ars longa, vita brevis

Two Women Engaged in Sexual Intercourse in a Neoclassical Canopied Bed. Etching, ca. 1780. via JSTOR

all i wanna do is lie in the sun!!!! read my books!!!! daydream about fictional scenarios!!!!! love without fear of abandonment!!!!!! smell like vanilla!!!!!!! cry over great poetry!!!!! sit on the grass for hours on end!!!!! not care about how others perceive me!!!!!! find god in the smallest of things!!!!! be free of guilt and shame!!!!

sometimes ur only closure is knowing that u had a good intentions & a good heart

I am a terrible combination of “whatever happens, happens” and “If everything doesn’t go according to plan, I will vaporize”

ping ponging back and forth between seeing immense beauty everywhere and feeling deeply like i am in hell

Gustave Caillebotte, The Floor Planers, 1875

All hail Gustave Caillebotte, the only Impressionist who bothered to say “You know what this art movement doesn’t have enough of? Shirtless rough trade, that’s what!” And then he became the change he wanted to see in the world, and I think that’s beautiful.

i saw this in a museum once and i gotta go off on this for a second– not only is it a gorgeous display of technical mastery over light, darkness, composition, form. it’s also a slap in the face to artistic conventions at the time. at the time, you could have nudes but they had to be heroic. they had to be virtuous. 1875, paris– art was supposed to be elevating. it was for the wealthy, it was to be uplifting, it was so everyone who commissioned the pictures could flex their classics education. okay?

so here’s the floor planers. they’re workmen. they’re workmen. they’re not some rent boy you dolled up with a helmet to be achilles or adonis. artists have been hornily painting working-class models (and sex-worker boyfriends) into their portraits forever, but you’re supposed to frame your appreciation for the male form as an intellectually irreproachable appreciation for the heroic body from literature, or, conversely you could depict the humble beauty of peasants, if you must, but it had to be a sort of ode to nature and the simple life. peasants could be art, as long as they were… out there, you know. in a field. being a metaphor. so there’s your options for looking at a shirtless guy: he’s got to be mythic.

but no. look, here, at the workmen. the floor planers. the workmen’s bodies not dressed up in sandals and helmet, in flowers, on a pedestal. the workmen not employed as some distant paean to an arcadian countryside, not stacking sheaves or holding a lamb or elevating the beauty of nature. they’re here, they’re urban, they’re in a room just like you might have. the workers of your world, in your home, in this reality. the male body as a very real, very nonfigurative tool, humble and employed, but still gorgeous. the beauty of the men that the patrician class pays not to see. the men who come into your mansion through the back door and work unseen and leave unseen. those men. there, right there, this painting, glowing and beautiful.

not adonis. but beautiful.

anyway at the time everyone fucking hated this picture because it’s a direct slap across the classist chops. they were BIG MAD, this was filthy, it was an affront. they hated it. the paris salon rejected it. established intellectuals didn’t want anything to do with this kind of confrontation. it wasn’t art.

i just love that.

like, look at those hot guys go. look at the shine on the floor and the way their arms are. no virtuous framing, no classic allusions. just some regular guys making the floors nice for a rich fucker who never laid eyes on them at all. but here they are: look at them.

they’re still beautiful.

Your love is tough, your love is tried and true blue

more studying, more walks, more reading, more skill-based hobbies, more experimenting w pretty fits and hairstyles, more gym, more exploring new things in general, more whole foods/healthy recipes, more financial literacy, more time management, more time off the phone, more being out the loop. nothing else matters

the beauty of sapphic love

unknown // Dodie she // Lyra Wren // Sappho // Henryk Siemiradzki // Leith Ross we'll never have sex // Blu & exile o heaven // unknown // Leith Ross (you) on my arm // Morgan Rogers honey girl // boygenius & ye vagabonds the parting glass // Cuno Amiet dancing bathers // Lilith Kerr unloving the knife // Jennifer Dugan some girls do // king princess 1950 // Sarah Waters tipping the velvet // Henry Caro-delvaille // Taylor Jenkins Reid the seven husbands of Evelyn Hugo // Sheridan Le Fan Carmilla // Olivia Gatwood the love as a cult // Sarah Waters tipping the velvet // Hans Makart // Mitski my love mine all mine // unknown

call me “pretty girl” and i will combust. don’t play with my life like that

what a beautiful mess 2 make

I am unfortunately just like other guys. I like trashy horror, dog poems, cannibalism as a metaphor for obsessive devotion, religious imagery, people who use my name in a sentence, academic validation, lying for fun, being bisexual and bleeding out in the snow.

OH, BELOVED ✨

[on the verge of having a complete breakdown] i need to make some kind of list or perhaps sort things into categories

All’s fair in love and poetry… New album THE TORTURED POETS DEPARTMENT. Out April 19 🤍

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📷: Beth Garrabrant