You Commit To Memory The Childhood Home, The Fuzzy Carpet, Your Great Aunt's Voice. You Love And Miss

Wedding ensemble by David Emanuel (British) 1982.

Perfume began in Mesopotamia as incense offered to the gods to sweeten the smell of animal flesh burned as offerings, and it was used in exorcisms, to heal the sick, and after sexual intercourse. The word’s Latin etymology tells us how it worked: per = through + fumar to smoke. Tossed onto a fire, incense would fill the sky with a smoke otherworldly and magical, which stung the nostrils as if clamorous spirits were clawing their way into the body. Perfumed smoke began with the things of this earth but climbed quickly into the realm of the gods. Atop the famous ziggurat-shaped Tower of Babel, which stretched closer to the gods than mortals could reach, priests lit pyres of incense.

— Diane Ackerman, ‘Smell: An Offering to the Gods’ A Natural History of the Senses

The number of messages I’ve failed to answer across all my devices and media platforms will be weighed against my soul on judgment day, and I will be cast into hell

How to Save Your Own Life, Erica Jong

enemies with benefits

me talking to a man: i know. i know. yeah i know. i know. i’m aware. yes i already know that

Hung on my bedroom wall is the quote attributed to Joan of Arc: “I am not afraid. I was born to do this.” However my life unfolds, goes my thinking, is how I am meant to live it; however my life unspools itself, I was created to bear it.

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias   (via fuckyeahannecarson)