forever contemplating if my savior complex is making my life rancid or if now is finally actually my time
lavinianicholai-deactivated2018
Joan Didion on Self-Respect, Vogue Magazine “People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of a moral nerve; They display what was once called character… Character — The willingness to accept the responsibility for one’s own life.”
i am going to check the despair. i am on this earth to read the poems my friends write and to fall in love w songs i hear through those i love and listen to my siblings thunderclap of wild laughter from the other room and crunch frost-bitten grass beneath my feet and watch pigeons jauntily flocking in and out of derelict windows and count dust motes in a shaft of early morning light in midwinter and and and and and. goodnight.
and ugly cry while chopping onions, and peel the stickers off of fruit to stick them on my brother when he isnt looking, and marvel at toddlers in their oversized coats, and wake up to go to the bathroom only to find the moon shining through my window illuminating everything everything everything
So even if my love for you leads me to ruin, don’t pity me. The Handmaiden (2016) dir. Park Chan Wook
a weird little poem i wrote for the new year :)
[transcript: Oh God. Hand me the champagne, / I think it’s finally happening. Ladies and gentlemen, / it’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for, where / I realize it’s all bullshit: everyone knows / when you say my new year’s resolution is to / work out more you really mean that your sadness / has become a beast too big to wrangle with / your own two hands; when you say there won’t be / any more clothes on my bedroom floor / there’s always the unspoken caveat that / you would be perfectly happy if those / clothes belonged to someone else. Oh God. / Hand me the champagne—no, scratch that, let’s celebrate—hold my hand, dance with me— / because I have found yet another reason to live. / I have found yet another copy of the same / poem to scream about living, living, living, / as if my body is my soapbox, my pulpit, as if to say come one, come all, we made it nowhere / again, cue the Springsteen, ‘cause baby, / we were born to run. Oh God. / Hand me the champagne, I think I’ve lost / my mind. When the clock strikes midnight / I promise I’ll become a new person entirely, / erased and redrawn in new colors. I’ll prove everyone wrong about me, even myself. I’ll lie down and / let the water decide. Oh God. Hand me the champagne, it’s all too much. And I know you can’t stay but / I need someone to kiss me now, right here / on the sidewalk before the sun comes up, / while you’re still beautiful and backlit / in silver. When was the last time you saw / a moon this bright, anyway? It’s almost / enough to make you believe someone’s / up there looking out for us. Almost enough / to make you trust the universe again. And now, / at long last, my bullet-train brain has meandered / along to the point, which is, of course: here’s to / another year of being ordinary, of having coffee / and napping and sitting around each other’s houses / doing nothing. So long and thanks for all the fish— / I trust that this year, if nothing else, / you will keep on walking / towards the light at the end of the hall.]
MISS YOU. WANT TO GET NOODLES WITH YOU. DISREGARD THIS, After Gabrielle Calvocoressi, by Lev St. Valentine
you’ve got to embrace being weird or else you’re going to die both spiritually and for real life
maybe the purpose of life is to fill it with as many positive things as you can. regardless of how bad life gets, don’t let it steal your personality, your hobbies, your style. after coming home from a bad day at work maybe you need to sit down and read a nice book. after studying non-stop for so long, maybe you should finish that crochet project you’ve been putting off because you’re so busy. maybe we should prioritize the things we love, the things that make us happy, and not just the things we’re forced to do to survive. in this society, a little peace from the outside world is important. don’t give up on the things that make you happy. don’t forget about yourself.
