Ephemerality

Sex is too powerful. Sex is half a billion years older than we are. This idea that we have sex? Bullshit. Sex has us.

—Dan Savage (via psychichange)

(via counterpunches)

That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone being gone. Just when you think it’s reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you, and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.

—Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever (via chr0nicles)

(via hail-zorp)

Christmas is a time when utter perfection seems within human reach: family members come home again, gifts bring joy to both donor and recipient, and goodwill pours from every lighted window.

—Karal Ann Marling, Merry Christmas! Celebrating America’s Greatest Holiday (via ephemeralness)

We did not always treat grief this way. Nearly every culture has a history, and some still have a practice, of mourning rituals, many of which involve changes in the dress or appearance of those in grief. The wearing of black clothing or mourning jewelry, hair cutting, and body scarification or ritual tattooing all made the grief-stricken immediately visible to the people around them. Although it is true that these practices were sometimes ridiculously restrictive and not always in the best interest of the mourner, it is also true that they gave us something of value. They imposed evidence of loss on a community and forced that community to acknowledge it. If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease.

We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.

—The Sun Magazine | The Love Of My Life (via she-thinks)

(via she-thinks)

You know what I do when I feel jealous? I tell myself to not feel jealous. I shut down the “why not me?” voice and replace it with one that says “don’t be silly” instead. It really is that easy. You actually do stop being an awful jealous person by stopping being an awful jealous person…. And if you can’t muster that, you just stop. You truly do. You do not let yourself think about it. There isn’t a thing to eat down there in the rabbit hole of your bitterness except your own desperate heart. If you let it, your jealousy will devour you. Your letter is evidence that it has already begun to do so. It has depleted your happiness, distracted you from your real work, and turned you into a crappy friend.

—DEAR SUGAR, The Rumpus Advice Column #69: We Are All Savages Inside - The Rumpus.net

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.

—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

The real message of “Friday Night Lights” is a message about the joy of little things: the awkward thrills of a first kiss; the strange blessing of an unexpected rainstorm on a lonely walk home from a rough football practice; the startling surge of nostalgia incited by the illumination of football-stadium lights just as the autumn sun is setting; the rush of gratitude, in an otherwise mundane moment, that comes from realizing that this (admittedly flawed) human being that you’re squabbling with intends to have your back for the rest of your life. “Friday Night Lights” embraces the rough edges, the fumbling, the understated beauty and uncertainty of the everyday. It’s rare for a TV show to acknowledge that happiness is a fragile, transient thing. Although the tenure of “Friday Night Lights” may have proved just as fleeting, its exquisite snapshots of ordinary life won’t fade from our memories so quickly.

— The New York Times (via anditallfallsdownsometimes)

(via dallowayward)

Up on a pedestal or down on a pedestal, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman.

—

The Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

(via natface)

(via claudia)

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.

—Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Jonathan Safran-Foer)

The US budget is like a 1st grader playing Oregon Trail. Spend all the money on ammunition so you can shoot at stuff, then wonder why your wagon is falling apart and everyone is dying of dysentery.

—Malhavoc430 // Reddit (via onahalladay)

(Source: mattchew03, via onahalladay)