Lydia Tymoshenko, The Duel

Once Upon a December, Emile Pandolfi

We are the girls with anxiety disorders, filled appointment books, five-year plans. We take ourselves very, very seriously. We are the peacemakers, the do-gooders, the givers, the savers. We are on time, overly prepared, well read, and witty, intellectually curious, always moving… We pride ourselves on getting as little sleep as possible and thrive on self-deprivation. We drink coffee, a lot of it. We are on birth control, Prozac, and multivitamins… We are relentless, judgmental with ourselves, and forgiving to others. We never want to be as passive-aggressive as our mothers, never want to marry men as uninspired as our fathers… We are the daughters of the feminists who said, “You can be anything,” and we heard, “You have to be everything.

Grandparents are here

songsofwolves:

HISTORY MEME : (1/9) Kings/Queens - Queen Razia Sultan

Raziyya al-Din (1205 – October 13, 1240) usually referred to in history as Razia Sultan, was the Queen of Delhi in India from 1236 to May 1240. Like some other Muslim princesses of the time, she was trained to lead armies and administer kingdoms if necessary. Razia Sultana was the only woman ruler of both the Sultanate and the Mughal period. She succeeded her father Shams-ud-din Iltutmish to the Sultanate of Delhi in 1236. Iltutmish became the first sultan to appoint a woman as his successor when he designated his daughter Razia as his heir apparent. She dressed like a man and sat in open durbar. She was an efficient ruler and possessed all the qualities of a Monarch. As a child and adolescent, Razia had little contact with the women of the harem, so she had not learnt the customary behavior of women in the Muslim society that she was born into.  As Sultan, Razia preferred a man’s tunic and headdress; and contrary to custom, she would later show her face when she rode an elephant into battle at the head of her army. (+)

My grandparents were supposed to fly in from Detroit at 4, but their flight has been delayed like, 14 times (and randomly diverted to Pittsburgh?), so we’ve just been hanging around a closed shopping plaza for the past four hours because it’d be a waste of gas to drive all the way home. I feel so bad for my poor grandparents / waiting is literally the most frustrating thing on the planet.

In my dreams the world would come alive, becoming so captivatingly majestic, free and ethereal, that afterwards it would be oppressive to breathe the dust of this painted life.