I do find that the shower, with its loud softness, its brain-unclenching heat, and its general vibe of low-key transfiguration, is an excellent place to work through snags in my sentences. It’s physical white noise! …the shower itself is like an ideal reading experience. You go in as one thing, and you come out as something newer and better—plus you smell good, which is not an improvement I’ve ever undergone while reading Dostoevsky.

Down into the most hidden, most elusive regions, the most difficult to work, the most sensitive to touch, down into the unconscious, and the bodily passions. They can be reached by borrowing the ladder of writing that goes down to the roots.

Hélène Cixous, from Stigmata; Unmasked!
(via xshayarsha)

I am not content, because my lot is limiting, as are all others. People specialize; people become devoted to an idea; people “find themselves.” But the very content that comes from finding yourself is overshadowed by the knowledge that by doing so you are admitting you are not only a grotesque, but a special kind of grotesque.

make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.

hollyhocksandtulips:

Photo by Frank Paulin, 1952

thunderstruck9:

Miles Cleveland Goodwin (American, b. 1980), Life, 2018. Oil on linen, 24 x 36 in.

cinemaphileadict:

The Girl on a Motorcycle (1968) directed by Jack Cardiff

mostlyskateboarding:

Man of the cloth vs. Man of the board. 

fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Q: Where does the cowboy myth come from and why is it so tenacious?

A: Myths in the modern world tend to be associated with institutions that promote them and they tend to encourage social deference. Life in the West was part of the wider realities of 19th-century American civilization. Cowboy work involved mostly younger men and boys because the job was so poorly paid, sometimes precarious, and aged people quickly. You had people including native Americans, Chicanos, Blacks and later the Chinese carving a space for themselves, and if in the isolation of the frontier, the old racial standards were often suspended, they were ultimately more sharply and violently imposed. But the realities they lived had little to do with the making of that cowboy mystique.

The importance of the myth seems to me a measure of the extent to which American capitalism simply doesn’t work the way the way it claims to. Everybody knows that it doesn’t really reward harder work. It doesn’t right wrongs or produce justice. So you need the individual righter of wrongs, a fictional figure that smudges categories of class and power. Someone at the same time a working cowboy, a roving gunman and a lawman.  

paintingispoetry:

James Whistler, Arrangement in Grey and Black No. 1, 1871

chaoticbard:

there really is a tumblr discourse rhetoric hole that people, and disturbingly a large amount of very young people, jump down into. a place where people cease to be real people, concepts cease to have real life applications, and reality itself warps away into a mess of rhetoric and useless words thrown around for no particular reason other than it equates to status in a virtual reality to do this.

internet activism and social justice are good, necessary things; but the moment that you stop taking into consideration the offline effects and applications of your speech and behavior, when you stop valuing the off-tumblr goals for that activism, when you stop seeing things and people as real but as only concepts or tools in a debate or rhetoric, your activism not only ceases to be meaningful; it becomes a dangerous thing in itself.

activism is not a performance. it’s not a manipulation of words to see how many people you can get to agree with you and/or applaud you. it is a practical effort for positive change. if you can’t remember that, you’re not doing activism. 

abhorrent-elms:

Being visible is the worst! Having a physical form is abominable! Public spaces are a nightmare! If you see me outside no you don’t!

odysseux:

Wings of Desire (1987)

baphomeme:

im serious about that “stop saving things for special occasions” bit tho like. even if u aren’t in your 20s. thats for everyone. its one of the most useful things ive learned lately

stop! just stop. eat the special snack. drink the expensive hippie tea. use the incense or the bath bomb or whatever you paid way too much for because you were feeling really bad and retail therapy makes u feel alive

when we save things for special occasions/rainy days it contributes to us feeling like A.) our day to day existence is lackluster and B.) you have to be feeling a certain level of Bad, or have to reach a certain level of Socially Accepted Achievement, to enjoy things

just give yourself stuff. there are definitely sometimes reasons to withhold things from yourself - as motivation, if it’s something you consciously want to use sparingly, etc - but at least for me half the time it just turns into self-flagellation and also cool things and cool experiences and nice treats just collect dust while i wait for some fabled day when i convince myself i finally Deserve it

just fuckin give yourself stuff dude. life’s so mindblowingly short