TO UKRAINIAN FRIENDS

i lied. i don’t actually like sex. put your clothes back on, i'm going to explain to you how patroclus made achilles mortal—human. achilles might have died a heartbroken hero but he lived a loved man. and it was all because of patroclus. he was loved because of patroclus, he was more immortal than his demigod blood could ever make him because of patroclus. to be loved incandescently, to be loved back with wide eyes and an open heart is more priceless than a promise from the gods.

SOMETHING CLAWS OUT FROM THE CENTER OF YOU, THE FOUNTAIN OF PHILOSOPHY NESTLED IN THE SUPERIOR VENA CAVA BLEEDS SHARP AND SICKLY. FLECHETTES OF PUTRID SERRATED BONE LIKE THE JAVELINS OF SOME FETID GREEK HERO CONDEMNED TO THE PATHETIC CLOACA OF HISTORY. BREATHE. DIE. REPEAT.

ONE BEAUTIFUL SUMMER MORNING THE CRACKS WILL HAVE HEALED AND THE TROJANS WILL STAY INSIDE YOUR WOODEN EQUINE BELLY WHERE IT IS SAFE AND DARK WHERE THEY WILL SPOIL INTO GENTLE OBLIVION, FERMENTING SWORD AND BONE INTO GRIT AND SLUDGE. IT WILL STAY LIKE THAT FOREVER. IT WILL.

"WILL IT EVER BE SOFT?" SOMETHING CRAWLS UP YOUR BACK. VERTEBRAE TWITCH INWARD, BENDING AND SNAPPING TO RECOIL LIKE WHEN YOU WERE BURNED WITH THE CURLING IRON. "YES." IT WHISPERS, "TENDER. LIKE A VIRGIN. LIKE VEAL."

beating the mental illness allegations by going to shower

📔🌿 𝓬𝓸𝔃𝔂 𝓪𝓬𝓪𝓭𝓮𝓶𝓲𝓪 🌿📔

This is my most favorite novelty soap ever

“When Van Gogh was a young man in his early twenties, he was in London studying to be a clergyman. He had no thought of being an artist at all. he sat in his cheap little room writing a letter to his younger brother in Holland, whom he loved very much. He looked out his window at a watery twilight, a thin lamppost, a star, and he said in his letter something like this: “it is so beautiful I must show you how it looks.” And then on his cheap ruled note paper, he made the most beautiful, tender, little drawing of it. When I read this letter of Van Gogh’s it comforted me very much and seemed to throw a clear light on the whole road of Art. Before, I thought that to produce a work of painting or literature, you scowled and thought long and ponderously and weighed everything solemnly and learned everything that all artists had ever done aforetime, and what their influences and schools were, and you were extremely careful about *design* and *balance* and getting *interesting planes* into your painting, and avoided, with the most astringent severity, showing the faintest *academical* tendency, and were strictly modern. And so on and so on. But the moment I read Van Gogh’s letter I knew what art was, and the creative impulse. It is a feeling of love and enthusiasm for something, and in a direct, simple, passionate and true way, you try to show this beauty in things to others, by drawing it. And Van Gogh’s little drawing on the cheap note paper was a work of art because he loved the sky and the frail lamppost against it so seriously that he made the drawing with the most exquisite conscientiousness and care.”

— Brenda Ueland, from “If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit”

when charles bukowski said, "and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?"

Les Masutani