The Romantic Collection By LitJoy

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

absolutely gutted that I’ll never get to live in an art nouveau style house!!

“you should be at the club” i should be by the sea. i should be in the mountains. i should be awestruck and rendered speechless by the majesty of the natural world. if you even care

god I would be UNSTOPPABLE if I was capable of consistently initiating tasks. just you wait. you'll be waiting a while but just you wait

Honestly if you want justification for why it’s important that English/Language Arts teachers make you break down exactly why a given sentence made you feel a given way, the fact that it’s now a point of basic political literacy to be able to tell when a headline is trying to make you angry, and at whom, and about what, is a pretty strong case in point.

With all the Barbie promotion that's been happening this scene keeps replaying in my head.

NEVER BEEN KISSED (1999) Dir. Raja Gosnell

This is like porn.

Another copy of American Gods by @neil-gaiman . Originally in paperback, rebound as a hardcover book in hand dyed red sienna leather with gilded pages edges and gold vinyl decoration depicting Shadow Moon standing beneath the tree Yggdrasil.