Victorian scientists were particularly interested in [the question of animal suicide], according to historian Edmund Ramsden in a 2010 article. Humane societies were eager to prove that animals experienced humanlike emotions, and animal suicides offered proof. A series of such stories began to appear in periodicals in 1845. One involved a depressed Newfoundland dog that repeatedly leapt into the water, kept its limbs still, and held his “head determinedly under water for a few minutes.” Other dogs drowned or starved themselves after losing their owners. A deer jumped from a precipice to avoid capture by hunting dogs. A duck drowned itself after the death of its mate. Scorpions were thought to sting themselves when surrounded by fire. No matter the motivation, self-destruction appears to be something that exists in even the simplest life forms. Single-celled marine algae engage in programmed cell death when exposed to stresses that they’re fully capable of overcoming. Researchers recently discovered that the “suicide” of some cells promoted growth in the survivors. Like infected mole rats or bees that abandon the colony to prevent an epidemic, algae die for the good of the community.
When you’re down, when you’ve been kicked down in the street and then kicked a few more times until you’re bleeding and your teeth are out, then you only have up to go. You get reborn again, and expectations aren’t so great because they’ve taken you away. It’s beautiful to be down there. It’s so beautiful.
—David Lynch (via enflurane)
(Source: lazy-flower)
Your handwriting. The way you walk. Which china pattern you choose. It’s all giving you away. Everything you do shows your hand. Everything is a self-portrait. Everything is a diary.
—Diary, Chuck Palahniuk (via siftingflour)
(Source: harboured)
You really don’t understand the beauty in death do you? The atoms that make up your body become part of the earth and the universe. You aren’t becoming nothing when you die. You become everything. The purpose of life is to live. Who needs more than that? It is wonderful and it is enough.
We only write about two feelings: one is the first day of summer when you and all of your friends are standing on the edge of a cliff watching the sun set and being overcome with all of your hopes and dreams at once. The other is when you’re walking alone in the rain and realize you will be alone forever.
—Johnathan Pierce (via actualpeople)
You smell like a flower that is neither alive nor dead, because no one has changed its water for weeks. You have a sleepy smell, like when you wake up in the morning and you’ve been dreaming too long.
—Legături bolnăvicioase (Love Sick)
(Source: larmoyante)
Alone With Everybody, Charles Bukowski, August 16th 1920 - March 9th, 1994
the flesh covers the bone
and they put a mind
in there and
sometimes a soul,
and the women break
vases against the walls
and the men drink too
much
and nobody finds the
one
but keep
looking
crawling in and out
of beds.
flesh covers
the bone and the
flesh searches
for more than
flesh.
there’s no chance
at all:
we are all trapped
by a singular
fate.
nobody ever finds
the one.
the city dumps fill
the junkyards fill
the madhouses fill
the hospitals fill
the graveyards fill
nothing else
fills.
My sin, my soul: "How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)"
by Junot Diaz
Wait for your brother and your mother to leave the apartment. You’ve already told them that you’re feeling too sick to go to Union City to visit that tia who likes to squeeze your nuts. (He’s gotten big, she’ll say.) And even though your moms knows you ain’t sick you stuck to your…
by Lemony Snicket
In 1996, Tracey Emin lived in a locked room in a gallery for fourteen days, with nothing but a lot of empty canvases and art materials, in an attempt to reconcile herself with paintings. Viewed through a series of wide-angle lenses embedded in the walls, Emin could be watched, stark naked, shaking off her painting demons. Starting by making images like the artists she really admired (i.e. Egon Schiele, Edvard Munch, Yves Klein), Emin’s two-week art-therapy session resulted in a massive outpouring of autobiographical images, and the discovery of a style all her own. The room was extracted in its entirety, and now exists as an installation work.
(Source: commovente)
Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
—Miyamoto Musashi (via heartmindawakening)
Haruki Murakami, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
