This Absence. This Emptiness. This Hollowness. This Nothingness. I Feel Them Too Much.

In some versions of the story it wasn’t the sun that Icarus flew too close to- it was the ocean with it’s tantalizing blue depths and salt water that stripped his wings of glue and down down down he fell sinking into the waves no one ever taught him how to swim. in some versions of the story Persephone walked into the underworld with her head held high eyes forward ready to take and take and take she stole the pomegranate seeds and when Hades found out he was furious and sent her away but every six months the seeds brought her back to the gate and a crown made of thorns grew on top of her head and she was queen. in some versions of the story Artemis fell in love with a mortal and when he broke her heart she grew cold and unfeeling not even her brother could pull her from her darkness there are days when she still finds herself at the windowsill waiting waiting waiting for her lover to return knowing he’s with another. in some versions of the story Medusa grew lonely she lived in a garden of statues and no one came to visit anymore and all she wanted was someone to love she became angrier and angrier at the cursed serpents on her head until one day she grabbed gardening shears and one by one by one chopped off the heads of the snakes but with their life force went hers and they bled out together and with a knowing look in her eyes she faded away. in some versions of the story the Gods and monsters and legends are still among us in churches and diners and battlefields they sit hunched over on dirty porch steps with cigarettes in their hands or across from you as a dinner date they have become us in more ways than one in some versions of the story the myths never faded from our minds because they are still in front of our eyes and you are the main character you are the reason we are all still here.

You’ll never know how much you mean to the stars– Lily Rain (via wont-time-love-us)

"Grey time-worn marbles

Hold the pure Muses;

In their cool gallery,

By yellow Tiber,

They still look fair."

- Consolation by Matthew Arnold

Instead of doing literally anything else that may be considered “productive” I went ahead and made this.

I present to you my list of Classic Lit Authors Sorted into Hogwarts Houses:

William Shakespeare - Ravenclaw

Emily Dickinson - Hufflepuff

H. P. Lovecraft - Ravenclaw 

Leo Tolstoy - Gryffindor

Edgar Allan Poe - Ravenclaw

Oscar Wilde - Slytherin

Robert Ervin Howard - Gryffindor

Jane Austen - Ravenclaw

Mark Twain - Slytherin

Ernest Hemingway - Gryffindor

Aldous Huxley - Slytherin

Sylvia Plath - Ravenclaw 

Ray Bradbury - Ravenclaw

William Blake - Slytherin

James Joyce - Slytherin

William Wordsworth - Hufflepuff

Lewis Carroll - Ravenclaw

Walt Whitman - Slytherin

Ralph Waldo Emerson - Ravenclaw

T. S. Eliot - Ravenclaw

Victor Hugo - Gryffindor

F. Scott Fitzgerald - Gryffindor 

George Orwell - Slytherin

Virginia Woolf - Ravenclaw

J. R. R. Tolkien - Ravenclaw

Toni Morrison - Gryffindor

Mary Shelley - Ravenclaw

Percy Bysshe Shelley - Ravenclaw

Charles Dickens - Gryffindor

Charlotte Brontë - Gryffindor

Emily Brontë - Slytherin

Anne Brontë - Hufflepuff

George Eliot - Gryffindor 

Louisa May Alcott - Gryffindor

Joseph Conrad - Slytherin

Jack London - Gryffindor

Henry James - Ravenclaw

Bram Stoker - Slytherin

Franz Kafka - Slytherin

E. M. Forster - Hufflepuff

Ayn Rand - Slytherin

Joseph Heller - Slytherin 

Harper Lee - Hufflepuff

J. D. Salinger - Slytherin

Arthur Conan Doyle - Ravenclaw

Agatha Christie - Slytherin

Roald Dahl - Ravenclaw

Frank Herbert - Slytherin

Octavia E. Butler - Ravenclaw

Vladimir Nabokov - Slytherin

This is obviously not a complete list (there are 50 here) and there will be a follow-up with more in the future! I am very sure about some of these (anyone who has ever met me or looked at my blog knows how hard it was to restrain myself from putting Oscar Wilde first) but I’d love to hear other people’s opinions if anyone has some!

Special thanks to @amapofyourstars for helping me sort these people even though she had little to no interest in any of their lives.

“so maybe this bridge was always meant to burn / maybe we were handing the matches back and forth back and forth / waiting for someone to strike out / waiting for someone to say / okay this is enough / I need to see some light / I need to see some flames / let’s set this ablaze and not call the police / let’s close our eyes and run opposite ways / I think I need to get away from you for awhile / I think I need to make sure I can never come home to you again.”

— where did the fire go / it never kept us warm– lily rain

A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.

Kurt Vonnegut, Welcome to the Monkey House (via quotespile)

And in our eyes the same sadness, like a night landscape.

Marguerite Duras, from Blue Eyes, Black Hair (pub. November 1986)

Maybe I was destined to forever fall in love with people I couldn’t have. Maybe there’s a whole assortment of impossible people waiting for me to find them. Waiting to make me feel the same impossibility over and over again.

Carol Rifka Brunt

(via

purplebuddhaquotes

)