hip swell vol. v

my favorites from october & november.

emma. (2020)

an excerpt from my journal, 11/17 :

i think the worst days are the ones where i can’t pin the sadness on anything else.

The other morning, I wandered into a bookstore tucked away in a battered corner of West London, a place I’d never walked before. I’d started the day with a lie, telling my family I’d only sit in a nook and read, not buy. I left with six new books.

It took me ages to find them. I’m craving something dark and weighty—prose that melts like confectionery on the tongue before spiraling into something maddening. Each novel I picked up felt wrong, skimmed with a detached boredom that should’ve been my first clue.

“This was rough but so good,” the clerk said about one of my choices, and I smiled faintly, my face framed by the thick fur collar of my cream coat.

“Good,” I told her.

On the train home, I started to feel less like myself—sluggish, aching for some elusive ease I seemed to deny myself. Like clockwork, I slid open my period tracker app—Clue, if anyone’s wondering. (They recently declared they’ll fight tooth and nail to protect users’ data. A small comfort, I suppose.) No luteal phase. According to the app, I’m very fertile at the moment.

But none of it made sense. None of it was what I wanted.

This past week, I’ve been feeding my hard drive with fragments of my world: backups of curated blogs, fanfiction I’ve loved or written, manuscripts, photos—everything that feels like it could slip through my fingers in the next four years. As

(di)visive

put it, I hold myself together by feeding.

That, too, should’ve been a sign.

I woke this morning—Sunday, a day where I always sink—and felt the heaviness settle in. The first thought to rise from the haze of sleep was: What else can I do for love?

Astrological whispers tell me Pluto’s moving into Aquarius for the next two decades, a transit promising transformation and reckoning with values. It’ll light up my 12th house, allegedly stirring sharp bouts of loneliness and a spiritual journey that will exhaust me in a way I’m entirely unprepared for.

But it’s not just the stars. My grief is both mine and inherited, transcendent and ancient. I’ve always carried it, and it has always been hard.

I think of that quote: The closest most women get to insanity is trying not to be. It’s painfully true, isn’t it? I feel most unmoored when I sense I’m losing my mind but know, deep down, that I’m not. I am here, sane and bearing it all in some deep reservoir I thought would fill by now.

I’ve tried to dress it up. ‘Journal’ instead of ‘diary’, so I can feel I’ve grown out of whatever it is that plagues me. It’s ridiculous. I’m such a tall child.

I’ve always said summer is my worst season and winter my sanctuary. But even winter has its edges. Most of the time, I feel bright-eyed, cushioned by the cold, my heart pulsing with a fresh rhythm. But December wanes, and the light begins to dim.

My parents’ anniversary falls in its final week. Sometimes, I think my sadness spikes then because I long so desperately for my own kind of love—a winter wedding, cheeks flushed with overdone blush, wrapped in my faux furs.

Will someone ever love me? I scream it, and the world echoes it back to me. People reassure me it’s coming, but I’ve always felt cursed, like I’m last in line. Too intense for lightness, too turbulent for safe landings.

And so, I find myself thirsting for spring—the dark kind. My other favorite.

Here is where the lion and the lamb meet in a tender ouroboros. Rain lashes, the sun shines defiantly, and the damage is laid bare. Nothing hides. It looks me squarely in the eye.

It is unafraid and so am I.

Despite it all, I’ve found ways to claim my small victories, my slivers of joy. I wake. I make tea. I talk about it.

Soon, I’ll go home. The airport ride will be the best part: the slur of the early morning, classical melodies interspersed with choral voices, and the nervous flutter in my stomach as I rush through security and wait at the gate. Ten hours until I’m home.

It’ll be dark when I land. I’ll find the glow of my father’s car, curl into the backseat, and watch the road shiver underneath the highway lights.

I’ll let my mother braid and unbraid my hair. I’ll sleep curled around my elderly dog, his body pressed against mine as though sensing where all my feelings pool—a phantom pregnancy with a phantom ache.

When I wake, it will all still be there.

⟡ literary pieces: essays, analysis, etc.

Dog Star by Nora Lange.

lamb-child by

Anna de Waal

Ask Polly: Why Don’t the Men I Date Ever Truly Love Me? By Heather Havrilesky

(the infamous) I was Caroline Calloway by Natalie Beach

Is the Heat Wave Making You Feel Weird Too? by

Isabella Rosario

(note: stunning voice.)

puppets, prophets, and predators by

rish

I Just Threw Up In My Mouth by

Girl Insides

Paris fashions’s return to tradition and conservatism by Oliver Dahle

medieval-girl autumn by

Anna de Waal

SEA FOAM by

bailey navin

when lorde said girl, you walk like a bitch, when i was ten, someone said that by

tunmise adebowale

Liberation Through Words by

sotce

anything at all from

Ochuko Akpovbovbo

. every piece is a small beam of joy.

Fashion’s Alt-Right Flirtation by

Emily Kirkpatrick

on loneliness by

miri

(note: i’m a miri truther. )

Nietzsche in Ramadan by

(di)visive

trogoautoegocrat by

(di)visive

a sentimental cycnic’s Laws of Nature by

Isabelle

grateful I don’t look like what I seen by

nadav

joy as an atomic bomb by

wenyi xue

⟡ interviews and profiles. 

Isabel Quintanilla's intimate realism

Lana Del Rey and the Vogue Italia Interview by Corinne Corci (note: the english translation is at the bottom.)

Etta Marcus is Not You Sad-Girl by Isabelle Cassidy

Max Richter: “We are always beginning” by Sophie Leigh Walker (note: richter is one of my favorite composers. he makes me miss my days of classical training.)

Astonishing Art From Southwest Russian—Young Artist Igor Krapar Shcherbakov by Rosa JH Berland (note: i need so much of his art in my house. i am so serious. who do i have to call?)

Nicole Kidman still feels it all by Ben Allen (note: i adore nicole kidman so much it’s not even funny.)

⟡ books. 

Guillotine by Delilah S. Dawson

House of Hunger by

Alexis Henderson

A Taste of Gold & Iron by Alexandra Rowland (note: currently reading).

⟡ films. 

Carmilla (2019) dir. Emily Harris

Chloe (2009) dir. Atom Egoyan

The Invitation (2015) dir. Karyn Kusama

The Substance (2024) dir. Coralie Fargeat

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) dir. Peter Weir

His Three Daughters (2023) dir. Azazel Jacobs

Mustang (2015) dir. Denez Gamze Ergüven

⟡ music.

⟡ wishlist. 

• A print subscription to The Cut

• Bistro Tiled Margot Monogram Mug

• Hidden Label Large Scented Candle, Vanilla Butter Cake, 30 oz.

• Secondhand cotton t-shirts

• Another blanket scarf

• Pré de Provence soap bars

• Dieux Instant Angel Moisturizer

• Beekeeper’s Naturals Propolis Throat Spray

• Papier Monogram Pine Leather Notebook in Green

• Jared Ellner Handwoven Ribbon Bag in Floral Pink

⟡ brain dump. — things that have been sticking with me.

• bone broth

• soup

• vintage nightgowns (i bought myself one from vinted and my life has severely changed for the better)

• strings in music and they way they sometimes do runs like a human voice

• how to stop questioning how loveable i am

• driving at night

• my dream home and what my office will look like inside of it

• kisses anywhere other than the mouth, specifically neck, shoulder, spine and ankle.

• the ocean

• the moon

• the word ‘evocative’

• @ ib_2134758881593 on tiktok

• gothic romance both in film and literature

• translation, language, and devoting your life to it i.e. translation majors

• the compositions of max richter (duh.)

• the work of igor krapar shcherbakov (duh, again.)

• long-form emailing between friends

• salmon

• how to find good poetry based on my personal standards

• films on motherhood

• dark chocolate

• sunlight on bare feet in the grass

• elaborate braiding à la asoiaf

• christmas (my favorite holiday)

• gift guides/what to gift the people i love

• my sisters

• my home

• the natural world

• how to find those farms where you can lay with a cow/horse/goat’s head in your lap for hours and lose time

• clambering through the woods like i did when i was little

• aurora’s performance of the seed ft. anna lapwood live from albert hall. it gives me ridiculous chills.

• apple tea

• kindness

• my initials on my belongings

• women in love with one another

• love, always

my moodboard of how i have been feeling this week.

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