5 Favourite Youtube Documentaries

Sometimes, and only sometimes, she drips with melancholy.

Dreaming of a time when all that existed were two curled bodies, intertwined in thought and mind.

But more often than not she smiles with false teeth.

Interlaced fingers, a soft note of contentment, kisses, sweet nothings and bittersweet smiles.

so we've talked about southern gothic but what about northern gothic? is that a thing?

There wasn’t so we invented one!

Southern gothic is a conventional literary genre, but northern gothic fiction would just get encapsulated in the overall Gothic genre. BUT. Tumblr made a meme. Because of course we did. It’s here: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/regional-gothic.

So far I’ve found Midwest Gothic: here here and here

Southern California Gothic, which is  popular (because of fucking course): here here here here and fuckin here

Northern England Gothic: here and here and here

not to mention chucklefucking Alaskan Gothic: really? i mean really?? fuck you. fuck you alaska.

And fuck me there’s even Gothic subgenres for cities that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Kansas City. Minneapolis. Small town Michigan Gothic?? Toronto? Yeah fucking Toronto.

In fact, there’s assorted Canada Gothic? There’s  so much hell-forsaken Canada Gothic, too fuckin much. 

International Gothic? Fuck this. There’s So Much Australian Gothic. There’s Finland Gothic. There is so much more and I want nothing to do with it.

But the worse, the absolute worse of the whole satan-forsaken toxic hellpile: Ohio Gothic. I hate Ohio. I am. from. Ohio. I was born there. One day I will die there. I fear Ohio. Because in Ohio: “Holes in the sidewalk. Holes on the street. Holes on the freeway. Holes in your mind.” And Ohioans know: HELL IS REAL.

Home Alone Gothic

You lock all the doors day or night. You tell yourself and others it’s so no person can break in, but you know you’re protecting yourself from something much worse.

The house ghost watches you from the top of the stairs, disappearing when you look in it’s direction.

It’s eerily quiet.

You thought you shut the basement door, but it’s always open when you walk by again.

What is that sound?

Your dog stares down the hallway and whines at nothing.

You know there’s something.

You go down to the basement to get something. There’s a being at the end of the hall. You are paralyzed. Its eyes stare into your soul as it approaches you. When it gets close it disappears.

You feel different and go back upstairs without grabbing your item.

You don’t even bother shutting the basement door.

There’s blood on the kitchen counter. You ignore it.

Suddenly it’s dark out. How long were you in the basement?

You close the curtains and blinds, knowing they don’t stop anything that truly wants to see inside.

The front door isn’t locked anymore.

Your favorite show goes to commercial, so you go to the kitchen to grab a drink. You come back to the TV playing static. The channel hasn’t changed. You sit and watch anyway.

The being from the basement has replaced the house ghost’s spot at the top of the stairs. It doesn’t let you go.

There’s a knock on the door. You realize every door was knocked on at the same time.

You haven’t seen your dog in a few hours, but you hear it whining from a location you can’t get to.

Your family member gets back home, they look different from when they left. An entirely new face.

They shut the basement door.

The dog greets them, tail wagging.

The TV plays the news.

The kitchen counter is blood free.

“Why are the curtains closed?”

They open them. Sunlight pours in.

It’s the middle of the day.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it a thousand more times: No piece of dystopian fiction has ever been a prediction of the future. They are observations and criticisms of the present. 

The Morning After I Killed Myself

The morning after I killed myself, I woke up.

I made myself breakfast in bed. I added salt and pepper to my eggs and used my toast for a cheese and bacon sandwich. I squeezed a grapefruit into a juice glass. I scraped the ashes from the frying pan and rinsed the butter off the counter. I washed the dishes and folded the towels.

The morning after I killed myself, I fell in love. Not with the boy down the street or the middle school principal. Not with the everyday jogger or the grocer who always left the avocados out of the bag. I fell in love with my mother and the way she sat on the floor of my room holding each rock from my collection in her palms until they grew dark with sweat. I fell in love with my father down at the river as he placed my note into a bottle and sent it into the current. With my brother who once believed in unicorns but who now sat in his desk at school trying desperately to believe I still existed.

The morning after I killed myself, I walked the dog. I watched the way her tail twitched when a bird flew by or how her pace quickened at the sight of a cat. I saw the empty space in her eyes when she reached a stick and turned around to greet me so we could play catch but saw nothing but sky in my place. I stood by as strangers stroked her muzzle and she wilted beneath their touch like she did once for mine.

The morning after I killed myself, I went back to the neighbors’ yard where I left my footprints in concrete as a two year old and examined how they were already fading. I picked a few daylilies and pulled a few weeds and watched the elderly woman through her window as she read the paper with the news of my death. I saw her husband spit tobacco into the kitchen sink and bring her her daily medication.

The morning after I killed myself, I watched the sun come up. Each orange tree opened like a hand and the kid down the street pointed out a single red cloud to his mother.

The morning after I killed myself, I went back to that body in the morgue and tried to talk some sense into her. I told her about the avocados and the stepping stones, the river and her parents. I told her about the sunsets and the dog and the beach.

The morning after I killed myself, I tried to unkill myself, but couldn’t finish what I started.

are men okay?

Arabic dark academia

Having tea first thing in the morning, the afternoon, evening, night and whenever you have nothing to do and whenever you have everything to do

Practicing calligraphy, hoarding calligraphy pens and quills like a dragon hoards its jewels

Youre now a calligragon btw

Pretentious hand written letters

Fragments of poetry and prose on the wall

In Egypt you can buy a vintage gramophone (as far as I remember)

Wrinkling your nose at orientalists who have clearly never been anywhere near the culture they're trying to portray.

Appreciating the orientalists who have in fact been there and paint like it. (Sorry to disappoint but there were never sexy slave babes roaming the streets)

Mourning for the scholars of Al Andaluas and times when Arabic was the language of science

Arguing over e'arab (the value of a word with regard to others in the sentence) and balagha (it translates to "eloquence" but is more like a complex version of figures of speech) of words

Arabic being such a complex language you get carried away sometimes

Passing the allotted wordcount so you start going over your paper and compressing a whole sentence, consisting of a conjunction, a subject, a verb and two objects into a word in desperation

Words like فأسقيناكموه (faa'skainakumooh) meaning "and so we have let you drink it" being an example.

Tea over burning coal. Over logs (hatab) tea over bokhour/oud hits different and you know it.

Brewing coffee over low heat and humming to Layali Al Ouns

"No offense but I like real coffee" when someone mentions starbucks

Um Kulthoum and Asmahan are superior you cant change my mind.

NO I DID NOT FORGET ABDUL HALIM HAFEZ I WANTED HIM A BULLET OF HIS OWN.

Fareed al atrash concerts at 3 am.

Nothing you ever cook will be under seasoned.

Reciting poetry to yourself in the mirror

Big chunks of jewelry (usually gold) engraved or woven through with intricate patterns and swirls. Wearing four bracelets in one hand is absolutely fine and under dressing is a myth

Owning swords is not out of fashion (ancient arabs were well known for their swordsmanship) but using them is, unfortunately <3

Wondering how they won wars with these swords. I couldn't even lift it enough to stab myself if I wanted

Extra names. People called شهد honey (shahd), جمال beauty (jamal), زهرة flower (zahra), ليلى night (laila), سماء sky (samaa), مهند/سيف sword (mohanad/saif) and صفاء purity (safaa) like it's the most normal thing in the world (which it should be, along with names of ancient gods)

Poetry from the abbasid era describing palaces and fountains and music so eloquently your heart skips several beats and you wonder how it is still beating at all and if, after all, you have been born in the wrong era.

Classic poetry from the school of Apollo brimming with romance and yearning you have never seen matched.

Poems that tear at your heart and stitch it whole with every bayt (verse? The equivalent for it) and you keep coming back for more.

Stories so well told that you swear you can see the princes and charmers and musicians and dancers all flicker to life in the flames before you

Historical masjids and churches.

Going to the palaces and shrines and towers from the ancient days of yore

Not exclusively (as neither is anything on this list) arabic but BRAIDS and braid jewellery that clinks when you shake your head

The unwavering belief that poetry is meant to be sung.

Singing poetry because it is meant to be sung

Thick eyebrows

Lining already lash lined eyes with kohl.

Beautiful brown eyes. Honey eyes. Chocolate eyes. Freshly turned earth eyes. Eyes that hold all the ethereal beauty of the world.

Hair styled in dark, thick curls or braids

Savouring the way the words move around from your throat to your chest to the tip of your tongue, like liquid gold,

The sweet music from the strings of a qitharah (string instrument)

Scented candles are cute, but have you ever heard of oud (perfume infused wood)? Anyhow one of my Sudanese friends make it AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL.

Wanting to study with the scholars of baghdad and azhar so bad

Recognizing that for all your culture, some of it is inspired by others and that's okay.

Please add what you can to this list. It is far from complete.

Trying to fall in love is like trying to make your heart beat backwards. It can’t be done. I am already what you are. And so we don’t fall in love; we simply notice that we are in love already, and always have been. We don’t fall in love; it is the ‘we’, the ‘me’ and the ‘you’, the ‘inbetween’, that falls away in love, revealing the intimacy of our own absence. We are all so deeply in love that we don’t realise it.

Jeff Foster (via lazyyogi)

"We both worked at Orchard but at separate times. He was there for a year, me a year later, then again the year after that. He went shopping there a lot and we talked some, then one day he asked me on a date and you know how things go. We had both gone to the same high school and didn't even realize it; never once had we seen or heard of each other. Funny how things like that happen."

The Big Dipper Never Sets ✨

Look up on a clear night in the Northern Hemisphere, and chances are you’ll spot the Big Dipper — one of the most recognizable star patterns in the sky.

It’s not a constellation, but an asterism: a prominent shape made of stars that’s part of a larger constellation — in this case, Ursa Major, the Great Bear.

What makes the Big Dipper special is that it’s circumpolar — it never dips below the horizon at mid to high northern latitudes. Instead, it appears to rotate around Polaris, the North Star, staying visible all year long. As Earth spins and the seasons change, the Dipper slowly pivots through the night sky, pointing in different directions depending on the time of year.

For centuries, sailors, travelers, and stargazers have used the Big Dipper to find true north and navigate by the stars. Its reliability makes it both a celestial compass and a familiar anchor in the ever-shifting sky.

So the next time you’re under the stars, find the Big Dipper and know that you’re looking at a cosmic constant that has guided humans for generations.