Sometimes I Can’t Believe How Dreamy This City Is! ✨🌙

dark academia life is just [reads book in one sitting] [tries to memorize shakespeare quotes] [scribbles unintelligible greek words on back of hand] [quotes arthur rimbaud] [commits murder] [drinks 5 cups of coffee] ["looks like you missed your latin lessons today!" ft. a terrifying owl] [quotes oscar wilde] [wears poofy clothes] [quotes the secret history] [writes bad poetry in notes app] [yearns to be understood]

attention !

as my soul longs for another's company, I subsequently am looking for one to converse with, a pen pal of sorts, ideally sharing an interest in the following:

• dark academia

• classical architecture

• roman & greek classicism

• latin (in lingua)

• the secret history

• classical literature

• an interest in reading in general

• open to the possibility of exchanging letters ?

• a passion for music

• a love for the obscure and esoteric

• a proclivity toward sesquipidalianism

• a tired soul confined to the body of one in their late teens

any (or none) will suffice, I am simply looking for someone to talk to and in turn who is willing to talk back 🖤

i often feel like one of the many reasons why we are so passionate about the whole dark academia thing is because it gives us the opportunity to live in a fantasy where our passion, whether that’s literature, art, theater, science, feels valid.

we live in a world where we are constantly stimulated, constantly finding new things, constantly pressured into liking more and more stuff because the world keeps going on at such a fast pace and it never stops and it’s so hard to keep up with it and it makes your breath short your mind tired your fears bigger and.

it almost feels like we are trapped because even though we would like to slow down for a bit, we know the world won’t stop with us, for us.

if we turn our phones off it’s unnatural and people start worrying, if we don’t check our social medias during our study breaks we get anxious – no matter how much we want it not to be that way, no matter how badly we would like to dedicate ourselves completely to these passions of ours, we can’t do it entirely, slaves of times so flourishing but so scary. the world has a crushing weight and most of the times we soccombe to it.

therefore, thinking about the dark academia concept is a way of finding comfort not only in our own minds but even on this tiny corner of the internet.

in a certain way the concept softens me, although it can often be extreme.

gathering in the common room at three in the morning, a circle of eager friends with the same thirst for knowledge; the sound of a pen scribbling ideas on a thin sheet of paper; round glasses slipping down the tip of our noses always hidden by the pages of novels and poetry collections; dim lights caressing our backs curved from studying for so many hours those same subjects that make our heart race increase; our stray black cats resting on our bellies as we curl up in bed, notes spread out all around us – on the floor, glued to a wall, in between the pages of big tomes; the rain gently tapping against the window of our dorm rooms as we sit with our backs against the wooden wall, completely lost in between crinkled words with no cellphone, no distraction other than the characters and philosophers speaking to us in ancient languages, voices sweet as honey; our minds getting poisoned as we start to believe in those revolutions so badly we’re willing to lose our sanity after them; having lessons with just a bunch of other people, tea burning our tongues as it runs hot down our throats; and then, when the line between reality and fiction blurs completely, we might lose ourselves – but we wouldn’t feel guilty in the comfort we find when our love for knowledge becomes so warm it eventually starts to burn our skin. God, how sweet it feels to become ashes for these passions of us.

just imagine

you are at a small liberal arts college in vermont, you study classics, and now you are sitting in the library which smells like dust, old books, and france. you and your small circle of friends with whom you study classics are sitting on the floor in a corner of the library where nobody goes at nearly two in the morning, with all of the old greek, french, and latin books. you are all studying or working on papers or translating books in silence, except for classical music playing on a radio next to you with the volume soft enough that only the few of you can hear it in your little corner of the library. the smell of coffee and tea mixes and wafts around all of you from the small disposable Styrofoam cups that are sitting on the carpet, which you got from the teachers lounge since your classics teacher allows you to go in there and raid it whenever you please. in the middle of the circle of all of you is a variety of stationery scattered in a jumble: pens (fountain and ballpoint), loose leaf papers with unspecified scrawled writing, a lexicon, and other writing and studying tools. suddenly, your friend sitting next to you, with whom you are closest in the group, taps you and slips you a paper discreetly. you unfold it and it says, “cubitum eamus?” you look up, make sure no one is looking, and nod.

Concept idea

most dark academia books and film have one person is obsessed with an enigmatic society or group of people/friends. What about the reverse?

A group of friends that become obsessed with one ‘perfect’ person; a loner of sorts, yet are mutually respected by everyone and don’t seem the need to make friends. Yet the group forces themselves onto that person, hungry to finding out more and essentially almost becoming like them. So they obviously get lured in by a single, mysterious person that could shatter them in a second.

i got an old book about the greek language for 1$ today :)

relatable deaths from ancient times

chrysippus: died laughing at his own joke

zeuxis: died laughing at his own art

aeschylus: stayed outside in his old age to avoid a prophecy that he would die from having something fall on his head, died when an eagle thought his bald head was a rock and dropped a turtle on him to break its shell

plato: partied too hard

empedocles: jumped into a volcano to prove that he was immortal

philitas of cos: was such an incredible pedant that he wasted away while studying erroneous word usage

saint lawrence: roasted alive during christian persecution under valerian, joked that he was done on one side and needed to be flipped over

didius julianus: purchased the roman empire in an auction, ruled for 9 weeks, executed for being ineffective leader

petronius arbiter: sentenced to death by nero, opened his veins while enjoying a sumptuous dinner party, edited his will to list all of the reasons he hated nero

— James Elkins, Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings

harry potter series: light and dark

we’ve all got both light and dark inside of us. what matters is the part we choose to act on.

Physically? I'm here but mentally I'm on a one way train to a mysterious city where nobody knows my name after just leaving an omnious note for my friends and family