#the marginalian

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photograph: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

* * * *

“You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.

[…]

“I don’t mean it’s easy or assured; there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe — that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.

[…]

“And now my old dog is dead, and another I had after him, and my parents are dead, and that first world, that old house, is sold and lost, and the books I gathered there lost, or sold — but more books bought, and in another place, board by board and stone by stone, like a house, a true life built, and all because I was steadfast about one or two things: loving foxes, and poems, the blank piece of paper, and my own energy — and mostly the shimmering shoulders of the world that shrug carelessly over the fate of any individual that they may, the better, keep the Niles and the Amazons flowing. And that I did not give to anyone the responsibility for my life. It is mine. I made it. And can do what I want to with it. Live it. Give it back, someday, without bitterness, to the wild and weedy dunes.”

—Mary Oliver, “Staying Alive”

h/t The Marginalian

[via Follies Of God]

[guy60660]

Violeta Lopiz | Marginalinian

[memoriesofthingspast]

📐⚠️🟥🔵🔶💠

[sassafrasmoonshine]

Arthur Rackham (British, 1867-1939) • Illustration for The Wishing-Table by The Brothers Grimm • From the collection Little Brother & Little Sister and other Tales of the Brothers Grimm • Pen and ink with watercolour • 1917 • Publisher: Constable & Co. Ltd, London

Wishing-Table, Gold-Ass, and Cudgel: “Gold pieces fell down on the cloth like a thunder shower.”

A beautiful review of the collection Little Brother & Little Sister, written by Maria Popova can be read on her online magazine The Marginalian.

[arthistoryanimalia]

M.C. Escher on Loneliness, Creativity, and How Rachel Carson [born #OTD] Inspired His Art, with a Side of Bach:

The above article mentions that Rachel Carson owned two signed prints by M.C. Escher; it's been noted elsewhere that one was Fish and Frogs (1949), but does anyone know what the second one was?

[plutoismyfavplanet]

Love is a giver and a plunderer, the way it both anneals the self and alters it, the way it moors our wholeness and maps our incompleteness. At its heart is the ecstatic, disorienting recognition that our world is unfinished, that by entering the world of the other we broaden and magnify our own, that in the end there is no world — only a flowing exchange of energy, through which we become more entirely ourselves.

- maria popova

[solitude-and-books]

illustration by margaret .c

- joseph brodsky

[amaised44]

[thepetrichorist]

So much of the beauty, so much of what propels our pursuit of truth, stems from the invisible connections—between ideas, between disciplines, between the denizens of a particular time and a particular place, between the interior world of each pioneer and the mark they leave on the cave walls of culture, between faint figures who pass each other in the nocturne before the torchlight of a revolution lights the new day, with little more than a half-nod of kinship and a match to change hands.

– Maria Popova, Figuring

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Photograph of Patti Smith by Rebecca Miller.

* * * *

Memory. Creativity. Links to the past.

From 𝐽𝑢𝑠𝑡 𝐾𝑖𝑑𝑠 by Patti Smith.

"When I was very young, my mother took me for walks in Humboldt Park, along the edge of the Prairie River. I have vague memories, like impressions on glass plates, of an old boathouse, a circular band shell, an arched stone bridge. The narrows of the river emptied into a wide lagoon and I saw upon its surface a singular miracle. A long curving neck rose from a dress of white plumage.

"𝑆𝑤𝑎𝑛, my mother said, sensing my excitement. It pattered the bright water, flapping its great wings, and lifted into the sky.

The word alone hardly attested to its magnificence nor conveyed the emotion it produced. The sight of it generated an urge I had no words for, a desire to speak of the swan, to say something of its whiteness, the explosive nature of its movement, and the slow beating of its wings.

The swan became one with the sky. I struggled to find words to describe my own sense of it. 𝑆𝑤𝑎𝑛, I repeated, not entirely satisfied, and I felt a twinge, a curious yearning, imperceptible to passersby, my mother, the trees, or the clouds."

And from 𝑀 𝑇𝑟𝑎𝑖𝑛:

"We seek to stay present, even as the ghosts attempt to draw us away. Our father manning the loom of eternal return. Our mother wandering toward paradise, releasing the thread. In my way of thinking, anything is possible. Life is at the bottom of things and belief at the top, while the creative impulse, dwelling in the center, informs all. We imagine a house, a rectangle of hope. A room with a single bed with a pale coverlet, a few precious books, a stamp album. Walls papered in faded floral fall away and burst as a newborn meadow speckled with sun and a stream emptying into a greater stream where a small boat awaits with two glowing oars and one blue sail."

Ecco Press Alfred A. Knopf Vintage Books & Anchor Books The Marginalian

[guy60660]

Ben Shahn | The Marginalian

[memoriesofthingspast]

Alice James - genius

[missbcm]

"I am convinced that most people do not grow up. We find parking spaces and honor our credit cards. We marry and dare to have children and call that growing up. I think what we do is mostly grow old. We carry accumulation of years in our bodies and on our faces, but generally our real selves, the children inside, are still innocent and shy as magnolias. We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do."

Letter to My Daughter is a superb read in its entirety. 

[the-november-library]

- Marcus Aurelius

Screenshot from The Marginalian by Maria Popova

[arthistoryanimalia]

#Superb_Owl Sunday article/photo gallery: "Gorgeous 19th-Century Illustrations of Owls and Ospreys" via The Marginalian (formerly Brain Pickings)

[solitude-and-books]