Keep Your Basket Covered in the Woods

"When I was super depressed, I wasn’t working—I was always too depressed. Hemingway did his best work..."

Fri, 24 May 2013 22:48:09 -0500

“

When I was super depressed, I wasn’t working—I was always too depressed. Hemingway did his best work when he didn’t drink, then he drank himself to death and blew his head off with a shotgun. Someone asked John Cheever, “What’d you learn from Hemingway?” and he said “I learned not to blow my head off with a shotgun.” I remember going to the Michigan poetry festival, meeting Etheridge Knight there and Robert Creeley. Creeley was so drunk—he was reading and he only had one eye, of course, and had to hold his book like two inches from his face using his one good eye. But you look at somebody like George Saunders—I think he’s the best short story writer in English alive—that’s somebody who tries very hard to live a sane, alert life.

You’re present when you’re not drinking a fifth of Jack Daniel’s every day. It’s probably better for your writing career, you know? I think being tortured as a virtue is a kind of antiquated sense of what it is to be an artist.

”

- In an interview with The Fix, Mary Karr debunks the toxic mythology that it is necessary to be damaged in order to be creative. My own vehement defiance to that mythology is what led me to choose Ray Bradbury – the ultimate epitome of creating from joy rather than suffering – as the subject of my contribution to The New York Times’ The Lives They Lived.

Pair with Karr on why writers write.

(via explore-blog)

sophialorens: Favourite Artists: John William Waterhouse

Fri, 24 May 2013 21:36:38 -0500

sophialorens:

Favourite Artists: John William Waterhouse

fursure-maria: mika - grace kelly

Fri, 24 May 2013 20:24:07 -0500

fursure-maria:

mika - grace kelly

meggyfoo replied to your post: You can say a lot about body positivity or… dressing rooms...

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:15:23 -0500

meggyfoo replied to your post: You can say a lot about body positivity or…

dressing rooms suck. <3

It wasn’t even the dressing room though— okay maybe it was for the bottoms, but seriously, EVERY SINGLE SWIMSUIT was like “lol, actually we’re going to show your MASSIVE BOOB SCAR because FUCK YOU ALY THAT’S WHY”

joseethefirst replied to your post: You can say a lot about body positivity or…

changerooms are probably where I feel the worst about myself

They are omg. The rest of the time I can be like BITCH I’M FABULOUS and mean it, but shove me under some unflattering lighting in a pair of swimsuit bottoms and I am convinced I’m like, Igor or something, I don’t even knowwww.

reallyreallyreallytrying: yo i ain’t saying she’s a gold-digger but she does carry a weird pan...

Fri, 24 May 2013 19:12:12 -0500

reallyreallyreallytrying:

yo i ain’t saying she’s a gold-digger but she does carry a weird pan everywhere and keep mumbling stuff about “gold in them there hills” idk so yeah she is probably a gold digger

You can say a lot about body positivity or whatever, but that doesn’t help when every fucking...

Fri, 24 May 2013 18:40:46 -0500

You can say a lot about body positivity or whatever, but that doesn’t help when every fucking swimsuit suit you try on shows your lumpectomy scar.

colchrishadfield: Working with Adam and Jamie was fun! Mutual...

Thu, 23 May 2013 22:48:16 -0500

colchrishadfield:

Working with Adam and Jamie was fun! Mutual moustache appreciation.

caterinasforzas: what to wear when…an old west madame. this...

Thu, 23 May 2013 21:36:37 -0500

caterinasforzas:

what to wear when…an old west madame. this pioneer town of hers, it’s half-real, built in a hurry. around her are false storefronts and blustering boys with peach fuzz where their beards can’t grow. that’s where she comes in. she makes men out of them. her business brings the coins and cowboys ‘round. behind bat-wing bordello doors, she guzzles cactus wine and whiskey cut with cayenne. she jiggles her fringed petticoats, flashing them up with a wink. as she dances, the daggers stashed in her tasseled boots and between her breasts’ blades grow warm. customers with chew plugged in their cheek-pockets fill mugs with brown spurts of spit. at night, in creaky, back-room beds, she claws the backs of blacksmiths and kilkenny cats, trappers and bandits alike. dirty-nailed hands of crass ranchers slide up her skirts. lawmen lick blackberry liquor from her lips. in this half-real, mixed-up town of where-do-we-go-now, she serves as whore, priest, and physician. “fix me, doc,” they growl into her neck. their up-turned faces, framed by her thighs, root around for comfort. after, or before, or sometimes instead of fucking, they sit on her floor and confess their sins and fears. they talk and talk as she hugs their rugged, muddied bodies. they lie their heads upon her lap. their whiskers scrape her skin. they’re cooking up a nation, they are - a new reality. this town is real, her saloon’s skeleton architecture insists, looming high like real buildings do. her girls give companionship and laugh real, real. her feet stomp a furious rhythm: real! real, real. real! she pins a fool’s gold brooch below her throat and paints her eyelids dark. we are real, her practiced smile promises, and getting realer every day.

post 526 of an infinity-part series

fripperiesandfobs: Costume designed by Bob Crowley for Maggie...

Thu, 23 May 2013 20:24:07 -0500

fripperiesandfobs:

Costume designed by Bob Crowley for Maggie Smith as Lady Bracknell in the 1993 production of The Importance of Being Ernest.

From the V&A

the heart, the mind, and the soul

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:36:09 -0500

the heart, the mind, and the soul

Photo

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:17:28 -0500

grumble-grumble: Untitled prepatory sketch by Jean Delville,...

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:12:12 -0500

grumble-grumble:

Untitled prepatory sketch by Jean Delville, for the Palais de Justice in Brussels, c.1911-14

vega-ofthe-lyre: Details | Dior

Wed, 22 May 2013 21:36:50 -0500

vega-ofthe-lyre:

Details | Dior

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 20:24:19 -0500

Photo

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:12:20 -0500

askmeagaintomorrow: my-pocket-universe: Fringe AU - In which...

Wed, 22 May 2013 14:33:28 -0500

askmeagaintomorrow:

my-pocket-universe:

Fringe AU - In which FBI Special Agent Lincoln Lee from amber!verse and Captain Lee from the alternate universe were in a joint-operation to investigate a possible breach from a third parallel universe. They arrived at the location in question and encountered/apprehended their doppelgänger who had crossed over from the even more technologically advanced and chaotic green!verse. This Lincoln appeared to be dangerous and vicious and he went by the name Count Vertigo.

Inspired by kc2oo9’s posts - where is my bacon + so that’s what Lincoln does when he borrows Peter’s coat and Walter’s drugs

TOO MUCH HOT EVERYWHERE

So, uh, it sort of came to my attention this morning that my post last night distressed a lot of...

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:50:42 -0500

So, uh, it sort of came to my attention this morning that my post last night distressed a lot of people, especially those who I knew during high school in real life. And your concern and nice words are really, really great, but seriously, don’t blame yourselves for not knowing, oh my god. I was trying so hard to hide it, and when I want to, I’ve always been really good at hiding what’s wrong with me. Acting: that thing I almost made a career of (for the given value of “career” with acting, but I’m deflecting, and you know what I mean).

And as you can see, it got better on an “Aly copes with her life” level. So we’re good now. Really I was just super confused and insulted and irritated last night, because someone made the last comment that basically amounted to “YOU DIDN’T HAVE A BIG QUEER CRISIS IN HIGH SCHOOL AND WEREN’T OUT AND DEALING WITH IT THEREFORE YOUR QUEERNESS IS INVALID/NOT REAL/PRETEND/NOT AS HARDCORE AS MINE” that I could stand, because I’ve been dealing with those since I said “fuck it” and stopped misdirecting people or being quiet about it. I mean, what the fuck, right?

Anyway back to your regularly scheduled nonsense byeeeeee.

thespacegoat: Courses:CourseraEDXUdacityUniversity of...

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:12:34 -0500

thespacegoat:

Courses:
Coursera
EDX
Udacity
University of Reddit

Books:
Bartleby
Gutenberg
Librivox
Poem Hunter

Videos:
Academic Earth
C. G. P. Grey
Crash Course
Khan Academy
Minute Physics
The New Boston Tutorials
TED
Unplug the TV

Documentaries:
Documentary Heaven
Top Documentary Films

Languages:
BBC Languages
Busuu
Dou Lingo
Live Mocha
MemRise
Verbling

Music:
How to Play Piano
Justin Guitar
Music Theory
Play Bass Now
Teoria

Programming:
Code Academy
Coding Bat
HTML Dog
Learn Code the Hard Way
Ruby Monk
Trypython

DIY/How-To:
Howcast
How Stuff Works
Instructables
The Daily Miscellany
Wiki How
Wonder How-To

Math:
Math Run
Project Euler
Wolfram Alpha

Cooking:
Cooking for Engineers
Cooklet
How2Heroes
Reluctant Gormet

So someone recently asked me why I don't have a coming out story. This is why.

Wed, 22 May 2013 00:08:00 -0500

I’ve known I was queer in some way since high school, though I can never recall actively examining it. I knew I was attracted to other women as well as men, and there was a (mildly to incredibly) disastrous incident at my junior year homecoming that involved and resulted in a lot of awkwardness, misdirection, poorly chosen words, and bad timing. I still have no idea how many of my high school friends knew about it. But otherwise? I really just didn’t mention it, on average, or was vague enough when talking about issues with the school and their abysmal treatment of LGBTQ+ students that I wasn’t directly talking about myself. I told a few people I was bisexual when they asked me directly, but I didn’t like that word for myself even then. I certainly didn’t think of myself as bisexual.

Most of my other queer friends have had very heavy experiences of realization, of coming out, of self hatred, of the inherent discrimination against homosexual dating or being trans in a Catholic school, let alone outside. I didn’t have any of that. I decided to start being honest and more forthcoming about my queerness around my peers after graduation simply because I noticed I wasn’t, and that felt weird. Currently, I operate under the assumption that everyone but my family and certain coworkers know I’m queer, and correct them if they are vocally wrong or mislabel.

I was, and remain, closeted at home for personal reasons, financial reasons, and Good-Fucking-Lord-I-Don’t-Want-to-Deal-With-My-Mother-After-That-Conversation reasons. Part of the reason I was quieter about my queerness in high school was that my friends were not; she already suspected something— maybe she thinks she knows something, I don’t know, I’m not going to ask her— and I didn’t want to deal with it then. I can never recall really being uncomfortable with my sexuality, or having a discovery moment, or any of that. I just didn’t have the ability or the energy to have a big queer crisis in high school, which sounds horribly callous. Let me explain.

Between my freshman year and my sophomore year of high school, my hyperextension and my arthritis first began to appear. That began a chain of medical problems that ended me up in the pain management center at a children’s, when my parents finally wised up to the fact that I meant it when I said I didn’t want to live like that anymore, and I was teetering on the edge of ending it myself. In eight months, I had gone from a fourteen-year-old active dancer with mild seasonal depression to a disabled fifteen-year-old who could hardly get out of bed in the morning, though whether that was the depression or my leg and hands on any given day was anybody’s guess.

I was handed over to a shitty psychiatrist who thought my depression stemmed from guilt issues and my desire to fix everyone else’s problems. It didn’t. It stemmed from the massive amounts of physical pain I felt every day that I had no coping mechanisms for. I ended up walking out of her office twice: once, after she patted me on the arm and said I’d be be all right and that we could brainstorm new hobbies while I was sobbing about not being able to dance or play sports again, and then when her grad student wanted me tested for mental diseases involving hallucinations and delusions after I finally tried to talk to her about my writing process, one of the only things that was helping me cope. That second time, I walked away for good, with no tools in my arsenal to combat my new reality other than a festering hatred for medical professionals and a deep distrust of psychiatry that I carry with me to this day.

That year I saw a sports medicine doctor who would later attempt to extort money from my family and favors for his friends by holding drugs over my head. I fell and could not stand up in front of an entire hallway’s worth of students. I used a wooden cane that was the wrong height and had to sneak it past my parents because they thought I was faking it. There were three weeks where I slept twelve hours a day or more, just so I didn’t have to be awake and be living. I abused pain medication for the first time, and I went through withdrawal for the first time. I spent two months physically unable to write. I lost any faith I’d clung to in a god I’d been told since birth loved me; suddenly, he had a greater plan for me, there was meaning to my pain, there’s a reason for it, because that god would never make me suffer for no reason. I was forced to be confirmed as a Catholic anyway, or my parents wouldn’t help me pay for school. I slammed my leg so hard into the kitchen table that I passed out. My hands once hurt so bad I threw up all over myself while crying. I was told I could never dance again, and painting wasn’t a good idea, either. I became ambidextrous so I could feed myself when my left wrist went first, only to lose control of my other hand a month later. I had to eat with my hands for two weeks because I couldn’t hold a spoon, and even then, there was no guarantee it would work.

During that, during all that, I was exhausted. I didn’t have time to be worried about my queerness, nor did I have time to properly address it. I was busy trying to keep myself alive, and it was a violent, valiant fight to that I pulled myself through. During all that, who would I have dated? Who would I have been cruel enough to subject to dealing with me? I was volatile and depressed and taking it out on the people around me just as viciously as I was taking it out on myself. I barely had the presence of mind to have a few crushes in my middle two years of high school, let alone date, or have sex, or give a shit about what label I wanted. I knew I was queer. I’d have to be a fucking idiot not to know. I just didn’t have time to deal with it.

wildlinging: Hamlet Act 1 [inspired by mmorrow]

Tue, 21 May 2013 22:48:32 -0500

wildlinging:

Hamlet Act 1 [inspired by mmorrow]