"Shall I dance them again, the nightlong dances?

Dance again with bare feet in the dew?

Shall I toss my head and skip through the penn fields

as a fawn slipped free of the hunt and the hunters,

leaping their nets, out-running their hounds?

She runs like a gale runs over the plain

near the river, each bound

and plunge like a gust of joy, taking her

dancing, deep through the forest

where no one can find her, and the dark

is free and its heart is the darkest green?"

- Robin Robertson's translation of the 'Bacchae' 

Painting by Arthur B. Davies.

Chalk

Why is it, when I attempt anything important to me, I must undergo metamorphosis?
Seeing my own reflection in the screen instead of ideas,
that at all other times, will sprout as spiteful as cornflowers,
I find a neon-blinded foul thing troubling to tolerate, 
and still, I can't look away.
As if it were Medusa, not Narcissus, enraptured by their own image,
horrified or full of pity for it, and in either instance,
unable to stop the process
as it slowly but surely turns to chalk. 

French turn-of-the-century Bicycle commercials

The long 19th century was a tumultuous time for the French. The great outcry of the 1789 revolution had been followed by war, economical instability, changing constitutions, a second revolution, and a complete reorganization of the city. With the arrival of la belle époque, the people wanted beauty and freedom, the promised rewards of all that they'd been through. So, it can be no coincidence that when the improved bicycle was marketed to the French public, it was with great emphasis on its revolutionary potential. Interestingly, it seems to have been especially the women's emancipation that inspired much of the symbolism. 

Which Victorian child are you today?

Marjorie is overwhelmed by the prospects of her future. 

Evelyn is apprehensive but determined to do what must be done. 

Alice has recently discovered Catholicism and is fervently ashamed. 

Bernard has made an enemy of the capitalist system and has no regrets, punishments be damned.

Madeleine is in control of her destiny and in need of no guidance. 

Clifford is celebrating the good things in life. 

Olga is fed up and has no fucks left to give. 

Hattie finds motherhood stressful but rewarding. 

Steven knows what you did. 

Camille Donxieux

Camille ou La Femme à la robe verte, 1866, Camille au métier, 1875. 

Snefnug hvirvler omkring lige uden for mit vindue

og jeg er irriteret over din medlidenhed.

Sincerely, yours

Roland Barthes writes that every love letter is written to someone, and it's true that you have been a frequent guest in my texts. At the time of dedication, it's an intimate act, an embodied part of the on-going dialogue between my inner-most self and you-in-me. And in returning to the site of text, I am resubmerged in its ritualized wishing-into-being, I am affectively returned to my relating to you, even if you are no longer the same you, even if I no longer long for you. 

Talking to someone in your mind only works insofar as there is still hope. Why would I write to a you who is not intimately known, being discovered with baited breath or wondered about? Except in memory, where you remain in the realm of the potential and I do not have to deal with what you became to me later. Disgusted. 

You are a golden, sunlight-on-cornfields force who makes my world bright. 

You are a darkness that swallows everything and leaves a trail of sweet sighing emptiness inside my mind palace. I don't go there often anymore. The walls are closing in on me and I'm not so drunk on what I might become as when I'd just discovered all of it. 

Sometimes you are me. Little young me with twinkles in your eyes and a thousand crowns to spend exactly how you want. I carry her safely tucked away in a pocket of wool behind my ribcage.

Really, obviously, you are always me. I am made of yous, as well. And I feel you, when I read the spaces where your name could never have been written, even when I don't always remember what it would have been. I feel you. 

And I cover you in wool and carry you, safely, sleepily, inside me.