I have mixed feelings about everything
This beautiful university – makes me feel like an unfinished page in a coloring book and the illegible scrawling on a bathroom stall that so clearly, so unclearly, are words of encouragement
This sweet, energizing coffee – has become a dependency, a weary blizzard of half-closed eyes and the intense craving of bitterness on my tongue
These organized flower beds—were so expensive, yet hungry children cannot be nourished by their sweet nectar by looking with their eyes, but at least; these students who tried harder than you by taking advantage of the privilege that you didn’t have, they; can have something to take for granted when they walk into their Eurocentric history class
These intelligent textbooks— seem to be written by mechanical humans taught by utopia that there is only one way to learn, only one way to identify who deserves to fully reach their goals, but clearly, we’re not all smart enough to confine our life solutions with artificial pencil led into a centimeter wide window of opportunity
These passionate groups of awareness and activism –only mean that there’s something unjust to be acted upon. I’ll hold the signs, but does that mean you’ll read me? I’ll scream in solidarity but does that mean you’ll hear me? I’m just that song that you haven’t heard over enough to have a meaning.
These hardworking, strong parents – are driven and mighty only because they were once weak, once conquered, and dammit, don’t you forget that you hurt me. Pressed teeth against the face of someone who was already suffering, like pulling rusty nails from a home and watching that home crumble. I bet you didn’t think that the damaged had the ability to maintain stability.
But you, Darling, you. You are the only thing I am sure of. With you I have no questions, only answers and these answers are so much louder than the erasable scratches I can make on a three hour exam into my future. I am not wondering if you can read the goose bumps on my skin like braille because you feel me. You feel my thirst for coffee before I can open my half-closed eyes and watch me dismantle rosebuds into explosions so that the petals surround us, allowing somebody to truly see what it’s like to feel like one of many but willing to detonate for the sake of perspective. I have mixed feelings about everything, but darling, not you.
Yesterday at SLUTWALK :)
At one magical instant in your early childhood, the page of a book—that string of confused, alien ciphers—shivered into meaning. Words spoke to you, gave up their secrets; at that moment, whole universes opened. You became, irrevocably, a reader.
- Alberto Manguel (via thelifeofabookjunky)
(Source: spencervon)
I think I’d give almost anything on earth to see you writing a something, an anything — a story, a poem, a tree, that was really and truly after your own heart.
- J.D Salinger, from “Seymour: An Introduction” (via violentwavesofemotion)
Sex: Intelligent Intercourse
Why smarties have less sex
Tina Fey and scholar James Franco are some of the hottest names in Hollywood—and they’re as smart as they are eye-catching. But for ordinary eggheads, the intellect that serves so well in the boardroom might need an assist in the bedroom.
“Intelligence is negatively associated with sex frequency,” says Rosemary Hopcroft, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. “It’s a bit dismaying.”
And people with higher education levels generally have lower numbers of sexual partners. The latest National Survey of Family Growth shows that, for example, men with college degrees are half as likely to have had four or more partners in the last year as men with a high school education alone. (Or at least, they’re half as likely to admit it, points out Anjani Chandra, a health scientist and demographer at the Centers for Disease Control.)
Why? “It’s hard to pick apart,” Chandra says. But the sexual habits of teens might offer a clue. Carolyn Halpern, a professor at the UNC School of Public Health, found a high concentration of teen virgins at the top of the intelligence scale. She thinks the smartest kids might hold off on sex because they’re thinking through its potential consequences.
But that doesn’t tell the whole story: The same bright teens are just as likely to postpone relatively innocuous activities like kissing. “It’s hard to imagine a 15-year-old wouldn’t kiss a boy because she’s worried about getting pregnant,” she admits. “You have to ask: Are these choices or questions of opportunity?”
She’s not implying that gifted kids are homely rejects—Halpern, along with other researchers analyzing the link between sex and intelligence, controls for attractiveness, personal grooming, and affability, and the observed effect still holds. It might be a question of priorities: “Pursuing education takes up a lot of time,” Chandra says.
That’s fine for scholarly teens, but why are the brightest adults still getting the least action? Life history theory, which examines how species have evolved different reproductive strategies to survive, offers a possible explanation.
People with high executive functioning—in judgment, decision-making, and impulse control—usually have what’s called a slow life history strategy, notes Aurelio José Figueredo, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Arizona: They tend to have fewer partners and less sex but more resources (such as money and status) to invest in potential offspring.
Geniuses hoping to lead lives of passion and promiscuity might be disappointed, but it’s not all bad news—at least for men. “Money, not intelligence, helps men have more sex,” Hopcroft says. “In and of itself, intellect won’t do the trick. But intelligence helps them get money.”
What does that tell us? “Don’t be an academic!” she says with a laugh.
She is beside me, drenched in sweat. She’s breathing gently, long slow breaths. I imagine her soul going in and out: wanting to leave, wanting to come back, wanting to leave, wanting to come back. The day will soon harden into what we need to do. But for now we have each other. We run a bath. In the faint phosphorescent light of the storm we submerge ourselves to our necks and our legs intertwine. Nothing could ever be this close. Everything is the best, or else, “I can’t go on living like this. Oh God, it’s all such a mess.” We stroke each other softly and feel entirely dislocated from the earth, which has never existed.
- Luke Davies, from “Candy” (via violentwavesofemotion)
(Source: sincerelyjoanna)
(Source: lointain-mirage)
Have you ever noticed?—people, no matter how beautiful or desirable, invariably will, if observed closely while going about their daily business of keeping alive, begin to seem like monsters.
- Donald Antrim, ”The Verificationist” (via mythologyofblue)
(Source: freakishlybeautifulspace)
(Source: illrepentwhenimthin)
