“And this is what mere humanity always does. It’s made up of these inventors or artists, millions and millions of them, each in his own way trying to recruit other people to play a supporting role and sustain him in his make-believe. The great chiefs and leaders recruit the greatest number, and that’s what their power is. There’s one image that gets out in front to lead the rest and can impose its claim to being genuine with more force than others, or one voice enlarged to thunder is heard above the others. Then a huge invention […] becomes the actuality. That’s the struggle of humanity, to recruit others to your version of what’s real. Then even the flowers and the moss on the stones become the moss and the flowers of a version.”

— Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

18-10-19

“Arguments for preservation based on the beauty of wilderness are sometimes treated as if they were of little weight because they are “merely aesthetic”. That is a mistake. We go to great lengths to preserve the artistic treasures of earlier human civilisations. It is difficult to imagine any economic gain that we would be prepared to accept as adequate compensation for, for instance, the destruction of the paintings in the Louvre.

How should we compare the aesthetic value of wilderness with that of the paintings in the Louvre? Here, perhaps, judgment does become inescapably subjective; so I shall report my own experiences. I have looked at the paintings in the Louvre, and in many of the other great galleries of Europe and the United States. I think I have a reasonable sense of appreciation of the fine arts; yet I have not had, in any museum, experiences that have filled my aesthetic senses in the way that they are filled when I walk in a natural setting and pause to survey the view from a rocky peak overlooking a forested valley, or by a stream tumbling over moss-covered boulders set amongst tall tree-ferns, growing in the shade of the forest canopy, I do not think I am alone in this; for many people, wilderness is the source of the greatest feelings of aesthetic appreciation, rising to an almost mystical intensity.”

— Peter Singer, Practical Ethics

17-10-19

“

‘Let me see, Mr. Vyse—I forget—what is your profession?’

‘I have no profession,’ said Cecil. 'It is another example of my decadence. My attitude quite an indefensible one–is that so long as I am no trouble to any one I have a right to do as I like. I know I ought to be getting money out of people, or devoting myself to things I don’t care a straw about, but somehow, I’ve not been able to begin.’

'You are very fortunate,’ said Mr. Beebe. 'It is a wonderful opportunity, the possession of leisure.’

”

— E.M. Forster, A Room With a View (via exhaled-spirals)

16-10-19

“If life were merely a habit, I should commit suicide; but even now, more or less desperate, I cannot but think, ‘Something wonderful may happen.’ It is not optimism […] which leaves a loophole for life… I merely choose to remain living out of respect for possibility.”

— Frank O’Hara, Early Writing

15-10-19

“When I first saw New York I was twenty, and it was summertime, and […] for three days I sat wrapped in blankets in a hotel room air-conditioned to 35°F and tried to get over a bad cold and a high fever. It did not occur to me to call a doctor, because I knew none, and although it did occur to me to call the desk and ask that the air conditioner be turned off, I never called, because I did not know how much to tip whoever might come—was anyone ever so young?”

— Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem

14-10-19

“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, in Selected Journals: 1820-1842

13-10-19

— Robin Wall Kimmerer, Gathering Moss

12-10-19

“When I was nine years old, the world, too, was nine years old. At least, there was no difference between us, no opposition, no distance. We just tumbled around from sunrise to sunset, earth and body as alike as two pennies. And there was never a harsh word between us, for the simple reason that there were no words at all between us; we never uttered a word to each other, the world and I. Our relationship was beyond language—and thus also beyond time. We were one big space (which was, of course, a very small space).”

— Inger Christensen, The Condition of Secrecy

11-10-19

“The dynamic of friendship is almost always underestimated as a constant force in human life […], but no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

— David Whyte, Consolations

10-10-19

“Let us consider the feeling of grace. At first it is only the perception of a certain ease, a facility in outward movement. And as those movements which prepare the way for others are easy, we are led to find a superior ease in the movements we can foresee, in the present attitudes which indicate and, as it were, prefigure future attitudes. If jerky movements are lacking in grace, it is because each is self-sufficient and does not announce those which follow. If curves are more graceful than broken lines, the reason is that, while a curved line changes its direction at every moment, every new direction is indicated in the preceding one. Thus the perception of ease in motion becomes the pleasure of the flow of time, of holding the future in the present.”

— Henri Bergson, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (via exhaled-spirals)

9-10-19