Sforni reading on the veranda- Oscar Ghiglia

1914

1890 Georges Croegaert - Reading

Almeida Júnior, Reading, 1892

let us vandalise each other with ourselves

before i saw you seeing snow for the first time i did not realise that when you wake alone

you try and blink the dreams out of your eyes. there is almost a violence in it. now you keep

to the wall at night, say he is dependable, is a way to dredge yourself out of hummingbirds

and hairties in the sink. sometimes you see me and blink. and then you must forgive yourself.

or pray above the toaster. i like to look at you when the sun is belly-up and slow-fingered

and i am always rambling and you are always making toast. but to touch is to give ourselves

as limbs packed in a pretty box and say here is the proof not all our ghosts can set right

when we insist on choking as a pastime and even now you shake so pleasantly. turn

in bed, accept the small handful of open i can offer. it is not as pure as the birds

but it’s a start. one day i will see snow and think of eyelids and that will be you.

our lovely gasping language. or i will see red and think of blue, and that will be you, too.

here we make links where there are none simply because wouldn’t it be gorgeous? and most

are of each other, gifting each our lighthouse and aching in public, indecently, and bringing

the moon with his tender wrists to the dinner table and showing him snow, and everything

was gorgeous because we were, you may say of this when we are old and stuff of myth;

and everything was gorgeous because we were, and gorgeous rose the sun, and gorgeous fell.

Reading Girl with hat  -  Walter Heiming 

German 1885-1955

Oil op panel 30,1 x 30,2 cm.,

Hello folks! I thought I’d do a giveaway because back to school season here! Going back to school sucks but new supplies make it a little more bearable. I’m pretty close to 1k (it’s only been 2 months, so thank you!) so I decided to merge these to events together for a giveaway! 

Rules: 

You will win: 

Other information:

Good luck! 

Portrait of Theophila Palmer (1771). Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.. (English, 1723-1792). Oil on canvas.

Reynolds has captured his niece, affectionately known as ‘Offy’ as she sits reading her novel, Clarissa Harlowe by Samuel Richardson. The position of her body suggests relaxation and no hint of being observed. Her gaze turns away from the viewer, as she reads one of the 18th century’s finest novels, which was written in 1747-48, in the form of letters from the eponymous heroine to her friend Miss Howe, and from her lover, Robert Lovelace to his friend John Belford.

DELAROCHE, Paul Portrait of Joseph-Carle-Paul-Horace Delaroche 1851 Oil on canvas, 63 x 41 cm Private collection

Perugini-Charles-Miss-Helen-Lindsay

two poems

i. sorbitol

First: establish the protagonist. Or so they say. Me, I like to start smaller. There’s so much beauty in a tilted head; the nervous lyric of a shoulder-blade; the weight of a gaze, candied eyelids, lips poised and soft as ash. Isn’t that more interesting? What about this: I wake up every morning as the dew rises up my throat and I think of sorbitol. It’s a common artificial sweetener with a laxative effect in large amounts. Every day we are inventing new ways to overdose. Every day the red berries grow sweeter and fatter to the touch; their tight silicon skins warm and beckoning. These are the things I am warning you about. These are the softness of suffocation. First: establish June as an antagonist. I have bought good-quality blinds and soon it will be as if the light never existed. I am sure of it.

ii. small wooden carving of a bird

The space we leave in absence has a habit of expanding. At first it is only a bottle of almond milk, or a slender dent in the sofa cushions from where she used to sleep, or a single red hair to garrotte the dust; before you know it your mouth is gagged with old air and all you can think is that ghosts are a luxury - ghosts can leave. No haunting measures up to this awful recurrence, the scent of a milk long since spoiled, the sewing needle protruding from the heel - all of her is the little wooden carving of a bird on the mantelpiece, or crystallised fruit sticking to the hands; all is a representation of itself, but better, brighter, Photoshopped, choking on its own sap. Now establish that nothing was beautiful in the first place, that birthmark with three dots or four, the coffee and a spoonful of aspartame, melon peeled and cut. There is no revelation in a throat. Now drop your gaze and let the blinds fall shut.

Jorie Graham (via poetsorg)

Horace Walpole’s Gothic library at Strawberry Hill, a castle constructed in the outer London village of Twickenham in 1748

via Architectural Digest

Summer Afternoon Ipolit Strambu

A Staircase in the Palace of Fontainebleau, 1888, Josef Theodor Hansen

Mary Cassatt (American, 1844 - 1926): Françoise in a Round-Backed Chair, Reading (via Christie’s)

Josep Duran

Jonathan Carroll (via browndresswithwhitedots)