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'tapestry'

monotype prints with oil paint and pastel.

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There was a thunderstorm in Chicago, and even though I felt depressed today, I thought maybe I can just walk by myself in the rain without hoping for someone else to do that with.

So, I did! When it was pouring down I went for a walk, went to a park and played on a swing for the entire time until the clouds parted to reveal the blue sky. For some reason, I just couldn't stop smiling and laughing in between like a little kid. Rain never disappoints me, it just reminds me again why I need to be a little kid and that's where I'll find my joy of being!

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Thank you @hampstead for the tag, this is so nice! I know I'm really late, but here it is!

tags: @inkprilled @trashraccoongirl @sorrrowfull @ag-th @cheruib @cupcakeshakesnake @hav-frue @toomagazineperfection @tenderlovingmuse @whoopisgun2008

ty for the tags @darkmatilda & @floraisunwell<3

ignore my fuckass handwriting

tags: @cowboylikemily @grayslovely @lovesick-all-over-my-bed @prentissociety @siriuslylantsov @awordsmith @thoughtfullyinlove @oceanbaes @brattyspence

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Sometimes I look back and think, I perhaps needed to cry it all out to understand the reality of being in the moment, to understand what I want to see but never really could. And that requires grief that I have never experienced before, cry so many times that I forget the count and a day without crying seems abnormal. I need to be hurt so badly to kick me out of the rut and question my own life a million times through suicidal ideation to see what the fuc**n point was! I don't think I have experienced sadness through all its color, not that I have experienced the same as someone who I loved before/now, but I think I can see the point of it.

Recently I realized, that if life doesn't make sense, stand at the altar of death and question your entire life! Have you asked yourself why being dead is not better than being alive? Then we might have some answers, as to what we need to give up on instead of our own lives! Answers through despair as the means, are sometimes our only teachers! For some of us, we don't necessarily have a choice but to do just that! For a lot of us, I guess life keeps moving on even without asking that question, and I belong to the former. At least, in hindsight, I believe that I did not have a choice except to knock on the door of death as a means to accept defeat from the means I have learnt to live my life, which wasn't pretty. Cause let's accept it, we are not left with good means a lot of times, cause that shit isn't in our hands.

So, now, I want to say, proclaim your defeat to anxiety, I don't necessarily see another way around it. Proclaim your defeat to death, in order to put all the other things in life in perspective, and now make a choice as to what we'd wanna let go! I hope most of us have an alternative answer!

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also a poem from the new, unreleased collection. very possibly my own all-time favourite.

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There's a sense of pain, experience and sadness in the wrinkles. Something I seem to relate to and sometimes like to stare at, a sense of loneliness which is very much reflected in her eyes.

Ref: The Wise woman

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Tiny

I look around me, and I feel tiny, So so tiny, ephemeral, Like a gossamer in the wind, float by As a spectator, To the beauty of the world. I can feel it all turn to dust, as my tunnel vision grapples, to find a sense of feeling. As tedium fills my soul, I'm left to wonder, to try my best to appreciate the surreal. As an audience to the impermeable fate, While letting the raven unfurl it's wings, and let it's talons dig into my cage, an existence only experienced in tears, a storm Whose whirlwind shaped my soul, where a sense of calm Only visits me with a tantalizing transience, in a fever dream, which should never be held. But to sleep, I need To dream, of the happy Netherworld, only to wake up In tears of solitude, and look forward to accepting my despair, All over again.

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Just the past few days!! My solo trip and food I cooked, roommate'w cats, book I read! Also drawing, and my own fermented homemade sodas. I'll try to be happy with all I did :)

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I need to build my world, my own world, and stand by myself and be happy in my solitude. I have put in a lot of effort to change myself, but I do feel tired, no - deplorably exhausted sometimes! How much more of a world to build around myself all by myself? At times, it is just perhaps enough to hang with a friend who I can perhaps rely on in my moments of low, but I'm struggling to even find such a friend, forget about love which throws me into despair. Being able to stand up for myself, and showing others around me to stand up....well I feel like I have done that too. Now I need a little bit of help, maybe someone who can try to let me know that they'll be around when I need them. I know I'm picky too, cause the very ones who get me are perhaps not interested in me. Somehow, I am left with building myself again, and I feel I'm left with the unbearable task of making myself shinier. Maybe the point is to accept my despair all over again, and just make myself shinier to look at myself in the mirror. I'm not entirely confident if even that is enough to push the feeling of emptiness to the background!

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Why is it that we think that we can solve geopolitical problems through activism, if we are unable to understand how to not feel lonely in our lives? It almost seems like we look towards the world and think that we have solutions to problems. We somehow abstract our own personal lives from the geopolitical or the socio-political problems as if both of them are two separate entities, aren't they just the result of how people are interacting with each other? How we have interpersonal relationships with other people in society? If at the end of the day I do not know how to interact with other people, I do not know how to make myself feel safe, how are we even wondering about the fact that a huge number of people who elect their leaders will be able to form a society that feels safe?

We always think that our individual lives are separate from our philosophical beliefs. If we believe that we should have a socialist government or that I believe in abolitionism, then a fundamental question to ask is how these beliefs would affect my day-to-day behavior? If I follow these philosophies, is there anything I could change in my current behavior to align myself to them? For example, if I believe in abolitionism then I want to believe in a society where the influence of the police is reduced to the bare minimum. But if that is the case, I think first we should be able to learn how to forgive people who make mistakes without ostracizing them. If someone hurts me, is it possible to not be totally avoidant and still see them as a friend? Because ostracizing people who made mistakes would only push them to commit greater harms and somehow that doesn't fit into the idea of the society that abolitionism paints. The same goes into other beliefs. For example, if I believe in a socialist government, is there something that I can do to change my day-to-day behavior to be more socialist? For example, maybe I can allocate some part of my salary to help homeless people I see around in my life. But I do not really see this happening. Most people who think that activism is a way to make themselves feel better are perhaps only doing it as an escape rather than to impart a change which is lasting.

The moment we abstract our personal identity from our beliefs, we are trying to mend a broken part of the society by forgeting that we are part of that very fracture which can lead to so many other invisible problems. Because we keep on repeating the same mistakes that we made before, regardless of the fact that our basic necessities have been met and the cycle continues until somebody down the line realizes that the problem is deeper, that the problem lies within ourselves. Don't you think we'll be forming a much healthier, more interconnected society if we are able to understand how to not feel lonely ourselves and maybe advocate the same to the people around us? Don't you then think that we would be much more judicious to see what kind of a government would be best for us?

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sketchbook stuff

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Petra Cotes, for her part, loved him more and more as she felt his love increasing, and that was how in the ripeness of autumn she began to believe once more in the youthful superstition that poverty was the servitude of love. Both looked back then on the wild revelry, the gaudy wealth, and the unbridled fornication as an annoyance and they lamented that it had cost them so much of their lives to find the paradise of shared solitude. Madly in love after so many years of sterile complicity, they enjoyed the miracle of loving each other as much at the table as in bed, and they grew to be so happy that even when they were two worn-out old people they kept on blooming like little children and playing together like dogs.

- One hundred years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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When I walked through Vincent Van Gogh's exhibit in the Netherlands, I could somehow see myself in those pictures. Just like the little kid who he drew saying that he was a 'very good kid', just how he had a view of interconnectedness as well as disconnect in the painting of a peasant supper, just how he put his grief into art cause words didn't seem like they're enough, how he wrote letters to his brother and shared the messiest of feelings, how being so distraught with rejection from a friend he cut off his own ear, just how he was able to see himself through the myriad of colors and spent an immeasurable amount of time trying to see if he could actually see himself. When I was drawing my self-portrait I didn't initially know if I wanted to start with a smiling face of mine. Cause so many times in my life, even now, I sometimes don't recognize the smile on my face. It seems farcical, somehow trying my best to poorly put on a masquerade. But I thought, maybe that is an exercise in itself, and went ahead to start with this picture. I think my first portrait is not all too bad, and I know I'll do better!