" Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to beat peace".
- Oscar Wilde,The Canterville Ghost
I’ve been interested in the costumes from Crimson Peak for a while, so I made a video! Check it out if you’re interested! :)
So, okay, fun fact. When I was a freshman in high school… let me preface by saying my dad sent me to a private school and, like a bad organ transplant, it didn’t take. I was miserable, the student body hated me, I hated them, it was awful.
Okay, so, freshman year, I’m deep in my “everything sucks and I’m stuck with these assholes” mentality. My English teacher was a notorious hard-ass, let’s call him Mr. Hargrove. He was the guy every student prayed they didn’t get. And, on top of ALL OF THE SHIT I WAS ALREADY DEALING WITH, I had him for English.
One of the laborious assignments he gave us was to keep a daily journal. Daily! Not monthly or weekly. Fucking daily. Handwritten. And we had to turn it in every quarter and he fucking graded us. He graded us on a fucking journal.
All of my classmates wrote shit like what they did that day or whatever. But, I did not. No, sir. I decided to give the ol’ middle finger to the assignment and do my own shit.
So, for my daily journal entries, over the course of an entire year, I wrote a serialized story about a horde of man-eating slugs that invaded a small mining town. It was graphic, it was ridiculous, it was an epic feat of rebellion.
And Mr. Hargrove loved it.
It wasn’t just the journal. Every assignment he gave us, I tried to shit all over it. Every reading assignment, everyone gushed about how good it was, but I always had a negative take. Every writing assignment, people wrote boring prose, but I wrote cheesy limericks or pulp horror stories.
Then, one day, he read one of my essays to the class as an example of good writing. When a fellow student asked who wrote it, he said, “Some pipsqueak.”
And that’s when I had a revelation. He wanted to fight. And since all the other students were trying to kiss his ass, I was his only challenger.
Mr. Hargrove and I went head-to-head on every assignment, every conversation, every fucking thing. And he ate it up. And so did I.
One day, he read us a column from the Washington Post and asked the class what was wrong with it. Everyone chimed in with their dumbass takes, but I was the one who landed on Mr. Hargrove’s complaint: The reporter had BRAZENLY added the suffix “ize” to a verb.
That night I wrote a jokey letter to the reporter calling him out on the offense in which I added “ize” to every single verb. I gave it to Mr. Hargrove, who by then had become a friendly adversary, for a chuckle and he SENT IT TO THE REPORTER.
And, people… The reporter wrote back. And he said I was an exceptional student. Mr. Hargrove and I had a giggle about that because we both knew I was just being an asshole, but he and the reporter acknowledged I had a point.
And that was it. That was the moment. Not THAT EXACT moment, but that year with Mr. Hargrove taught me I had a knack for writing. And that knack was based in saying “fuck you” to authority. (The irony that someone in a position of authority helped me realize that is not lost on me.)
So, I can say without qualification that Mr. Hargrove is the reason I am now a professional writer. Yes, I do it for a living. And most of my stuff takes authorities of one kind or another to task.
Mr. Hargrove showed me my dissent was valid, my rebellion was righteous, and that killer slugs could bring a city to its knees. Someone just needs to write it.
being as i am an idiot, and having been one my whole life, i just wanna say that i find it very easy to do nothing, and go nowhere. i eat chocolate late at night in the dark. i stand in the garden also. and i’m often waiting for something to happen. and i’m stupid.
“Please — consider me a dream.”
— Franz Kafka; ‘Once while visiting his friend Max Brod, young Kafka awakened Brod’s father, who was asleep on a couch. Instead of apologizing, Kafka gently montioned him to relax, advanced through the room on tiptoe, and said softly: “Please – consider me a dream.”’ from Franz Kafka (Franz Baumer)
Hey, do you know that feeling of hitching up a long skirt so you don’t fall on your face when walking upstairs, and then you immediately become a wretched yet resolute Jane Austen character? It’s a universal thing, right?
what if we fucked around and renormalized sending handwritten letters to our lovers? 💌
when patroclus said “i will never leave him. it will be this, always, for as long as he will let me” and when sam gamgee said “don’t go where i can’t follow” and when bucky barnes said “i’m with you till the end of the line” and kaz brekker said “i would have come for you. and if i couldn’t walk i’d crawl to you” and orpheus said “wherever she is that’s where I’ll go” and castiel said “i’ll go with you”
i think there is something sad and beautiful about willingly letting some things happen. about seeing you phone battery dying and not charge it. about letting your schoolbag get soaked on a rainy day. about not fretting when you lose your ring in the ocean. about not trying to stop it when you see a cup falling to the ground. about letting some people go from your life without trying to make them stay
you'll be mad and sad after, but it means you had let that go before it even tried to go away. and i find this sad, but oddly beautiful
“He placed his mouth on her throat, kissing the words she could not utter. He seemed to divine where she wanted a kiss to fall next, what part of her body demanded to be warmed.”
one of my favourite things in the entire world is when there’s a huge thunderstorm outside and it’s raining heavily and you’re in bed swathed in blankets and you have just never felt warmer and safer than you do in that moment