(I am not a camera).

Memory, like perception, is a survival mechanism: it interprets our experience in ways that help us go on living.

do not

There are times in life when people must know not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach small children this.

— Terry Pratchett

teeter/totter

The present tense of regret is indecision.

— Cecil Baldwin, Welcome to Night Vale, “Eternal Scouts”

project day

"Don’t get all shiny and hard and special. Let yourself be odd and awkward, and hurt. You’ll be stronger and happier if you let yourself feel genuinely upset by this right now. Crumple on down into the carpet, and sob for a while. You need to remember this, and acknowledge that it upsets you, that you don’t want to do this to yourself again. If you deny that this hurts, though, you will do it again and again and again."

-heather havrilesky

this!

https://soundcloud.com/gabrielle-aplin/bastille-gabrielle-aplin

Spork 1.3

"Wanna make a monster? Take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable—your weaknesses, bad thoughts, vanities, and hungers—and pretend they’re across the room. It’s too ugly to be human. It’s too ugly to be you. Children are afraid of the dark because they have nothing real to work with. Adults are afraid of themselves.

Oh we’re a mess, poor humans, poor flesh—hybrids of angels and animals, dolls with diamonds stuffed inside them We’ve been to the moon and we’re still fighting over Jerusalem. Let me tell you what I do know: I am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good. The truth is complicated. It’s two-toned, multi-vocal, bittersweet. I used to think that if I dug deep enough to discover something sad and ugly, I’d know it was something true. Now I’m trying to dig deeper.

I didn’t want to write these pages until there were no hard feelings, no sharp ones. I do not have that luxury. I am sad and angry and I want everyone to be alive again. I want more landmarks, less landmines. I want to be grateful but I’m having a hard time with it."

— Richard Siken, excerpt from Black Telephone

on fate

-A number of stories emerged after September 11^th, 2001, from people who should have been in the Twin Towers at the time of the plane crashes; who, any other day, would have been. One man had an extra-long goodbye dropping his son off to his first day of kindergarten. A woman missed her bus. Another man had recently bought new shoes, which gave him blisters, and he was in Rite Aid buying Band-Aids at the time the plane crashed into his office window. 

The point is, I know that some things are beyond our control. I have a friend who believes that free will is a myth. But, some nights when I am driving alone across the Ross Island Bridge, I imagine swerving ever-so-slightly across the double yellow into the oncoming traffic. It’s not a suicidal thought – it has nothing to do with that. It’s about the choice. I could choose to do that, and it would change everything.

Is my free will another person’s fate?-