It's Okay to Not Be Okay, 2020

Moon Kang Tae	"What do you want from me? I know you won’t back off until you get it,   so tell me what you want. What do you want?"
Ko Mun Yeong	"'Just take it and leave?'"
Moon Kang Tae	"Yes, if you don’t mind."
Ko Mun Yeong	"You. — I’ll take it and leave.    Moon Kang Tae, what I want is you."
Moon Kang Tae	"Why me?"
Ko Mun Yeong	"Because I can’t stop wanting you."
Moon Kang Tae	"But why?"
Ko Mun Yeong	"Because you’re so pretty. Well, you know. Like shoes, clothes and cars.   When I see something pretty, I want it. And I need to have what I want.    Whether I have to pay for it, steal it or just take it by force. You   don’t need some grand reason to desire something, right?"

"Harry Potter 20th Anniversary Symphony" by Pteryx Videos

June 26, 1997 Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was first published.
The Harry Potter series is officially 20 years old.

"대취타" by Agust D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGjAWJ2zWWI

https://open.spotify.com/track/0H4ugk6rhnXmTl47ayy9O5?si=ZDj0Zz_rSfOz2L2ttJ4vJA

"Pb-resources" by Alexis Williams

https://www.pb-resources.com/

It's Okay to Not Be Okay, 2020

Bad memories stay here [taps with her fingers on his chest, over his heart] longer.

The Boy Who Fed On Nightmares

The boy woke up from another awful nightmare. Bad memories from the past
that he wanted to erase from his head were replayed in his dreams every night
and haunted him nonstop. The boy was terrified of falling asleep.

So one day, he went to the witch and begged.

"Please get rid of all my bad memories so that I won't ever have a nightmare again. 

Then I will do everything you ask."

Years went by, and the boy became an adult. He no longer had nightmares. 

But for some strange reason, he wasn't happy at all.

One night, a blood moon filled the night sky, and the witch finally showed up again 

to take what he had promised in return for granting his wish. And he shouted at her 

with so much resentment.

"All my bad memories are gone. But why... Why can't I become happy?"

Then the witch took his soul as they had promised, 

and told him this—

"Hurtful, painful memories. Memories of deep regrets. Memories of hurting others 

and being hurt. Memories of being abandoned. 

Only those with such memories buried in their hearts can become stronger, more passionate, 

and emotionally flexible. And only those can attain happiness. 

So don't forget any of it. Remember it all and overcome it. 

If you don't overcome it, you'll always be a kid whose soul never grows."

(Found here: It's Okay to Not Be Okay, 2020)

Kim Sowol

When you leave,
weary of me,
without a word 

I shall gently let you go.

"What If We Cultivated Our Ugliness? or: The Monstrous Beauty of Medusa" by Jess Zimmermann

Medusa lost her beauty—or rather, it was taken from her. Beauty is always something you can lose. Women’s beauty is seen as something separate from us, something we owe but never own: We are its stewards, not its beneficiaries. We tend it like a garden where we do not live.

Oh, but ugliness—ugliness is always yours. Almost everyone has some innate kernel of grotesquerie; even fashion models (I’ve heard) tend to look a bit strange and froggish in person, having been gifted with naturally level faces that pool light luminously instead of breaking it into shards. And everyone has the ability to mine their ugliness, to emphasize and magnify it, to distort even those parts of themselves that fall within acceptable bounds.

Where beauty is narrow and constrained, ugliness is an entire galaxy, a myriad of sparkling paths that lurch crazily away from the ideal. There are so few ways to look perfect, but there are thousands of ways to look monstrous, surprising, upsetting, outlandish, or odd. Thousands of stories to tell in dozens of languages: the languages of strong features or weak chins, the languages of garish makeup and weird haircuts and startling clothes, fat and bony and hairy languages, the languages of any kind of beauty that’s not white. Nose languages, eyebrow languages, piercing and tattoo languages, languages of blemish and birthmark and scar. When you give up trying to declare yourself acceptable, there are so many new things to say.

(full article here: https://catapult.co/stories/role-monsters-gorgons-medusa-women-beauty-ugliness)

Fortesa Latifi

all my grief says the same thing: 

this isn't how it's supposed to be.
this isn't how it's supposed to be.

and the world laughs,
holds my hope by the throat,
says: 

but this is how it is.

"An Archive of Feelings" by Ann Cvetkovich

Because trauma can be unspeakable and unrepresentable and 

because it is marked by forgetting and dissociation, 

it often seems to leave behind no records at all.

Dinner Mate, 2020

You know, our heart can be a step behind our brain.

"Mayday" by Crush ft. Joy

Tag des Hundes, 2020

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

I think we fucked, and maybe I should say make love, 

but maybe not because we didn't actually make love. 

It was sadder than that. We were sadder than that. 

But it wasn't bad and it wasn't wrong. It wasn't desperate. I think it was salvation.

"Before You Came" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz

Before you came, 

things were as they should be: 

the sky was the dead-end of sight, 

the road was just a road, wine merely wine. 

Now everything is like my heart, 

a color at the edge of blood: 

the grey of your absence, the color of poison, of thorns, 

the gold when we meet, the season ablaze, 

the yellow of autumn, the red of flowers, of flames, 

and the black when you cover the earth 

with the coal of dead fires. 

And the sky, the road, the glass of wine? 

The sky is a shirt wet with tears, 

the road a vein about to break, 

and the glass of wine a mirror in which the sky, 

the road, the world keep changing. 

Don't leave now that you're here— 

Stay. So the world may become like itself again: 

so the sky may be the sky, 

the road a road, 

and the glass of wine not a mirror, just a glass of wine.

"Gut Symmetries" by Jeanette Winterson

We looked at each other, 

afraid to speak, 

afraid to load our feelings into words 

in case the words cracked and split. 

I pinned my tongue to the roof of my mouth. 

Hold in, hold in, 

one crack and the wall is breached.

"Cecilia and the Satellite" by Andrew McMahon in the Wilderness

Through all the things my eyes have seen
The best by far is you

For all the things my hands have held
The best by far is you

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tYya_LOPEw)

I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.
- "Orlando" by Virginia Woolf ||

I am tired of myself tonight. I should like to be somebody else.
- "The Picture of Dorian Gray" by Oscar Wilde ||

The enormity of my desire disgusts me.
- "The War of the Foxes" by Richard Siken ||

What if I'm someone I don't want around.
- "Falling" by Harry Styles ||

Hyena, 2020

Some people make me gag even though I try so hard to respect them.