Ad-meliora-tendo - I Strive To Higher Things

Tabula Rasa

Noun

[tab-yuh-luh rah-suh, -zuh, rey-]

1. a mind not yet affected by experiences, impressions, etc.

2. anything existing undisturbed in its original pure state.

Origin: In Latin tabula rasa means “erased tablet, a tablet rubbed clean (of writing).” Tabula has many meanings: “flat board, plank, table, notice board, notice, game board, public document, deed, will.” For schoolchildren the schoolmaster’s command Manum dē tabulā “Hand(s) off the tablet!” meant “Pencils down!” Rasa is the past participle of radere “to scrape, scratch, shave, clip.” The inside surfaces of a folded wooden tablet were raised along the edges and filled with wax for writing. The wax could be erased by smoothing with the blunt end of a stylus (more correctly stilus) or by mild heat. The Latin phrase is a translation of Greek pinakìs ágraphos “tablet with nothing written on it, blank tablet,” from Aristotle’s De Anima (Greek Perì Psychês, “On the Soul): “What it [the mind] thinks must be in it just as characters may be said to be on a writing tablet (pinakìs) on which nothing is yet actually written (ágraphos).” Tabula rasa entered English in the 16th century.

“The alarm wakes him, and he opens his eyes to a new day. He feels rested, reset, a tabula rasa.” - Lisa Genova, Inside The O'Briens, 2015

living in the old small town, wandering around with my dogs, having big house, wearing dark dresses, drinking lots of coffee, reading historical novels and collecting works of art

hi everyone im still pissed we never learnt in school that shakespeare was bi and wrote the sonnets about a dude and a woc he was into

November aesthetics: 'Eros' by Ludovico Einaudi, black coffee, chaotic notes from the previous night, constant headaches and fatigue, screams at midnight, dripping candle wax, cold bed, insomnia, reading William Blake's biography.

We live in a world filled with old books, cups of tea sipped over conversations with a friend, music waiting to be heard, and endless questions longing to be answered. There are so many marvelous things around us all the time, and it can be so pleasant to slow down for a moment to take them all in.

Yet more chaotic academia things:

Reciting Shakespeare to pets or inanimate objects, giving the most heart-wrenching, dramatic, and over-the-top performance known to man.

Highlighting only the homoerotic subtext in any given piece of literature.

Writing anonymous complaint letters to publishing companies, for the most insignificant flaws in printing. Just because of their boredom.

Constantly whistling "William Tell Overture".

Getting ink everywhere.

Always needing to pee because of the extortionate amounts of caffeine they drink.

Stitching a communist star to their beret.

80s meets Victorian gothic.

One squeaky shoe.

Making paper aeroplanes out of discarded essay pages, to launch at any and every unsuspecting stranger in the library.

Paris mornings

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.

#cancer #autumn #professor #englishliterature

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