Latest Posts by apollonianposts - Page 2

My aesthetic is like dark academia but the medieval Iranian / Islamic golden age version

Took me until about halfway through college before I realized “study” means “play with the material in a variety of ways until you understand it” and not just “read the assigned chapters and do the homework” and I think that probably should have been discussed at some point prior to that.

Aida_diop_1 [ A i d a D i o p ]

📸 by saidmhamadofficial

"Saga (I won't forget you when I'm gone)", Andrei Voznesensky (translated by metamorphesque)

"Close your eyes", Paruyr Sevak (translated by metamorphesque)

― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

when will someone make a sapphic dark academia book WHEN??

Leah Raeder, Black Iris

for days of hauling books

Here is my controversial mental health take of the day: your negative emotions are not the problem, its the way you handle them that becomes the problem. You being jealous that your friend hung out with someone else and didn't tell you, is actually not the problem. It's when you choose to get angry with them, yell & lash out, or passive aggressively do something they hate to get revenge, or when you ignore them and isolate and self harm, those are all harmful ways to cope with your feelings. Rather than react, take the time to validate yourself, because it's normal to feel jealous or left out and chances are that there are deeper abandonment wounds that are triggered here, probably from your childhood. Take a moment to pause before you react. Then try a direct and open communication to your friend instead. Because I guarantee you they'll respond so much better to you opening up a conversation with, "hey, I felt left out when you hung out with so-and-so without me, can we talk about that? And maybe hang out soon?" Rather than the now laborious and torturous emotional work of having to feel guilty for your rage when you lash out or get revenge. Splitting is normal, because who doesn't get pissed off at someone you're close with? Your switching emotions from highly affectionate to devaluation are not the problem. Everyone gets disgusted & hurt by someone they love at some point in our lives, especially small offenses, I guarantee you chances are that person isn't doing it on purpose and would gladly like to know how you feel, these emotions and conversations are normal and necessary for humans to have. But the inability to clearly and directly communicate your feelings and needs to that person when you are hurt is what makes it toxic. You can absolutely learn how to handle your reactions in a safer manner, how to identify when you're feeling hurt, and how to communicate and ask for clarity and resolution rather than react and escalate. Communication is the backbone of every relationship you will ever have. This is what the emotional work of most personality disorders looks like.

one thing i need to start living by is “become the thing that you want” if i want friends who throw themed parties maybe i should start throwing those parties. if i want someone who writes me love letters maybe i should start writing letters for the people i love. if i want to hang out at museums and pretty cafes maybe i should invite my friends to these places. and maybe even then i won’t find the kind of people i want to be around. but then i would have become the exact person i want to be around. and maybe that’s good enough.

Every time I read or watch Lord of the Rings I can’t help but think about how Tolkien had survived one of the bloodiest, most cruel, most dirtiest and darkest wars in human history, came back and wrote this:

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

And this:

"'I wish it need not have happened in my time,' said Frodo.

'So do I,' said Gandalf, 'and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.'"

And this:

"I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."

And this:

“Many that live deserve death and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the wise cannot see all ends."

And this:

“True courage is about knowing not when to take a life, but when to spare one.”

And clearly they were all written partly because he survived the war, because of what he’d seen and done and learned. But at the same time the unwillingness to lose faith, the courage and strength that this man had to believe in these things after going through hell! It makes the nihilists look so cheap, so uninteresting! People who’ve went through concentration camps and wars believe in humanity anyway, isn’t that proof that hope and love exist? And many, many, many of them did not return or returned broken and cruel and traumatised to the point when no faith in others was possible for them, and nobody can blame them. But there were many who refused to lose faith and hope. They have seen some the worst that life has to offer and came back believing that we shouldn’t be eager to deal out death and judgement and should love only that which the sword defends.

No matter how many people say that humanity is horrible and undeserving of love, and life is dark and worthless, and love doesn’t exist I remember this and have hope anyway. Because there were people who have actually had all reason to believe in the worst and still believed in the good, so the good must be real. The good is real, even despite the evil, and we must trust in it.

Vardges Petrosyan, Years Lived and Unlived (translated by metamorphesque)

Literally unfollowing every single celebrity that comes across my timeline and I encourage you to follow the same.

Mohja Kahf, “Most Wanted”, Hagar Poems

Nikki Giovanni, The Collected Poetry, 1968-1998

the vocabulary of loss is the dictionary

It’s crazy when you stop to think about how many times you’ve thought to yourself, “This is it. I just can’t bear to do it anymore. I’m done.” And yet here you are. You’re still breathing, still living, still fighting for joy, for life, for light, for love. And you are loved. For as much as you may be struggling right now, you’re here. You’re strong as hell. Don’t forget it, kid. 

musings on the sun

christina perneta, noor hindi, vincent van gogh, jeanette winterson, zinaida vysota docenko, anne sexton, olga kos, khalil gibran

gentle reminder: nothing in this world has the power to take away your worth. not what's been done to you, not the mistakes you've made, not the things you've failed to do, not the assertions other people make. you are breathing. you are alive. you are a person. nothing else is needed to give you value.

― Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, This Is How You Lose the Time War

[text ID: I love you. I love you. I love you. I'll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You'll never see, but you will know. I'll be all the poets, I'll kill them all and take each one's place in turn, and every time love's written in all the strands it will be to you.]

for days of hauling books

what r ur top books of all time

The Metamorphosis, The Castle, Letters to Milena by Franz Kafka

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (no, it's not too long - if anything, it should've been longer)

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Samvel by Raffi

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Fish in Exile by Vi Khi Nao

Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend by Hermann Hesse

South of the Border, West of the Sun by Haruki Murakami

1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante

All the Lovers in the Night by Mieko Kawakami

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

when will someone make a sapphic dark academia book WHEN??

Leah Raeder, Black Iris

musings on the sun

christina perneta, noor hindi, vincent van gogh, jeanette winterson, zinaida vysota docenko, anne sexton, olga kos, khalil gibran

When a physicist falls in love :)

Richard Feynman's love letter to his deceased wife, 1946.

What a beautiful book. The afterword of made me cry after a long emotional journey of small glimpses of his life:

"...the coffin had been covered with yellow flowers, 'his favorite color [...] a symbol of the light of which he dreamed both in his heart and in his work.'"

— Van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Something not enough people have been discussing about Oppenheimer is just how accurately they portray what the wonder and awe of physics feels like. I remember watching the thought sequences and near obsession Oppenheimer had with stars and quantum mechanics, and between the visuals and the music, it just resonated *so hard with me.*

The phrase, "can you hear the music?" so perfectly describes what made me fall in love with physics in the first place. It's something so *beyond* the scope of human existence; a hidden score that the universe harmonizes to. I so often feel like movies either downplay science or glorify it to seem less taxing and tricky than it is, but I feel like Oppenheimer found the sweet spot. To quote someone I saw review the trailer, they "made scientists (and for that matter physicists) cool again." Anyways, just thought that was neat and figured I'd share my nerdy little thoughts since there's so much barbenheimer everywhere and I can't seem to find just Oppenheimer appreciation. Do love barbenheimer though.

forever in love

with your dark night

forever in love

with your dark night