21:21

Marchesa | Spring/Summer 2017 Ready to Wear Details

(and then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom)

Then let me say one more thing. It’ll clear the air. I may have come close, but I never had what you two have. Something always held me back or stood in the way. How you live your life is your business, just remember, our hearts and our bodies are given to us only once. And before you know it, your heart is worn out, and, as for your body, there comes a point when no one looks at it, much less wants to come near it. Right now, there’s sorrow, pain. Don’t kill it and with it the joy you’ve felt.

It’s a very Greek idea, and a very profound one. Beauty is terror.Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it. And what could be more terrifying and beautiful, to souls like the Greeks or our own, than to lose control completely? To throw off the chains of being for an instant, to shatter the accident of our mortal selves? Euripides speaks of the Maenads: head thrown I back, throat to the stars, “more like deer than human being.” To be absolutely free! One is quite capable, of course, of working out these destructive passions in more vulgar and less efficient ways. But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.

for @garglyswoof

Even after everything we’ve been through, would any of us go back to the world we’re used to?

“The absence of pain led to an absence of fear, and the absence of fear led to a disregard for consequence.” x

“When we are asleep in this world, we are awake in another” -Salvador Dali

We were like gods at the dawning of the world, & our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.

Look in the mirror and you’ll know. Look into your own eyes and tell me you are not heroic, that you have not endured, or suffered, or lost the things you care about most. And yet, here you are, a survivor of Hell’s Kitchen, the hottest place anyone’s ever known. A place where cowards don’t last long, so you must be a hero. We all are. Some more than others, but none of us alone. Some bloody their fists trying to keep the Kitchen safe. Others bloody the streets in the hope they can stop the tide, the crime, the cruelty, the disregard for human life all around them. But this is Hell’s Kitchen. Angel or devil, rich or poor, young or old, you live here. You didn’t choose this town, it chose you. Because a hero isn’t someone who lives above us, keeping us safe. A hero’s not a God, or an idea. A hero lives here, on the street, among us, with us. Always here but rarely recognized. Look in the mirror and see yourself for what you truly are. You’re a New Yorker. You’re a hero. This is your Hell’s Kitchen. Welcome home.

J. R. R. Tolkien