virgodura:

sespursongles:

And speaking of Sophia Tolstoy, her diaries are just so depressing. 

“I am to gratify his pleasure and nurse his child, I am a piece of household furniture, I am a woman. I try to suppress all human feelings. When the machine is working properly it heats the milk, knits a blanket, makes little requests and bustles about trying not to think […].“

She wrote this when she was 19, one year into her marriage to Leo and as she was pregnant with the first of his 13 children.

A few years later, when she was 25 or so:

“I am so often alone with my thoughts that the need to write in my diary comes quite naturally … Now I am well again and not pregnant—it terrifies me how often I have been in that condition. He said that for him being young meant “I can achieve anything”. For me […] reason tells me that there is nothing I either want or can do beyond nursing, eating, drinking, sleeping, and loving and caring for my husband and babies, all of which I know is happiness of a kind, but why do I feel so woeful all the time, and weep as I did yesterday? I am writing this now with the pleasantly exciting sense that nobody will ever read it, so I can be quite frank with myself […].“

During her 12th pregnancy she wrote about taking scalding baths and jumping from high pieces of furniture to try and miscarry.  And at one point while reading her husband’s diary (which he told her to read) she found the sentence “There is no such thing as love, only the physical need for intercourse and the practical need for a life companion.” In her own diary she wrote “They ebb and flow like waves, these times when I realise how lonely I am and want only to cry…”

A few years before her husband’s death, she published a cycle of prose poems titled “Groans”, under the pseudonym “A Tired Woman”.

the most depressing quote from her diaries:

“I have served a genius for almost forty years. Hundreds of times I have felt my intellectual energy stir within me and all sorts of desires – a longing for education, a love of music and the arts… And time and again I have crushed and smothered these longings… Everyone asks, “But why should a worthless woman like you need an intellectual or artistic life?” To this question I can only reply: “I don’t know, but eternally suppressing it to serve a genius is a great misfortune.”

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/178942644106.

“Be Better at Listening,” Pomplamoose

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/178721685396.

This World

I would like to write a poem about the world that has in it

nothing fancy.

But it seems impossible.

Whatever the subject, the morning sun

glimmers it.

The tulip feels the heat and flaps its petals open and becomes a star.

The ants bore into the peony bud and there is a dark

pinprick well of sweetness.

As for the stones on the beach, forget it.

Each one could be set in gold.

So I tried with my eyes shut, but of course the birds

were singing.

And the aspen trees were shaking the sweetest music

out of their leaves.

And that was followed by, guess what, a momentous and

beautiful silence

as comes to all of us, in little earfuls, if we’re not too

hurried to hear it.

As for spiders, how the dew hangs in their webs

even if they say nothing, or seem to say nothing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe they sing.

So fancy is the world, who knows, maybe the stars sing too,

and the ants, and the peonies, and the warm stones,

so happy to be where they are, on the beach, instead of being

locked up in gold.

– Mary Oliver

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/178535215940.

210 398

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Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/178273313355.

cendaya:

Zendaya on whether ignorance is truly bliss

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/178172022815.

Remove yourself from the past
Wherever you are you don’t have to stay

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/177793732041.

studyblr:

prove them wrong.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/177368032196.

dendroica:

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death– ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. But white Americans do not believe in death, and this is why the darkness of my skin so intimidates them.”

— James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (via bonesache)

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/176399005026.

trainthief:

idroolinmysleep:

Aaron Copland, Fanfare for the Common Man, London Symphony Orchestra, Aaron Copland, cond.

Just found out one of my favorite composers of all time and everyone’s go-to for the classic American sound was gay and Jewish! Hope you’re all having as good a day as me. 

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/176329105405.

Inspired by the sight of Bowie’s producer/engineer Tony Visconti embracing one of Bowie’s backing vocalists by the Berlin Wall, the song tells the story of two lovers, one from East and one from West Berlin. Bowie’s performance of “Heroes” on June 6, 1987 at the German Reichstag in West Berlin was considered a catalyst to the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall.^[4][5][6] Following Bowie’s death in January 2016, the German government thanked Bowie for “helping to bring down the Wall”, adding “you are now among Heroes”.^[7]

— “Heroes” (David Bowie song), Wikipedia

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/176293068755.

bericdondarrion:

“When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another.”

— Salvador Dalí

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/176048114089.

gayred5:

gracetowns:

romeo and juliet (1.4) – william shakespeare

romeo: i had this intense af dream last night bro
mercutio: oh so did i
romeo: what did u dream dude
mercutio: that ur full of shit

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/175873691349.

I’ve set my alarm for 3 a.m.; hopefully by the time this posts I’ll be asleep.

There’s a really neat beach that I’ve never been to. I was planning to try to get there this weekend, but we’re traveling on Sunday, which means I’d need to go Saturday. And at this point I can’t not participate in the local protest, even though it will probably be small, even though my own contribution will be pathetic and inadequate.

So I’ve decided to use a day of PTO and go tomorrow instead, spend some time by myself with just the wind and the grass, a few cows. And the birds.

I’m hoping for Grasshopper Sparrows. I’d never seen them IRL until this year, when I found out you can see them in SBA; you just have to work for them.

It’s nice to be able to achieve something.

Grasshopper Sparrow (Ammodramus savannarum) by Flickr user Dominic Sherony

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/175365268410.

SPC ECO – 2104

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/175196627782.

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/175100923384.

This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.

— Frederick Douglass

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/175068271663.

inthetags:

reblog this and put a song in the tags that breaks your heart

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/174654901036.

inthetags:

reblog this and put a song in the tags that breaks your heart

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/174623208955.

“I dress in a way that makes it easy to assume I’m in disguise, but if so, it’s a terrible disguise.”

– https://twitter.com/alexandraerin/status/1001955009674739718

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/174428379161.

One Small Blow Against Encroaching Totalitarianism: Not Him But Us

Reposted from http://lies.tumblr.com/post/174264637691.