And The Nights, Bigger Than Imagining: Black And Gusty And Enormous, Disordered And Wild With Stars.

“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”

— T. S. Eliot (via wordsnquotes)

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.

Death and the Maiden by Ana Sanchez

Any quotes which make you shudder?

GLAD YOU ASKED:

“I’m sorry about the blood in your mouth. I wish it was mine.” —Richard Siken from “Little Beast”“You happened to me. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse.”—Marilyn Hacker from “Nearly a Valediction”“I don’t want to be around you. I don’t want to drink you in. I want to walk into the heart of you and never walk back out. “—Nico Alvarado from “Tim Riggins Speaks of Waterfalls”“Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers.”—Margaret Atwood from “The Good Bones”“When I don’t touch you it’s a mistake in any life, in each place and forever.”—Bob Hicok from “Other Lives and Dimensions and Finally a Love Poem”“When I haven’t been kissed in a long time, I create civil disturbances, then insult the cops who show up, till one of them grabs me by the collar and hurls me up against the squad car, so I can remember, at least for a moment, what it’s like to be touched.”—Jeffrey McDaniel, “When a Man Hasn’t Been Kissed”“Kiss the mouth which tells you, here,here is the world. This mouth. This laughter. These temple bones.”—Galway Kinnell from “Little Sleep’s Head Sprouting Hair in the Moonlight”“I will love you forever; whatever happens. Until I die and after I die, and when I find my way out of the land of the dead, I’ll drift about forever, all my atoms, until I find you again.”—Phillip Pullman from “The Amber Spyglass”“I wanted to write ‘stay’ on your sides,surround your bed with oceans of salt.I hope he folds you into a fox, loves you like a splintered arrow, brandishes the kill of your lips. May the bouquet of your hips wither. May the wolves forget your name.”—J. Bradley“I love you. If you hadn’t existed I would have had to invent you.”–Elaine Dundy from “The Dud Avocado”“And I’d choose you; in a hundred different lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.”—Kiersten White“The first time I asked you on a date, after you hung up, I held the air between our phones against my ear and whispered, ‘You will fall in love with me. Then, just months later, you will fall out. I will pretend the entire time that I don’t know it’s coming.’”—Miles Walser “I will come back from the dead for you.”—Richard Siken from “You Are Jeff”“Do you want it? Do you want anything I have? Will you throw me to the ground like you mean it, reach inside and wrestle it out with your bare hands? If you love me, Henry, you don’t love me in a way I understand.”—Richard Siken from “Wishbone”“Here we are, at the place where I get to beg for it. Where I get to say ‘Please,for just one night, will you lay down next to me? We can leave our clothes on,we can stay all buttoned up?’ But we both know how it goes–– I say I want you inside me and you hold my head underwater. I say I want you inside me and you split me open with a knife.”—Richard Siken from “Wishbone”“Even when I’m dead, I’ll swim through the Earth like a mermaid of the soil, just to be next to your bones.”—Jeffrey McDaniel

Dark Academia Procrastination 

‣ watching the clouds pass by your window 

‣ completely changing your spotify playlists 

‣ reading up on long-dead philosophers and some new ones 

‣ boiling the kettle three separate times because you keep forgetting that you put it on already 

‣ painting your nails 

‣ listening to the trees and the birds within them 

‣ flipping through unread books hoping one will catch your attention 

‣ reading poetry and tasting it on the back of your tongue 

‣ dabbling in witchcraft 

‣ thinking about Oscar Wilde 

‣ experiencing intense nostalgia but letting it consume you instead of pushing it away like you usually do 

‣ getting too involved in the classical music you’re listening to and feeling the crescendo in your soul  

‣ fantasizing

“We read to know we’re not alone.” - William Nicholson, Shadowlands