love letter

I think that the real reason that Terry Pratchett is my favourite fantasy writer is that he’s the only one who really centres working people in his stories. I mean, Game of Thrones is almost entirely about the antics of rival aristocrats; Harry Potter is heir to two family fortunes and the subject of a prophecy and goes to an elite boarding school; even the Hobbits (save Sam) in The Lord of the Rings are minor gentry. Meanwhile, who are the main protagonists in Discworld? A recovering-alcoholic cop; an old peasant woman who lives in a cottage; a conman who was forced to take over the post-office. Pratchett writes entire novels about classes of people that other writers treat as background characters. He’s not condescending in his depictions; he’s willing to show enlisted soldiers as people, rather than arrow-fodder; and he’s aware that even ‘simple peasants’ know detailed information about things that wizards and knights can’t be arsed to care about; that everything about the world takes a hell of a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes and that most people never see, And he makes sure that you know this, too.

Reading a Terry Pratchett book is literally just: Here's a funny little joke Here's something that you can tell is a joke but don't get and will only figure out five years later Here's a surprisingly cool fantasy concept Here's a unique and well written simile Here's a lil guy Here's something that has aged depressingly well into the modern day Here's something that has aged remarkably queer into the modern day Here's a character that you can barely understand what he's saying Here is the most terrifying and deeply disturbing concept you have ever heard, casually mentioned Here is the dumbest fucking pun you've ever heard but in the best way Here is a quote so profound that it makes you view morality and the world in a different way Here is a plot twist that you can't tell if it's genius or stupid Congratulations! You've finished the book! It has fundamentally changed you as a person and you will never be the same!

Orange Lamp and Oranges   -    Janet Fisher , 1982.

American, b. 1938 -  

Oil on canvas ,     65 7/8 × 50 in.   167.3 × 127 cm.

when albert camus said “the sea; i didnt lose myself in it. i found myself in it” and when sylvia plath said “if i lived by the sea i would never be really sad” and when hozier said “love, when the sea rises to meet us” and when an anonymous writer said “and yet my heart wanders away, my soul roams with the sea” and when homer said “I’d rather die at sea”

and when marguerite duras said “there is one thing i am good at, and that’s looking at the sea” and when agnès varda said “it’s important to always be by the sea. the sea is the element of love”

and when hermann broch said “those who live by the sea can hardly form a single thought of which the sea would not be part,” and when keri hulme said “I know about me. I am the moons sister, a tidal child stranded on land. the sea always in my ear, a surf of eternal discontent in my blood,” and iain pears said “being by the sea is like a permanent baptism; the light and air hypnotizes, and your soul is washed by vastness.”

and when julia de burgos said “the sea, the true sea, almost mine now” and when saadi youssef said “but to the sea, to this sea, i return” and derek walcott said “you want to know my history? ask the sea.”

and when e e cummings said “for whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea” and when john masefield said “i must go down to the seas again for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied”

and when albert camus said “I will have always loved the sea. it will have always made everything peaceful inside me” and when chelsea wolfe said “I never was a child I was pulled right out of the sea and the salt, it never left my body” and when virginia woolf said “I live; I die; the sea comes over me; the blue that lasts” and when emily dickinson said “say, sea, take me!”

Some stars from my journals

— joy sullivan

if percy shelley were alive today, i know for a fact he would be a huge hit on tumblr dot com.

I'm generally of the opinion that trying to resurrect prematurely cancelled shows is like necromancy—odds are they'll come back wrong.

Except for Galavant. Any Galavant revivial will be funnier the longer it stayed cancelled.

Tags pass peer review, etc, because they SO perfectly capture the spirit of the show.

— Lament of the Jade Stairs Li Bai [Tang Dynasty] Translation by David Hinton, from Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (source)

lydia davis

An Airbnb we had in Marseille 2021

Observing the solar eclipse of April 17, 1912 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands

When Louis narrates this whole passage about Paris but it’s actually about Lestat…… then you’ll see

art nouveau really slapped and served and they were so right about florals and curves and unconventionality and originality and being inspired by the shapes of nature and wanting to incorporate fine art into home design and rejecting the compulsory conformity of mass manufacturing like every time i see an utilitarian square bricks and metal building i want to kill myself immediately

in a train right now, i can see the city lights and i feel so so overwhelmed

“She thought of them as clothed in misty glitter(...)”

— Anya Seton, from Katherine