sea level down
personal inspiration blog.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
— Stephen R. Covey (American educator, author, businessman, keynote speaker; 1932-2012) via readerscorner
 (via petitpoulailler)

(Source: onlinecounsellingcollege, via petitpoulailler)


“He’s very special. He’s an invention. The closest thing I could find to that was the fallen angel. The fallen angel believes in the beauty of the darkness. That is so incomprehensible to us, we can’t understand it, and so we’re attracted to it. So I wasn’t reading textbooks about mental disease, I was imagining how it was to be Satan.” (x)
Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.
— Flannery O’Connor; Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (via wordpainting)

(via my-ear-trumpet)


khenti-renaissance: 1931: Mafia boss Joe Masseria lays dead on a Brooklyn restaurant floor holding the ace of spades.

Oh my fucking god pudgy elderly Daniel and I-no-longer-have-cartilage-between-my-knees Ezra are the best. They’re both such cheery old men.  Ezra needing a fucking cane and Dan with bifocals guffaws foreverrrrr

I’m having such a bad case of feels right now.

a lifetime ago pt. 3

If you’ve ever had a turbulent relationship with a sibling that’s both heavy on the I believe in you fuckass but if you fuck up you’re on you’re own theory then you’ve got the gist of Ezra and Mary’s swanky thang. There’s equal measures jealousy and hate and love, but mostly backstabbing that they’ve calculated into their plans so its like betrayal but not really? It’s getting shanked repetitively and knowing it hurts being aware it hurts and not justifying the end result with such and such is worth the scar. That’s not the type of character they are. But y’know Mary is scars inside and out and she rolls with that because its what drives her. Her anger never bubbles over the top because she fine tunes it to goddamn perfection and she runs on it like a goddamned pro.

Ezra is another can of crazy beans that just… bears a whole other post. But he loves Mary, truly he does, and its not like loving her hurts him but he knows what an obvious show of affection means in their world and that would destroy what Mary has built for herself. He realizes he’s a lucky asshole in the fact that he was born a male, a white male, with the only unfortunate leaning being that likes to court disaster and have its babies and then set those babies on fire because HA its goddamn hilarious.

Mary loves Ezra but she has no issue selling him to the highest bidder. This is probably due to the fact she knows he’d have a goddamn ball fucking around in that situation. Mary envies Ezra for being so fucking aware, but Ezra envies Mary for being so drawn to earth. (And isn’t it ridiculously poetic as shit that symbolism-wise Dan is the earth and Mary is the sky and Ezra is the sea, look at that shit.)

But when the diarrhea cocktails really hit the fan and people are getting flayed left and right they have each others backs, because they just know. They know each others prices and limits and what they’re willing to do, to each other and the world, to survive.

picturesofwar: A young British boy reading outside the ruins of a bookshop after suffering bomb damage during the Blitz. London - October 8, 1940.
howtoseewithoutacamera: by Jacob Aue Sobol Beijing, China, 2012. From Arrivals and Departures.