(Source: vealyneologism, via thensings-mysoul)

(Source: benedmonds, via thensings-mysoul)

(Source: headstrongandsteadfast, via thensings-mysoul)

cinderellainrubbershoes:

(compiled by Pamela Haag at BigThink)

1. Mamihlapinatapei (Yagan, an indigenous language of Tierra del Fuego): The wordless yet meaningful look shared by two people who desire to initiate something, but are both reluctant to start. 
   Oh yes, this is an exquisite word, compressing a thrilling and scary relationship moment. It’s that delicious, cusp-y moment of imminent seduction. Neither of you has mustered the courage to make a move, yet. Hands haven’t been placed on knees; you’ve not kissed. But you’ve both conveyed enough to know that it will happen soon… very soon.
2. Yuanfen(Chinese): A relationship by fate or destiny. This is a complex concept. It draws on principles of predetermination in Chinese culture, which dictate relationships, encounters and affinities, mostly among lovers and friends.From what I glean, in common usage yuanfen means the “binding force” that links two people together in any relationship. 
   But interestingly, “fate” isn’t the same thing as “destiny.” Even if lovers are fated to find each other they may not end up together. The proverb, “have fate without destiny,” describes couples who meet, but who don’t stay together, for whatever reason. It’s interesting, to distinguish in love between the fated and the destined. Romantic comedies, of course, confound the two.
3. Cafuné (Brazilian Portuguese): The act of tenderly running your fingers through someone’s hair.
4. Retrouvailles (French):  The happiness of meeting again after a long time. This is such a basic concept, and so familiar to the growing ranks of commuter relationships, or to a relationship of lovers, who see each other only periodically for intense bursts of pleasure. I’m surprised we don’t have any equivalent word for this subset of relationship bliss. It’s a handy one for modern life.
5. Ilunga (Bantu): A person who is willing to forgive abuse the first time; tolerate it the second time, but never a third time.
   Apparently, in 2004, this word won the award as the world’s most difficult to translate. Although at first, I thought it did have a clear phrase equivalent in English: It’s the “three strikes and you’re out” policy. But ilunga conveys a subtler concept, because the feelings are different with each “strike.” The word elegantly conveys the progression toward intolerance, and the different shades of emotion that we feel at each stop along the way.
   Ilunga captures what I’ve described as the shade of gray complexity in marriages—Not abusive marriages, but marriages that involve infidelity, for example.  We’ve got tolerance, within reason, and we’ve got gradations of tolerance, and for different reasons. And then, we have our limit. The English language to describe this state of limits and tolerance flattens out the complexity into black and white, or binary code. You put up with it, or you don’t.  You “stick it out,” or not.
   Ilunga restores the gray scale, where many of us at least occasionally find ourselves in relationships, trying to love imperfect people who’ve failed us and whom we ourselves have failed.
6. La Douleur Exquise (French): The heart-wrenching pain of wanting someone you can’t have.
   When I came across this word I thought of “unrequited” love. It’s not quite the same, though. “Unrequited love” describes a relationship state, but not a state of mind. Unrequited love encompasses the lover who isn’t reciprocating, as well as the lover who desires. La douleur exquise gets at the emotional heartache, specifically, of being the one whose love is unreciprocated.
7. Koi No Yokan (Japanese): The sense upon first meeting a person that the two of you are going to fall into love. 
   This is different than “love at first sight,” since it implies that you might have a sense of imminent love, somewhere down the road, without yet feeling it. The term captures the intimation of inevitable love in the future, rather than the instant attraction implied by love at first sight.
8. Ya’aburnee(Arabic): “You bury me.” It’s a declaration of one’s hope that they’ll die before another person, because of how difficult it would be to live without them.
   The online dictionary that lists this word calls it “morbid and beautiful.” It’s the “How Could I Live Without You?” slickly insincere cliché of dating, polished into a more earnest, poetic term. 
9. Forelsket: (Norwegian):  The euphoria you experience when you’re first falling in love.
   This is a wonderful term for that blissful state, when all your senses are acute for the beloved, the pins and needles thrill of the novelty. There’s a phrase in English for this, but it’s clunky. It’s “New Relationship Energy,” or NRE.
10. Saudade (Portuguese): The feeling of longing for someone that you love and is lost. Another linguist describes it as a “vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.”
    It’s interesting that saudade accommodates in one word the haunting desire for a lost love, or for an imaginary, impossible, never-to-be-experienced love. Whether the object has been lost or will never exist, it feels the same to the seeker, and leaves her in the same place:  She has a desire with no future. Saudade doesn’t distinguish between a ghost, and a fantasy. Nor do our broken hearts, much of the time.

(via hateshiploveship)

(Source: candita, via asmallhope)

asmallhope:

Sasha DiGiulian: “Pure Imagination”

This girl is such an inspiration, not just because of what she’s done but her attitude-at least in this video-is just a little reminder of what we are capable of-as athletes and as human beings. 

(Source: cocoshay, via unafraidunashamed)

staceythinx:

As a former surfer, Paul Bobko had plenty of time to observe waves of all shapes and forms. It was during this time that he found his inspiration for his series Water Landscapes-Suspended Energy. 

About the project:

In his magnum opus, Gravity’s Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon introduces us to the German concept of Brenschluss in the telemetry of the flight of the V2 rocket. The rocket is propelled by its engines and travels along its parabolic arc. At a certain point the engines turn off, this flameout is called brenschluss. At brenschluss the rocket’s ascendancy is checked by gravity, and before it begins to fall to its target on earth, it hesitates for just a moment. After this moment gravity and momentum alone, not a rocket engine, define the inexorable trajectory of descent to its inevitable, calamitous end.

So to do Paul Bobko’s Water Landscapes-Suspended Energy photographs allow us to see that very moment of hesitation when the force of nature that is the ocean wave, ceases to be propelled by the surging forces of the ocean floor. The ocean suddenly lets go and sets it free, it hesitates at this moment of release, then crashes on the shore, liberated, but spent. Bobko shows us this very moment of hesitation, before the explosion. The outline of the explosion is clear and coming, but it hasn’t happened yet, it is, as yet, prelude…the power is still coiled in the curl, frozen for this second. Light comes glowing through that watery tunnel, foam is leaping from its crest, escaping and ecstatic. The menace is limned in the terrifying flexing of its form. It is most exhilarating to see the noun become the verb.

oh gott, so viel liebe.

(via decentlife)

(Source: girlwithoutwings, via unafraidunashamed)

msleahhbic:

vagabonddaiz:

‘During the 1960s and 70s, thousands of monuments commemorating the Second World War – called ‘Spomeniks’ – were built throughout the former Yugoslavia; striking monumental sculptures, with an angular geometry echoing the shapes of flowers, crystals, and macro-views of viruses or DNA. In the 1980s the Spomeniks still attracted millions of visitors from the Eastern bloc; today they are largely neglected and unknown, their symbolism lost and unwanted. Antwerp-based photographer Jan Kempenaers travelled the Balkans photographing these eerie objects, presented in this book as a powerful typological series. The beauty and mystery of the isolated, crumbling Spomeniks informs Kempenaer’s enquiry into memory, found beauty, and whether former monuments can function as pure sculpture.’

- Roma Publications

I think these are crazy beautiful. 

(via thelearningbrain)

Graphic Designer & Illustrator | Neil Brian - Splash!

A simple project study on the creation of tonal values on a black & white medium. Pencils and ink used. 

(via vagabonddaiz)

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus || Spoken Word

“In the scriptures Jesus received the most opposition from the most religious people of his day. At it’s core Jesus’ gospel and the good news of the Cross is in pure opposition to self-righteousness/self-justification. Religion is man centered, Jesus is God-centered.Religion either ends in pride or despair. Pride because you make a list and can do it and act better than everyone, or despair because you can’t do your own list of rules and feel “not good enough” for God. With Jesus though you have humble confident joy because He represents you, you don’t represent yourself and His sacrifice is perfect putting us in perfect standing with God the Father.”

Jefferson Bethke