Quill - Tumblr Posts
Something I realized was worth keeping in mind lately: your body doesn’t just keep the score on trauma, you know.
Like we’re starting to give some lipservice to the idea that trauma, that stress and harm and damage, live in our “bodies” even if we don’t consciously/cognitively acknowledge them, but there’s two small problems with this idea.
One is the idea that there is a brain-body split, because there isn’t. Your brain, the place where your cognition occurs, is just another part of your body. Your conscious memory is also part of your body keeping the score. I could go on about this for a while, but I’ll refrain for now.
Because almost more important to this issue is that your body also keeps all the other scores.
The smell that calms you down. The fact that you feel better after a big hug. The way your favourite kind of tea helps ground you. The sudden joy at a particular song.
All of these things also live in your body. Your comfort food being comfort food is a score your body is keeping. How to read. The comfort of a warm bed. All of that knowledge lives in your body, in its memory too.
Nurture your passions, not just your obligations. You’re not here to just pay bills.
In the future, children will think our ways are strange. "Why do old people always grow so much milkweed in their gardens?" they'll say. "Why do old people always write down when the first bees and butterflies show up? Why do old people hate lawn grass so much? Why do old people like to sit outside and watch bees?"
We will try to explain to them that when we were young, most people's yards were almost entirely short grass with barely any flowers at all, and it was so commonplace to spray poisons to kill insects and weeds that it was feared monarch butterflies and American bumblebees would soon go extinct. We will show them pictures of sidewalks, shops, and houses surrounded by empty grass without any flowers or vegetables and they will stare at them like we stared at pictures of grimy children working in coal mines
take figures out of their boxes btw. sew patches on your favorite jacket. go to bed with your favorite plushes. wear the pants you usually save for special occasions. draw something cool on your wall. put a sticker on your laptop. dye your hair and pierce your lips. glass is meant to break, metal is meant to rust. items are meant to be used. that's how the world knows that somebody loved them.
"Do you ever dream of land?" The whale asks the tuna.
"No." Says the tuna, "Do you?"
"I have never seen it." Says the whale, "but deep in my body, I remember it."
"Why do you care," says the tuna, "if you will never see it."
"There are bones in my body built to walk through the forests and the mountains." Says the whale.
"They will disappear." Says the tuna, "one day, your body will forget the forests and the mountains."
"Maybe I don't want to forget," Says the whale, "The forests were once my home."
"I have seen the forests." Whispers the salmon, almost to itself.
"Tell me what you have seen," says the whale.
"The forests spawned me." Says the salmon. "They sent me to the ocean to grow. When I am fat with the bounty of the ocean, I will bring it home."
"Why would the forests seek the bounty of the oceans?" Asks the whale. "They have bounty of their own."
"You forget," says the salmon, "That the oceans were once their home."
i hate it when i cant even write a poem about something because its too obvious. like in the airbnb i was at i guess it used to be a kids room cause you could see the imprint of one little glow in the dark star that had been missed and painted over in landlord white. like that's a poem already what's the point
how do draw good
fill 14 sketch book
bad stuff is good stuff bc you made stuff
do you like sparkle???? draw sparkle
draw what make your heart do the smiley emote
member to drink lotsa agua or else bad time
d ont stress friend all is well
your art is hot like potato crisps
don’t let anyone piss on your good mood amigo
if they do
eat
them
“i once saw a scientist on television. and she was speaking generally about science things (being a scientist and knowing science things etc.) and, speaking generally i am not a science person, and while i respect them, i do not have much interest in scientists or science things. so i went to switch the channel at the precise moment that the presenter sitting beside the scientist asked: what, in your opinion, is the most ASTOUNDING fact about the universe ? and this stopped me. because it is not often that television presenters ask such interesting questions, and the scientist was pursing her lips in a thoughtful way that made me think i wanted to her her answer to the interesting question. after a pause, she did not look directly at the camera, but directly at the presenter. did you know, she said, that there are atoms in your body. the presenter laughed. of course, he said. what else would my body be made of? well, said the scientist, and i did not need to look at the television screen to know she was smiling. do you know where those atoms came from? well, said the presenter. and he did not say anything else. i snickered from my place in the armchair and the scientist smiled again. the most ASTOUNDING fact that i have ever known, she said, is not a fact, specifically, but the story of every atom on this planet. the ones that make up the grass and the sea and the sand and the forests and the human body. these atoms came from stars. the presenter sat forward and so did i. stars, continued the scientist, are mortal like humans. they die, and, in their later years, are unstable. it pains me a little to say it, but a star’s death is far more dramatic than a human’s. is it? asked the presenter. the scientist was looking at him still, and i felt strongly as though i was listening in on a very private conversation. it is, the scientist nodded. the stars i am referring to, she said, collapsed and exploded a very long time ago, and scattered their enriched guts across the entire universe. here, she paused, and her words caught in my mind in a way that made me wonder if she was a scientist or a poet. their guts, she said whilst sipping from a glass of water, were splayed across every inch of time and space. these guts were made of the fundamental ingredients of life and existence. carbon and oxygen and nitrogen and hydrogen and all the rest of it. all in the bellies of these stars that flung themselves across the universe in protest when it was their time to die. and then? asked the presenter. the scientist’s lips quirked upwards. and then, she said. it all became parts of gas clouds. ones that condense and collapse and will form our next solar systems - billions of stars with billions of planets to orbit them. and these planets have the ingredients of life sewed into the very fabric of their own lives. so, she said, smile still playing on her lips - where do your atoms come from? from those gas clouds, said the presenter. no, said the scientist. from those stars. every atom, every molecule, every inhale and exhale and beat of your heart, is traceable to the crucibles that cooked life itself. and you are sitting here and so am i and so are your viewers at home, and we’re all in the universe, aren’t we? yes, said the presenter. but i’ll tell you what’s even better, the scientist smiled wider. the universe is in us. your atoms and my atoms and your camera men’s atoms came from those stars. you’re connected and relevant without even having to try. you are made of stardust and the fabric of the universe. that is the most ASTOUNDING fact i can tell you. the presenter smiled and the scientist smiled wider and i smiled too, and later i switched the channel to something less scientific and wondered if i should feel small, tiny and insignificant in relation to the stars that collapsed and exploded and threw themselves everywhere. and that is how my mother found me, sitting on the sofa. and she asked me what was wrong, and i said, nothing. i’m just a lot smaller than stars are. my mother is very literal woman. as such, her natural response was: of course you’re not. don’t you see how small stars are? that’s only from a distance, i said. maybe you’re looking at yourself from a distance too, she said. and she left the room and it is years later now, but i still think about the scientist and what she said and my mother and what she said and i still see the presenter on television. and i still think that the stars are very big but now i think, they are in me. so i am big too.”
—
‘the most astounding fact’ - j.c., inspired by neil degrass tyson’s talk of the same name (via girlonfired)
@galacticsuggestions LOOK FRIEND!!!!
(via n–e-v-e-r-l-a-n-d)
Bro, you ok? Bro, humans aren’t separate from the ecosystems around us. We’re a part of them, bro. Bro, we’re never going to have absolutely zero effect on ecosystems, because we live here, bro. Bro, I never said it had to be a bad effect. We don’t have to immediately be perfect either, bro, sometimes doing what you can is what you can, and its way better than nothing. Bro what do you mean humans are a plague. You’re starting to sound a bit like an ecofascist, bro… Bro?
