you are dear to yourself in the morning

Carved ripples on granite. Shen Lieyi.

Sergiu Ciochina (Moldova-France b. 2001) Nights in Amsterdam #2, 2025 oil on panel

Now you've lived with me for five years. Five is like the number of toe beans on one of your feet. When I clip your nails five is when we're halfway done. But we're hopefully not even halfway done with how long we get to be together. I'm gonna have to figure out new ways to help you count.

Maggie Smith, “Wild”

— Anne Carson, The Gender of Sound

Tree Swallows by Linda H. Dulak - Audubon Photography Awards

barn swallows depicted in the “spring fresco”, akrotiri, thera, greece. c. 16th century BC

this fresco is from ~3600 years ago

Cat Napping,  before 1940

A few minutes of a summer solstice morning with indigo bunting and chipping sparrows singing

"Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

And maybe no one will ever know. But maybe also some day more than a century down the line, maybe some idiot will be crying into her coffee because of what you died trying.

Always falling into a hole, then saying “ok, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of the hole which is not the grave, falling into a hole again, saying “ok, this is also not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of that hole, falling into another one; sometimes falling into a hole within a hole, or many holes within holes, getting out of them one after the other, then falling again, saying “this is not your grave, get out of the hole”; sometimes being pushed, saying “you can not push me into this hole, it is not my grave,” and getting out defiantly, then falling into a hole again without any pushing; sometimes falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying “this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole,” all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together; sometimes the willful-falling into a hole which is not the grave because it is easier than not falling into a hole really, but then once in it, realizing it is not the grave, getting out of the hole eventually; sometimes falling into a hole and languishing there for days, weeks, months, years, because while not the grave very difficult, still, to climb out of and you know after this hole there’s just another and another; sometimes surveying the landscape of holes and wishing for a high quality final hole; sometimes thinking of who has fallen into holes which are not graves but might be better if they were; sometimes too ardently contemplating the final hole while trying to avoid the provisional ones; sometimes dutifully falling and getting out, with perfect fortitude, saying “look at the skill and spirit with which I rise from that which resembles the grave but isn’t!”

Abandoned buildings reclaimed by the desert sands ➤ Kolmanskop, a ghost town frozen in time. ph. Mark Daniel

oh emily wilson translation of the iliad we’re really in it now

End ID

Jan Erik Waider

Jellyfish mosaic tile piece, Havana, Cuba. From Great Houses of Havana.

[ID: A mosaic done in small tiles of blue, grey, green, and gold; it depicts a gently lapping body of water, with a jellyfish jetting along in the upper left corner.]