collection of texts, excerpts, poems, quotes, and the like.(wip)
dear elia (excerpt) | mimi khuc
how do we usually talk about suicide? we think of it as tragic. but often also as selfish and shameful...we say something is wrong with them. sure, we might say they need help. psychology and psychiatry, the fields chiefly entrusted with understanding and addressing suicide, often frame it as an isolated, discreet illness unto itself, as if the only response to suicidal ideation is to stop the suicide from happening: suicide prevention, they call it... it's taking away someone's way of addressing a problem without any understanding of the problem. people want to die because their lives feel unlivable. suicide is not an "insane" response to an "insane" world; it's a desperate response to an unbearable existence.
dear xavler high school (excerpt) | kurt vonnegut
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don't make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow.
history and presence (excerpt) | robert orsi
The broken world is lived through and survived, but the brokenness is not forgotten. This suggests that religion is less about the making of meaning than about the creation of scar tissue.
martyr! (excerpt) | kaveh akbar
tired of interventionist pyrotechnics like burning bushes and locust plagues, maybe god now worked through the tired eyes of drunk iranians in the american midwest, through cvs handles of bourbon and little pink pills with G 31 written on the side.
seminar (excerpt) | jaques lacan
I love you, but, because inexplicably I love in you something more than you - the object petit a - I mutilate you.
the summer hikaru died (author's note) | mokumokuren
the inside of "hikaru" feels nice and cold. being touched by it feels good because the chemicals your brain releases moments before death, beta endorphins, are released. i feel that the things people find truly fearful are also pleasant to them.
a primer for the small weird loves (excerpt) | richard siken
The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater
because he is trying to kill you,
and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,
and you are ready to die in this swimming pool
because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means
your life is over anyway.
You’re in the eighth grade. You know these things.
You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do
long division,
and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless
he keeps his mouth shut, which is what you
didn’t do,
because you are weak and hollow and it doesn’t matter anymore.
july 19 2005 | pete wentz
wrote you a goodbye note (you just wrote me off) on your arm when you passed out. bestfriends, ex friends- better off as lovers not the other way around. racing through the city in the back of yellow checkered cars. The takeoffs are the worst but the skin from your shoulder to your ear makes it all worth it. and i'm sorry the way my moods flicker on and off like old light on your porch, but i know you wouldn't have it any other way. sneaking in your window instead of out. the way you hold a cigarette cause you don't know what to do with your hands when we are sitting this close. the way the waists of pants feel better at the ankles. the way you were always my best excuse for calling in sick on everyone else. I miss you.
Petey
sun bleached flies | ethel cain
god loves you, but not enough to save you
angels in america | tony kushner
Prior: But still. Still.
Bless me anyway.
I want more life. I can't help myself. I do.
I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway.
When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children, they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. We live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough, so inadequate but... Bless me anyway. I want more life.
phantom thread | paul thomas anderson
kiss me, my girl, before i'm sick.
vicky krieps for yahoo entertainment | phantom thread
You know how when you love someone so much, you say, ‘I could eat you’? You’re combining passion with food. And the images I had! Saying those lines, it felt so passionate and almost sexual, even though I was talking about mushrooms and eating.