ceruleanhouse

[ceruleanhouse]

A 1913 love letter that unfolds into a little art gallery.

Caricaturist Alfred Frueh (1880-1968) sent his fiancee Giuliette this letter, so that she could train for the "Gallery Marathon" she would experience when she arrived in Paris. It came complete with original works of art and a coat check.

[ceruleanhouse]

Erika Stearly

[ceruleanhouse]

[ceruleanhouse]

Reached out to a biologist to request some info about an extinct species of freshwater shrimp and the email she sent in response was not only lovely and helpful but also kind of poetry to me? People who study invertebrates are actually the most hopeful and compassionate scientists that we have.

[ceruleanhouse]

Simona Kossak (1943–2007) was a Polish scientist, ecologist and environmental activist who dedicated her life to protecting the Białowieża Primeval Forest, the oldest forest in Europe. She was an extraordinary and fascinating personality, known for her close connection to nature and animals. The locals often called her a "witch" because she lived in the seclusion of the forest and seemed to have a special relationship with the animals. Her pet "terror crow" was known for stealing gold and attacking cyclists - an anecdote that is often told. She lived in her small wooden hut, which had neither electricity nor running water, for over 30 years. A lynx occasionally slept in her bed, and a tame wild boar shared her home. Simona Kossak was known not only for her unconventional life, but also for her scientific contributions to nature conservation and her tireless work to protect the Białowieża Primeval Forest. She fought against the destruction of this unique ecosystem and left an important legacy in the field of environmental protection in Poland.

[ceruleanhouse]

𝗍𝗂𝗅𝖾𝗌 𝖻𝗒 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗋𝗅𝗈𝗍𝗍𝖾 𝗌𝖺𝗅𝗍

𝖨𝗀: 𝖼𝗁𝖺𝗋𝗅𝗈𝗍𝗍𝖾_𝗌𝖺𝗅𝗍_

[ceruleanhouse]

what I really like about all these vintage couple’s portraits is that there is a very certain romatic decorum kept up – certain themes and poses – which, while of course being the mainstream preferred view of couples repeated throughout many studios, are just… so nice to look at. 

this staged affection, a mix of theatricality and intimacy, the couple holding still for a couple of moments and now immortalised in a very set sequence of embraces and kisses. there is a charm to it even when I can’t tell whether this was a genuine couple portait or just actors hired by the photographer.

the kiss on the bare shoulder (eyes perfectly averted), the cheek caress, the piano and the violin, the interrupted embrace, the woman tilted back as in a half-stopped dance…

[ceruleanhouse]

idk man! going to the library just to hang out, work on a puzzle. wearing clothes people have given to me rather than clothes I've bought. jewelry my friends have made me. writing letters. cooking food from scratch. walking a LOT. taking public transportation. braiding my hair before bed. having a cup of tea on my porch. saying hi to my neighbors and participating in workplace contests and stopping at the farmers stands on the side of the road. going to local events. smashing entire handfuls of wild berries in my fingers just to KNOW what nature is like. complimenting strangers and chatting with cashiers and bus drivers and everyone. listening to local music. buying organic when I can. putting everything down and petting my cat or thinking about eating my apple when I do. savoring the taste. refusing to listen to anything but happy music before noon. slowing down and connecting with the world might save u. idk.

[ceruleanhouse]

*

marie howe, what the living do

[ceruleanhouse]

BEANNACHT / BLESSING

by John O’Donohue

For Josie, my mother

On the day when the weight deadens on your shoulders and you stumble, may the clay dance to balance you. And when your eyes freeze behind the grey window and the ghost of loss gets into you, may a flock of colours, indigo, red, green and azure blue, come to awaken in you a meadow of delight. When the canvas frays in the currach of thought and a stain of ocean blackens beneath you, may there come across the waters a path of yellow moonlight to bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, may the clarity of light be yours, may the fluency of the ocean be yours, may the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow wind work these words of love around you, an invisible cloak to mind your life.

[ceruleanhouse]

chaotic muppets interview

[ceruleanhouse]

i think along the river during qingming festival deserves AT LEAST as much of a fandom as bbc sherlock. there’s so much there, tons of material for fanfic. just imagine what we could have

[ceruleanhouse]

Mosaic floor tile excavated at Bayland Abbey in Yorkshire, England, 13th century

from The British Museum

[ceruleanhouse]

oh yeh we're drawing on fabric again lol

[ceruleanhouse]

the beauty in the soft roundness of a woman's belly

vriden, anders zorn | jeune femme nue, henri-jean guillaume martin | duo, leonor fini | etude de femme nue, henri fantin-latour | female nude, william getty | venus au bain, jean-baptiste camille corot | seated nude, emile baes | mountain stream (detail), louis michel eilshemius | gammal spegel, anders zorn | liegender akt, emile baes

[ceruleanhouse]

“You may have noticed that the books you really love are bound together by a secret thread. You know very well what is the common quality that makes you love them, though you cannot put it into words: but most of your friends do not see it at all, and often wonder why, liking this, you should also like that. Again, you have stood before some landscape, which seems to embody what you have been looking for all your life; and then turned to the friend at your side who appears to be seeing what you saw - but at the first words a gulf yawns between you, and you realise that this landscape means something totally different to him, that he is pursuing an alien vision and cares nothing for the ineffable suggestion by which you are transported. Even in your hobbies, has there not always been some secret attraction which the others are curiously ignorant of - something, not to be identified with, but always on the verge of breaking through, the smell of cut wood in the workshop or the clapclap of water against the boat’s side? Are not all lifelong friendships born at the moment when at last you meet another human being who has some inkling (but faint and uncertain even in the best) of that something which you were born desiring, and which, beneath the flux of other desires and in all the momentary silences between the louder passions, night and day, year by year, from childhood to old age, you are looking for, watching for, listening for? You have never had it. All the things that have ever deeply possessed your soul have been but hints of it - tantalising glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught your ear. But if it should really become manifest - if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.” We cannot tell each other about it. It is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds, when the mind no longer knows wife or friend or work. While we are, this is. If we lose this, we lose all.”

— C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (via sunrec)

[ceruleanhouse]

Kazimierz Sichulski - The Hutsul Madonna (1909)