Latest Posts by lispenardlover - Page 3
do u understand how fucking deeply upset it makes me when i remember that anytime i say “a little life” people r gonna think im talking about “i think i like this little life :3” PLEASE NO
you guys i’m 17 today😜😜
how to express emotions infront of people without feeling terribly ashamed of yourself tutorial
x = x, he thinks. x = x, x = x.
——
i took this photo today whilst visiting Lispenard Street <3
- a little life
dear god this book. this book is. i'm consuming it like i did with books back in third grade, back when life was just beginning to crumble and i was going down with it, back before i knew just how bad it could get. i'm devouring this book and it is so painful. it's speaking to me and it's making me cry.
i think about jude’s biological parents everyday actually. why did they leave him? did they regret it? did they wonder if he’d been successful? (he was) did they wonder if he’d actually even survived?
"The only person who sees Jude for exactly who he is, is Malcolm..." "..and Jude hates him for it, Jude resents him for it.." "..the interventions Malcolm makes in his home."
- Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life Play interview
"Willem's flaw is pretending....." "when you're having sex with someone, you can usually tell when they're not enjoying it.."
(indirect, Hanya's words, yet not in the interview ; "Harold's greatest flaw is not trying hard enough. He has compassion and love for those in his life, but he should have gone further."
"Andy, simply, is a bad doctor.")
i was looking for a specific part of a little life and i was flipping through my copy and suddenly just read “Limes” and i fucking jumped and had to walk away
i'm definitely totally normal about jude st. francis
whenever i see a fairly attractive sad looking guy im like omg jude
your card declines at therapy and they bring out baby jude (you can’t save him)
When your card declines at therapy so they remind you how Jude knows for certain how true the axiom of equality is, because he himself––his very life––has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes. The context may have changed: he may be in this apartment, and he may have a job that he enjoys and that pays him well, and he may have parents and friends he loves. He may be respected; in court, he may even be feared. But fundamentally, he is the same person, a person who inspires disgust, a person meant to be hated.
your card declines at therapy and they bring jude and willem during the happy years in (you can’t save them)
Your card declines at therapy and they bring out Harold’s “in everything I see, I see him” monologue from Lispenard Street II
yeah “a little life” by hanya yanagihara is controversial or whatever but did you know that “and so i try to be kind to everything i see, and in everything i see, i see him.”
A LITTLE LIFE.
i lowkey missed it the first time because it’s in the background of willem and malcom’s conversation abt jude’s long sleeves but
can we please talk abt jb and jude coming back from a nice beach walk and deciding to and i quote ‘fling sand at each other’ before jb drunkenly collapses and jude decides, apparently without any warning or discussion, to bury him up to his waist in the sand while jb lies there singing
what could be better than this just guys being dudes!!!!
sam claflin u will ALWAYS be my willem
“do you think he was happy with me?”
the happy years, pg. 493
lispenard street, pg. 713
lispenard street, pg. 719
imagine being harold and losing your son in law and knowing EXACTLY like EXACTLY what’s going to happen to your actual son and doing everything you can to keep him alive but just KNOWING that it’s all futile.
Jude when he used to take his walks
JB going into the studio for the first time after jude’s death
malcom’s last architectural model remaining unfinished
willem’s last script staying unsaid
the last time jude sang
the last time a piano felt jude’s touch
the last time willem made a shopping list
so many things unsaid, unread, unfinished, unplayed, undone, so many limes never bought.
"I was raised Catholic," he began. "But you're not now?" the judge asked, frowning. "No," he said. He had worked for years to keep the apology out of his voice when he said this.
Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
“Willem”, I ask you, “do you feel like I do? Do you think he was happy with me?” Because he deserved happiness. We aren’t guaranteed it, none of us are, but he deserved it.”
it’s just. the way to the man in rome, jude is just a good looking boy who he complemented to his father, but the man will never know everything that happened to jude. that jude thinks he’s horrifically ugly. the way jude’s story ends. it makes me so fucking ill
not going to lie a specific scene in the book that really fucking hits me sometimes and i need to double down is when someone tells harold jude is beautiful . i just can’t. there’s something so solemn about it
auuuuuGHHHH the old man in Rome. Harold being so happy that Jude is recognized as his son by others even when they don't look anything alike, but the love is so clear and so vivid that people can just tell. Like when Harold was telling Liesl about adopting Jude and she can just tell how much he loves him that she says "You love him a lot" bc Harold loves so freely and so intensely and so unconditionally and his love shines out of him like warm rays of sun
And also the old man teasing Harold for being so plain but having such a beautiful wife and handsome son,,,,,,,,,,justice for Harold Stein
literally and the way harold and jude just fit, so well so that people think they’re biologically related. :(
not going to lie a specific scene in the book that really fucking hits me sometimes and i need to double down is when someone tells harold jude is beautiful . i just can’t. there’s something so solemn about it
Thinking about the wildflowers that Willem and Jude planted in the fields around their house and how they’re probably still growing, year after year. They probably spread out over time, with no one to mow them or trim them back. They probably smother the house now, growing right up to the doorstep.
The happy years didn’t last long enough. But the flowers will continue to grow.
if….if we’re doing headcanons,,,,,jude + willem domesticity?? 👉👈
Gonna hijack this ask a little bit and give you domesticness from their college days + including JB and Malcolm (partly bc I don’t really have any domestic headcanons from Jude + Willem’s middle age years, partly bc I’m an absolute fiend for the boys and their college days)
- Late night talks as they lay in their bunk beds, hands reaching out for each other in laughter, voices growing quieter when one of them falls asleep
- Jude bringing back leftover cookies and sweets from Batter that Allison gives him
- Leaving each other notes on their desks, reminders and bits of encouragement when they have exams. JB draws crude doodles on the notes.
- Sharing EVERYTHING with each other. They often don’t even have to ask to borrow something
- Being unable to remain in fights/arguments for long, by the end of the night they’re back to talking with each other
- Taking care of their friend when one of them inevitably gets sick from Pho Viet Huong
- Inside jokes! So. Many. Inside jokes. Gets to the point where their other shared friends outside of their little group begin to get annoyed
- Making abhorrent food combinations together because they’re broke. Jude’s always turns out the best, and they marvel at how he can take the most dismal, meagre ingredients and create a delicious meal.
- Evening walks around Boston. Sometimes they’re very talkative, jumping from one topic to another. Sometimes, they just enjoy the quiet and each others company.
- Constant, endless, silly teasing. Ex. Calling Willem their “diversity hire” for being the only one of them who is white.
- On that note, being incredibly defensive of each other when outsiders overstep the boundaries. No one’s allowed to talk shit about them except each other, especially Jude. So much as look at him and his crutches in a vaguely judgemental way, and your life will be ruined by dawn break
- Getting tiny potted plants to keep in their room and taking care of them. They keep little schedules for who waters and when, marvelling at the plants as they grow
- Going to plays and movies and events together, the four of them attached at the hip, moving as a monolith, smothering their laughter behind their hands as people around them glare but not caring because they’re so enamoured in the joy and pleasure of each other
- After wild nights out, taking care of each other when they’re drunk/hangover, whoever’s the most sober dragging the others down the block or onto the subway, cleaning them up and tucking them into bed, in the morning sitting by their bed as they get ill.
- Taking Jude’s crutches (with permission of course) whenever they need an excuse for something. “Oh, I missed the midterm because I got injured, can I retake it?”
- Being each others family for graduation, whooping and whistling loudly in the crowd, taking thousands of silly pictures afterwards
- Talking shit about the professors, the TAs, the staff that they hate. Snickering to each other whenever one of them walk past them in the hallways
- Reading with each other, reading to each other, leaving notes in the back pages of books, swapping novels and magazines
- Late night subway rides, trying to make themselves heard over the clunky clatter of the subway trains, swaying in their spots as they clutch the hanging straps
the parallels in this book make me insane but yk when Harold was talking w Liesl for the first time in sixteen years and discovered she had been doing the same thing he had, which was seeing Jacob’s essence in the faces of students or just passerbys in the street.
“Only to realize later that she had imagined they might be our son, alive and well and away from us, no longer ours, but walking freely through the world, unaware that we might have been searching for him all this time”
And then later on, after Jude’s death, Harold finds that in everything he sees, he sees him. He seeks his son’s face once again, finding comfort in the idea that he might be somewhere off in the world, walking free, without pain and without grief, but he is no longer his and Julia’s.
Was that the price that Harold and Julia paid to let Jude be freed? That he might be off somewhere else, no longer really Jude but something or someone else that does not carry the pain or grief that Jude carried with him? But in return, he would no longer be Harold and Julia’s? They would never be able to reach him again, but he is free now.
“And if a child can no longer be comforted, is it my job to give him permission to leave?”