"When I am king they shall not have bread and shelter only, but also teachings out of books, for a full belly is little worth where the mind is starved."

-Mark Twain, The prince and the pauper

What I've been reading

10 | 06 | 21

Edgar Allan Poe is just that kind of writer I always heard about but never knew what he did exactly. Some time ago I was in the subway and a girl was selling a bunch of books for super cheap, so I bought this one with seven of his tales. It's way different than I thought it would be, for one some tales are way too short and I just can't understand the character motivation that well, but I guess I should expect that from short stories. Overall it's a good read, and although it wasn't the absolute masterpiece some people biult it up to be it is pretty good and it's a quick confort read for when you're feeling like a darker subject.

We all of us live under the gaze of the cameras. That is part of the human condition from now on.

Slowness | Milan Kundera

Audun Alvestad

Excuse me, I’d really like to go back to reading books without analysing the fuck out of them.

Been working on a regional map to conclude all the maps I've made so far. The upper left part of this regional map is still not created. But this one will follow soon. It is an important one which shows the first capital of the book. Very important to me. :3

I love you, but I don’t know how to help you. I still don’t! I’m an emotional delinquent and I say wrong things all the time, but I want to be better for you. I promise you that. It doesn’t matter if I have to give up everything, because you’re worth it. You’re worth it all because you are magnificent, you are, Magnificent and gorgeous and brilliant and kind and good and I just . . . love you. I love you so damn much

~The Gentleman's guide to vice and virtue

Still reading 1984. The party hates the capitalist even though they literally act like them.

Like 1984-like place could still happen because of capitalism and classism.

A few of the people I had known were gone—even in that short time—back to the Midwest or to Times Square, or had been busted, or moved to Coffee Andy’s in Hollywood, or gone to Golden Miami. They had disappeared, one day: One day you’re here and thats fine, and the next day you’re gone and thats fine too, and someone has that very day come in to take your place whatever it might have been.

John Rechy, City of Night

I fell apart many times.

so.

what does that say about me

besides

I live through

wars.

Jean-François Millet (French, 1814–1875)

A Forest Story

There is an entire forest

full of the most incredible flowers,

plants and trees inside you,

and you are ignoring all of it to nurture a single tree

that they planted inside your heart and abandoned.

The people who left you this way

don't deserve to become your favorites stories to tell.

You are a massive forest full of beautiful and vibrant stories

and every single one of them deserves you more

than those that abandoned you to hell.

-Nikita Gill

Turn him into stars and form a constellation in his image. His face will make the heavens so beautiful that the world will fall in love with the night and forget about the garish sun.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Sometimes we meet someone and are with them for a short time, yet somehow we write about them forever.

“I HEARD YOU WERE HERE.” A clear voice, like ice-melted streams. My head jerked up. I was in a storeroom, my knees against my chest, wedged between jars of thick-pressed olive oil. I had been dreaming myself a fish, silvered by sun as it leapt from the sea. The waves dissolved, became amphorae and grain sacks again.

It was Achilles, standing over me. His face was serious, the green of his eyes steady as he regarded me. I prickled with guilt. I was not supposed to be there and I knew it.

“I have been looking for you,” he said. The words were expressionless; they carried no hint of anything I could read. “You have not been going to morning drills.” My face went red. Behind the guilt, anger rose slow and dull. It was his right to chastise me, but I hated him for it.

“How do you know? You aren’t there.”

“The master noticed, and spoke to my father.”

“And he sent you.” I wanted to make him feel ugly for his tale-bearing.

“No, I came on my own.” Achilles’ voice was cool, but I saw his jaw tighten, just a little. “I overheard them speaking. I have come to see if you are ill.”

I did not answer. He studied me a moment.

“My father is considering punishment,” he said. We knew what this meant. Punishment was corporal, and usually public. A prince would never be whipped, but I was no longer a prince.

“You are not ill,” he said.

“No,” I answered, dully.

“Then that will not serve as your excuse.”

“What?” In my fear I could not follow him.

“Your excuse for where you have been.” His voice was patient. “So you will not be punished. What will you say?”

“I don’t know.”

“You must say something.”

His insistence sparked anger in me. “You are the prince,” I snapped.

That surprised him. He tilted his head a little, like a curious bird. “So?”

“So speak to your father, and say I was with you. He will excuse it.” I said this more confidently than I felt. If I had spoken to my father for another boy, he would have been whipped out of spite. But I was not Achilles.

The slightest crease appeared between his eyes. “I do not like to lie,” he said. It was the sort of innocence other boys taunted out of you; even if you felt it, you did not say it.

“Then take me with you to your lessons,” I said. “So it won’t be a lie.”

His eyebrows lifted, and he regarded me. He was utterly still, the type of quiet that I had thought could not belong to humans, a stilling of everything but breath and pulse—like a deer, listening for the hunter’s bow. I found myself holding my breath.

Then something shifted in his face. A decision.

“Come,” he said.

“Where?” I was wary; perhaps now I would be punished for suggesting deceit.

“To my lyre lesson. So, as you say, it will not be a lie. After, we will speak with my father.”

“Now?”

“Yes. Why not?” He watched me, curious. Why not?

When I stood to follow him, my limbs ached from so long seated on cool stone. My chest trilled with something I could not quite name. Escape, and danger, and hope all at once.

- The Song of Achilles