boldly go

Bottoms, Tops, we all hate cops!!

Art Deco Brass Chandelier With Blue Flower Lamp Shades // AmandaLighting

Ojai California

Rochelle Redfield @ Chloé Fall/Winter, 1984 Ready-to-Wear

https://www.instagram.com/captain.shyborg

AT HOME With Artist Marie Bodin for Lauren Lotz

McLean, Virginia, December 1978. Photograph by Joel Sternfeld.

for a second, you did the bad thing and bargained about it.

if it meant that you would never be numb like this again, what would you give up?

maybe it's the childhood stuff or the religious trauma or how your dad doesn't believe in medication, but this is how you are, right. you need to have a counterbalance. suffering has to have its own reward. there needs to be a point to it. and if you're happy - if you could just be happy, and the world could actually fill in enough space that the edges of your spirit actually meet the horizon of your body - you would need to pay for it.

your passions? that one seems fair, but how could you actually be happy without them. well, you'd never be numb again, so maybe you'd be able to find joy in the small things like you used to. gleeful, you'd make coffee and breakfast into an artform. you'd find a way to make it make sense, somehow. you'd move on. it'd be different, but it would be doable.

your lover? your friends? this would be hard. you owe so much to your community. still, you could maybe make yourself a small home in the woods. you could live a quiet life, one devoid of friendship - but also without this horrible grey mist. a life like bigfoot, then. you'd figure out how to make the most of it.

your hair. your teeth. all of it.

sometimes you are jealous of mental illness as it appears in media: a big stroke of a meltdown, a firestorm that resolves prettily in therapy. it is flashing lights and thin teenagers. you've absolutely had breakdowns that stole the show - but life after resolved into a pixel art of things you managed to piece together afterwards, not a tapestry of a heart made suddenly-beautiful. that people could pick up blades as if they weigh nothing, that the way it all appears is as a cry for help, not a slow backsliding.

you have to stop the thought: i'd give up everything.

but also - be real. you'd never give up your dog. nor your best friend. nor the way you feel walking while through deep fog. you'd never give up the last bonfire of summer, the reckless laughter of halloween. so you do still love things.

maybe that's the problem: you know it should be easier. you have everything you could possibly want. so how come you are still trapped? still yearning?

Yuka Mizuhara for MARFA Journal

Molly has a real butterfly on her head!

Grazia Netherlands February 2018 Anne-Marie van Dijk by Katelijne Verbruggen