The I Love You lighthouse is perched facing out into the Atlantic and was build 1855 and sends the first light 1860, on the exposed Minot’s Ledge — named after George Minot, an 18th-Century Boston Merchant who lost a valuable ship on the rocks prior to construction of the lighthouse. The ledge is part of the Cohasset Rocks, off Massachusetts, USA.
When, in 1894, a new flashing lantern was installed in the 34-year-old lighthouse it had a 1-4-3 sequence and very soon the number sequence was taken to represent I Love You (I /1 flash, Love /4 flashes, You /3 flashes). Over the years this simple lighthouse code has been a comfort to sailors from the area, their sweethearts and families.
“At the moment when Cosette emerged, bucket in hand, melancholy and overcome as she was, she could not refrain from lifting her eyes to that wonderful doll, towards the lady, as she called it. The poor child paused in amazement. She had not yet beheld that doll close to. The whole shop seemed a palace to her: the doll was not a doll; it was a vision. It was joy, splendor, riches, happiness…”
There are worlds out there where the sky is burning, and the sea’s asleep, and the rivers dream; people made of smoke and cities made of song. Somewhere there’s danger, somewhere there’s injustice, and somewhere else the tea’s getting cold.
I am OBSESSED with people telling me how they met the love of their life. Just found out my director met his wife through a misdirected email - that’s fate right there.
“I saw her last name was Jewish - and I’m Jewish, so when I corrected the email I told her Shabbat Shalom with a smiley face — this was the very beginning of the emoticon era, you understand. She had a watermark of a dog rescue at the bottom of her email, and I love dogs, so I found her website and there she was — all these videos of her rehabilitating dogs and talking about the organization. I fell in love with her just from those videos.”
“I asked if we could meet for coffee, told her I was looking for volunteer opportunities — which was halfway a lie — and she said ‘okay, but just so you know I have a boyfriend, so this is strictly business,’ and I was so disappointed, but I did want to meet her. We sat in that coffeeshop until they turned the lights out on us, and she broke up with her boyfriend the next day.”
MULTIPLE people in the notes have told me how important these tags are to them so here’s to keeping it in the main post.
[ID: A cropped screenshot of the posters tags on this tumblr post. They read:
“also they were in their forties at this point / not young lovers / which is a reminder that love stories happen at all ages”
This is my enneagram ode to my two favorite fours. And yes there are other fours in the series, Kieran and Matthew but I wanted this to be about Kit and my OC Alyssa and their dynamic.
Also I realized embarrassingly that I’ve been forgetting to use he/they pronouns for Kit the last couple fics. I am a fool. I blame the ADHD.
Cw: Mentions of ableism and autistic trauma.
I really recommend you listen to the instrumental of Four by sleeping at last while you read this.
“There’s a famous story that reminds me of you.”
“Yeah?”
“It involves a dog and a bone. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. A dog is chewing on a bone and then it comes across and lake and it sees another dog holding another bone. And it decides that it wants the other bone for itself as well. So it growls at the other dog and the other dog growls back.”
“Oh I think I know this one. But what the hell does this have to do with me?”
“Patience Ali. So the dog continues to growl to try and intimidate the other dog but it just growls back, so the dog opens it’s jaws to snap at the other, and it’s bone slips from it’s mouth and falls into the water below.”
And the dog is left staring at it’s own reflection.“
Alyssacouldn’t sleep again. It was a nightmare that had awoken her. Ice cold waters and cruel laughter that had her bolting upright in bed, clutching at her sweaty chest and gasping for air.
It’s alright. It’s over.
That was what she took comfort in everytime she woke up. Not that it wasn’t real because it was, but the knowledge that at least it was over now. She ran a sweaty hand through her poor hair, trying to flat it a bit. Obviously Alyssa was unsuccessful but the feeling and motion of stroking her hair soothed her.
The second thought that came to her frantic mind was Ty. A desperate urge to seek him out for comfort which she immediately scolded herself for internally.
You shouldn’t be so needy. It’s annoying.
Which of course then led her to wandering around the halls of the stupid institute aimlessly, trying to quiet her mind.
Alyssa would probably never feel comfortable in these walls. It wasn’t where she belonged. But then again where did she belong exactly? Back in New York with her pack? Or with her family? She had never really been able to feel like she fit in or belonged anywhere. Even amongst her own people she felt like an outsider desperately prancing around like a fool to gain their approval.
So they could tell her what she was missing. The piece. The spark. The thing that would make her fit and make all her parts make sense so people would stop leaving and rejecting her.
Alyssa swept her hair back into a low bun to get it off her neck. LA summers were torture already, especially to someone with sensory issues who grew up in New York, but the panic of the nightmare hadn’t helped.
She continued her way downstairs towards what she thought was the kitchen. Maybe some water would help.
The shaking had subsided and now panic gave way to crushing despair. The feeling that deep down she knew would never be fixed. Loneliness and self hatred wrapped up into a lethal combination. It was confusing, the shame she felt for wanting to wake Ty and ask him to hold her like a child because she had a bad dream. To whisper to her that she was loved and needed. That she mattered.
It was less about being afraid to be weak and more about the fear of being told that she was as insignificant as she worried she was. A worry that was confirmed for her everytime someone stopped answering her messages or stopped talking to her or turned on her so viciously for seemingly no reason.
Until she opened her eyes and realized that it was never real to begin with. None of it was. Just like her.
mitski, strawberry blond / e.c., love freely / chen chen, when i grow up i want to be a list of further possibilities / hanya yanagihara, a little life / interview with cohen by kris kirk, poetry commotion, June 18, 1988 / gabriela mistral, from a letter to doris dana
I just keep staring at this gif and thinking how John’s tone of voice is quite lovely and low and terse and maybe he would just kiss Sherlock to shut him up and get him to cooperate and and ?????
It’s 6am during the winter so it’s still dark outside. You both sit in the comfortably heated car as you drive through the city/town. You looked at the stars that are still visible, admire the colors of the rising sun, awe at the lights of buildings with signs lit or lights on that could be seen through the windows. You have the radio on max volume or have a playlist on shuffle. They quietly begin singing to the music before their voice rises. Soon you’re both belting along to the lyrics, hidden in your own little bubble of bliss. After a while you two get some coffee/tea/milk/juice and some breakfast. You park at the most secluded area of the place you call home and sit on the hood of the car and eat, enjoying each other’s presence.
You find a girl crying next to a grave. “What’s wrong?” You ask. She cries harder. “Nobody came to my funeral.”
Night watchman at a cemetary isn’t the kind of job most people want. I’ve always liked it, though. It’s pretty peaceful, most of the time, which is nice. Sometimes I get to chase off teenagers or would-be occultists or obnoxious drunks, which is fun. There’s a lot of entertainment in a good chase, at least for me, and scaring the crap out of them is fun too.
Sometimes it gets sad, though.
It was my first walkthrough of the night when I saw the girl weeping beside the grave. It happens sometimes, and I never chase them. The cemetary is for the dead and the grieving. They’re always welcome here.
I went over to her, careful to keep the grave between us so I wouldn’t scare her. “What’s the matter?” I asked gently. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
She shook her head, still weeping. “No-one came to my funeral,” she sobbed. “No-one at all.”
I checked the stone. She’d been about seventeen. An age of strong emotions and fierce resentments. “I’m sorry,” I told her, and meant it. “That’s… always hard.”
“If they cared about me, they would have come,” she wept. “This means nobody cared at all.”
“Not always,” I told her gently. “Sometimes it means that something else happened. If you like, I can try to find out.”
“Really?” She wiped her eyes. “I’d… I’d appreciate that. I’m Lucy.”
“Stanley.” She couldn’t shake hands, so I gave her a friendly nod. “Come with me, Lucy. I’ve got a laptop in the watchman’s hut.”
She followed me, drifting silently, back to the hut. I brought her in, and made two cups of tea, offering her one. “I’m not solid,” she said, her lip quivering. “I can’t -“
I showed her how to take it, the ghostly echo of the solid cup, and told her I’d learned it from the day attendant over at the columbarium. She’s Korean, and knows a lot about hungry ghosts. She sipped her tea while I opened the laptop and ran the usual searches.
I do this a lot.
Sure enough, there’d been three major car accidents between the area she’d lived in and the cemetary. There’s almost always at least one - there’s this one intersection that no exorcism, ritual purification or cleansing spell has ever worked on - and it usually helps. A lot of spirits want to know why someone they loved didn’t come.
My barricade day surprise is that I tracked down a copy of I Miserabili, published in 1966 and illustrated by the incredible Renato Guttuso!
His illustrations are absolutely out of this world and he uses so many different styles and levels of polish just in this book. I tried to show a decent sampling here while also getting the most impressive page spreads (imo).
Let me know if anyone wants to see illustrations of any particular character/scene because he drew them all and I mean that I will happily post more pics below of some faves. Marius looks like a particularly forlorn shade of grey rat in this one, I will say.
Trans-inclusive language in religious texts is SO IMPORTANT. There is nothing in some young people’s lives that can either validate or dehumanize them so quickly as how they see themselves represented in the words of their religion.
[ID text: Tweet by Twitter user @remembrancermx: “Found this in a new prayerbook I bought & now I’m sobbing. This was so important to find for Shabbat.”
Excerpt from Where Healing Resides by Mishkan R'fuah:
“A Prayer for Transitioning Gender
May the One who blesses our ancestors, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Leah, Zilpah, and Bilhah; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—bless me as I enter into this new chapter in my life. The world was not formed by a single act. Each and every day God renews the work of creation. May God grant me the strength to renew my own creation. May I open my heart and mind to continuous growth, unexpected change, and the perpetual unsettling, liberating expansion of being alive; may I have the courage to name and sanctify this moment of change that is shaping my body and soul in the image of the ever-evolving Divine. Blessed are You, El Shaddai, our God, the Renewing One of the world, who has allowed me to reach this time of transformation. And let us say: Amen.”
[id: three painted panels in gold and sepia tones. the first shows a girl standing on a porch, half-shadowed and smiling. the second shows another girl standing in waist-deep grass and smiling widely. the third shows them embracing in the same field. /end id]
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