Latest Posts by blackswan8043 - Page 6

Aristotle’s philosophy on two human beings in love reminds me of Rik Garrett’s current series ‘Symbiosis’. The fate of two physical bodies that connect and form as one soul, which is similarly portrayed throughout Garrett’s mixed media photography. The Chicago based artist explores ideas regarding love, relationships, magic, alchemy and mutually beneficial partnerships in nature.

Goes to sleep for a lifetime

me: *sleeps for 4 hours* tired me: *sleeps for 8 hours* tired me: *sleeps for a month* tired me: *sleeps for a year* still tired

Yes it definitely did!!❤️

saw an elderly man bent down w his phone trying to take a photo of the purple spring flowers growing next to the sidewalk ……... hope this mental image brought u as much joy as the real thing did for me <3

maybe if you take a hot shower. cook something. eat a little soup. feel a little sunshine. make something with your hands—it doesn’t have to be big. maybe if you stretch your body and draw a silly little picture and get some rest, the world will feel like something your hands can still hold

’夢‘ DREAMS 1990, dir. Akira Kurosawa

Been thinking about this since forever!!

things i do not understand about fics involving or by allosexual/alloromantic people (an incomplete list by an aroace looking for validation):

sexual attraction, obviously. like I know logically that it's a thing but I'm still half-convinced it's made up. I get aesthetic attraction, I can think of people as beautiful, but the urge to have sex is — obviously — not there.

specifically, attraction to sweat? like characters in fics will get sweaty and then people find that attractive? how??? I can logic out wanting to have sex in most cases, but this one makes no sense to me

hating someone & being attracted to them at the same time. It's why I don't like a lot of enemies-to-lovers — if you hate each other, what is the appeal of sex???

reader x character fics. I'm fine reading about romance happening to other people, but why would you want to read about romance happening to YOURSELF? isn't it weird? or is that just the aromanticism in me—

in some contexts I can conceptually understand wanting to have sex, in other ones I can't. Like... sometimes it just seems more realistic to cuddle?

finding anger attractive... ig this is related to the enemies-to-lovers stuff, but even in fics that AREN'T enemies to lovers, arguments turn into sex. why? what is appealing about being angry?

possibly tbc if I encouter anything more, feel free to add on

#his beauty cannot be described in words❤️

unreal (cr.@/joonie)

Some more recommendations 💯

Indian academia

Recently I have seen a lot of excellent posts in the dark academia tags which call out the euro-centrism of this subculture and also give great recommendations for non-white cultural academia. So I decided to put together works of Indian authors that I read growing up in India as a literature student. Please note this list leans heavily towards works centred on Bengal due to my own heritage, and is by no means comprehensive or meant to represent the entire, varied diaspora of India.

Historical/political fiction:

the lives of others by neel mukherjee: chronicling the rise and fall of a bengali family against historical events like the partition, the 1943 famines, the bengal emergency etc. diverse cast of characters retelling history through multiple povs, lyrical prose, incredible research providing an insight into naxalite bengal. talks about how it feels to be a leftist when you are born and brought up in bourgeois privilege.

the lowland by jhumpa lahiri: everything!! written by jhumpa lahiri!! should be savoured!! but this gorgeous book in particular made me UGLY CRY. to summarise without spoilers, it's a story about two brothers, separated by inches and then by miles, a story about student revolutionaries, bengal burning and boston beaches, and it's a story about a beautiful, brilliant, tormented woman who loves and loathes in equal measure.

the shadow lines by amitav ghosh:** intergenerational trauma, dhaka riots and the entwined histories of two families- one in london and the other in calcutta. sharp, bittersweet and sometimes rather scandalous. if you enjoy ggm's works try this.

a flight of pigeons by ruskin bond**: after her father is killed in the 1857 sepoy mutiny, an anglo-indian girl, her mother, and female relatives are given shelter by the muslim family of one of the chief rebels. set in north india near UP, ruskin bond's writing is powerful and explores found families and the price of imperialism and war. chef's kiss.

train to pakistan by khuswant singh: the horrors of post independence sectarian violence as recounted by a fictional village on the indo-pak border with a population largely comprising muslims and sikhs. a harrowing read but evocative and honest.

shalimar the clown by salman rushdie: allegorical story about the kashmir valley unrest, told through the insane, shakespearean revenge tragedy spun out by kashmiri tightrope walker shalimar who falls in love with boonyi, a beautiful pandit girl, a love that dooms him.

a fine balance by rohinton mistry**: four strangers' lives spill into each other as india crumbles under the 1975 emergency. this one has everything political commentary, social satire, depiction of economic hardships and a whole range of characters from diverse backgrounds. side note: it's a pretty heavy and tragic read, please be careful.

Societal stories

the guide by rk narayan: raju, an impoverished, street smart boy in a fictional south indian town takes to conning people as a tour guide but things spiral out of control when he has an affair with a married classical dancer. allegorical writing, funny and eccentric, and there's a LOT of satire about desi stereotypes: fraud religious leaders, scandalous village affairs, neocolonial mindsets and well, dancing. had a great read of this one. don't watch the film, it's inaacurate and the author himself didn't like it :(

malgudi days by rk narayan: set in the same town as the guide, a collection of short stories about the colourful lives of small town dwellers, from astrologers to doctors to postmen. it's funny and poignant in equal measure. there's not a single mediocre story in here, they're all just......charming.

interpreter of maladies by jhumpa lahiri: stories set in boston and bengal about ordinary indian people and ordinary indian lives which are just so, so MASTERFULLY written and in such crystal bright detail it feels all too real. I recommend a temporary matter, when mr pirzada came to dine, sexy, mrs sen and this blessed house.

em and the big hoom by jerry pinto**: a goan family in late 20th century mumbai + their experience when the mother is diagnosed with bpd. I haven't read this book but it was highly recommended by my friends + authors who are greatly esteemed by me

any and every work by ruskin bond because my man literally GREW up around ayahs and tonga drivers and lonely gardeners and sad kite-makers and friends in small places. I recommend road to the bazaar: a collection of short stories about north indian children involving tigers in train tunnels, beetle races, rooftop gardens and the feeling of being home again.

the white tiger by aravind adiga**: epistolary novel that deals mostly with the class struggle in india as told by a village boy, who travels to delhi for work and his slow rise to success through monumental obstacles. a good read to look into the lives and the plight of underprivileged workers and the persisting class disparity in globalised india.

city of djinns by william dalrymple: travelogue/memoir/anecdotes of the author's time in delhi as he researches for the detritus of history in the country capital. non fiction but every bit as riveting as a well spun story.

Retellings/Biographies

rajkahini (transl: stories of kings) by abanindranath tagore: stories about the rajput rulers of western india and their glorious, semi-mythological histories of battles and heartbreaks and visions. the author was often termed a lyrical artist because his descriptive prose is so good it feels like a painting put into words.

empress: the astonishing reign of nur jahan by ruby lal: a feminist biography of my favourite figure from history, nur jahan, and her deliciously satisfying ascent as the sole female sovereign in the line of the great mughals. but wow, what a woman.

the palace of illusions by chitra banerjee divakaruni: retelling of the great epic mahabharata but from draupadi's point of view. poetic and magical, and her descriptions of female rage and the unfairness of society even in mythical canon is SUPERB.

Poetry!

sarojini naidu: patriotism, society, feminism, romance

nissim ezekiel: postcolonial, satire

ak ramanujan: society, classical retellings, folktale inspired poetry

agha shahid ali: socio-political, ghazal inspired poetry

tishani doshi: feminist, contemporary

eunice d'souza: contemporary, gender politics

Pure self indulgent recs

hayavadana by girish karnad: a ridiculous, criminally hilarious play-within-a-play about a love triangle and accidental body/torso swaps and a goddess who couldn't care less and a man with a horse head. yeah.

devdas by sarat chandra chattopadhyay: pls stop shoving the movie down my throat it's the cringiest depiction of bengali culture ever but yeah the novel is 💗💗 and it's about childhood sweethearts dev and paro, the cost of obsessions and lusts and an enigmatic courtesan chandramukhi who keeps loving the wrong things.

any and every work by rabindranath tagore should be considered academia but in particular his short stories, like the kabuliwalah and the postmaster.

the byomkesh bakshi series by sharadindu bandyopadhyay: written in the vein of poirot but in colonial bengal, follows one (1) sleuthy boy and his sidekick as they unravel psychological crimes and murder mysteries. some stories are just genuinely scary and all have eclectic casts. sharadindu said homoerotic/feral women/immoral genius people rights!

Like I said this list is not comprehensive!!! But I tried my best!!! I think we should really try to decolonize our reading tastes. And yes I purposely left out Arundhati Roy (because she is literally the only Indian author ever recommended in lists) Vikram Seth (because I do not like him) and Roshani Chokshi (because any one of the above)

I hope you guys get some good picks from this list :)

[** has heavy trigger warnings]

Lmao the tags are sending me💀

kathony + tags part 2

Lmaoo yess!!😭

#same ship different font

My dream since childhood😩✨️

Some awesome treehouses that look so relaxing and call my inner wood elf inside! 🌱🌿🍃

I wanna move in here✨️

POV: you now live with the village witch

I'm cryingg😭😭❤️

✨️Ethereal✨️

@freezingfaerie 's archive

If you’ve ever wondered why Egyptian mummies are so rare, it’s because wealthy Europeans ate them. Between the 12th and 17th centuries, while pilfering the continent for goods, resources, artifacts, and Africans themselves, colonizers also looted and exoticized Egyptian tombs. Mummies were ground up into medicines and consumed by the elite, believed to be a remedy for various ailments and an infusion of life-energy from the spirits of the dead. When Egyptian mummies became scarce after hundreds of years of eating them, corpses from other parts of North Africa and Guanche mummies from the Canary Islands were instead exported and sold to European apothecaries. But even as they engaged in cannibalism for their own selfish indulgences, one of the primary ways that Europeans demonized Indigenous peoples was by naming them all as savages and cannibals.

Colonizers have not limited their use of racial cannibalism to the medicinal. They have also used it punitively and vindictively. During the genocidal King Leopold II’s occupation of the Congo (1885-1908), Belgians massacred more than 10 million Africans. Most were forced to work for the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company, and were severely punished if they did not meet their rubber quota. In Don’t Call Me Lady: The Journey of Lady Alice Seeley Harris, there is a black and white photo of a Congolese man named Nsala, seated at the edge of a porch. His eyes are fixed on the severed hand and foot of his 5 year-old daughter, Boali. The Belgian militia had cut them from her body before killing her and her mother. To further exact their cruelty, they ate Nsala’s wife and child. They did this because he had failed to meet his rubber quota for the day.

The thing about white supremacy is that it does not merely subsist through the consumption of the Other; it whitewashes by de-emphasizing and lessening these misdeeds and others. History looks very different when white people are not the protagonists in its retelling. A significant instance: the accepted and well-known white feminist narrative about the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s is that it was a hysteria driven by rampant misogyny and a pointed persecution of white women, the survival of which they harken to as evidence of their historical resilience. I prefer to think of it, more accurately, as a community of racist, religiously-intolerant enslavers and colonizers of stolen Native land cannibalizing itself—and I wish it had finished its meal instead of begetting centuries of white people who would gorge on the lives and cultures of Black and Indigenous folks.

As the Donner Party traveled across the U.S. as part of a violent westward expansion in 1847, a small group that broke off from the larger party became stranded without food in a grueling wintery hellscape. So, they conspired to murder their two Native American guides, Salvador and Luis, for food. The two men ran away, but were found a few days later and were swiftly eaten, the only members of the party to be hunted and murdered before they were cannibalized. Salvador and Luis are rarely spoken of when the story is told to relay the suffering and survival of the people who ate them. In the version of the story that tells the truth about colonialism and the violence it requires, the Donner Party are the monsters, not the damsels.

The Transatlantic Slave Trade was a monstrosity of boundless proportions. Its enormity altered the world in a multitude of ways and none were/are more changed by it than Africans and their descendants. Many Africans believed—or, rather, knew—that white people were cannibals and feared that they would be taken away and consumed, like the others who had disappeared and not returned once white people began to arrive on African shores. Fear of white cannibalism on the ships carrying Africans to other lands was indeed palpable, and often led to attempted mutiny and escape or suicide by jumping into the waters below.

—  Sherronda J. Brown, THE HISTORY OF CONSUMPTION AND THE CANNIBALISTIC NATURE OF WHITENESS

❗️❗️

VIDEO: Living Under Israel’s Missiles

Four boys of the Bakr family were killed by a missile strike during last year’s incursion. Their surviving family members are still scarred from the attack.

More than anyone, children bear the brunt of regular Israeli military assaults on the Gaza Strip. During the 51-day war in the summer of 2014, 551 children were killed and 3,436 were injured. But these gruesome figures say little about the psychological state of the nearly 800,000 children who have survived the periodic bombing campaigns. After the final cease-fire that ended Israel’s Operation Protective Edge on August 26 of last year, UNICEF estimated that at least 425,000 Palestinian children in the besieged Gaza Strip require “immediate psychosocial and child protection support.”

[ The physical wounds of Gaza children might have healed, but they live with enduring psychological trauma ]

Just ✨️ETHEREAL✨️

Sky & Clouds painted by Théodore Gudin ☁️

This is why I don't wanna be an adult😭😩

being an adult is awful. every day i have to decide what to eat

Me everyday after waking up:

i am tired. i am exhausted. from my head to my soul to my bones i am so fucking tired.

THIS!!

I've said this before and I'll say it again: it's more important to know and understand fully why something is harmful than it is to drop everything deemed problematic. It's performative and does nothing. People wonder why nobody has critical thinking skills and this is part of it because no one knows how to simousltansly critique and consume media. You need to use discernment.

My favourite queen😍

magnificent century characters | Hurrem Sultan

Jude Duarte, The Wicked King (2019) ♛ ♜ ♗ ♞

“‘For a moment,’ he says, 

‘I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me…’

‘And what made you decide it wasn’t?’ He grins up at me.

 ‘They missed.’”

Omggg my heart!!!😭❤️

THE FOLK OF THE AIR ♔ HOLLY BLACK

❝ In my most wretched hours, I believe you will never come back. Why would you, save for your ambition? You have always known exactly what I am and seen all my failings, all my weaknesses and scars. I flattered myself that at moments you had feelings for me other than contempt, but even were that true, they would make but a thin gruel beside the feast of your other, greater desires. And yet my heart is buried with you in the strange soil of the mortal world, as it was drowned with you in the cold waters of the undersea. It was yours before I could ever admit it, and yours it shall ever remain.❞

Why is this me?🤡💩

evikholin‌:

brain: u gotta be… The Best™

me: ok so we’ll work hard then?

brain: no work… only Best.

THIS!!

I think a lot about how we as a culture have turned “forever” into the only acceptable definition of success.

Like… if you open a coffee shop and run it for a while and it makes you happy but then stuff gets too expensive and stressful and you want to do something else so you close it, it’s a “failed” business. If you write a book or two, then decide that you don’t actually want to keep doing that, you’re a “failed” writer. If you marry someone, and that marriage is good for a while, and then stops working and you get divorced, it’s a “failed” marriage.

The only acceptable “win condition” is “you keep doing that thing forever”. A friendship that lasts for a few years but then its time is done and you move on is considered less valuable or not a “real” friendship. A hobby that you do for a while and then are done with is a “phase” - or, alternatively, a “pity” that you don’t do that thing any more. A fandom is “dying” because people have had a lot of fun with it but are now moving on to other things.

I just think that something can be good, and also end, and that thing was still good. And it’s okay to be sad that it ended, too. But the idea that anything that ends is automatically less than this hypothetical eternal state of success… I don’t think that’s doing us any good at all.

The dresses🤌

Women in Paul Antoine de La Boulaye's paintings.

I will say again,I love hair pins❣️

Jewelry by Daria Anisimova.

At this point I just wanna live a peaceful country life✌️

When the sun has set, no candle can replace it.