smil-emilyjanegodwin

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

man: has anyone ever told you you’re beautiful? me: oh no sir, today is my first day out of doors and papà forbade mirrors in the house lest we fall victim to vanity

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

I miss the desert😭🌵✨ but it has me so inspired.

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

u cant trust people who step on flowers

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

too busy being yours

to fall for somebody new 

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

Take a shower, wash off the day. Drink a glass of water. Make the room dark. Lie down and close your eyes. Notice the silence. Notice your heart. Still beating. Still fighting. You made it, after all. You made it, another day. And you can make it one more. You’re doing just fine.

Unknown (via misjudgments)

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

Have you ever heard the one about the boy who stopped loving after a girl he knew baked his heart into a pie and dug right in? Have you ever heard the one about the girl who was afraid to dip her toes into the water after the girl she loved drowned her in a sea of obsession? Have you ever heard of them? Of how they closed up like clams and refused to give up their pearls again? They clutched onto them like they were the last remnants of their beings, and who could blame them– after giving up so much, how could anyone expect them to empty themselves out again? There is nothing wrong with the aftermath of a bad love story. You are not any less human just because you are composed of patchwork guilty parts and stitches from old wounds. Not everyone is fortunate enough to leave unscathed from a partner. And whether it is trust issues that they left you or a need to pile up bodies of your own, it doesn’t mean you’re broken.  We are all ripples of the same human commotion, we are all consequences of mismatched loving, we are all damned in some respect from strangers who once meant something in our lives. Take all the time you need to recover. You are almost never the same person you were coming into the relationship. But it doesn’t take away who you are. It doesn’t mean you’re not bound for another shot at happiness. Because when you’re ready, should you look for it, love will find you again.

It’s been two years and I’m just starting to feel this heart beat again (via ink-trails)

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

Sculptor Expertly Fools the Eye with Surreal Ceramics That Look Like Wood

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

Jasmine Dowling

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

you are water twelve feet deep, and i am boots made of concrete.

// it sucks that i don’t have a scanner but oh well…

ig: alienfizz 🎨

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

What’s Wrong With Zoos?

Despite the popular boycott on other animal entertainment industries such as circuses and Sea World, zoos remain popular all over the world, bringing in millions of visitors every year. Many zoos are run for profit, making the zoo industry a multi billion dollar market. 

The most popular defence for zoos is based on their conservation work. While many zoos do actively contribute towards conservation efforts, most of the significant conservation work is performed by private breeding institutions and conservation organisations, not zoos. David Hancocks, a former zoo director with 30 years’ experience, estimates that less than 3 percent of the budgets of accredited zoos go toward conservation efforts. Only 16 of 145 reintroduction programs worldwide ever actually restore any animal populations to the wild. Of those most were carried out by government agencies, not zoos. Most animals in zoos are not endangered, a quarter of British zoos for example don’t have any threatened species whatsoever. Even the zoos that do successfully breed animals in captivity have very little success with reintroducing them into the wild, since animals bred in captivity over generations just do not have the essential skills to survive, and may even introduce disease to wild populations. Zoos aim to conserve captive populations, not wild ones, but even in this they fall short. Undesirable animals are routinely culled because they are not profitable, and those animals who are selected for display usually have significantly shorter lifespans. Elephants for example, live half as long in captivity as they do in the wild, a deficit often attributed to stress.

Zoos claim that their other main purpose is education, but study after study has demonstrated that zoos fail miserably at this task. Knowledge retention in visitors is abysmal and your average visitor only spends about thirty seconds to two minutes viewing any given exhibit, including reading any information signs. A CAPS study in the UK found that 41% of the individual animals on display had no signs identifying their species – the most basic of information. The majority of children studied (62%) show no change in learning or, worse, experienced negative learning during their trip to the zoo. Animals in zoos also demonstrate vastly different behaviours than their wild counterparts, with many exhibiting repetitive stress behaviours, depression and increased aggression. This begs the question of what we can possibly learn about wild animals by observing the behaviour of their unhappy, stressed and atypically behaved captive counterparts.  For the majority of visitors the experience seems to be less about conservation or education and more about entertainment.

Zoos capitalise on our deepest need to feel connected to animals and nature, but this comes at a great cost to the animals themselves. To view an animal in a zoo is to look at them on your terms entirely, in an artificial environment that will never adequately imitate their homes, trapped, helpless and unable to escape your glare. Authentic experiences come from animals who interact with you because they want to, because they have chosen to appear before you, not because you have paid for it. These animals do not exist for our consumption, they are not commodities, they are not amusements. We simply do not have the right to place these animals in cages for our own benefit. 

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]

i don’t know how to let you go without regret.

micropoetry 003 // a.s.w. (via avolitorial)

[smil-emilyjanegodwin]