1. romeo and juliet on the balcony, julius kronberg 2. the meeting on the turret stairs, frederic william burton 3. la belle dame sans merci, john william waterhouse 4. god speed, edmund blair leighton 5. the end of the quest, francis bernard dicksee 6. la belle dame sans merci, francis bernard dicksee
people fighting tooth and nail to make the human body a pristine, frozen thing when it is in fact ever-changing and often gross by nature… where is the affection. the respect. let that thing breathe
The night gardener once asked me if I knew how citrus trees died: when they reach old age, if they are not cut down and they manage to survive drought, disease and innumerable attacks of pests, fungi and plagues, they succumb from overabundance. When they come to the end of their life cycle, they put out a final, massive crop of lemons. In their last spring their flowers bud and blossom in enormous bunches and fill the air with a smell so sweet that it stings your nostrils from two blocks away; then their fruits ripen all at once, whole limbs break off due to their excessive weight, and after a few weeks the ground is covered with rotting lemons. It is a strange sight, he said, to see such exuberance before death.
When We Cease to Understand the World, Benjamín Labatut
