you can feel the poetry rotting in your stomach.

— Ocean Vuong, Because It’s Summer

one thing i need to start living by is “become the thing that you want” if i want friends who throw themed parties maybe i should start throwing those parties. if i want someone who writes me love letters maybe i should start writing letters for the people i love. if i want to hang out at museums and pretty cafes maybe i should invite my friends to these places. and maybe even then i won’t find the kind of people i want to be around. but then i would have become the exact person i want to be around. and maybe that’s good enough.

Rosalie Lettau (based Germany) - 1: Whisper  2: Offering  3: Ritual  4: Lure  from Coven series, Drawings: Pencil, +Digital

Salvatore Postiglione (1861–1906), Dante and Beatrice (detail)

[Text ID: “I feel occasionally my skull will crack, fatigue is continuous ⏤ I only go from less exhausted to more exhausted and back again.”]

Edna St. Vincent Millay, from The Collected Poems of E. M; “True Encounter,”

St. Annes Church

one fun thing about being a teacher in march 2023 is that chess is a literal epidemic among teens. we are starting to have meetings about how we can STOP teenagers from playing too much chess which is like if we were trying to figure out how to stop them from reading for fun. When i was in high school five years ago chess was nerd shit only but now it is transcending every social and language barrier and is absolutely rampant. kids aren’t on their phone texting in class anymore it’s ONLY chess.com. kids are playing chess on their phones while playing chess in real life. this is still better than tiktok because at least the kids are developing an attention span from this

no see the thing is I think he has a point

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

~ John Waters

— Donna Tartt, The Secret History

Amor Vincit Omnia by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, detail, 1601–1602, oil on canvas 

Kim Addonizio