Fascination proceeds fear.

Portrait of Maitê Proença by Luiz Garrido.

If you need to crash and crawl, do it to get higher.

Into the Ether, For Usher Maripossa’s 2013 campaign | Photograph by Lissy Elle.

Se estendo o braço, chego exactamente aonde o meu braço chega ―
Nem um centímetro mais longe.
Toco só onde toco, não aonde penso.
Só me posso sentar aonde estou.
E isto faz rir como todas as verdades absolutamente verdadeiras,
Mas o que faz rir a valer é que nós pensamos sempre noutra coisa,
E vivemos vadios da nossa realidade.
E estamos sempre fora dela porque estamos aqui.

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Si extiendo el brazo, llego exactamente hasta donde mi brazo llega ―
ni un centímetro más allá.
Toco sólo donde todo, no donde pienso.
Sólo me puedo sentar allí donde estoy.
Y esto causa risa como todas las verdades absolutamente verdaderas,
pero lo que hace reir en serio es que nosotros pensamos siempre en otra cosa,
y vivimos evadidos de nuestra realidad.
Y estamos siempre fuera de ella porque estamos aquí.

********************************************

If I stretch out my arm, I get exactly where my arm gets ―
Not even a centimeter farther.
I only touch where I touch, not where I think.
I can only sit down where I am.
And that’s funny like all really true truths,
But what’s really funny is that we’re always thinking something else,
And we live truant from our reality.
And we’re always outside it because we’re here.

―Alberto Caeiro [Fernando Pessoa heterony], Poemas Inconjuntos

Photograph by Peter Sutherland.

(Lady Bracknell)  ― Good afternoon, dear Algernon, I hope you are behaving very well.

(Algernon) ― I’m feeling very well, Aunt Augusta.

(Lady Bracknell) ― That’s not quite the same thing. In fact the two things rarely go together. 

― Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest

The End of the Day

In all its raucous impudence
Life writhes, cavorts in pallid light,
With little cause or consequence;
And when, with darkling skies, the night

Casts over all its sensuous balm,
Quells hunger’s pangs and, in like wise,
Quells shame beneath its pall of calm,
“Aha, at last!” the Poet sighs.

“My mind, my bones, yearn, clamoring
For sweet repose unburdening.
Heart full of dire, funeral thought,

I will lie out; your folds will cling
About me: veils of shadow wrought,
O darkness, cool and comforting!”

— Charles Baudelaire

Excerpt of Les Fleurs du Mal | Illustration for the La Mort section by Carlos Schwabe.

Lubed soul.

Photograph by Roman Walczyna.

Since the Hesperides themselves are mere symbols of the gifts the apples embody, they cannot be actors in a human drama. Their abstract, interchangeable names are a symptom of their impersonality.

— Evelyn Harrison

heaveninawildflower:

‘The Garden of The Hesperides’ ( 1869-1873) by Edward Burne-Jones (1833-1898) | Oil on canvas.

And so I watched you from afar coming all the way whispering the wind.

Patti Hansen over Manhattan, New York, 1977 | Photograph by Helmut Newton.

[Inspirational track here]

Doing down the road to sickness.

RN7, France 1954 | Photograph by Christer Strömholm.

New blood for hire.

Forever Dark editorial | Photograph by Michael Donovan for Vision China.