Relationships that have real king/lionheart energy, that whole “I have sworn myself wholly to you, I am your sword arm, I am your dog” to someone else’s “you are the one person in this world I can rely on, and I am both bolstered and burdened by your absolute faith in me” vibe, but it’s in circumstances that are like. so low stakes. Manager of a movie theater/the one usher who doesn’t smoke weed at work.
im so happy i made all the correct choices that led to us meeting
its something like this i think
Maybe it’s better to have the terrible times first. I don’t know. Maybe then, you can have, if you live, a better life, a real life, because you had to fight so hard to get it away⸺you know?⸺from the mad dog who held it in his teeth. But then your life has all those tooth marks, too, all those tatters and all that blood.
James Baldwin This morning, this evening, so soon
"There's no wildlife here. The land is barren and stripped from farming chemicals"
I just saw two blue herons fly super low over our house, which means they've been fishing in the creek behind us, which means there's fish there. Which means there's bugs to feed the fish and algae to feed the bugs, which means the water and soil is worth something damnit.
Yes, I'm sorry the suburb isn't the grand, sweeping swath of uninhabited land that you so desperately crave but would learn to loathe, but saying that the land here is barren and that there's no wildlife here and that there's nothing to salvage- that's a You problem. Nature might be struggling, but against all odds it is at least trying.
And you can help by being its caretaker...
This is what I’m harping on about when I talk about Urban Animism.
The hopelessness, the lack of community, the lack of connection to the natural world, it’s all an illusion.
Migratory birds still use the bayous, drainage ditches and culverts. Moss and lichens grow in the margins between cement. You’ll find fish and turtles in a puddle in a cement culvert. You’ll find pocket prairies struggling to get established in utility easements and empty lots and medians. There are lizards and snakes in the non-native landscaping.
Hopelessness is a tool. If people keep saying it’s dead then you won’t look and if you don’t look, then you can’t build empathy with the natural world around you and you won’t be motivated to heal its wounds and steward its growth. If they keep your eyes on the death and misery, then you won’t see all the life and joy there is to protect.
There are grackles, seagulls, raccoons, possums, and coyotes, all thriving in urban and suburban environments. They’re not vermin, they’re our neighbors. They, too, are worth protecting and they’re everywhere if you look.
And the thing is, it is bad. A lot of these areas are heavily compromised and nothing is being done. A lot of them need tremendous amounts of work to be in a healthful and balanced state. But, when there is so much damage, when there’s so little effort being taken, that’s an opportunity. How little effort you’ll have to put in to make an incredible difference. It won’t be perfect, but it’ll be worlds better than it was, and that will matter to your neighbors, the fish, frogs and birds.
But first you have to look, you MUST look, you must see these beings so that you can recognize them as your neighbors.
Forgot to close a parenthesis and now spirits enter me like a waterslide
Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things
initiation song from the finders lodge by Ursula K. Le Guin
"Old Town Square at Night" by Józef Pankiewicz (1892) vs the same place on November 28th 2023 (Warsaw)
right???! i need to talk about this for a moment because. it's so magical to me. like usually when you see old paintings of warsaw you can't recognize anything - it's been bombed to hell in the 40s, and especially in the city centre everything had to be rebuilt basically from scratch (sorry to all the other cities that had to give their bricks away. btw. i know its a sore spot.)
and yet the old town is basically identical as it has been before the war, to the point that when i first saw that painting i was like "oh fuck, i know exactly where this is and how to get there"
idk this painting is like. so special to me. i went there on tuesday because i had a lot of spare time and i realized it was getting dark and it struck me that i could take this photo and it's not exactly aligned because i saw the biker and had to be quick so i could catch him in the same spot as the carriage in the painting but it's just so. idk. it's incredible to me that i can compare which windows were lit on that evening 131 years ago... that even the ornament remains the same... that the painting feels like a cloudy memory and not just a scene
i wandered around in the wind and rain for 45 minutes but i guess i should have been out there longer there is still an evil within me
the transition im crying
small talk? it was quite big to me. i love you
A bird on a branch times five: Eurasian nuthatch/nötväcka, Coal tit/svartmes, Blue tit/blåmes, Willow tit/talltita and Great tit/talgoxe. Värmland, Sweden (October 26, 2019).
not as smart as i think i am by Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz
how some of it happened by Marie Howe
