flâneur

Emily Hu

82 followers · 44 following · 6946 views

on the atlas — 297

highlights — 4281

  • I want to prioritize my closest friendships and not spend all my time doing “quick catchup over coffee” with people I only see once a quarter. I want to befriend people who are down to be silly and goofy. I want friends I can grow with, friends who are willing to be there for me, but who are also willing to challenge me
    why I left nyc
  • hosting and making plans felt less effortful than it does in new york because people were open to making plans last minute, and people were down for “slow, relaxed” hangouts that might take up an entire afternoon or evening. also, more of my friends here are into the exact same things I am (writing, meditation, obscure intellectual rabbitholes), and the circles feel small enough that even when I bring together friends from different worlds, there’s enough common ground to have interesting conversations.
    why I left nyc
  • the transience was what got to me. I’ve always wanted something very simple: a small group of close friends that I see consistently, week after week. friends I feel comfortable just sitting with. friends I can make my stupid absurdist jokes with, friends who will prioritize me by setting aside an entire evening rather than just “let’s catch up between 7-8pm three tuesdays from now.” I had a semblance of that kind of community in new york for a while, but by the end of my time there it was nonexistent.
    why I left nyc
  • On weekends I start going on trips outside of Geneva. The train rides in Switzerland are breathtaking and feel almost unreal. People say not to escape from your problems, but sometimes you need a change of scenery to appreciate the path ahead. London reminded me of the bustle, to convene and progress with purpose. Oxford and Cambridge instilled a newfound beauty in the pursuit of scholarship. Vienna was historic and artsy: I noticed how aesthetics and expression changed my perception of the world. Nice reconnected me with the sea, where I stood still by torrent night tides, realizing that some…
    a sweet humming - by jennifer tsai - jenn's journal
  • Only one rule applies: ‘A work of art is good if it has arisen out of necessity.’
    is there a noun form of "sophomoric"? - by jessica dai
  • Your first draft isn’t an unoriginal idea expressed clearly; it’s an original idea expressed poorly, and it is accompanied by your amorphous dissatisfaction, your awareness of the distance between what it says and what you want it to say. That’s what directs you during rewriting, and that’s one of the things lacking when you start with text generated by an A.I.
    🌻 tryhard - by Jasmine Sun - half-baked futures
  • Of course, we ought to pick the right games to play, ensure that we struggle toward the right kinds of ends. There’s nothing that makes me sadder than watching a friend bust ass for a job or relationship that doesn’t enrich them. Effort must lead to reward. The feedback loops have to work out. There was this essay on competitive math that spread around my Twitter circles lately. The author mourns the pointlessness of the activity, the divergence between the math problems that get you into college and the math problems that push the field forward. I think the problem was actually that he didn’t…
    🌻 tryhard - by Jasmine Sun - half-baked futures
  • What a gift to be in another’s world that previously I was only orbiting. What a gift to bring others into mine. What a gift to show them, despite our intense bonds, that I’m a home unto myself.
    Gets closer all the time - by Evana - arbiter of distaste
  • All my lessons I wear like a necklace. A delicate gold chain that my fingers don’t need to untangle. I never feel trapped, only free. No matter what, I told a friend, we’ve made a beautiful life out of so much rubble.
    Gets closer all the time - by Evana - arbiter of distaste
  • I’ve been thinking about our storyline / how the past becomes the present if it’s always on your mind. Over the last year, I’ve fallen out of love with the past. I’ve begun to believe in a different theory of time. That is, it’s only the present that exists.
    Gets closer all the time - by Evana - arbiter of distaste
  • And that we’re so lucky to be writers. To get to have this gift, which is just a way of seeing the world. That we get to think all day.
    Gets closer all the time - by Evana - arbiter of distaste
  • But you can’t deny that there is a pattern in these tradeoffs: you frequently chose another dose of the predictable and comfortable over developing a relationship with another person.
    Where the Wealth Was All Along
  • because by the end of your life the only thing that seemed relevant was the people you loved, or ended up loving. When you died all the value in your world resided there, in the simple and all-important fact that you really knew other people and other people really knew you.
    Where the Wealth Was All Along
  • The mind is an extremely powerful connect-the-dots machine, constantly and rapidly making associations between what it notices, triggering any one of a zillion memories or projections about the future.
    Where There’s Stress, There’s a Story
  • You commit to someone. Not because there’s something less better out there. But because you want them, your history together, how you are together, and your future together. That is something that can never be duplicated anywhere else.
    50 pieces of advice - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • For things like love and the things they pour into (career, another person, a child, a dream) there’s no going halfway. Because love is about blind faith. You have to just send it. There’s no consolation prize for going halfway. It will not happen. You have to fully go into it.
    50 pieces of advice - by Patricia Mou - wellness wisdom
  • There are those who are snatched away who never had the opportunity to comprehend the immense significance of their lives, and there are those left behind who stand yearning before a vacuum, paralysed in an eternal farewell that can never be spoken.
    Nick Cave - The Red Hand Files - Issue #64 - Do you have any regrets as you get older? : The Red Hand Files
  • I was young and stupid and I didn’t value my time. I was young and stupid and I didn’t value people enough. And sometimes I still don’t — I’m still pretty young and stupid.
    Biggest regrets of the living revealed - by nikhil
  • I regret how infrequently I tell people I love them, even as I fear that I’ll lose them. Why is it so hard to say it sometimes? What are we so busy with instead? I regret so many plans that I declined because I was too lazy or too shy. Was scrolling TikTok really worth it instead, man?
    Biggest regrets of the living revealed - by nikhil
  • I regret how little I cherished the many people I knew in my earlier lives. In high school and college, I was always so fixated on what came next that I never let myself really exist among my peers. I loved to think of myself as so special and unique and unknowable to everyone I knew. How could the people in my hometown or my college understand the depths of my otherworldly character? It was all a front for my own insecurities of not being enough for anyone I knew, but it was obnoxious all the same. Regret. Regret. Regret.
    Biggest regrets of the living revealed - by nikhil
  • Yet, the future doesn’t extend into forever and to completely deny regret is to deny realities about how I feel. I have said that I have no regrets, but in reality, I was wrong: I simply didn’t want to fixate on them. As much as I wish that they didn’t exist, regrets seep into my life, shaping how I see the world. There’s an entire world of regrets about the past that I’ve harbored for years and perhaps admitting to them now will make it easier for me to reach the end without feeling as many. Or maybe I’ll just feel a little lighter for being honest with myself.
    Biggest regrets of the living revealed - by nikhil
  • Don’t wonder how you will deal with this. You ARE dealing with it. Don’t wonder how you will get over it. You will NEVER get over it. I know that seems heartbreaking and depressing and wrong. Trust me that it’s also gratifying and miraculous and astonishing and endlessly inspiring and important and helpful. Letting this pain in and growing from it will give you strength and resilience that you can pass on to other people in ways you can’t possibly understand now. It’s NOT all about you, not remotely. You are not stuck. You are not wallowing. This is a beautiful, terrible time in your life that…
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • But here it is, almost 20 years later, and I get it. I remember my dad perfectly — his big laugh, his voice singing “Danny Boy” with showy bravado, his teasing tones, his little Muhammad Ali dance. If I turn my back on how important he is, I block my path to joy. I block my ability to bring joy to other people. He is a vital part of my life. And even the sadness I feel about losing him is vital. It makes every color brighter, it makes every single moment of happiness — or longing, or satisfaction, or grace, or melancholy — more real, more palpable, more complete.
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • “My god. He was just in here the other day. He looked so healthy and young.” It was a very honest response. Then he said, “My dad died when I was 25 years old. That was 25 years ago. I still remember him perfectly, like I just saw him yesterday. I still have dreams about him.”
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • “My god. He was just in here the other day. He looked so healthy and young.” It was a very honest response. Then he said, “My dad died when I was 25 years old. That was 25 years ago. I still remember him perfectly, like I just saw him yesterday. I still have dreams about him.”
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • Because mourning is about being alive. That’s something you have to remind yourself of, and maybe you should even take a shot at trying to explain this to your mother. Leaning into your sadness is not REFUSING TO BE HAPPY. Leaning into your sadness, every day, inviting it into your life, getting up and putting on some running shoes and running and walking and running for an hour or two, and crying while you run or walk — that’s reaffirming that you want to keep living. That’s celebrating how much your father meant to you and how he will never disappear from your life, ever. That’s knowing that…
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • Don’t retreat. You need to find people who will talk about this. Figure out who they are. You’re in therapy now. If your therapist isn’t helping you deal with this that well, then get a new therapist. Or find a grief counselor, too. Or find a therapy group for people mourning a big loss. Look hard at your friends and figure out which ones you can lean on a little more. Someone out there can handle it, I’m sure of that. You just have to figure out who it is.
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • After my dad’s death, I felt more anguished AND I felt more alive than I’d ever felt in my life. I felt more grateful than ever. I only wanted honest people in my life, people who could talk about heaviness and melancholy and really savor it instead of feeling uncomfortable.
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • When you lose someone very close to you, someone who makes up this essential part of your history and your future, your worldview shifts dramatically. You have a palpable feeling that everything and anything good can disappear at any time. I missed my dad a lot. I also felt like everyone I knew was going to start dying. I also hated that my dad wasn’t able to go on living. I wanted him to be alive; I wanted him to feel rain on his face, to eat a great meal, to read something funny, for HIS sake.
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • No one else will talk about grief with you? See, this is the bullshit thing about suffering a big loss when you’re so young. I went through this, too. Very few of my friends — and I had lots of friends — were capable of even discussing my dad’s death with me. It made them uncomfortable. That’s how young we were. They were sure they’d say the wrong thing. We were all so self-conscious and inflexible and unaccepting of the immense gulf between different peoples’ experiences. Some people stay that way, too. They try to downplay death, or act like the death of a third cousin and the death of a par…
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • Then I went into therapy and I realized that, two years later, I hadn’t grieved my father’s death nearly enough. Two years of grieving, even if you’re not trying to turn it off most of the time, is NOTHING, when it comes to a parent or a spouse or anyone you’ve lived with for a big part of your life. When it’s someone like your dad, who formed your identity? Of course you feel lost without him. You want him back. That’s a gigantic loss. And it feels like you’re losing part of your childhood, too, when someone important from your childhood disappears. It doesn’t help that your mother doesn’t un…
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • But he loved me and he showed it, and when he died, I felt like the center of my life would never return. He and I were both very needy, very raw, and the rest of my family was much more controlled, more skeptical, more reserved, far less prone to starting a fight or leaping into the fray or showing their asses.
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • Your mother doesn’t want you to be an artist, a writer, an intellect. But that’s what you are, right? That’s what you want and what you believe in. You want the truth — you want to feel what you feel. You want to feel completely, painfully alive, and you know, instinctively, that this includes diving straight into your grief and not coming up to the surface until you feel like you’re ready.
    'My Dad Died Unexpectedly And I Can't Get Over It!'
  • Because I think that sometimes, you need to care. That it’s beautiful to care. That in order to work on something that really, truly, makes you feel it in all of your bones you have to be utterly obsessed. To love and care for something (or someone) so deeply you’re willing to pull out all the stops. That obsession is way cooler than apathy.
    obsessive spouts - by kel - the (un)comfy corner
  • Pure experience beats theory again and again. There’s no logic. You don’t have to play 20 questions with me to know that I’m not driven by logic. I follow some other line of reasoning. The only truth I know is what I feel. Empirically speaking.
    Weird science - by Evana - arbiter of distaste
  • Maybe I yearn more than every other person. That can’t be true. People are so private about what makes them happy.
    Weird science - by Evana - arbiter of distaste
  • Someone in grad school said all their poems were about yearning. I thought about this often, partly because I had a crush on the person who said it. I wondered if any of their yearning was directed at me. As I tend to do, I messed up with them—tremendously—because maybe for the first time ever, I got scared of how much I could feel. That I could desire more than I previously believed I was allowed. But I couldn’t hold that duality then. I was a coward. I don’t like who I am when I get scared. From then on, I promised myself that I would live with the discomfort rather than run from it.
    Weird science - by Evana - arbiter of distaste
  • We are so burned out by our data-heavy, screen-based, supposedly friction-free lives that we no longer have the time or energy to engage in the kind of small, unfabulous, mundane, place-based friendships or acquaintance-ships that have nourished and sustained humans for literal centuries.
    The friendship problem - by Rosie Spinks
  • You get it all served in uncomplicated, lack of friction, no obstacles and you no longer know how to deal with people. Because people are complex systems. Relationships, friendships are complex systems. They often demand that they hold two sides of an equation. And not that you solve little problems with technical solutions. And that is intrinsic to modern loneliness.”
    The friendship problem - by Rosie Spinks
  • For us as adults, that means talking to people in the queue with you, talking to people on the subway, talking to people when you create any kind of group. Book club, movie club, sports club. You stay in the practice of experimentation, doubt, of the paradox of people: You need people very much but the very people that you need are the ones that can reject you.
    The friendship problem - by Rosie Spinks
  • She craves more of the kind of friends that can pop over for an hour on a Sunday afternoon without planning weeks in advance. So do I.
    The friendship problem - by Rosie Spinks
  • the world is a lot less repetitive than the mind. The mind goes on about the same stuff forever. The world always has something new to say. It just doesn’t use words.
    How to Make Your Mind Maybe One-Third Quieter
  • By the sounds of it, the “silent walk” movement is essentially Gen Z’s discovery of inner monologue as an alternative to constant electronic entertainment.
    How to Make Your Mind Maybe One-Third Quieter
  • I think about my mother every day, but not as concertedly as I used to. She crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely, gone.
    How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss – The Marginalian
  • I have learned a lot about how humans think about death. But it hasn’t necessarily taught me more about my dead, where she is, what she is. When I held her body in my hands and it was just black ash, I felt no connection to it, but I tell myself perhaps it is enough to still be matter, to go into the ground and be “remixed” into some new part of the living culture, a new organic matter. Perhaps there is some solace in this continued existence.
    How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss – The Marginalian
  • Whatever my life is, whatever my loss is, it’s small in the face of all that existence… The meteor shower changed something. I was looking the other way through a telescope before: I was just looking at what was not there. Now I look at what is there.”
    How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss – The Marginalian
  • You are but a mote of dust. And your troubles and travails are just a mote of a mote of dust.
    How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss – The Marginalian
  • If you love this world, how can you look forward to departing it? Rousseau wrote, “He who pretends to look on death without fear lies. All men are afraid of dying, this is the great law of sentient beings, without which the entire human species would soon be destroyed.”
    How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss – The Marginalian
  • Or, if you don’t, you can do what a stoic like Seneca did, and push away the awfulness by noting that if death is indeed extinction, it won’t hurt, for we won’t experience it.
    How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss – The Marginalian
  • “If mourning is denied outlet, the result will be suffering,” Gorer wrote. “At the moment our society is signally failing to give this support and assistance. . . . The cost of this failure in misery, loneliness, despair and maladaptive behavior is very high.”
    How We Grieve: Meghan O’Rourke on the Messiness of Mourning and Learning to Live with Loss – The Marginalian