sadsongbird

[sadsongbird]

“Were we positive, eager, real — alive? No, we were not. We were a nothingness shot with gleams of what might be. But no more.”

— Katherine Mansfield, from a Letter to John Middleton Murry, 11 October 1922 

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The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1923–1927

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most things can and should be heart-shaped

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thank you to all of the music artists that live in my phone and sing songs whenever i want them to

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Athletes take care of their bodies. Writers must similarly take care of the sensibility that houses the possibility of poems. There is nourishment in books, other art, history, philosophies— in holiness and in mirth. It is in honest hands-on labor also; I don't mean to indicate a preference for the scholarly life. And it is in the green world among people, and animals, and trees for that matter, if one genuinely cares about trees. A mind that is lively and inquiring, compassionate, curious, angry, full of music, full of feeling, is a mind full of possible poetry. Poetry is a life-cherishing force. And it requires a vision a faith, to use an old-fashioned term. Yes, indeed. For poems are not words, after all, but fires for the cold, ropes let down to the lost, something as necessary as bread in the pockets of the hungry. Yes, indeed.

Mary Oliver, A Poetry Handbook: A Prose Guide to Understanding and Writing Poetry

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“I like to fancy souls as being made out of light. And some are all shot through with rosy stains and quivers…and some have a soft glitter like moonlight on the sea…and some are pale and transparent like mist at dawn.”

— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea  (via oiseauperdu)

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__elizaveta_l

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Teresa Maxova by Marina Parisotto

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"It is play, not properness that is the core of the creative life. The impulse to play is an instinct. No play, no creative life. Be good, no creative life. Sit still, no creative life. Any group, society, institution or organization that encourages women to revile the eccentric, to be suspicious of the new and unusual, to avoid the innovative, to impersonalize the personal, is asking for a culture of dead women."

- Clarissa Pinkola Estes - Women Who Run with the Wolves

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If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old, old story, that is a door. If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door. If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door. Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

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the ability to see more beauty in the world is a skill. the more beauty you see, the more comes to you, the more you create yourself. so much of the disempowerment people feel is because they are trained to see the ugly and negative in everything. you have to unpick your mind from the lure of negativity and train yourself to find beauty. if you want a beautiful life, it starts with learning to find the beauty everywhere.

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writing as therapy. writing as healing. writing as discovery. writing as self-love. writing as making sense of the dark. writing as rebirth. 

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a compilation of videos very worth watching! 

the pink triangles: the story of the gay holocaust

nawal el saadawi on feminism, fiction and the illusion of democracy

life beyond: alien life, deep time, and our place in cosmic history 

life beyond II: the museum of alien life

stephen axford: how fungi changed my view of the world

man spends 30 years turning degraded land into massive forest 

the prisoner of azkaban - why john williams’ score is the best in the series

video essay: the world of wong kar wai

how much is enough?

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