❝ Innocence, on the Bicycle of Propriety, carrying the Urn of Reputation safely over the Abyss of Indiscretion ❞⠀—Edward Gorey, The Broken Spoke

❝ Now we sit through Shakespeare in order to recognize the quotations. ❞⠀—Orson Welles

❝ A dancer dies twice—once when they stop dancing, and this first death is the more painful. ❞⠀⠀—Martha Graham

❝ Get my swan costume ready. ❞⠀—Anna Pavlova’s final request before passing away

❝ The beauty of those swans! Of course, they’re angry beasts, like peacocks; but where peacocks are common, there’s nothing common about swans. The silence of their swimming... you don’t hear it, but you feel it. ❞⠀—Diana Vreeland, D.V.

❝ Ouspenskaya used to fix the class with a very stern, rather frightening look, a monocle in one eye, and tell us to imagine we were blades of grass on the ocean bed. And everyone swayed. ❞⠀—Helen Beverley, on Maria Ouspenskaya as an acting teacher, in Nazimova: A Biography

❝ All the walls were melting and there were... ❞⠀—Florence + the Machine, Grace

• 📚

❝ There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag—and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty—and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you. ❞

• —Doris Lessing
  • The Golden Notebook

❝ I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompan...

• accessory ♡ chandelier earrings
• adjective ♡ amaranthine
• animal ♡ glasswing butterfly
• book genre ♡ biography
• candy ♡ japanese kitkats
• city visited ♡ boston
• classical piece ♡ mystery! tango
• clothing ♡ cashmere cardigan
• coffee ♡ mocha
• colors ♡ peacock/jewel tones
• commercial ♡ for ʜ&ᴍ
• decade ♡ 1920s
• deity ♡ sipnget (night goddess)
• designer ♡ dries van noten
• dessert ♡ baklava
• emoji ♡ butterfly
• fairytale ♡ fitcher’s bird
• film ♡
  • 1920s ♡ pandora's box
  • 1930s ♡ cleopatra

❝ Dreams are a time to be safely crazy, so that we can stay sane during the day. ❞⠀—Mrs. R. Cartwright, Director of Sleep Laboratory, University of Illinois*

❝ It’s well we cannot hear the screams / We make in other people's dreams. ❞⠀—Edward Gorey, Verse Advice

⇲

• ᴏᴄᴛ {?} 2025
  • Traveled in a flimsy balsawood coffin & woke up seeing my surrounding bedroom materialize just as I pushed open the coffin lid in my dream.
• ᴊᴜɴ 13 2025
  • Descended to a subway station that felt like decompressing into an ever-expanding other-world as the doors slid shut & the trains moved in opposite directions. That other-world became a night-darkened empty theme park where I floated to the top o...▸ as she wielded a bow & arrow ▸ with colored paper streamers flying thro...

┊ I’m ɴᴏʙᴏᴅʏ! ┊

• Who are you?
• Are you nobody, too?
• Then there’s a pair of us
  • — don’t tell!
• They’d banish us, you know.
  • ⸻ ❀
• How dreary to be somebody!
• How public, like a frog
• To tell your name the livelong day
• To an admiring bog!
  • —Emily Dickinson

┊ ʜᴇʟʟᴏ. ┊

• a ʙᴇʀʟɪɴɢᴏᴛɪᴇ̀ʀᴇ is a special pair of scissors for cutting warm striped ʙᴇʀʟɪɴɢᴏᴛ candy before they cool into shape

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀❀

• reading 📚 ⤸
  • flowers of evil
    • charles baudelaire
• watching 📺 ⤸
  • the avengers (1967)
    • s5 e01
• drinking 🍎 ⤸
  • cinnamon apple herbal tea
    • lipton
• studying ✍🏼 ⤸
  • beginner's latin textbooks
  • ilocano -to-english dictionary

• conceits & trifles
• an open umbrella
• broken teacup
• flapping butterflies
• garter snaps
• gasoline rainbow
• inexplicable confetti *
• ladybug charm
• macaron crumbs
• pair of brown eyes
• paper puzzle purse
• perfume pistol *
• tinted emollients *
• tiny cordate grimoire
• vial of * Q.ʀ.ᴠ. *

• what does your heart look like?
  • a bird struggling to get loose
• what detail from the garden of earthly delights are you?
  • owl sitting on egg from which loads of human legs break free
• come to my tea party & i will give you a gift:
  • a glass vial of poison
• come to my masquerade & i will give you something you need:
  • a shapeshifting cleaver
• which shakespearean method of dying are you?
  • death by swallowing fire
• which virgin martyr are you?
  • st. cecilia

apples & oranges & fanciful dichotomies

• sunrise or sunset
• early bird or night owl
• dragonflies or butterflies
• poppies or tulips
• lilies or orchids
• daisies or buttercups
• snow white or rose red
• cockle-shells or silver bells
• cochineal or viridian
• glass quartz or obsidian
• onyx or mother-of-pearl
• faux pearls or bakelite bangles
• bohemian chic or dollybird mod
• heart-shaped or cat-eyed glasses
• rhinestones or sequins
• strawberries or blueberries
• raspberries or blackberries
• pomegranates or figs
• lime or lemon
• lemonade or iced tea

• ↻ rewatched
• ⋯ partially watched
• ᴛᴄᴍ: turner classic movies

⇲

• closely watched trains (1966) ostře sledované vlaky ∙ ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• the flapper (1920) ʏᴏᴜᴛᴜʙᴇ
• travels with my aunt (1972) ⋯ ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• delusion (1981) ᴛᴜʙɪ
• the naked witch (1969) ᴛᴜʙɪ
• slaves of new york (1989) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• happiness (1965) le bonheur ∙ ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• dogfight (1991) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• vampyres (1974) ᴛᴜʙɪ
• medea (1970) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• howards end (1992) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• metropolitan (1990) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• sylvia & the ghost (1949) sylvie et le fantôme ∙ ʜᴜʟᴜ...

• the times of harvey milk (1984) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• merchant ivory (2024) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• garbo (2005) ʜᴜʟᴜ/ᴛᴄᴍ/ᴅᴠʀ
• garbo: where did you go? (2024) ɴᴇᴛғʟɪx
• catching fire: the story of anita pallenberg (2023) ʜᴜʟᴜ
• nature (2025) ᴘʙs
  • s43 ep13: hummingbirds of hollywood
• american masters (2025) ᴘʙs
  • s39 ep3: art spiegelman: disaster is my muse
• anna may wong: frosted yellow willows: her life, times & legend (2007) ʏᴏᴜᴛᴜʙᴇ
• love, cecil (2017) beaton ∙ ᴋᴀɴᴏᴘʏ
• pompeii: the new dig (2024) ᴘʙs
• mystique of the pearl (1996) ᴋᴀɴᴏᴘʏ
• quant (2021) mary ∙ ᴄʀᴀᴄᴋʟᴇ
• ballet 422 (2014) ᴛᴜʙɪ
• poetry in america (2024) ᴘʙs

┊ neat ┊

• wings (1927) dolly shot

┊ lovely ┊

• pavlova: a woman for all time (1983) anna
• the color of pomegranates (1969) sayat nova
  • poetry
  • more (⚠ blood drip)
• russian ark (2002) run
• marie antoinette (1938)
  • birdcage hair
  • masque madness
• marie antoinette (2006) cake & candy
• watership down (1978) bright eyes
• dancing dreams (2010) tanzträume ∙ cute
• the red shoes (1948) dance
• puce moment (1949) dazzle
• blood tea & red string (2006) idyll
• who are you, polly maggoo? (1966) qui êtes-vous, polly maggoo?

• bookmarks
• attention
• intro illustrata
• dulcimer queen
• fog in march
• skirt, jacket
• sea spa
• lemonade
• butt song
• daisy, daisy
• chick rock
• magical
• catwalk
• doll valley
• tingel tangel
  • based on ❀
• cherry: youtu.be/vOID2_-qt4c
  • the link breaks on listo, so just copy & paste it