“Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.”
—Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful
November 2010
184 posts
i’m reading the Mysteries of Udolpho on halloween. it’s very appropriate. i feel like catherine morland. too sensible to have a gothic adventure, too stupid not to be afraid of (and open to?) the possibility. i wonder if i’ll ever have a friend who will understand what i mean when i say any of this.
October 2010
90 posts
“There is no life higher than the grasstops
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.” —Sylvia Plath, Wuthering Heights
Or the hearts of sheep, and the wind
Pours by like destiny, bending
Everything in one direction.
I can feel it trying
To funnel my heat away.
If I pay the roots of the heather
Too close attention, they will invite me
To whiten my bones among them.” —Sylvia Plath, Wuthering Heights
Emily Dickinson
I died for beauty, but was scarce
Adjusted in the tomb,
When one who died for truth was lain
In an adjoining room.
He questioned softly why I failed?
“For beauty,” I replied.
“And I for truth,—the two are one;
We brethren are,” he said.
And so, as kinsmen met a night,
We talked between the rooms,
Until the moss had reached our lips,
And covered up our names.
“halloween is the weird girl’s valentine’s.”
—
sometimes i feel like migraines are severing my connection with reality. my fingers are heavy. i just spent half an hour sitting in my closet touching a sweater.
“Ninety-nine dreams I have had
And every one a red balloon
It’s all over, and I’m standing pretty
In the dust that was a city
I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
Here it is, a red balloon
I think of you and let it go” —99 Red Balloons, Goldfinger
And every one a red balloon
It’s all over, and I’m standing pretty
In the dust that was a city
I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
Here it is, a red balloon
I think of you and let it go” —99 Red Balloons, Goldfinger
“Look at the light through the windowpane. That means it’s noon, that means
we’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.” —Scheherazade, Richard Siken.
we’re inconsolable.
Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.
These, our bodies, possessed by light.
Tell me we’ll never get used to it.” —Scheherazade, Richard Siken.
“She cast one more lingering, half-fainting glance at the prince, and then threw herself from the ship into the sea…”
—Hans Christian Andersen, The Little Mermaid
“She linger’d, looking like a summer moon
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And shower’d the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach’d
The Gateway, there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazon’d with armorial gold.
Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listen’d round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.” —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Godiva
Half-dipt in cloud: anon she shook her head,
And shower’d the rippled ringlets to her knee;
Unclad herself in haste; adown the stair
Stole on; and, like a creeping sunbeam, slid
From pillar unto pillar, until she reach’d
The Gateway, there she found her palfrey trapt
In purple blazon’d with armorial gold.
Then she rode forth, clothed on with chastity:
The deep air listen’d round her as she rode,
And all the low wind hardly breathed for fear.” —Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Godiva
the best part of making my own meals is that i can eat little elf portions of a bunch of different things.
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
how could anyone lose hope in the world when there are babies…
i wrote an anonymous letter of complaint (contempt?) about how a website approached the jane austen manuscript story. maybe that means plus three hundred neurotic points, but i am so happy.
“Ah, my friend, you do not know, you do not know
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
…
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.” —T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady
What life is, you who hold it in your hands”;
…
“You let it flow from you, you let it flow,
And youth is cruel, and has no remorse
And smiles at situations which it cannot see.” —T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady
Sir Philip Sidney
Sonnet 91 (of Astrophil and Stella)
Stella, while now by honor’s cruel might,
I am from you, light of my life, mis-led,
And that fair you, my Sun, thus overspread
With absence’ veil, I live in sorrow’s night;
If this dark place yet show like candle light
Some beauty’s piece, as amber-color’d head,
Milk hands, rose cheeks, or lips more sweet, more red,
Or seeing jet’s black but in blackness bright.
They please, I do confess; they please mine eyes,
But why? Because of you they models be,
Models such be wood globes of glist’ring skies.
Dear, therefore be not jealous over me,
If you hear that they seem my heart to move.
Not them, oh no, but you in them I love.
i’ve always wanted to be a pastel girl. i wear jewel tones and faded colors, but pastels are only for the loveliest…
