lying in a bed with a window that lets you see the pouring rain

heaven is the increments of time where we touch getting slowly closer together.

heaven is knowing that you’re always there.

normally, i don’t like when people are always there. i always liked to be alone where it was safest.

you’re the only one i’m happy knowing is there. there for me.

that’s because alone isn’t the safest, not when you’re here. the safest is with you. i have the protection of being away from everyone who hurt me but more importantly i have you, and you are rays of sun and knowledge and delight.

i told you in the art gallery that i always branded myself as someone who didn’t like words of affirmation. i’d tell people it was the love language i liked the least, giving or receiving.

in year 11 psychology we learned about attachment styles, and i told everyone and myself that i had an avoidant attachment style, that i liked to do things on my own probably because i was too smothered as a child.

that’s why i felt uncomfortable when my old boyfriend would tell me he loved me, or wanted to marry me. i thought that’s just not my style.

and okay if it may be true for my relationships with most people. but not you.

i love you, and i want to marry you, and i want to give you words of affirmation roughly once every 15 minutes, and i want to write several thousand word essays on tumblr about you even though i’m still not a huge words person. but the words i have, i want to give to you. i don’t want to avoid you like i’ve been used to. i want all your love in all the languages, because i want you to be here. i want us to be here.

i don’t know what this has to do with heaven but you are heaven. i do not want to die, and what i cant wait for isn’t heaven, its sharing a bed with you and making you tea and getting sick after you’re sick and giving you gifts and writing you love letters. i want to eat up everything able to us on earth, all the realities of holding your hand, how it feels to lie down on the floor with you when everything else is hostile. i want to give you everything.

@actsofsurvival thank you for loving me in a way that i fell in love with 💛

Tell me a soft memory

we would find out later i had burned off my entire cornea - about 65% of my eye. my doctor told me it is the organ with the highest concentration of nerve endings - i was in an amount of pain that can't be spoken.

and i was blind. for the first time in my life, i was totally blind. i kept thinking about reading, about writing. weirdly, just once, about driving. we had no idea if i would ever see again. just like that - my entire life was different.

it is a strange place to reference for a soft memory, to begin here.

my siblings were taking excellent care of me, but there was a moment in the hospital where, just through bad luck and timing - both of them had to step away for a moment. i was crying at that point; not emotionally. for 3 days after this i would still be crying, my tears, like a mermaid's, a frothy pink with blood.

my brother worried about leaving me. he had another, just-as-bad emergency.

"i got her," someone said. "don't worry."

a soft hand held mine, and then she started talking.

her name was jess. she has a wife named clyde. they live a few blocks up the street. clyde fell down, but the x-rays seem to be coming back better than expected. jess says she's got long dark hair and "more wrinkles than an elephant". jess describes every chair in the room and every person. she talks about her two kids and her cats and her favorite memories from college.

a doctor came. i had to switch to a different waiting room. i tried to stand up to follow the voice - i found jess's hand, following me. she didn't let go. she kept talking the whole way: lamp to your left, just a few more steps, okay to your right is the ugliest painting, good, now a little more walking straight, you got it baby

in the new silence of the next room she sat me down and called my brother for me, telling him where we'd gone to. and she stayed there for a bit, just chatting, her voice echoing in the eerie quiet. gently describing the room to me. and then someone was rude. from the sound of the voice, a kid, i think.

"why is she crying?"

"she just lost her vision," jess said. "she can't see."

"oh." said the kid. "that's scary."

the kid tells me he is here because he has peas stuck up his nose. that makes me laugh, his mom (?) groans. she tells me about the kid (he's 6, he likes paw patrol and eating cheese), about herself, about moving from cali.

jess says she's sorry, but she has to leave now, she's gotta go check on her wife.

"don't worry," says the mom. "i got her." and then i felt her hand press into mine.

for hours like that: i am taken care of by strangers. each person just talking with whatever comes to their head - not for any reward or celebrity or real reason, i guess. just because i am scared and alone and in the hospital and blinded and need to be distracted. not everyone even got told the story - they would just pick up in the silence with - oh by the way the television is playing HGTV - do you like that kind of a thing? yeah, me too, but could never quite get into those open-floor plans, i'll tell you -

by the time my brother is able to come back, the room is buzzing. we talk to each other like old friends, laughing, cracking jokes about if you don't like hospital food wait until you get on an airplane and can't believe i'm up past two in the morning what a party animal i'm becoming. i am holding the hands of someone named drew, who likes my crow tattoo and making crochet snails.

there are many dark moments full of pain in this world. this - in the low of absolute-dark, absolute-pain: people find a way to paint in it anyway. the color splash of their voices: this triumphant, radiating kindness of - let's be here together, let me help you, let's keep going.

i never saw their faces. i can't remember many of their names. but i think about them often, and the way we all took a deep breath - and did something gentle amongst the pain.

Most of us could probably stand to benefit from reading this. I did. It’s really lovely.

Don’t feel sad about the last Neanderthals.

The last Neanderthal man died while watching his mixed grandchildren play in the meadows with the sheeps. He was glad he no longer had to travel so far; there was enough food for everyone. The air was good, and it wasn’t very cold anymore.

the thing about art is that sometimes you'll be moved to tears by stuff that is not very good

thinking about this bit from an article by Ann Druyan in 2003: