I Want Friends With Whom I Can Visit Art Galleries And Photography Collections, Exchange Monthly Book

anyway it is the year two thousand and twenty and in my country alone 100,000+ are dead and over 40 million people (myself included) are unemployed due to a pandemic that has had a negligent-at-best-cruel-at-worst government response, black people are being murdered by police at horrific rates, trans people have the highest murder rate of any group, hate crimes (especially against immigrants) have spiked globally, and the president called for the military to shoot people protesting violent systemic injustice

if you will not use any platform at your disposal to call out injustice and bigotry then you have chosen your side

neutrality is not an option when one side is calling for the death of the other

anyway since we’re all baking bread and dealing with a plague, here’s a quiz on who you would be in the middle ages

push yourself to get up before the rest of the world - start with 7am, then 6am, then 5:30am. go to the nearest hill with a big coat and a scarf and watch the sun rise.

push yourself to fall asleep earlier - start with 11pm, then 10pm, then 9pm. wake up in the morning feeling re-energized and comfortable.

get into the habit of cooking yourself a beautiful breakfast. fry tomatoes and mushrooms in real butter and garlic, fry an egg, slice up a fresh avocado and squirt way too much lemon on it. sit and eat it and do nothing else.

stretch. start by reaching for the sky as hard as you can, then trying to touch your toes. roll your head. stretch your fingers. stretch everything.

buy a 1L water bottle. start with pushing yourself to drink the whole thing in a day, then try drinking it twice.

buy a beautiful diary and a beautiful black pen. write down everything you do, including dinner dates, appointments, assignments, coffees, what you need to do that day. no detail is too small.

strip your bed of your sheets and empty your underwear draw into the washing machine. put a massive scoop of scented fabric softener in there and wash. make your bed in full.

organise your room. fold all your clothes (and bag what you don’t want), clean your mirror, your laptop, vacuum the floor. light a beautiful candle.

have a luxurious shower with your favourite music playing. wash your hair, scrub your body, brush your teeth. lather your whole body in moisturiser, get familiar with the part between your toes, your inner thighs, the back of your neck.

push yourself to go for a walk. take your headphones, go to the beach and walk. smile at strangers walking the other way and be surprised how many smile back. bring your dog and observe the dog’s behaviour. realise you can learn from your dog.

message old friends with personal jokes. reminisce. suggest a catch up soon, even if you don’t follow through. push yourself to follow through.

think long and hard about what interests you. crime? sex? boarding school? long-forgotten romance etiquette? find a book about it and read it. there is a book about literally everything.

become the person you would ideally fall in love with. let cars merge into your lane when driving. pay double for parking tickets and leave a second one in the machine. stick your tongue out at babies. compliment people on their cute clothes. challenge yourself to not ridicule anyone for a whole day. then two. then a week. walk with a straight posture. look people in the eye. ask people about their story. talk to acquaintances so they become friends.

lie in the sunshine. daydream about the life you would lead if failure wasn’t a thing. open your eyes. take small steps to make it happen for you.

we made comparisons between joe exotic and trimalchio from petronius’s satyricon in my latin class today after my professor went off on a tangent about binging the show when he should have been grading our tests. and i never thought my netflix binging and niche interests would overlap like that

When Anaïs Nin said “I don’t want worship. I want understanding,” and when George Orwell said “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood,” and when Marina Tsvetaeva said “In my early childhood, for as long as I can remember, I thought that I wanted to be loved. Now I know and tell everyone: I don’t need love, I need understanding.”

Rest in Power Dominique Fells.

Rest in Power Riah Milton.

Your lives mattered. 💜

Meditations in an Emergency, Cameron Awkward-Rich

PLEASE DONT BUY YOUR BOOKS FROM AMAZON

hi just a reminder this was the decade that lemony snicket wrote ‘I will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence and as justice loves to sit and watch everything go wrong’ and I think it is the greatest love poem in existence