RIGHT so when I started my sociology course in college, my teacher stated us off with
‘well I guess we have to do icebreakers. i’m Jon, and I fear bears. why do I fear bears? because bears can run at 30 miles per hour and Chester Zoo is 30 miles away. that means a bear can be outside this door in an hour. why would a bear be here? because they can smell fear and I fear them.’
“What is it that brings on these moods of yours? Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain of being alive.”
— Charles Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil
It's silly not to hope. It's a sin he thought.
- Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
john keats: the lavender in sunsets, flowers in the rain, sunlight slipping through clouds, lazy summer afternoons, the heavy scent of musk, flickering candlelight reflecting off the gold titles of books, fireflies on a cool summer night, being wrapped in fresh bedsheets, the ache of wanting what you can never have, dripping sunlight like gold, loving someone so exquisite, soft lips and soft whispers, fingers through hair, names of lovers carved in trees, broken glass, the insistence of being perpetually dreamy
f. scott fitzgerald: mahogany wood, crisp winter skies with cold bright stars, the solitude of an early autumn morning wrapped in fog, empty bottles on stacks and stacks of books haphazardly placed in a messy room, pale bruised arms reaching out into the darkness, cigarette smoke just barely hiding the scent of alcohol, a wall of books all poetry and old and weathered, a bad thunderstorm occurring at the end of a beautiful day, the way tragedy strikes in your heart but ends up stopping your breathing for a moment, your favorite sweater, parties spilling into four a.m. with the stars above spinning and dancing, the contrast of blood against snow, a purple split lip oozing blood, black eyes fading to blue to pale skin, the butterflies of falling in love for the first time, the statues falling apart over time in cemeteries, the romanticization of self-destruction
franz kafka: the weight of dread that sits heavily in your stomach when thinking about the future, decrepit houses cloaked in mystery from children telling stories of people who died there, the way not even light can escape a black hole, the rich smell of old books, delicate veins in the wrist, ghosts filling lungs, shattered bones, raindrops on the tongue, rusting metal, nostalgia that aches, the way hope feels like a plastic bag over your head
h.p. lovecraft: the anxiety felt when staring into an unknown cave, pouring rain and mud, a child’s fear of the dark, thinking so many questions about your existence as you stare at the vast expanse of never ending ocean, the silence of three a.m., danse macabre by camille saint-saens playing on a record in an empty house, the possibility of aliens and the weird feeling it gives you that you can’t explain, unexplainable phenomena, strange lights in the sky in the dead of night, ouija boards and urban legends
jack kerouac: the brisk pine air of being on a mountain, travels without a destination, those nights where you’re missing three hours of memory, screaming to a lifeless desert about how you’re so alive, coffee shops late at night, car rides at night spent speeding and laughing in the dark, naps spent in the sun, novels highlighted and underlined with notes and epiphanies in the margins, the way uncertainty sits on the shoulders, ignoring flaws and loving life, wind through hair, depression as fog in the brain, impossible ideals, a quiet sunrise, walks alone, when you think about trying to discover all the secrets to the universe, dazzling people, open lands stretching out into infinity, falling in love with being alive
edgar allan poe: the ocean’s horizon inseparable from fog, hollow bones, a preserved heart held in hands, twinkling stars above an old graveyard, the way everything turns to dust, silent black birds with eyes full of wisdom, self-inflicted flames, perfection depicted as a rotting corpse, death as bricks in the heart, lips barely brushing against each other, glassy glazed eyes, biting into a lemon, heart-shaped bruises, rotting flowers on a grave, dried blood and spilled liquor, the hush of dusk when it begins raining, the intimacy of a secret
“But in order to speak about all and to all, one has to speak of what all know and of the reality common to us all. The sea, rains, necessity, desire, the struggle against death–these are the things that unite us all. We resemble one another in what we see together, in what we suffer together. Dreams change from individual to individual, but the reality of the world is common to us all.”
Albert Camus, Create Dangerously
[x]
But never have I been a calm blue sea. I have always been a storm.
Stevie Nicks, Storms (via music-and-quotes)
Listen — are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
Mary Oliver, Have You Ever Tried To Enter The Long Black Branches (via the-book-diaries)
“It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.”
— Charles Bukowski, Pulp