Turn Off Your Phone, Throw It In A Lake, Become Unreachable

Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.

— W.S. Merwin

“I am writing to reach you–even if each word I put down is one word further from where you are.”

— Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin, 2019)

if not, winter by sappho // ampio orizzonte by ettore tito // lesbos by sylvia plath

The moon had been observing the earth close-up longer than anyone. It must have witnessed all of the phenomena occurring - and all of the acts carried out - on this earth. But the moon remained silent; it told no stories. All it did was embrace the heavy past with a cool, measured detachment. On the moon there was neither air nor wind. Its vacuum was perfect for preserving memories unscathed. No one could unlock the heart of the moon.

— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”

— Rabindranath Tagore, Unending Love

Only reason I haven’t gone insane is because I romanticise everything.

“There was so much in you that charmed me that I felt I must tell you something about yourself. I thought how tragic it would be if you were wasted.”

— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

People. People. Endless noise. And I am so tired. And I would like to sleep under trees; red ones, blue ones, swirling passionate ones.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky, from Complete Prose Collection; “The Brothers Karamazov”

half of me finishes a book within 6-12 consecutive hours and the other half of me takes roughly six months.

Dear Milena,

I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.

― Franz Kafka