Scientists Fear

…for we are in such fragile skin, so close to getting lost in the in-between.

Eimear McBride, from The Lesser Bohemians (via luthienne)

To feel anything deranges you. To be seen feeling anything strips you naked.

Anne Carson, Red Doc> (via theclassicsreader)

talk to a real person by Stephen Shore

the things we learn on our mothers’ laps

see that lady standing there between the window & the fire extinguisher? she’s just lost her father & i think her boyfriend just left her.

why the fuck would you say that?

i’m telling you, i’ve got this superpower. i just know.

how’s that? a superpower?

not a marvel studios superpower, u silly. more like this supreme capacity. i’ve always had it.

when my dad abandoned my mom, she lost herself in the world’s most dangerous drug: poetry.

she used to hold me on her lap while reciting emily brunte & sylvia plath.

i think that’s why i can read into people’s sadness.

when i come across sadness on the street, authentic sadness, the blues crawl out their host & come talk to me. i’m thinking of starting a mémoire or a blog on it. like that humans of new york, u know?

talk about those things we learn on our mothers’ laps…

i reckon everyone who’s lucky enough to have a mum will undoubtedly learn something whilst resting on her lap. my mom used to sit me on her lap while she revised old latin scriptures & tried herself at egyptian hieroglyphics.

that’s why sometimes tombs & churches murmur their secrets to me. they tell me stories about the afterlife & how, if demanded gently, fire can caress the soul the way water strokes the curves of an overflowing vase.

they find it hilarious that we make a big deal out of our own end.

when all there really is, is an everlasting void.

- @skinthepoet

One does not find solitude, one creates it. Solitude is created alone. I have created it. Because I decided that here was where I should be alone, that I would be alone to write books. It happened this way. I was alone in this house. I shut myself in—of course, I was afraid. And then I began to love it. This house became the house of writing. My books come from this house. From this light as well, and from the garden. From the light reflecting off the pond. It has taken me twenty years to write what I just said.

Marguerite Duras, Writing (via mythologyofblue)

the things we learn on our mothers’ laps

see that lady standing there between the window & the fire extinguisher? she’s just lost her father & i think her boyfriend just left her.

why the fuck would you say that?

i’m telling you, i’ve got this superpower. i just know.

how’s that? a superpower?

not a marvel studios superpower, u silly. more like this supreme capacity. i’ve always had it.

when my dad abandoned my mom, she lost herself in the world’s most dangerous drug: poetry.

she used to hold me on her lap while reciting emily brunte & sylvia plath.

i think that’s why i can read into people’s sadness.

when i come across sadness on the street, authentic sadness, the blues crawl out their host & come talk to me. i’m thinking of starting a mémoire or a blog on it. like that humans of new york, u know?

talk about those things we learn on our mothers’ laps…

i reckon everyone who’s lucky enough to have a mum will undoubtedly learn something whilst resting on her lap. my mom used to sit me on her lap while she revised old latin scriptures & tried herself at egyptian hieroglyphics.

that’s why sometimes tombs & churches murmur their secrets to me. they tell me stories about the afterlife & how, if demanded gently, fire can caress the soul the way water strokes the curves of an overflowing vase.

they find it hilarious that we make a big deal out of our own end.

when all there really is, is an everlasting void.

- @skinthepoet

i’m getting a new apartment very soon. i can see the melodrama / wes anderson deco ideas piling up in my head. 

And what would we do, you and I, if we could know for sure that someone was out there, squinting through the dust, saying nothing is lost, that everything lives on waiting only to be wanted back badly enough?

excerpt from Don’t you wonder, sometimes? by Tracy K. Smith, Life on Mars (via: skinthepoet)

What i’m learning is that growth is ugly. It’s not bubble baths and self-help books that teach you how to love yourself. It’s fighting, kicking and screaming against the self-doubt that weighs you down. It’s panicking at the possibility of failure while still moving forward anyway. It’s slowly peeling out of your skin and feeling the tenderness of a touch without armor. The process of growth is ugly, but it’s the product that makes it worthwhile.

a.m. // what i’m learning (via writingitdown)