photos of dachas by Fyodor Savintev, published in Dacha: The Soviet Country Cottage (2023)
u know what makes me cry..... that one van gogh quote about life changing for the better..... “many people seem to think it foolish, even superstitious, to believe that the world could still change for the better. and it is true that in winter it is sometimes so bitingly cold that one is tempted to say, ‘what do i care if there is a summer; its warmth is no help to me now.’ yes, evil often seems to surpass good. but then, in spite of us, and without our permission, there comes at last an end to the bitter frosts. one morning the wind turns, and there is a thaw. and so i must still have hope.” yeah..... Crying....
“I look to her in the simplest, smallest moments, when she reads or drinks coffee or brushes her teeth and I am breathless, knowing it does not take a million dollar telescope to witness the crushing beauty of the universe.”
— Beau Taplin • T E L E S C O P E S
There is a musk that comes from academia, which I'll attempt to describe.
It starts with the smell of wood. Where a building isn't stone, it is old lacquered hard wood that has also been absorbing the elements for centuries. Outdoors, it is wet and slick, but indoors, the dryness preserves it, and absorbs the scents brought in such as leather and cigarettes and cigars and the spilled whiskey.
There is the scent of people as well, permeating throughout. Academia is often thought of as a solitary environment, but lectures and classes and clubs and parties, they bring together women, men and others in a tight space often. There's the scent of sweat and perfume and cologne, but also the inimitable aroma that comes from worn leather and damp wool. Breath these in deep enough, and your mind and soul are transported to events that have transpired over the course of decades, if not longer. The deep bellied laughter, the intimate whispers, and even the silence between two or more forbidden lovers, gazing from across the room.
Finally of course, there's the musk of books. Of paper, flax, cotton and leather, of the glue binding in the spine, and the collected dust of a hundred years. That scent is the book dying, the materials with which it was made slowly degrading over a prolonged period. A finely trained nose might even determine a book's age, from the distinct smell of the materials used by printers at the time.
Breath it all in, and let yourself feel everything that these fragrances evoke in your mind. Longing, desire, nostalgia, lust, anger, sadness, melancholy. The history that has passed may guide your present and future.
autumn through my eyes by @lazyumbreon
thinking about desire paths
One day you think: I want to die. And then you think, very quietly, actually I want a coffee. I want a nap. A sandwich. A book. And I want to die turns day by day into I want to go home, I want to walk in the woods, I want to see my friends, I want to sit in the sun. I want a cleaner room, I want a better job, I want to live somewhere else, I want to live.
"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."
Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]
you made crusty bread rolls… by gary johnson
"I am constantly trying to communicate something in- communicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones."
— Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena