salt of the earth

“They’re the salt of the earth, those girls. They don’t sit each night and compare notes on groups, criticising lyrics, asking if it’s valid. They just play the record… yeah, and maybe they dance. I love them. I love them dearly”

—	David Bowie

“I don’t want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.”

—

F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise  “I look at you and see all the ways a soul can bruise, and I wish I could sink my hands into your flesh and light lanterns along your spine so you know that there’s nothing but light when I see you.” — Shinji Moon “I am eternally, devastatingly romantic, and I thought people would see it because ‘romantic’ doesn’t mean ‘sugary.’ It’s dark and tormented — the furor of passion, the despair of an idealism that you can’t attain.” — Catherine Breillat This is a cool blurb I found on tumblr. I'm not especially religious, but I thought this was an interesting read: Sex and religion go together like peanut butter and mustard. In essence, they are often pitted against each other in a black and white battle of sin and purity to rival that of potter and voldermort himself. Saying the rosary and hooking up don’t exactly go together, I found this out the hard way amidst a cloud of guilt, self loathing and trepidation. To put it simply, I am a creature of kissing. Kissing in cars, on bridges, street corners (tre classy) and the occasional abandoned building. In a typical catch 22, teenage confusion moment, I am also a creature of religion. I came to a point in my seventeenth year when my spirituality and sexuality collided in an apocalyptic, internal battle for the history books. I had attended an art program and met a certain large-lobbed metal aficionado who was as different from me as about anyone I had ever met. While watching the shining with him one late night at the program, I discovered something eternally more frightening than jack nicholson’s demented grin; my sex drive.           Many religions advocate abstinence such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. As a child I would go to worship, and was told tales of the purity of women. It seemed to me that the moral weight of the world lay between the woman’s legs. Even as a kid I believed that my faith’s location was on the surface of my naked skin. This was all fine and dandy until puberty hit me like a brick wall, I distinctly remember praying for forgiveness in the school bathroom because of my desire to kiss  a short, brown haired boy with a lisp… on the lips. Middle school seemed to be a breeding ground for sinful behavior. Girls with tight T-shirts and glossy lips, boys whispering genitalia jokes and drawing a certain male reproductive organ on their desks. I will admit I felt a moral superiority in my shapeless overalls and avoidance of suggestive pop-music. I openly advertised my aversion to kissing, hugs and sustained eye contact. I would make faces at the TV when watching couples kiss in rom-coms, step outside at dances when slow songs came one (typically something by lifehouse or lips of an angel). Although Mr.Lisp and I went our separate ways, I will always remember writing long journal entries about him in my fuzzy, cat-shaped notebook… and then proceeding to tear them up out of shame.         Highschool came, a cesspool of hormones, sexual tension and awkward hookups, but there I was, still blushing at sex jokes. As my faith began to wain, I became more adventurous. I had my first kiss with a boy who’s last name still remains a mystery, a feat which made me feel foolishly daring and mysterious. I went skinny dipping with a boy who went on to compete in extreme bar-tending competitions in london. I bought one hideously lacy, pink bra at a thrift store which i proceeded to hide under my bed. There was still a pang of guilt, but it seemed that my sexual contentment and my faith where inversely related. I Began to wonder if I could be confident in my body and sexual identity, while maintaining ties to my religion. -treesandempathy

poison ivy

*this photo isn't from "Poison Ivy," but it's really pretty and is an accurate representation of the aesthetic i wish encompassed my life daily. drew's hair is the prettiest shade of pink ever, and the flowers are so pretty and this picture is just so pretty and perfect. her chipped nail polish also adds a special down-to-earth feel other than the fact that she is literally down to the earth. i just love this photo, i think it's one of the prettiest i've ever seen.

i just finished watching Poison Ivy. It was my first time seeing the movie. I loved every minute of it. It was so perfect and tragic. I felt the characters were lost and delirious, searching for home and belonging in a world tangled with weeds. Some may say Ivy was one of these weeds, but I disagree. You could see how pure she was, how genuine and down to earth. Perhaps her moments of depth and connection were merely snippets of her manipulative nature, but to me she was hopelessly lost - left blinded in a world unfamiliar to her. There is this one line where Ivy says something like, "My mom was dead long before she died." And to me, (SPOILER ALERT), Ivy was dead long before her body left the earth. It seemed the entire movie was documenting the slow decline of her death and demise. 

menorahs and trees

Happy Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Christmas/Solstice/other December holidays! I'm Jewish and an avid Hanukkah celebrator, but my family ironically opens presents on Christmas day and then consumes endless amounts of bacon to suffice our hunger.

This is honestly the most beautiful Christmas tree I've ever seen. Being Jewish, our house is regularly lacking a Christmas tree. I've proposed getting a Hanukkah bush, but the idea was shot down, as well as my dream for a bush as beautiful as this tree. It's okay, our menorahs make up for the lack of holiday foliage.

your life

“I want to be alone and I want people to notice me - both at the same time”

—	Thom Yorke  “I love you more than my own skin.” -Frida Kahlo

“Books are adventure. They contain murder and mayhem and passion. They love anyone who opens them.”

—

Inkheart

“No dreams impassion the sleep of this mahout’s helper, battered to death by an elephant after the boy teased it.” - National Geographic, 1971.

“Your life is not an episode of Skins. Things will never look quite as good as they do in a faded, sun-drenched Polaroid; your days are not an editorial from Lula. Your life is not a Sofia Coppola movie, or a Chuck Palahniuk novel, or a Charles Bukowski poem. Grace Coddington isn’t your creative director. Bon Iver and Joy Division don’t play softly in the background at appropriate moments. Your hysterical teenage diary isn’t a work of art. Your room probably isn’t Selby material. Your life isn’t a Tumblr screencap. Every word that comes out of your mouth will not be beautiful and poignant, infinitely quotable. Your pain will not be pretty. Crying till you vomit is always shit. You cannot romanticize hurt. Or sadness. Or loneliness. You will have homework, and hangovers and bad hair days. The train being late won’t lead to any fateful encounters, it will make you late. Sometimes your work will suck. Sometimes you will suck. Far too often, everything will suck - and not in a Wes Anderson kind of way. And there is no divine consolation - only the knowledge that we will hopefully experience the full spectrum - and that sometimes, just sometimes, life will feel like a Coppola film.”

—

Unknown

some of the greatest photos ever. i wish i knew who took them. i'm pretty sure they're from the 70s, just based off the color hues.

snowflakes are people

It's sad, because I've only recently realized that every single human is unique and special. I've only just come to the realization that all people are different; nobody is the same as another, nobody is the same at all. It's quite sad that it's taken me this long to really appreciate the individuality of every single person in society. For a long, long time I've always clustered the "mainstream kids" into a conformist category, which is wrong. I disagree with conforming, but to me it's such a complicated topic. Like, when and when aren't you conforming? I guess it's mainly just an issue of altering yourself in order to be accepted into a singular clique or group or stereotype to the point where you aren't really being your true, authentic self. But at the same time change is good, and nobody should be afraid to change.

I'm really glad that I'm now able to appreciate the individuality of all people. I like noticing the way people's faces crinkle up when they laugh, how they stand, how they walk... everything. Not in a creepy way, but just in a way that like.... it's cool to notice the little, tiny, miniscule things people do that make them different from everyone else. The details about people are the things that make them fascinating. I guess sometimes it's easy to overlook these little details, but I think they deserve to be noticed and appreciated. 

“I’m not fascinated by people who smile all the time. What I find interesting is the way people look when they are lost in thought, when their face becomes angry or serious, when they bite their lip, the way they glance, the way they look down when they walk, when they are alone and smoking a cigarette, when they smirk, the way they half smile, the way they try and hold back tears, the way when their face says they want to say something but can’t, the way they look at someone they want or love… I love the way people look when they do these things. It’s… beautiful.”

-Clemence Poesy

“you are flowers in my stomach

cutting me open nightly, blooming through 
the cracks of the ribs
i only want to be the sun for you.

-Elke River

perfect life. this is like the midnight diner excursion i plan to go on with my friends soon.

amazing amazing love love love love love

so incredible.

perfect life! music, guitar, pretty clothes.

i wanna find this place

beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful

perfect journey

swampy wonders

magical fantastical

this needs to be my wallpaper

love love love

so simple and pretty

These are some of my favorite photos of all time. UGHHH I literally love them so much you don't even understand. I'm going to print them all out and cover my walls in them. I'm going to go watch a Stonehenge documentary now via youtube <3 enjoy winter

psychedelic moods

FINALS ARE OVER I'M A FREE WOMAN. I feel as though I've just been granted the right to vote. Wow. This is just the epitome of freedom guys.

I currently have four zits. Whatever. I don't like wearing foundation it's the equivalent of wearing a mask to me. It makes me feel weird. I feel like zits are the same thing as underwear lines. Everyone tries to hide them even though it's something everyone universally shares. I don't care if my underwear line is showing... it's not like it's shocking or surprising I'm wearing underwear. I'm pretty sure most of the world does too.

“I could not become anything; neither good nor bad; neither a scoundrel nor an honest man; neither a hero nor an insect. And now I am eking out my days in my corner, taunting myself with the bitter and entirely useless consolation that an intelligent man cannot seriously become anything, that only a fool can become something.”

—	Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground

I am getting so restless with life. These people came to give a talk at my health class a few weeks ago. They gave us a survey thing to fill out. We basically checked boxes and at the end we were categorized into varying elements. I was a fire. That means I am energetic, feisty, loud, outspoken, adventurous, etc. I definitely identify as those things but I can also be very quiet and introverted. I'm actually really introverted about how I feel, but I guess that's to compensate for being so extroverted about everything else. I actually really disliked how these two women came in and started telling me and my classmates who we were and what element we fell under. They didn't know us, they didn't know the experiences we'd been through or anything. I just felt it was incredibly rude and abrasive of them to start telling us who we were, especially since we're still figuring it out ourselves. 

I am just craving adventure and experience and excitement. I've been so swamped with school so I can actually have a future, but it's just frustrating that I don't always have the time to just have fun and go do the things I wanna do. Like go sit on a roof all night and look at the stars. Just simple things like that...

This photo symbolizes a never-ending road of adventure and experience I plan to discover and venture through at some point in my life. It'll be a jungle, with vines and leaves and wild animals, and it'll be perfect.

I like these pictures.

just kids

Wow. Today I got an iPhone 4, and I feel like a new woman! I was in desperate need of an update from my old phone from 8th grade, and since nobody wants iPhone 4's since the iPhone 5 has come out, iPhone 4's are being sold for spankin good deals! It's white and as beautiful as a fluffy marshmallow in hot chocolate on a cold rainy day with the absence of sun and positivity gleaming from the sky. I love it.

I'm currently sitting down, refraining from studying for my finals by dousing my taste buds in Ibarra hot cocoa as well as Cheez-Its, the world's finest cheese-cracker creation. The hot cocoa's delicious sweetness is too tempting- I can't wait for it to cool, can't wait for the marshmallows to melt into a gooey concoction; I have to drink it right now. My tongue may be burnt, but I am satisfied.

I pick up a Cheez-It and begin to chew, licking the cheese powder from by thumb and forefinger. Dang. That's good.

As technology evolves, I remain the same. A kid.

Just Kids.

Photography by Robert Mapplethorpe. He is so cool.

Robert Mapplethorpe

Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith

Robert Mapplethorpe

Andy Warhol

two men.

dan savage sucks shit

I love when you read things and a lightbulb just clicks on. This lil "movement" has always been in the back of my mind, but after reading this I finally realize how screwed up it is. Teachers can be really annoying, cruel, hypocritical people. They clearly have favorites, they clearly favor, and they expect you to treat them with respect even when they're disrespecting you. Not to mention Dan Savage is a savage beast with destructive powers... I'm not a fan. I'm going to make an ANTI-DAN SAVAGE poster and hang it above my bed in honor of my distaste towards him. Tell me what y'all think about the lil article-esque thing below once you finish reading, and your opinions on the situation as well as Dan Savage as well as teachers as well as bullying!

I had a ton of swear words in this little blurb originally, but I decided to delete them. I hardly swear ever when I speak, so I don't know why I keep doing it on my blog. I don't think swearing is really necessary - it doesn't put further emphasis on one's beliefs or make anything anymore convincing; to me it just reads as anger and a stubborn outlook and makes someone unapproachable. I think I come off really angry on this blog and I'm really not - I am about some things but I don't yell at stray cats in my free time or anything. I just have strong beliefs and I'm starting to think, just after rereading posts and such, that it comes off I'm an angry feminist with anger issues who happens to be really angry. I think I'm just going to stop swearing because I feel I can easily put emphasis upon things I believe in without using language like that. Wow... the irony because I just looked at my title...

***

“The reason “It Gets Better” caught on with politicians and celebrities is because it’s great PR and it requires absolutely NOTHING from them in the way of real action.”

—

someone on datalounge who I cannot quite disagree with (viaaliapenny) I just need that entire comment on my blog: “It’s just a bullshit PR campaign, nothing more. Telling kids to put up with bullying until they leave school is not constructive advice. It’s cruel. School boards, school administrators, teachers, etc., need to have zero tolerance policy for bullying. It’s not uncommon for teachers to bully unpopular kids themselves. That’s where the changes need to be made. But that requires action, and it requires standing up to conservatives who fight anti-bullying campaigns tooth and nail (often claiming that bullying gay people is a christian right). The reason “It Gets Better” caught on with politicians and celebrities is because it’s great PR and it requires absolutely NOTHING from them in the way of real action. It’s cruelty to tell a kid to tolerate bullying. And to whom is this campaign even directed? The fat gay kids that Savage makes fun of himself? It’s a campaign aimed at good looking white boys with great bodies and upper middle class families. Yes, THEY will do better once they start hitting the gay bars. But for most average looking kids from working class families, they will find a gay community that’s often very much like High School, with cliques and teasing and rejection. Gay kids need to get support from society, and the kids that need that most are the kids that Savage himself would mock and demonize; kids of color, working class and poor kids, fat kids, kids with acne, and kids who are otherwise marginalized in society AND in our community. Even when you look at the videos on YouTube, you see politicians who’ve come out against marriage equality, sports teams that would never accept a gay person in their ranks, and celebrities who just want some good press. The gay kids who participate are often great looking white boys, who you know will be accepted in the gay community, and are already leading charmed lives. It’s a campaign for the people Savage likes…sexy white male teenagers with athletic bodies who will be greeted with open arms. I’ll take the campaign seriously when Savage speaks out on behalf of marginalized gay kids, and criticizes the gay community for iots racism and other prejudices. But he’s the biggest bigot and bully of the bunch, and that’s been proven from his many years as a “columnist.” I often couldn’t believe how conservative, prejudiced, and intolerant he was in those columns.” (via davyjonesing) Also trans people.  Dan Savage doesn’t care about the T, and he’s been actively, grossly cissexist on many distinct occasions.  (via misterstibbons) Not to mention asexuals, women, lower-class people, etc. Let’s face it kids, Dan Savage is the most hypocritical douchebag in the queer rights movement. But yes I agree with everything that has been posted above.  (via daelhorhota) don’t forget that he thinks bisexuals in general need to “make up their mind” and that male bisexuals are essentially unicorns (via freakingdork) I once had an extended argument over when he was glitter-bombedbecause he’s a huge hypocritical transphobe. You can’t claim to be a trans* ally and then hurl transphobic slurs at your enemies. There’s no complicit-by-ignorance-and-stupidity argument to be made there - that’s just straight up transphobia. He is not an ‘activist.’ He is making a great living by essentially capitalizing on the intersection of his hegemonic identities and a burgeoning pinkwashed economy. (via trungles) liking all the commentary here, and yeah that’s always bugged me about the “it gets better” campaign; it should be made better for kids NOW, not just waiting for them to get older and for their life to stop sucking (via pentapod-monster) Dan Savage is a fat shamer, too. Basically he endorses all kinds of bullying as long as it’s not directed towards his particular demographic, so the fact that he launched this campaign is laughable to me. (via bubonickitten)

creep

“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.”

—	Franz Kafka

kiss the boys and make them die

I am in love. I've never loved a photo series more than this in my entire life. This is honestly so perfect and spectacular in zillions of ways. I can see the story that would play out here. There is a girl gang, called The Boy Snatchers, and basically, when they get angry at a girl, they kiss her boyfriend and literally suck the life out of him and kill him. They are also very cult-like, and swore to each other never to date boys EVER, because they wanted to be best friends for forever and never leave each other. But then this new boy comes, and one of The Boy Snatchers, Suzy, falls for him and her and new boy fall in love. But the girl gang members are NOT happy about this, and resolve that the only way to fix this problem is to kill her and the boy. So first they go after the boy, and kill the new boy by kissing him (that's how they kill boys). Then they go after Suzy, and they stab her and then eat her blood. Then, they go and get new boy's body, and Suzy's body, and they dig a shallow hole in the forest. They lay both bodies next to each other, and cover the little earth bed in flowers and pretty things, like autumn leaves and butterflies. Then the other three girls in The Boy Snatchers swim away in a river and never return to the little town again.

This is a photo series by Petra Collins for Rookie Mag!