On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous - Tumblr Posts

"What is a country but a life sentence?" - on earth we're briefly gorgeous

“Because tenderness depends on how little the world touches you. To stay tender, the weight of your life cannot lean on your bones.”

— Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

On Astrology and Queerness: Ocean Vuong

Just started “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” and Ocean Vuong’s Scorpio Moon is so loud!!

I feel like I’ve noticed it ever since I read “Time Is A Mother”. He has a thing for really violent imagery to convey emotions. This man must be a Cancer rising because it’s too strong!

This is from “The Bull” and this is one of my favorite lines in the whole book. This whole poem to me was about his relationship with queerness and other boys. As you can see it’s quite intense!

Speaking of queerness he gave a speech talking about queer folk that I think really highlighted his Scorpio Moon “For queer folk failure becomes a necessary practice towards success” I feel this make sense why the ancients say a detriment Moon or Venus can indicate queerness.

Moon and Venus are the two reproductive planets. He has both a Virgo Venus and Scorpio Moon. I find that queer people have to work a lot harder to find what works for them. As that knowledge is really not provided to them in this world. This quote truly exemplifies this fact A planet in detriment has no resources for the planet to function properly. So naturally this would cause a person with these placements to struggle with the themes of the planet and might go through a trial and error period to find what works for them.

Obviously these are not the end all be all placement for queerness (I’m queer and have none of these placements) but I felt it was interesting to look at!!

~✨TaTa for now✨

-Issiah

“Sometimes, when I’m careless, I think survival is easy: you just keep moving forward with what you have, or what’s left of what you were given, until something changes—or you realize, at last, that you can change without disappearing, that all you had to do was wait until the storm passes you over and you find that—yes—your name is still attached to a living being.”

— Ocean Vuong, from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and the prey.

– Ocean Vuong

To love something, then, is to name it after something so worthless it might be left untouched - and alive. A name, thin as air, can also be a shield.

- Ocean Vuong

I made a little something cause this book is, so, so, so tragically beautiful i cannot cope 🙄

-Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

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-Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

Currently reading On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and when I read this part where Ocean talk about his mother, Rose living with a war inside her I was immediately reminded of Ari when he talks about how war affected his dad, Jamie in AADDTSOTU. How both of the parents were had a war long ended still living inside of them, haunting them and their sons living with the pain of their parents wounds, watching them hurt and not knowing how to make it right. How it was Vietnam War for both of the stories, one real and one fictional. It's haunting and heart breaking. The things war does to people and their loved ones.

In "On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous" Ocean tells how in Vietnamese the word for missing someone and remembering someone is same...So when his mother asked if he misses her, he flinched thinking she said "Do you remember me?"

I was just sitting and thinking about my own mother tongue. In Hindi too, the word for missing and remembering is the same "याद" (Yaad) the only difference is the change of verb and sentence formation and that's how we know if the speaker is talking about missing someone or remembering someone; "मुझे तुम्हारी याद आ रही है।" (literally meaning 'Your memory/remembrance is coming to me') "मैं तुम्हे याद कर रहा हूँ।" But the sentence is always talking about remembrance. Now that I see, there is no literal translation for "I miss you" because we don't have the word for "missing" someone, all we ever do is remember them and with the memories, they are never 'missing' they are with us through that remembrance. It's like saying "I am not sad thinking about how you are not here anymore but rather I'm remembering the times you were here and I wish things were the same." It makes sense how the word "याद" also refers to 'memories'. To say "I miss you" in Hindi is to say "Now that I feel your absence, your memories are coming to me, you are coming to me, I am remembering to remember you."

“One day he said to me ̶ […] ̶ 'Why are you sad?’. ‘I’m not sad,’ I said, and began to cry. Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous.”

—

Margaret Atwood, from ‘The Blind Assassin’, first published in 2000.

“Sometimes being offered tenderness feels like the very proof that you’ve been ruined”

- Ocean Vuong, from ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’, first published in 2019.

“To arrive at love, then, is to arrive through obliteration. Eviscerate me, we mean to say, and I’ll tell you the truth.”

— Ocean Vuong, from ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’, first published in 2019.

Because freedom, I am told, is nothing but the distance between the hunter and its prey.

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

[Text ID: “I read that beauty has historically demanded replication. We make more of anything we find aesthetically pleasing, whether it’s a vase, a painting, a chalice, a poem. We reproduce it in order to keep it, extend it through space and time. To gaze at what pleases—a fresco, a peach-red mountain range, a boy, the mole on his jaw—is, in itself, replication—the image prolonged in the eye, making more of it, making it last. Staring into the mirror, I replicate myself into a future where I might not exist.”]

SOON WE’LL BE STRANGERS

ocean vuong, on earth we’re briefly gorgeous // hanif kureishi // her (2013) // megan morrison, grounded: the adventures of rapunzel // @heavensghost

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.

― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

Because the sunset, like survival, exists only on the verge of its own disappearing. To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.

― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous