This Is My Favorite Tweet Of All Time

just occurred to me that sirius black was an eldest child in a friend group of ONLY CHILDREN?? what a poor poor soul

for Acker, writing seems to be a way to slow down her pain, to snatch at and examine it

The young woman that emerges is herself in flux, and appears, by turns and at once, petulant, defiant, earnest, seething, self-sabotaging, fearful, isolated, longing. From time to time, and especially when discussing her cats or her writing, there are eruptions of elation, even ecstasy. She feels too much, doesn’t feel enough. She has a difficult time meeting people, she hates people. She loves her body, hates her body. She loves New York, hates New York. In one moment, she is completely convinced of the value of her writing; the next, it’s worthless. She craves authenticity while struggling to define what that even means. Above all, she is constantly questioning—what she thinks, what she does, what she writes and feels and remembers and desires. Even as the entries can feel hurried and harried, for Acker, writing seems to be a way to slow down her pain, to snatch at and examine it.

— Jason McBride, “Eat Your Mind: The Radical Life and Work of Kathy Acker“ (Simon & Schuster, November 29, 2022) 

Richard Papen winter

There was one of those hyperspecific polls that had an option like “your grandfather told you war stories that he never told anyone else” and now I feel like I have to tell the story about how a spider saved my grandpa’s life in WWII and how my family doesn’t kill spiders because we owe our existence to that One Single Spider

whatever *throws up and dies*

i think one of the most important things you learn about making connections with others is that a significant portion of the time people just do not know theyre doing what theyre doing

One thing that has made me a much more well-adjusted person is a clip I once saw of Hank Green saying that anyone can be in amazing shape as long as being in amazing shape is one of their top three priorities.

(This is obviously a generalization that isn't true for everyone. But it is true for most people and I'm proceeding from there.)

This "top three priorities" framing has genuinely reduced my tendency toward jealousy and self-comparison a lot. Now when I feel envious of someone’s spotless, aesthetic home, I think to myself, “Having a spotless, aesthetic home is probably one of their top three priorities. It’s definitely not one of mine, so I shouldn’t expect my home to look like that.”

Or when I see an influencer with a body that takes a ton of work to maintain: “Maintaining that body is obviously one of her top three priorities, because it’s her livelihood. My livelihood is my brain, so I’m never going to prioritize my body like that.”

It also helps me to identify areas that I actually DO want to prioritize more. I realized in recent years that my envy for my friends who prioritized writing more than I did was NOT going away, so I started to prioritize writing more. (Not top three, but higher priority than it has been in the past.)

when was the last time you asked yourself how it felt to exist within a body?

x / martha gellhorn