Sun-Hyuk Kim, Whispering
I like how this looks like lungs (among other things).
(Source: impartart, via twain-muffin)
beautiful & heartbreaking:
When I was a little girl, I took ballet lessons in a community hall that was situated in front of a large graveyard. It used to be a church, I guess… but it hadn’t been that in a long time.
Sometimes I’d sneak out during the last few minutes of class, or would wander while I waited for my mother to pick me up. The cemetery fascinated me, and if I’d had the opportunity I could easily spend hours just reading gravestones. Every grave held someone new; a lifetime of memories, regrets and hopes, ideas and family… all gone and rotted away as though they never existed. All that’s left is the stone, and a coffin six feet under.
There was a small section toward the back, one of the oldest parts of the cemetery, that held many babies and children. Tiny little graves with tiny little headstones. Dates, most from the early 1900’s, that told a story of grieving mothers who lost their babies mere days or months after their birth. I circled each grave, running my fingers along the stone, exploring the cracks where moss was seeping through. There were so many of them; tiny headstones, tiny bones in broken rows.
How did this happen? Did they get sick? Did they have accidents? How is it that little babies die? Babies aren’t supposed to die. What I understood about death was that it happened to old people, or sick adults. I had a friend who died of cancer a few years prior, and I only has small flashes of memory left of him: jumping across a ditch and darting through an old road, his hand taking mine, shaggy black hair. He was older than I was, and I was very fond of him. The little gravestones made me think of him, and how unfair and unnatural it seemed that he got sick and died. I hadn’t processed or grieved his passing; it didn’t make sense to me. Children shouldn’t die. Little babies don’t die. I was so young when he died, and it only took a few years for his memory to blur, and fade away. I can no longer remember his name.
Twenty years later I lay in a hospital bed at midnight, staring down at my newborn son’s lifeless body. He was so small - with thick black hair, and little soft fingers that refused to grasp mine. I thought about the tiny gravestones and the tiny slabs of cement below them shaped like cradles, as though their broken bodies were laid down inside and entombed forever. I had pressed my hands into each one, searching for whatever was left and desperate to form a connection, to understand; if I tried hard enough, for long enough, maybe I could pull the memories of their lives from the tombs. Blood from the stone.
I held my son for hours, touching his skin and trying to connect to what was left of him before his image faded like the memories of my friend. If I held him close enough, for long enough, I could absorb his body back into me and keep him forever; I’d never have to feel the pain of his loss. I felt like I was that little girl again, staring at little gravestones and trying to understand why babies die.
(Source: lepetitmermaid)
Post-mastectomy tattoos by Tina Bafaro. Photos by Bafaro.
Utterly stunning
Wow!
EPIC
this is lovely—& what an awesome idea.
(via ibloodbenddicks)
semaphorism
n. a conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject but don’t go any further—an emphatic nod, a half-told anecdote, an enigmatic ‘I know the feeling’—which you place into conversations like those little flags that warn diggers of something buried underground: maybe a cable that secretly powers your house, maybe a fiberoptic link to some foreign country.
see also: me whenever something medical gets brought up (well, when I’m not compelled to be all, Would You Like to Hear About My Life-Threatening Infection & Extensive Hospitalization in the Wake of a Ruptured Appendix?…which maybe I should bust out less often).
anyways, this is a good word.
(via novazembla)
circulatory system pressure points, late 19th-early 20th c.
I don’t care if this is supposedly a scientific reference illustration…I’m calling it art.
(via scientificillustration)
art with embroidery by Ana Teresa Barboza Gubo
so wonderful. I know I’ve posted some of her work before, but this collection has even more images.
(Source: f-l-e-u-r-d-e-l-y-s, via babyslime)
sometimes I am startled by how turning 30 became such a huge catalyst in my life
how did 30 get to have this enormous significance?
I changed everything: location (four states away), relationship status (unhappy to ~SINGLE~), living situation (shared house to my very own half-a-duplex), general outlook on life (eh to I’MMA MAKE THIS SHIT GOLD) and other people (ball-o-insecurities to I’M AWESOME AND I DON’T CAAAAARE, also sticking to my standards re: decent human beings) and my body (oh noes imperfection to FUCK YES I LOOK GOOD).
I am so much happier. My quality of life has improved 500%. I am finally fucking comfortable with myself, my body, my brain. I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing most of the time but you know what? that’s just fine. I’m getting there. I’ll figure it out.
and all because 30.
I don’t get it
but it’s pretty fucking great.
I think that a lot of people, but especially women between the ages of 25 and 30, have this kind of transition where suddenly other people’s interpersonal bullshit that seemed really kawaii when you were 16 suddenly is revealed for the destructive, selfish, sometimes abusive but essentially toxic melodrama that it is and you just start unceremoniously (or ceremoniously, depending on your personality type) hacking dead wood people out of your life like the gangrenous limbs they are.
I think it’s also that you start to view alone-ness and even loneliness differently; it becomes less “state to be avoided at all costs” and more a poetic yearning toward self-love.
I have a lot to learn from you, a lot to learn from myself four years ago. I think I’ve gathered too much “fear of loss” into my heart, which all too easily turns to “fear of risk”.
Thanks for reminding me how to be awesome. <3
This is really interesting, because most of what you described is what I’m feeling at the moment, only, I’m at the beginning of the process and realizing that alone-ness isn’t something to avoid. Cutting out toxic people in my life made me realize that that’s what they are -toxic,and I gained nothing from them. Especially during my earlier years when I was woried about societal pressures of fitting in and I would just let shit fly and I didn’t know any better.
Now I’m in my mid twenties, and I don’t feel as much self-hatred and pressure as I did when I was younger. I feel as if I have a lot more to learn, but that will come and right now I am satisfied where I am as a person.
My next-youngest sister is about to turn 27 and her fingers are starting to itch for the chopping machete.
We’ve spoken on it at length. She’s been in a relationship for about a decade, and the bullshit is starting to get older than old, it’s rotting and starting to stink up the place.
I think it’s partially to do with finding you own things, and processes, and priorities that seem to almost shift themselves, and you find yourself looking around at other people like, “at what point did I convince myself I needed you? At what point did I realize I don’t?”
just wanted to chime in quietly & say that everything about this exchange really spoke to me—particularly the bold, but all of it really. I was more like 23/24 when my big sea change happened (maybe being in a long-term relationship with someone 4 1/2 years older accelerated my perspective a bit), but yeah, it’s such a strange & interesting process—& one that’s kind of hard to articulate, which is why I appreciated reading through all of this. I feel like this is one of those posts I’ll want to go back to & re-read.
I’m about to turn 30 in a couple months, & while there’s a little bit of existential angst that comes with any birthday—even moreso since I almost died from an infection shortly after my 27th which is a whole other story—on the whole I just feel SO grateful to be where I am now, as opposed to what 20- or 17-year-old me would’ve expected.
on a related note…
