By David G. Forés

Shoutout to all the cavemen who gave their lives to find out which plants are poisonous and which you can eat

Requested! Mountain goat + Books + Bisexual (plus Doll Skin)

I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it — to be fed so much love I couldn't take any more. Just once.

— Haruki Murakami

“He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” - Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

via @the-book-diaries

The gods have always been there. Apollo pops down to say hello and gloat and flirt with some random mortal. Athena comes down to chat and argue with the scholars and those too poor to get into school but still smart enough to rig running water to their houses. Persephone will make your garden overflow with crops and flowers if you leave a dog bone for Cerberus on your doorstep. Dionysus makes fun of the European Jesus and turns teenagers water to wine if you plant grape vines outside your window and leave water on the windowsill. Artemis will come down and hunt, looking for excuses to fight and grapple. If you leave out a peacock corsage for Hera the day before your wedding she’ll bless it and Hestia will provide your feast.

The gods have always been there, but they have not always been kind.

Women cut their hair jagged and run their eyeliner so that Zeus won’t find them attractive. People have to throw offerings into the sea before entering and women don’t wear revealing outfits for fear of attracting Poseidon’s attention. Hera will send Artemis to kill any man who she thinks is unsuited for his wife. Apollo can’t stand a one night fling. 

The gods have always been there, but they have not always been kind.

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)

Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us.

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (via merulae)