Ad-meliora-tendo - I Strive To Higher Things

when sappho said “in the crooks of your body i find my religion” and when hozier said “the only heaven i’ll be sent to is when i’m alone with you”

A Dark Academic’s Guide to Recovery

Lending yourself to an ancient and forbidden ritual, offering yourself to the pure-selfishness of pulling the roots from underneath you and replanting them again in the wet and dark soil. To feel the candlelight flicker on your lips as you recite an ode to yourself and the divinity within your fingertips. 

Indulge in dark literature. Consume the words with a hunger that becomes insatiable, drinking the stories that haunt your bones like wine brewed from the Cask of Amontillado. 

Accept that thoughts will cut through your mind, and respond to them with poetry. Respond to self-deprecation with powerful epigrams, for you are Aphrodite, and you bend the wills of men, as jasmine flows from your voice; untouchable from cusp of mortality. 

Wear a locket and fill it’s silver lining with a horcrux: a dried petal of the rose from a lover, the black and white photographs of handsome and deceased monarchs or scholars, and the captured air of autumn’s first kiss.

Adore the moon and the moon alone, for you are born from her celestial dust, and you will return to her in your late night walks outside the walls of your favourite library. 

Collapse on the hillside moor and scream into the air as though you were in Wuthering Heights, falling and crying into the heather and dew, releasing the anxieties and fears that only the earth will hear. She will comfort you more than tracing the wet ink along your parchment. 

Julius Grimm (1842-1906)

In 1888, Julius Grimm used photography and telescope observation to create this intricately detailed and precise oil painting of the moon. In the night sky, the moon is always lit from behind you – so the shadows of the craters can never appear as they do in this painting. Grimm instead regarded the moon as if it were a still life, bathed in golden light emanating from the left side of the painting. 

“The picture should only be hung or positioned, that the light falls onto the picture from the side where the arrow is positioned, because otherwise, in the case of incorrect lighting, the effect could be completely lost.”

I may not be a pastor to replenish and cleanse your sins, but should you have any unresolved resolutions and need to vent, then I am here to bless you.

A new begining shall occur, and we must drop the weights we bring from yesterday so that tomorrow can be anew.

*adjusts Victorian shirt* What do you mean? *writes poetry with an expensive fountain pen* Am I really  *drinks Absinthe* too dramatic?! *flings herself on a 19th century chaise lounge* Don’t be ridiculous!

sorry i can’t hang out today, i read a richard siken poem so now i have to cry for ten hours

I just want a girlfriend and go to the library with her, discuss poetry and philosophy, have dates in cute cafes, just sit in silence and read books, cuddle while we watch old movies at 3am in the morning, visit art museums, take long walks in the park holding hands and talk about mythology. Is that really too much to ask for?

Classics

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | We Should All Be Feminists | 2014

the most beautiful words in the english language

ineffable — indescribable, unspeakable

eudaemonia — the state of consummate happiness

sumptuous — extremely costly, luxurious, magnificent

nadir — the lowest point (of something abstract)

lassitude —tiredness, lack of energy

scintilla — a spark or a trace of something

aurora — the dawn

quintessential — perfectly typical or representative of a particular kind of person or thing

renaissance — revival

bodacious — remarkable, admirable

ebullience — the quality of excitement and enthusiasm