Wanderer In The Storm (Carl Julius Von Leypold, 1835)

Yellowjackets//The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter

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Marsha P Johnson with a snoopy plush <3

Shawl Dancers. Ruthe Blalock Jones / Chulundit. 2004. acrylic on canvas

Old Viking cave dwelling and farm, Rutshellir Caves, Iceland

Job Savelsberg

i've come to realize there are only two kinds of tragedies: preventable and inevitable. preventable tragedies are the kind where everything could have maybe worked out if only. if only romeo had gotten the second letter. if only juliet had woken up earlier. if only creon had changed his mind about antigone sooner. if only orpheus hadn't turned around.

inevitable tragedies are the kind where everything was always going to end terribly. of course macbeth gets deposed, he murdered his way to the throne. of course oedipus goes mad, he married his own mother. of course achilles dies in the war, he had to fulfill the prophecy in order to avenge his lover.

both kinds have their merits. the first is more emotionally impactful, letting the audience cling to hope until the very end, when it's snatched away all at once leaving nothing but a void. the second is more thematically resonant, tracking an inherent fatal flaw in its hero to a natural and understandable conclusion, making it abundantly clear why everything has to happen the way it does.

Catania and Mount Etna at dusk, as seen from the dome of the Abbey of Saint Agatha. / Feb 2024

Miniature English Drawing Room of the Late Jacobean Period, 1680-1702

Narcissa Niblack Thorne & Unknown Artisans

c.1937

Art Institute of Chicago (Reference Number: 1941.1189)

Ocean Vuong, “A Letter to my Mother that She Will Never Read” The New Yorker, May 2017