An old photo of a place called Hell’s Cafe in Paris, which has since shut down.
When we killed what we were to become what we are, what did we do with the bodies? We did what most people do; buried them under the floorboards and got used to the smell. I’ve lived my life like a serial killer; finish with one part, strangle it and move on to the next. Life in neat little boxes is life in neat little coffins, the dead bodies of the past laid out side by side. I am discovering, now, in the late afternoon of the day, that the dead still speak.
Jeanette Winterson, from “Gut Symmetries,” published c. 1998 (via violentwavesofemotion)
“Before everything, before even humans, there were stories. A creature at a fire conjuring a world with nothing but its voice and a listener’s imagination. And now, me, and thousands like me, in little booths and rooms and mics and screens all over the world, doing the same for a family of listeners, connected as all families are, primarily by the stories we tell each other. And after, after fire, and death, or whatever happens next, after the wiping clean or the gradual decay, after the after…when there are only a few creatures left, there will be one at a fire, telling a story to what family it has left. It was the first thing, and it will be the last.”
— Welcome to Night Vale Episode 71, “The Registry of Middle School Crushes” (via realhousewivesofnightvale)
fraktur love letters (pennsylvania c.1800-1850)