R. F. Kuang🔛🔝

i read babel late last year and it left a gaping hole in my heart that has yet to be filled.

"Alice sat watching, cradling her beer, and she was so happy she could have cried. Here she belonged. Here she could utter things, could be honest about where her mind had drifted, and they wouldn't look at her like she was mad. All her life she has bumbled through social contact like the only actor who'd forgotten to look at the script. She has been the weird one, the troubled one, the one no one wanted to sit with. But they were all the weird ones here. And here no one punished you for caring too much, thinking too deeply. Here you could jump down any rabbit hole you liked, and everyone would tunnel down with you." — R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

katabasis really said hey never kill yourself because of cinnamon buns and the sensation of grass on your feet and the sparkle of the stars at night and a weekend off and the crash of the ocean waves and the color green and the loved ones around you - even though academia may make you feel like a dried out and empty husk the world around you is never dried out and empty and living life is a wondrous gift - and she's so right!!! Wow!