“In their effort to keep us from hurling our curdled dreams at one another, the faiths have the good sense to provide us with angels to worship and lovers to tolerate.”

— Alain de Botton, Religion for Atheists

“How many kingdoms know nothing of us!”

— Blaise Pascal, Pensées

(Source: circulationwithinmyskull)

Blood test results tomorrow for the fatigue and pain I’ve been experiencing for three months. If they’ve found something it’s probably going to be Bad News, and if they haven’t then it’s harder to diagnose. Have had to quit my job and defer my university exams because of this; I haven’t really talked about it much because I know so many people have it so much worse, and I still have a lot of mobility compared to some.

Having to lie down for such extended periods of time is not very good for my mental stability. While the thoughts and beliefs are mild in comparison with my previous bouts of depression, it is still very uncomfortable inhabiting my own body and mind at the moment. I find myself fantasising for other people’s lives, ignoring all the ways I could strive to make my own happier and productive in order to wallow in easy self-regret.

Times like these, when I’m spiraling in a complex of nausea and banality, my aspirations seem absurd and words just seem so far away.

“Some people underestimate how erotic it is to be understood.”

— Mary Rakow

(Source: kitty-en-classe, via a-thousand-desires)

“Through the centuries, while their European counterparts in Europe grew up on stories that depicted women as weak, helpless, sinister, or untrustworthy, Native American women grew up hearing tales about the powers and strengths of women. They heard stories about women healers, women warriors, women artists, women prophets. But above all, they heard stories of woman as the divine creator, woman as a supernatural power, woman as a force of transformation in the universe. There are dozens of variations in the details, but the core meaning is consistent: women, and the female forces of the universe, are strong. Sometimes they are so powerful that they can change the course of the world. Often, once they take a stand, they change their own lives and the lives of those around them.”

— Susan Hazen-Hammond, Spider Woman’s Web: Traditional Native American Tales About Women’s Power

(Source: iygrittenothing, via kittensandscience)

“

Every language has its own version of um. French has euh, Korean eum, Finnish öö, Russian eh; even sign languages have signs for um. The fact that most languages have some kind of um suggests that it serves a natural and important language function.

So what is this important language function? Why do people say um? Not because they are nervous. Scholarly studies of the word reveal that the use of um does not correlate with anxiousness or any particular personality traits. Rather, um is used to signal an upcoming pause—usually uh for a short pause and um for a longer pause. The pause may be needed in order to find the right word, remember something temporarily forgotten, or repair a mistake. Um holds the floor for us while we do our mental work. It buys some time for thinking.

”

—

When and Why Did People Start Saying “Um” When They Talk?

So fuck you, brat who told me to stop saying it when I was thirteen.

(Source: mjlogue, via kittensandscience)